I do a week for 8th graders called “Welcome to High School”. We break from our usual independent reading and delve into a more mature class-set book, John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”. Short, I assign nightly reading, pull out my old high school materials (and borrow my high school teaching wife’s) and give them a desk-in-rows challenge of staying awake while I throw my arms around and talk of symbols, foreshadowing and give punitive reading quizzes.
Having taught “student centered” and “independent project and inquiry” based lessons–drank from the fountain of Nancie Atwell, among others–I don’t know how I did it for those early years in my career.
Still, it is valuable. The kids calm down in looking up at high school (I force them to succeed) and get to try something different.
So, we have this poem. A classic to go with a classic text. If anything, you can talk about resiliency; my students struggle with the concept.
To a Mouse
Robert Burns
On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
