In Praise of howweirdcanyouget.com
I received a wonderful email from a teacher at Olivet New Church school in Ontario (the birthplace of Alice the Apatosaurus):
The kids clearly loved Featherbrain, but more than that, they loved your
Howweirdcanyouget site. Shall I tell you how we discovered it? It was one of
those “the teacher has ADD” moments, let me tell you! We were having SSR
time, and all was quiet in the classroom. We were sharing the Silver Birch
books and it was my turn to read Featherbrain. (I try to read all the books
I ask the kids to read) My eyes fixed on the www.com address and I thought
“Let’s ruin the quiet atmosphere with some excitement” (or something like
that; I don’t actually remember what I was thinking) and announced (probably
without thinking) “I wonder if this is a real site?” The kids, some of whom
are always looking for a distraction anyway, were quite eager to check it
out. As you know, we only have 4 students, so it was easy for us to crowd
around the computer. I wish I had a video of us at that time. We quickly
decided we had to buy a magic potion. Naturally I had to be quite dramatic
as I wondered out loud how safe this is, and if the authorities know about
this (etc ~LOL) Y kept worrying about the price; how were we going to pay
the $19.95? At each pop-up I asked the kids (trepidation quivering in my
voice) “Should we go on?” The kids’ voices got louder; there was a fever
pitch in the air as they yelled “YES!” to each one. When we finally got to
the last one that denied access we all burst out laughing. Some nervous
laughter if I sensed that correctly 
Well, SSR was shot for the day, LOL!
but reading had suddenly become more interesting. (Bull’s-eye!!!!)
We used your invitation to submit to a contest to talk about recipes and how
to write one. I jumped off from there and I read the 3 witches’ part from
Shakespeare’s’ Macbeth out loud (nice recipe there!) to them. They were
excited to write their own recipes for magic.
I was thrilled with this letter – to have a part in reaching kids, to hear about how much fun the kids had, and to learn how a great teacher can bring learning alive. And it really made me laugh!
Maureen
