Tough
While working through Call of the Wild with one of my 7th grade classes, I assigned a quick writing warm-up exercise to start the class: "Who is the toughest person you know and why?" The book deals with the protagonist becoming tougher as he encounters more challenges in the great white north. I paced the room while my students wrote, occasionally stopping to answer a question or two about the assignment. After a few minutes, I asked for volunteers to share some of their choices. "I think the toughest person is..." one kid shot out the name of a wrestler that he had seen on television, but his classmates quickly pointed out that he had never "met"that wrestler and therefore he didn't count as someone he "knows." "My older brother is mad tough," another kid piped up. "He can lift crazy heavy weights." "That's not tough! That's strong!" other students disagreed. "Same thing" "You know w...