Initiation

Black and white, baby!

If you've read DIVERGENT, you wouldn't be surprised that our kids expected an initiation.  We expected to host one, too.  It also won't surprise you that we put a CRL spin on things. After our Principal cancelled the order of serum injections, we were left with very few options.



Exploding muffins

We started with the idea of running five separate initiations.  We brainstormed a different activity for each faction, playing to their strengths: logic puzzles for Erudite, target practice for Dauntless, that sort of thing. But after days of planning (and several orders of takeout) we couldn't think of much for our humble Abnegation kiddos except community service.  Sure, we could have them help teachers after school, clean out lockers, and wash desks for points.  They'd do it...we knew they would...but it seemed heartless to have them traipse around the school with a trashcan and Clorox wipes while they heard Dauntless shouts coming from the gymnasium. 

Somewhere along the way, perhaps whilst perusing an Oriental Trading catalog, we stumbled upon the idea of a carnival.  You know when something just *feels* right?  Well, this was one of those moments.  We started out calling paintball venues and ended up with a carnival. Whoda guessed?!



Oh yes: PLINKO! We bought two.

With our minds (and budget) set on a carnival,
we quickly switched gears from meaningful-literary-connections to good old fashioned fun.  Instead of selecting stations for each faction ahead of time, we decided on a Free-For-All.  All stations would be open to all factions; let 'em run around for an hour with their friends and collect tickets and just be kids.  What a liberating concept!


Our darling Amity kiddos, seated in a circle.

Of course, we couldn't completely turn our back on the idea of connecting to the book.  Instead of pretending to have uncovered deeper symbolic meaning in the throwing of a beanbag at a clown, we openly acknowledged our silliness.  In explaining the event to the kids just before opening the games, Mary said, "We made a few connections, a few very LOOSE connections to the factions, but really the point of today is just for you to have fun."  Then the students were free to explore:

Dauntless Target Practice - throwing a beanbag at a clown/net/thing.
Candor's Balancing Act - walk a circuit with a wooden egg balanced on your head
Amity's Duck Pond - play Duck Duck Goose.  Winners get to pick a duck from the pond.  
Abnegation's Break Time at the Food Pantry - throw a ball to knock down cans
Candor Lets the Chips Fall Where They May - Plinko!
Erudite's Potential to Kinetic Energy Transfer - ring toss
Abnegation Tunic Trot - sack race
Erudite's Food Chain Fling - use a rubber frog to shoot down foam apples
Dauntless Exploding Muffin - balloon darts
Around the Amity Campfire - sing songs with your friends!

Pick a winner at the Amity duck pond.

Looking back, we made a lot of decisions based on what was easier for us. Stations were set up, scripts were given to Faction Leaders (aka our fabulous colleagues who gave up yet another Friday afternoon to come play), and tickets were allotted.  Taking into account the varying populations of our factions, the CRL decided to work in some math and award points based on tickets per capita. Be impressed. Be very impressed.



"Every year, we're doing a sack race."

The kids took the attendance. (Dauntless wouldn't sit still long enough to allow their 8th grade representative to get an accurate headcount.  Amity seated themselves in a circle while a sweet little 6th grade girl calmly led the roll call.) The kids tallied their tickets. (Dauntless asked for a calculator while struggling to add their points together.  Erudite presented Erin with their total and had already factored their percentage, down to two decimal points.  We kid you not.)



We were absolutely overwhelmed by the teachers who came to help. A few teachers made it a family event by bringing their elementary aged children in to play.  Our collective CRL heart melted when again we had a dozen high schoolers return to HMMS - this time surprising their teachers with costume changes! - eager to take over Initiation games.  Every single station was manned by a staff volunteer so we were free to just take it all in...laugh out loud at the sheer joy of kids jumping in sacks (on Friday we decided no matter what book we do, we will always have a sack race), offering suggestions for egg balancing to those with slippery hair, cheering on the girls who just would not give up until they'd popped that darn balloon!  

We did get just a little punchy when deciding point values for the activities.  Mary is still laughing about putting a 2 on the bottom of each and every duck in the pond.  

Everyone is a winner, get it? Amity doesn't have competition!



Loving the chaos on Initiation Afternoon

The exceedingly patient colleague who worked the duck pond on Friday reports there was only one riot when the kids figured out the schtick.  Most, though, were happy to just go along for the ride.  In one of the afternoon's more memorable moments, an eighth-grade boy - who had his eye on the kids seated in a circle around a dozen plastic floating ducks - asked, "Is this Duck Duck Goose?" When he received an affirmative, he nodded sagely and sat down, declaring, "I like it!"

Faculty throwdown

Now, if you know anything about the CRL, you know we love spectacle.  It just so happens that Oriental Trading sells carnival supplies *and* sumo wrestling inflatables.  What does one have to do with the other?  We have no idea, but could you say no to giant sumo inflatables?  Yeah, we couldn't either.  Initially, we thought the sumo wrestling could be the Dauntless initiation.  But we didn't want the kids to fall and break themselves, so we saved the wrestling for the finale and allowed teachers to suit up for bonus points for the faction of their choice.  Besides saying we work with the absolute best colleagues in the world, we'll let the photo speak for itself.  


Shameless Plug: We'd love for you to join us this Thursday night, 3/13/14, at 8:00pm for a Twitter discussion about student engagement and motivation with book clubs #IRAchat

-Mary and Erin
@allincotillo @allinoleary

Where We Belong

It was 7:25 on Friday morning; a sixth grader bounced into the front office and circled around the secretary. "Do you know what today is? It's All In!  All In is todaaayyyy!"  That was just the beginning.

It's no secret - the Crazy Reading Ladies did their fair share of bouncing around on Friday, too. 

The theme of our first activity was "Where You Belong."  The five factions are central to the plot of DIVERGENT, so our first mission was to sort our cherubs based on what they value.  Kids rotated among seven faculty-led stations to confront various moral dilemmas.  Their answers determined their faction, and the results were entertainingly accurate. 

That's…a lot of initiates!

DIVERGENT has brought us our biggest numbers yet - 281 students - and we planned our first event in a way that would (hopefully) accommodate our voracious readers. We weren't sure how many would decide to stay after school the Friday before a long weekend; but, as the day wore on and we encountered one bouncing child after another, we laughed and said, "I think we're going to get slammed."

Slammed we were.  

When the doors opened, over one hundred-sixty middle schoolers poured into the gymnasium.

One happy seventh grader.

The view from Year Three is pretty fabulous.  We are thrilled beyond belief to have more participants than ever, and yet somehow, the planning has gotten infinitely easier.  We weren't nervous anticipating what was to come; we were excited.  We've already confessed that this event was planned mere days beforehand.  Well, we also made changes with one hour to go.  "Let's change how we reveal the factions." YEA! "Let's add a costume event to the relay!" COOL! We rolled with it, it worked…and it was good.  

Besides, it's kind of awesome that we've amassed such a costume cache over the last three years, we didn't even need to shop!  

Fabulous faculty faction fashionistas.

Our attendance list was impeccable, and our teachers were superlative.  Oh, while we're mentioning how organized we are, we should probably tell you that teachers came to help with zero knowledge or preparation. See, the CRL had written a two-page missive with specific instructions the day before. We emailed it between the two of us, added details, and even edited it. It was pretty wonderful, and it would have been incredibly helpful. And we completely forgot to email it to our colleagues. 

We work with the most supportive faculty on the planet; over a dozen teachers, both of our administrators, and the school secretary braved the chaos and came to play. This left the CRL free to roam, extinguish small fires, snap pictures, and enjoy.  For that, we can't thank them enough.  

Some of our wonderful cherubs.

To be perfectly honest, this labor of love is highly emotional for the CRL. It's hard not to get choked up when you see teachers dressed in faction colors, sprawled on the floor with kids after school.  We've had teachers that have been with us since the beginning, and those who experienced their first All In! event this past Friday.  

The euphoric finish to the faction relay.

We see struggling readers march in to the gymnasium with pride, unable to wipe the smile off their faces. We see regular ed and special ed kids working and laughing and posing together. We look around and see three-peats and newbies. After three years of putting up with her mom's endless meetings with the other Crazy Reading Lady, we have our own little CRL in attendance now. (She's in Candor and unsurprisingly volunteered...demanded?... to run the first leg of the relay race.) And we lost our breath when we saw a child who is a frequent truancy concern make his way to the gym. After school, on a Friday, because he read a book…for fun.

All In! alumni

As if we needed any other reason to be emotional, we can't help but reflect on our own middle school experiences. We'll be straight with you: we were NOT cool.  Just the fact that we're able to write "our own middle school experiences" without breaking into hives is impressive.  We were not popular, or poised, or pretty.  Yet somehow, we've managed to create a middle school experience to which our kids want to return.  Friday afternoon, eight alumni showed up from the high school to lend a hand, cheer initiates, hug their teachers, and have fun.  Kids wanting to come back to middle school?  That just might be our biggest achievement yet.  And it solidifies the gut feeling we've had since the beginning of this crazy reading adventure: that working together, in this school, with these kids…this is where we belong.

-Mary @allincotillo and Erin @allinoleary

Factions

Mary:
When Katie, Erin and I met around my kitchen table to plan the book reveal, we took faction quizzes.  Predictably, Erin identified with Abnegation and Katie with Dauntless.  I really wanted to be Erudite.  Not only do I value learning, but blue is a really great color for me.  I was somewhat disappointed to be grouped with Amity.  I took another quiz, this time choosing answers I thought had a slightly more intellectual flavor.  Nope.  Still Amity.  I took quiz after quiz after quiz.  Amity, Amity, Amity.  Phbt.  I don't look good in yellow. 

Owning our faction fashions.

The night before the big reveal, I didn't sleep well.  I tossed and turned a lot.  I didn't attribute my restlessness to anything in particular.  I had a big day ahead of me.  There was the reveal, a new lesson to teach to my classes, and my parents were in town for a rare dinner opportunity.  It wasn't until I was walking in to school, fighting the growing nausea, that I realized I was nervous.

After our on-air, highly scripted, excessively-rehearsed argument, we each snatched up our book and left the news room in a bit of a huff.  News crew kids tailed Miss O'Leary and grilled her; I eavesdropped from the guidance office, grinning like an idiot.  As I hid like the Amity coward I am, I realized something.  I didn't lose sleep because I had to speak on the news.  I wasn't nervous because I knew I'd be addressing a room of 500+.  Nope.  My stomach was now completely calm.  I felt sick because I didn't want to fight with Erin.  Huh.  I guess I'm Amity after all. 

CRL update twelve weeks later…

We were planning our first event, inspired by a colleague's Scruples-like faction activity.  We took seven moral dilemma-type queries and generated five responses to each one, hopefully capturing the values held by the factions.  

The humble, innocuous Abnegation
slipped right under the radar.

We also had a strong desire to out-think our kidlets.  See, every sixth-grade girl wants to be Dauntless.  Every eighth-grade boy wants to be Dauntless too, and will go so far as to answer the questions in the back of Veronica Roth's bestseller reflecting whom they hope to be, not as the student who cried in Miss O'Leary's class when she corrected his capitalization error.

See what we mean?

We had a lot of fun with it - what U.S city would  Candor visit? What would Dauntless eat for dinner?

Candor is ready to relay…
and tell the world.

So we made up the responses.  All thirty-five of them.  Sure we had justifications - and we totally thought they were clever - but we had a decent dose of mind-messing thrown in, "No one is going to order sushi, they'll all choose chicken fingers and fries - we'll totally get some Abnegation!"  FYI - turns out, a considerable number of middle schoolers order sushi.  Who knew?

The Erudite included every member
of our school's math team. No joke.

When all was said and done, and all one hundred sixty-something initiates rotated through the stations, we stood in awe.  Not only did our test result in a fairly even distribution of initiates, it was incredibly, impeccably, hysterically accurate.  


When it came time for the faction relay race, this is what went down. 

"Go ahead."  "No, it's okay.  YOU go!"
"You first.  I insist!"  

"It's cool if we just wear our own
leather, right?"

Amity: While all the other students were debating who would be one of the 7 from their faction to run the relay race, no one in Amity volunteered.  They didn't want to take a spot from a friend who might want the honor.   They didn't care who won; they were just so darn happy to BE there!  

Dauntless:  They wouldn't sit down.  Or shut up.  Or notice when the entire gym was silent and staring at them, waiting for them to do both.  At one point they were chasing the Assistant Principal around the gym to see who was the fastest. They came dressed in their own black clothes, knee-high boots, and Batman sweatshirts.  When handed a leather jacket for the costume portion of the relay race, one dauntless heroine asked if she could just wear her own.  

Erudite: Before the black-market-trading portion of the faction relay activity, the Erudite plotted in secret.  They decided to hoard the materials they gathered.  True, they wouldn't need *everything* they got, but by keeping it to themselves they knew they'd be depriving other teams of points.  It was a manipulation the CRL never anticipated (we ruled it legal - it's not their fault they are smarter than we are).

Candor:  These guys ratted out the clever Erudite at the very first opportunity and complained (loudly) that it was unfair. 

Our HMMS cherubs answered questions that were written the night before by women running solely on desperation and caffeine, yet their answers resulted in factions that were so perfectly aligned with the novel that we could supply the filming of INSURGENT with more extras than they could possibly need.   

You can't make this stuff up. 

I guess that just about wraps up...oh... Abnegation?  Well, Abnegation finished second…but nobody noticed.

Who is Going to #IRA14 in New Orleans?

We are!
About 50 seconds in.
So cool!

@allinoleary
@mzcotillo

HMMS families are All In!

Targeting a new demographic - parents!

Not to brag (okay, totally to brag), but the Crazy Reading Ladies are pretty darn good at this whole gettin'-'em-to-read gig.  Engaging content? Check.  Attention getting visual displays? Check. Positive peer pressure, admin support, catchy theme music? Triple check.  Still, as all good teachers do, we often stop to reflect and brainstorm ways to become better.  So how does one improve upon 500 early adolescents cheering for a book as it if were a new member of One Direction? How about including Mom and Dad.

Wait, what?

You heard us.  On Monday, November 18, the CRL added one more dimension to our realm of literary insanity. Grown-ups.

For the very first time, we invited parents and community members to join us on our adventure.  We partnered with the local library and hosted an activity night for the first ten chapters of DIVERGENT.

It's a logical next step, really.  We already know that All In! is a family affair.  We've reveled in the stories of parents and siblings reading together.  The more the merrier, right?  Absolutely.  And while I'm sure the world is brimming with stories of middle school kids who make their parents drop them off around the corner lest they be seen together, we know that stereotype falls woefully short of capturing the true spirit of our students.  In the words of one 7th grader:   "So if my mom reads the book, she can come, too?  That's awesome!"


While the concept was conceived months in advance, vetted and approved weeks and weeks ahead of time, and formal plans were set several days early, the CRL still found themselves juggling details at the last minute. (Seriously, how does that happen?)  Tables and chairs were arranged and rearranged; table tents and trifolds and refreshments were manhandled.  And as we fussed, we fretted.   How many people would come?   We would consider the event to be a success if we got 15 people.  We conservatively hoped for 10. Just as long as it wasn't the two of us, our administrators, and Mary's daughter.    

Our adorable Amity kids

On each table was an agenda and list of objectives. We won't bore you with them all, but allow a brief sample: 

Objective #1 - Have fun!
Objective #3 - begin to analyze how complex characters develop over the course of the story (CCR.RL.3). 
  
Yes, we did tie the objectives to MA Frameworks.  We joke about doing it just to show off, but really we wanted to take the opportunity to make the point that while these kids are squealing about books and characters and movies, they are also engaged in some serious academic work.  These kids are having fun, and they just happen to be learning, too.  We also encouraged attendees to tweet their thoughts during the event.  Our principal and assistant principal took up the challenge and we were highly amused to read the tweets later that evening. We'll paste a few at the end of the blog for your viewing pleasure.

As children and parents arrived, we invited them to take the Faction quizzes generously donated by the Bellingham Barnes and Noble bookstore.  Once they identified with a Faction, we invited them to seat themselves accordingly.  

We ended up with: 

• a ton of Erudite...HMMS is full of smarty-pants
• a parent-heavy group of Abnegation
• fairly equal numbers of Dauntless and Candor
• four lonely Amity (and boy, those four were super sweet.)

Abnegation Moms and Dads...
and one 6th grade boy.

Our first activity was a relatively simple characterization exercise.  Each group received and envelope with six names: Tris, Four, Christina, Al, Tori, and Eric.  For each person were examples of characterization: a physical description, something they said, something they did.  We did not provide directions, just handed over the envelopes and asked people to make sense of the materials inside.  After a minute puzzling over content, each group sorted the information into categories.  After a super-brief lesson on the methods of characterization, groups were tasked with identifying a character trait to best describe each character at the beginning of the story with the promise that we would meet again to discuss their growth over the course of the novel. HMMS decided that, at least in the beginning, Tris is inconsistent, Four is fearless, Christina is honest, Eric is hostile, Tori is protective, and Al is insecure. 

We then moved onto an interactive visual timeline.  The CRL came up with this when we were reviewing the content of chapters 1-10.  We chose a total of twenty visuals - the apple slices Beatrice gave to the factionless man, bowls from the Choosing Ceremony, that sort of thing - and scattered them among the tables. As we chronologically reviewed the book, teams held up a picture to declare the next event and place it on the large poster board. Although Erin's clip art selections left a lot to be desired ("How did I miss Caleb's laser eye surgery?" Hey. That is clearly an Erudite eye. You can barely see the laser on the pupil) the activity proved to be lively way to review content, provide commentary for particular plot points, and keep events organized. And an unexpected bonus: kids were quick to open their books and select supporting textual evidence ("No, they rank them after they fight.  It's on page…) It was beautiful.

Look how organized the Erudite are.

When we glanced at the clock, we realized we had fewer than ten minutes remaining in our Divergent discussion group.  We opened it up to our guests to ask questions or bring theories before the group.  The content of the ensuing conversation was so rich and wonderful, we wished we had another hour.  So, the CRL learned a lesson: we had been too concerned with having activities to fill the evening and had forgotten about the benefits of an open discussion.  Next time, we promise to leave more time to chat about the book.  We almost got emotional listening to parents talk to their kids, or offer opinions about character choices in the book, or how this reminds them of a current political situation.  It was everything we wanted, and more.

Yes, there will definitely be a next time.  We are hoping to choose a different weekday evening in order to accommodate as many families as possible, but we will absolutely do this again.  

Our numbers?  We had been so worried about sitting around with Mary's daughter and our two administrators…and nearly forty people came.  And laughed and learned and shared a wonderful evening.  Never underestimate the power of a good book.

@allinoleary
@mzcotillo

Parental Guidance Suggested

When we selected DIVERGENT, we knew it was a choice that needed to be paired with a certain amount of tact.  While the pros of the novel far outweigh the cons, it is a book that involves violence.  Is DIVERGENT more violent than THE HUNGER GAMES or THE HOBBIT?  Perhaps not.  But while Katniss shoots a bow and Bilbo wields a sword, Tris shoots a revolver. 

Guns make people nervous.  We get that.  Guns make US nervous.  Still, at its heart DIVERGENT is a book about a young woman who is raised to believe that being a part of a community is so much more important than being an individual that she would rather die than be factionless.  I don't think it's a stretch to say most middle school students feel similarly about fitting in.  To a typical early adolescent, there are few fates worse than sitting alone at lunch.  And so the story of Tris - her evolution from a girl who seeks to belong to a young woman who must leverage her individuality to save her world - is a story worth putting in the hands of kids.  However, as Tris journeys from a meek Abnegation child to a determined Divergent, she carries a gun in her hand.  And she fires it.  And that's something we didn't feel we could put in front of kids without involving parents. 

 (Retrospective side-note by Mary, mom to the blonde 6th grader in the photo on the left: I wonder if we may have over-reacted.  I'll admit, I was nervous about the guns.  I have a sweet 11 year old daughter who leads a fairly sheltered life.  She hides under a blanket when previews of popular crime/zombie/police TV interrupts her viewing of America's Funniest Videos.  She had nightmares after our school's Rachel's Challenge assembly.  She's...sensitive.  Yet she read DIVERGENT in a weekend, only ever expressing concern after a certain scene involving a butter knife, and even then it was to comment that it was "gross," not scary.  I didn't quite understand the difference between the novel and the assembly; how could one be so terrifying and the other so entertaining? Mrs. D, veteran teacher and mom to teenagers, helped me figure it out.  One is real, one is fiction, and she's old enough to know the difference.  Perhaps my worry was born from me not giving my daughter enough credit.  ~Sigh~ I guess she's gonna keep growing up.)

Step one in parental involvement: send a flyer home with each student at the end of the reveal assembly.  Said flyer acknowledges the gun violence of the novel, and it also identifies the redemptive concepts that are explored, including courage, belonging, and strength. Now, we Crazy Reading Ladies haven't taught middle schoolers for a collective 15 years without learning a thing or two about the habits of our cherubs.  We had very, very little faith that more than 5% of those flyers would make it all the way out of the auditorium, into a backpack or folder, and into the hands of parents.  So we made use of our school's ConnectEd messaging service and we sent the flyer into the email inbox of every parent in the school.  (Try to turn *that* into a paper airplane, kids!)

Step Two: invite the parents to participate in the fun.  The invitation itself isn't anything new.  We've had parents read along with us before.  Some of our favorite stories of years past involve children reading books with their father, brother, mother.  One story moved us so much we tried to get approval for an 18 year old brother to be a movie chaperone.  (It didn't work, but we did manage to save him a T-Shirt.)  Parents have always been invited to read along with us.  This year, to raise the bar, we invited the parents to take part in some of the activities.  

Our first parent-friendly activity was held Monday, Nov. 18th. You can read all about it in the blog post titled "HMMS families are All In!"  In order to make the activity accessible, we partnered with our local public library and held our first book group meeting 6:30-7:30pm.  Our fabulous PCC arrived to help with set-up and to provide refreshments.  (Mary's Rule #1 - All Meetings Will Have Food.)

That's as far as Operation Mom and Dad has gone thus far.  We do have plans to involve parents further.  As always, we'll ask for parent chaperones to the movie.  We've planned at least two more evening events at the library, and we're hoping to host a weekend games activity in which parents can participate.  

As for the potentially upsetting content of DIVERGENT, we hope that by involving parents, any risky behavior addressed in the book will spur conversations  - important conversations - between parents and their kids.  Reading together not only helps parents bridge the generation gap and give them a common experience to share and process with their kids, it's also a great excuse to spend some time together.

@allinoleary
@mzcotillo

Reveal Day

An Absolutely Perfect Day - a timeline

After months of planning and weeks of teasing, The Book was revealed at approximately 10:15am on Friday, November 1st.  We have lots of video footage and encourage you to watch it all.  Below you'll find a timeline of events and the corresponding videos.  But the real story isn't in what was captured by cameras, but in the little moments that happened off screen.  This week, we'll share those
with you and spend just a few more moments reveling in the miraculous, wonderful, marvelous, serendipitous perfection. 

Reveal Day:
6:55am 

• We smile at each other across the parking lot; our first words are not of excitement or anticipation but of nausea "I'm feeling sick."  "Me too!  Why are we so nervous?" 
• Twenty-six balloons (spectacle) are pulled from vehicle as gusts of hurricane-strength wind whip us forward.  Okay, it wasn't a hurricane, but it was really, really windy on Friday.

7:15am

• Still suffering from nausea, we decide not to talk about gastric ailments anymore.
• CATCHING FIRE and DIVERGENT - the final two books - are retrieved.
• Three crazy reading ladies head up to the VideoTeam news studio.
• In-the-know Principal wishes us well as kids enter school "Oh my gosh this is it!  You're going to tell us right now! I can't wait!" Gaggle of tweens misses sarcasm.
• Over-caffeinated VideoTeam news kids greet us: "Is today the day?!"  "You're gonna reveal it right now?"  "We'll be the first to know!"

7:24am

• Erin is concerned about her acting skills paling in comparison to Theatre Major Mary's.  The argument is practiced.  Again. 

7:33am

7:36am

• Crazy Reading Ladies storm out of news studio.  On the library stairs, our breathing returns to normal; smiles appear on faces.  "I think we pulled it off!"
• Kids in News studio ask, "Wait, are they coming back?"
• On the way to our classrooms, kids catch up to us in the hallway (those little buggers are fast.) Mary secures sanctuary in guidance office.  Erin continues to fuel drama.
• "Did that really just happen?" "Are you and Ms. Cotillo in a fight?"

8:24am

• Principal goes on PA system and announces a surprise assembly at 10:00am.  He keeps up the act by saying "I have no further information at this time."  

The element of surprise was absolutely essential to the magic of Reveal Day, and it was preserved by our phenomenal staff.  Days earlier, a "spoiler" email was sent out giving play-by-play details of the morning.  Everything except the title itself was revealed in that email.  To our delight, many teachers decided they didn't want to know what was happening and never opened the email; they wanted to experience the thrill with the kids.  The 6th grade teacher who burned our iMovie to a DVD the day before refused to watch it in advance.  How cool is that?

• Principal assists in readying equipment in auditorium.  Crazy Reading Ladies do not have much patience for technical difficulties.  DVD works fine.  Audio CD does not; it is ditched.
• CRL notice Principal wearing his Hobbit shirt for the occasion. "I gotta represent."
• Auditorium is properly blinged out.  Balloons are moved no fewer than four times.  (We love our students, but excited kids and helium are a dangerous combination.)

9:13

• Charade is maintained during hall monitoring between classes.  CRL continue to argue and roll eyes in each other's presence.   Mary baits Erin by smugly reassuring kids that CATCHING FIRE is *the* book, because "You know I'm gonna get my way."  
•  Concerned children become emotionally unglued.  We have messed with them an awful lot this week.

9:21

• Mary puts her theater degree to work when she faces her first class of the day.  "I don't even know."  and "I *thought* we'd agreed; I guess not."  and "We'll try to have a decision on Monday" become standard replies to impatient questions.
• Parent notices are copied and collated and the memory is deleted from the RISO machine.  You know what they say: Loose lips sink book reveal assemblies.

9:23

• Emmett arrives. We hug him.  We are reminded of how awesome he is and how dearly we miss him.  The charade is briefly busted when Erin escorts Emmett to Mary's room.  It's hard not to smile watching them embrace.  He decides to visit a few of his middle school teachers before hiding out and practicing his speech.
• Yes, his speech.  When we invited Emmett to be part of our master plan, we knew we wanted to present his award and give him the honor of revealing the book.  He asked if he could write a speech.  No, you can't have him.

9:37

• We run through the assembly in Erin's classroom.  Erin hears Emmett's speech for the first time and is blown away.  The term "occipital cortex" put us over the edge, but his sincerity and heart made us weep.  Mary will hear it along with the school thirty-some minutes later.  One of the best parts of the video is seeing Mary react to the testimony from her former student.

10:06

• Lights go down and we are on.  Kids scream and clap as we approach the podium.  

• As we stand behind Our Boy, we are overcome with emotion.  Perhaps it was seeing Emmett at the podium, or watching the standing ovation he earned from 497 middle schoolers.  Maybe it was feeling the energy in that room, the palpable anticipation and excitement...about a book.  Maybe it was the three of us standing next to each other, and hearing the unspoken words float between us: "This couldn't possibly have been any better."

Rule #1 of teaching is: Never do something the students can do for you.  Well this takes the cake.  No matter how many degrees, years of teaching experience, or administrative clout we put behind that podium, no one, absolutely NO ONE could have motivated those students the way our superlative freshman did.  Emmett not only did something we could not, he did it better than anyone ever could.  It was humbling to be in that room and simply bear witness.

10:15

• "And the book is DIVERGENT!" 
• Room positively erupts in book-generated euphoria and the following CRL creation is aired. 

•  During the video, the CRL distribute fliers to students and teachers in the pitch-dark auditorium (in heels, thankyouverymuch.)
• Somehow, we were able to find each other and watch the last few minutes together.  The reaction to the video was surreal.  Of course, our cherubs sang along to "the Hobbit song" (in case you were wondering, Pavlov was dead-on) but when Eminem filled the air, they gasped and echoed his words perfectly in sync to the music.  The CRL cried.  Again.

Since last year taught us the importance of music, we spent a considerable amount of time deciding on an anthem for this year's book.  Although we knew this song would be perfect, we were taking a chance with Eminem.  Yes, we were only using the chorus, but...it's Eminem.  We wanted something to grab their attention and perk the boys' ears.  The song was chosen long before the reveal was even planned, and the students' reaction told us we had a winner.  

10:23am

Despite our promises that it would be worthy of an article, a reporter never came to Reveal Day; however, the local paper did send a photographer to capture the event.  And he had some questions for Emmett and the CRL after the assembly was over. 

"What was that?" he asked.  "Who are these kids?  Are they all going to the movies - like, did they win something?"

No, we explained.  This was the student body.  They just found out the title of the book that we'd be reading this year.

The man shook his head and said "I've never seen anything like that.  What did you do to these kids?"

1:50 pm 

• Four hours after the assembly, Erin was waiting for dismissal with a group of her seventh-grade girls.  In chatting about the reveal, one of them said, "You know, last year I didn't do The Hobbit.  I mean, I tried, I started it...but I just couldn't get into it, so I stopped.  And you guys had so much fun.  I'm really disappointed in myself.  I'm not letting that happen again.  I don't care what it takes.  I'm going all in this year."

Without even knowing it, she gave the CRL the cherry on top of their dystopian sundae.  Not only was she motivated to participate, it was also the first time we heard "all in" from a student.

It's official.  We're All In!

Mary @mzcotillo and Erin @allinoleary

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