Under Deadman's Skin

by KATCH, JANE

• ISBN13: 9780807031292
• ISBN10: 0807031291
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2002-02-18
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

The five-and six-year-olds in my class have invented a new game they call suicide. I have never seen a game I hate so much in which all the children involved are so happy. So begins Under Deadman's Skin, a deceptively simple-and compellingly readable-teachers' tale. Jane Katch, in the tradition of Vivian Paley and Jonathan Kozol, uses her student's own vocabulary and storytelling to set the scene: a class of five-and six-year-olds obsessed with what is to their teacher hatefully violent fantasy play. Katch asks, "Can I make a place in school for understanding these fantasies, instead of shutting them out?" Over the course of the year she holds group discussions to determine what kind of play creates or calms turmoil; she illustrates (or rather the children illustrate) the phenomenon of very young children needing to make sense of exceptionally violent imagery; and she consults with older grade-school boys who remember what it was like to be obsessed by violence and tell Katch what she cando to help. Katch's classroom journey--one that leads her to rules and limits that keep children secure--is an enabling blueprint for any teacher or parent disturbed by violent children's play.

Author Biography

Jane Katch taught emotionally disturbed children with Bruno Bettelheim at the Orthogenic School, and kindergarten with Vivian Paley at the University of Chicago Lab School. She now teaches young children in central Massachusetts, and lives in northeastern Connecticut with her family.

Table of Contents

Introduction	00	(1)
Vivian Gussin Paley
The Suicide Game	1	(5)
Murderer	6	(2)
Rated R	8	(4)
The Party	12	(4)
Runaways	16	(4)
Obsessed	20	(8)
Reserved	28	(2)
He Knows I Know He Knows	30	(3)
The F-word	33	(5)
Anaconda	38	(4)
Vulnerable Bad Guys, Electric, and Poisonous Snakes	42	(3)
A Vulnerable Writer	45	(2)
Strangled	47	(1)
The Rules of Violence	48	(4)
Girls!	52	(8)
The White Ninja	60	(2)
The Shooting Game	62	(3)
Hippo and Baboon	65	(6)
Bottled Up	71	(3)
Baba Yaga	74	(3)
Forgiveness	77	(4)
Keeping Calm	81	(3)
Half Bulldog, Half Chihuahua	84	(2)
Exorcising the Exorcist	86	(5)
Tortured	91	(3)
Mama's Little Baby	94	(4)
Puppy Power	98	(5)
The Baby Business	103	(5)
The Finger	108	(3)
The Car Race	111	(2)
A Cold Duckling, a School Shooting, and a Home for a Dead Butterfly	113	(4)
Placing Blame	117	(6)
Empathy	123	(2)
A Big, Big Teacher	125	(3)
Epilogue	128	(3)
Acknowledgments	131