Faith in the Profession

And in the Pendulum meet Swing department, I received an invitation to the following webinar:

How Worksheets Support Active Learning in Ways That Screens Can’t: Myths, Busted!

It's funny, but it connects to a conversation I had just the other day with our 21-year-old house guest. "What has your experience been with Gen Alpha?" I asked the Zoomer.

"I think they're annoying," she answered predictably. (Oh, hey there, Millennials.) "And very different from us."

"How so?" I asked with interest.

"When I was born," she began, "not everyone had a screen 24/7. I mean, my baby pictures are actually printed out in an album. That's not true of younger people. Their pictures are all on somebody's phone."

I nodded, thoughtfully. "Did you have a tablet?" I asked her. 

"Not of my own. There was a family iPad, and we had to share it," she answered.

"So watching movies and other things was more of a communal experience for you," I said. "That tracks. It used to be very engaging to use short videos in a lesson, but in the last few years, kids have found them boring. Maybe because they watch short videos of their own choice all the time."

"Probably," she agreed. 

"It's not a novelty anymore," I added. "And they also hate doing skill drills on their devices. It's as if such platforms are a desecration of their screens." I laughed. "I guess teachers are going to have to figure out something else." I paused. "I'm sure they will!"

Once a Teacher...

"You should put the top down on the Jeep," I suggested to Heidi at breakfast this morning. She and Delaney were going to go shopping for a bit before we headed back up to Carlisle. 

"It's not supposed to rain, is it?" Heidi asked. Then her eyes widened. "What about the crows! They might poop in it overnight!"

We agreed that that would be extremely gross, but the weather is amazing, sunny and not too warm, so we decided to put the top down anyway and just make sure it was back up before nightfall. 

It's been several months, however, since last we put down the top, and the procedure eluded us. After digging out the manual and watching a couple of YouTube videos, we managed to convert the vehicle, though. 

As we returned to the house, I was dreading putting the top back up in just a few hours, but I bucked up thinking about the fun of riding in a convertible on a beautiful day. "You know what we should do?" I said. "We should take it down and put it back five times in a row! We need to build that automaticity."

Last to Know

Our 21-year-old goddaughter is visiting from college this weekend, and as happens whenever she is here, this evening found us lingering around the dinner table chatting long after the dishes had been cleared. "Do you know what?" she asked as the conversation meandered through the family. "I had no idea until recently that my grandparents were divorced!"

We nodded sympathetically, knowing that her grandmother had passed away the day after she was born. Her grandfather was already remarried, but she was unaware of the timeline.

Well," I laughed, "you are officially an adult now. You're going to get all the dirt now."

A little while later, we made good on that. We were reminiscing about her mom and Heidi coming to Virginia together for a summer job. "That's how I met Larry," Heidi told her, mentioning a mutual friend.

"How did my mom know him again?" she asked.

"They were dating!" Heidi said.

Her eyes widened. "So that's the guy before my dad," she replied, connecting the dots. "I have questions!"

Professional Courtesy

"If you're not familiar with farro," our waiter told us last night, "it's a grain, similar to, uh, I would say, quinoa?" he finished on an upnote. I raised my eyebrows at Heidi, but did not correct him. Everyone in our group was either farro savvy or had no intention of ordering it. I did have it on my meal, and it was excellent.

It was the second time this week I have stayed mum on food facts. On Wednesday, we went with friends to a cooking class downtown. The experience was my Christmas gift from them, and I was looking forward to it. Our session was on handmade ravioli, and as a former chef and teacher, I was very curious about both the content and the presentation. As the instructor proceeded through the lesson, the members of my party did a lot of nudging and winking at me, mostly because I refused to engage on any level other than learner. 

"How many times have you done this?" someone whispered.

"Just once, today," I answered.

"How would you do this?" someone else asked me a little later. 

I shrugged. "This way, right now," I said pointedly.

And although I didn't really learn anything new, and I may have taught the class differently, it was still enjoyable. Just like the farro.

Leaping Llamas

"What is that animal?" the teacher asked her first-graders, pointing to a black-and-white illustration in their workbooks.

"A sheep!" someone called out.

"It does kind of look like a sheep," she acknowledged.

"A llama!" suggested another.

I giggled because a llama was not something I ever would have guessed. But even though the school was less than three miles from my grandparents' house, the kids in the class were from a much different background than mine. All but one were multilingual learners, most speaking Spanish at home and English at school. (Also, llamas are a lot more ubiquitous today.)

The teacher laughed too. "It's actually a goat," she told her class. "And do you know what we call a baby goat?" She waited, but hearing no volunteers, continued, "A kid!"

Many of the students looked blankly.

"You know, like sometimes we call children kids," she said. "You're kids, and a baby goat is a kid, too." She smiled. "Now, what does this kid do?" she asked, pointing to the word "jumps" on the handwriting line beneath the picture.

"El niño salta," whispered one boy to the girl next to him, hopping up and down in his seat a bit.

He does indeed.

The Yin and the Yang

The weather today was perfect.  The sun was so pleasantly warm, and the air had just the slightest chill. It was my very favorite kind of day.

And as I walked through its glory, it occurred to me that this is why I love my cooling comforter so very, very much. It keeps me cozy and warm, but if I wake up in the middle of the night, a slight adjustment gives me a smooth, cool sensation on my bare feet or hands, soothing me right back to sleep. It's like flipping to the other side of the pillow-- a perfect combination of warm and cool. 

It's no wonder I have been sleeping so well!

AND Good Company

Besides the obvious spiffing up your house and guest quarters, having company often gives you the opportunity to do things you mean to, but never get around to. Take this weekend, for example. We're driving up to Carlisle, PA, to fetch our goddaughter, who is a senior at Dickinson. On the way back to our newly-cleaned home, we're going to stop for dinner in Frederick, MD, at Bryan Voltaggio's restaurant, Showroom. 

He's one of our Top Chef favs, and we've been meaning to get up to his hometown for over a decade. Even though we've driven through dozens of times on our way back and forth from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia (not to mention Carlisle), we've never made time to actually eat at one of his places. That's going to change on Friday.

Then, on Saturday, we have tickets to As You Like It at the Folger Library Theatre, another place we know we should visit more often. The current production has been well-reviewed and cited as a "love letter to Washington, D.C." and "a light-hearted tonic for the troubled times the city finds itself in." Honestly, who could say no to that?

As of now, Sunday is open, but it turns out so are we, so who knows what fun we'll get into?