I was lucky enough to receive all sorts of birthday wishes today, but of them all, this piece of advice stands out:
Happy Birthday! Hope it is full of beings you love.
Because it has been! And even though I did not consciously realize it, those words have long been my guide for planning and spending all of my birthdays, with many happy returns, indeed.
I spent the Sunday afternoon before the COVID shutdowns began browsing books at my local Barnes and Noble. Who knew that would be the last time I would set foot in a bookstore (or library!) until today? And as good as it was to be back, I was surprised by how unfamiliar so many titles in the kids and YA sections that I usually frequent were. Thank goodness the publishing world did not grind to a halt with the rest of us!
Oh, and the Daphne and Velma series? The one that fills in the backstory of your favorite Scooby Doo gals, detailing how the two were friends from pre-K, until Daphne dropped Velma in middle school and never looked back? Well! That one was too good to leave on the shelf.
Down here in the deep south we were prepared to make it through the days by fanning ourselves and drinking sweet tea on the veranda (or staying in the a/c all day). But weather predictions have it that the temps here will be cooler than DC by 10 degrees or more for the next few days. And? Just a bit warmer than Ketchikan, Alaska where Josh is sweating through his fish-processing orientation in unseasonably toasty weather. But on the plus side? The landscape is breath-taking there, and he says the food is plentiful and good, and dinner will be served promptly at 5.
Maybe he can find a veranda to enjoy a nice glass of iced tea with that incredible Alaskan scenery.
The text chain was humming. Our cleaning lady, whom we had recommended to several neighbors, had been working at a home in Bethesda (a referral from one of our recommendations) when a misstep led to injury. It turned out Estela was sidelined for at least 6 weeks with a broken ankle. Summer vacation made cleaning the house ourselves a no-brainer: after all, we did it for months during the COVID shutdown. And so this morning? We grabbed our bucket and mop and scrubbed from bottom to top, spit-polished til it shines.
Oh, and we also sent a Get Well Soon card to Estela, because nothing like a Saturday spent cleaning to remind us how much we appreciate her.
As the midsummer sun subsides to the gloaming, I sit back in my chair and prop my feet up with gratitude for this day-- this day! Windows flung open wide, a morning yoga practice and meditation, an audio book and a few hours at the garden, poke for lunch, a walk to the grocery, blueberry pie, the pool, chatting with neighbors, and now? A fine meal and TV I want to watch. With weeks of summer stretching expansively ahead, I could not be more content.
You know that place where the weather is always around 80 degrees and sunny? Low humidity and a light breeze?
Neither do I.
But I sure have enjoyed it here the last couple of days.
There are many forms of the same advice:
There is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
Take it bird by bird.
Today, for the first time since March of 2020, I...
wait for it...
went to the gym!
It was cool and rainy, and with no comfortable outdoor options, I drove on over, scanned my key tag, and had a pretty decent workout.
Can the movies be far behind?
Since we moved into our cozy little condo in 1999, it's been mostly us and our pets. (The pets? Well... That's another blog post, but there have been many: 5 cats, 2 dogs, 3 turtles, 2 hamsters, 2 gerbils, and countless fish.) There have been periods, though, when we have had a couple of temporary co-residents, first our godson, Josh, and then my cousin Elaine. Both moved on years ago, though, so imagine our surprise this afternoon when, turning the key on the mailbox, we found correspondence addressed to both.
When the FaceTime ringtone jangled my phone last night at around 9:30, Heidi and I exchanged glances. "It's Bill!" I said. "He's calling both me and Courtney." I shook my head and tapped join. "This is going to be either really bad or really random."
When the call connected, the screen was dark and jerky, like a scene from the Blair Witch Project. "Hello? Hello?" I called.
"Tracey?" my brother's voice answered, and I could just make out his shadowy figure somewhere in the night, surrounded by trees. "I'm crossing a swaying bridge at Gary's farm, and the bouncing must have butt dialed you. Sorry!"
"No problem!" I replied. "As long as everything is okay, I'll talk to you soon."
"Really random," I reported to Heidi.
"Much better than really bad," she agreed.
In their enthusiasm and love of the outdoors, our cats have scratched the hell out of the screen doors leading out to the decks. In recent weeks I have been on the hunt for a replacement, without much luck. It seems that all the local hardware and big box home improvement stores are out of stock on the item we need.
And so, in a spurt of handiness, I decided to order a repair kit instead, and try to replace the screen myself. The first day of summer vacation dawned quiet and warm, and when I stepped outside to water the plants, I knew that the time was right to DIM.
Flathead screwdriver, razor knife, and roller tool in hand, I pried a corner of the old screen up and zipped out the 35-year-old spline and torn aluminum netting. Then I rolled out my new, fiberglass pet-proof mesh and pushed it into the channel at the top. Heidi came over to assist as I stretched and rolled the new spline into place, then trimmed the extra screen with my utility knife.
Unlike so many superficially simple but practically complicated projects, this one went off without a hitch, and it turned out great! Every time I look out and see the perfect expanse completely unmarred by claws, I am as pleased and proud as can be.
Call me overly optimistic, but I have to think that's a sign-- it's going to be a very good summer.
1. How to draw an English muffin:
2. How to draw a cat:
3. It was harder than I thought it would be to say good bye to these kids.
What a year!
In case anyone needed any confirmation that my learning style is old school, here ya go:
The teacher for a day pulled up his slides. "The only things you will need for this lesson are a piece of paper and a pencil to take notes."
I was on it! In no time every in-person student, the teaching assistant, and me all had our materials on the desk and ready to go. What followed was an extremely detailed presentation on Sonic the Hedgehog, a topic upon which I know virtually nothing. But, although the teacher moved quickly through the dense material, my pen moved even faster as I evaluated information, created bullet lists, and made connections, using arrows and boxes to organize the facts.
When I turned my loose leaf paper over, the kids in the room with me looked up surprised. They had already given up, and their notes were sparse. "C'mon you guys!" I encouraged them. "I bet the assessment is open note. The more you have, the better you can do!"
What followed was a 30 question Kahoot! With mics muted, our little group joined forces. I pointedly referred to my noted throughout, and in the end? Our team won the day! But the real prize was when one of the in-person kids shook his head and said with a bit of disbelief, "I gotta start taking better notes!"
Teacher-for-a-day has not been quite as successful this year as it has in the past, which is hardly surprising, considering that many would say teaching in general has not been as successful this year as it has in the past.
Even so, a lesson today was just too short to be a hit, but it was designed by a student who really did her best, so I turned off my mic and camera and let her present five slides on drawing an ice cream cone. I learned along with the class, completing all the activities with enthusiasm, as I do with all the lessons, and when we got to the end with a simple ice cream cone drawn on my paper and no assessment in sight, I unmuted. "Why don't we all color these as our favorite kind of ice cream cone and post photos of them in the chat?" I suggested. It was what I would have done if I had underplanned the lesson (which happens more often than you might think).
Fortunately? The teacher liked my idea, and her comments as she moderated the drawings really ended the lesson on a positive note. And later, when I read through the feedback before sending her a summary, I was pleased to see that all the kids enjoyed the activity.
The question of the day was What are your three road trip must-haves?
First answer? Food, phone, and a bottle to pee in.
Well.
Safe travels, kid.
Perhaps it was the way Milo cries pitifully at the door, but only when Lucy is outside, that on a whim we decided to order tiny harnesses for our cats. When they arrived today, I eagerly pulled them from the box, but then stood there dumbly with a tangle of colorful nylon straps hanging from my hand: the engineering was a mystery to me. Fortunately, they included directions, and when I lifted those from the bottom of the package I read the brand name of our new merchandise: come with me kitty and laughed out loud.
Because that's not creepy at all.
"Do we have any classwork today?" read the message in my inbox this morning. I frowned and checked the timestamp. It had been sent a few minutes earlier.
"Nope!" I replied. "Because it's Sunday!"
"Thanks," she responded. "I was confused when I woke up this morning."
Just one more week.
We stopped by my brother's on the way home from the farmer's market this morning. It is my mom's birthday, and I wanted to spend a little time.
He wasn't home though, so Heidi and I chatted with Victor and Emily, admiring the garden and letting the dogs play a little. We were just heading home when Bill got back. "We're having fried chicken and chocolate cake for dinner tonight," I told him.
"I'll be there at five," he joked.
"Make it 6:30!" I said.
And so it was.
Happy Birthday, Ma.
When I read the proposals, it was a little hard not to be offended. Two students wanted to teach their classmates a lesson on Haiku, which I had just taught not six weeks ago! Did they think they could do a better job or had they forgotten that I had taught it? Either way, it was a wee bit insulting.
But reason prevailed-- who could argue with kids getting a fresh spin on a topic that is actually one of the power standards for our grade's state test?
Haiku? Have at it!
"You know what I don't get?" a student asked in class yesterday. "How complicated math will ever help us in real life." He was working on his 6th Grade from A-Z project and reflecting on what he had learned this year. "I can see how I might use adding and subtracting, maybe multiplying and percents, but what else is math good for?"
"If you need to buy a new rug," one of the other kids suggested helpfully.
"Can't you just get someone to come do that?" he shrugged.
I thought of him today when another student came into my class brandishing a torn slip of paper covered in numbers. "This is a magic piece of paper!" he announced. "I used it to finally figure out that 3 small pizzas are actually less pizza than 1 medium and 1 large. BUT," he paused dramatically, "they cost the same!"
Now that's useful!
We had our first two teacher-for-a-day lessons today, and they were both done virtually. Despite planning requirements and direct advice from me, the first lesson was just a talking head-- one guy discussing beyblade battle strategy. Sure, he waved some beyblades around, assembling and disassembling them all the while pontificating about contact points and spin-stealing.
The next lesson was on WWII-- it began with a 6 1/2 minute video which led into the teacher reading all the text from a set of black and white slides. The whole thing ended with a five question quiz, which I scored a 0 on. That't right-- I didn't get a single question correct.
To be fair, social skills are not a strength for either of these kids, and the other students were generally kind, and even appreciative, but it made me a little sad that they think that's what teaching is.
At 8 AM my students were quietly typing away at their daily writing when one of them snapped his iPad closed with a satisfied, "Finished!"
"That's great!" I told him.
"Yeah," he shrugged. "Don't mind my grammar, though."
My eyebrows hit my hairline. "What!" I laughed. "Of course I'm going to mind your grammar. I'm your English teacher kid." I shook my head.
"Well, okay," he allowed. "Maybe no one else will mind it then."
I spent around 3 hours today sitting with my friend Mary in front of the school in lawn chairs. We were there to give out prizes to the students who had met the monthly writing challenges over the last 99 days. It was a pleasant way to wile away a morning in early June, sitting in the shade of the building with a light breeze keeping the steadily climbing heat from becoming too oppressive.
And of course, there were the kids-- what fun to meet dedicated writers I've never had the pleasure of teaching in person! They were pleased as well with the token prizes, mere symbols of their accomplishment and discipline.
One mom asked if she could take a picture of me with her son, and I was happy to oblige. As we stood side by side, he reached over and put an arm around my shoulder. It made me laugh, so I hope the photo was good. As he turned to leave, I congratulated him one more time and stuck out my hand to shake his. His eyes widened above his mask, and he quickly pivoted and offered me his elbow.
"Safety first!" he cautioned.
"You just had your arm on my shoulders!"I told him as I bumped my elbow to his. "I thought a handshake would be okay!"
I was sitting out on the downstairs deck when I heard a cat meowing plaintively somewhere nearby. Scanning the surrounding area and seeing no felines in distress or otherwise, I returned to the word puzzle I was solving. Lucy and Milo were out there with me, but Tibby was off somewhere else, keeping her own counsel I assumed.
The mewing began again, this time a little more desperately, and I would have thought it was Tibby, but for the fact that there were no windows open upstairs. Still, I thought it strange that she was not outside with us: she's a cat that rushes the deck anytime the doors are open. So, I went into the house to investigate, calling her name.
First I checked the downstairs powder room; it's another door she rushes, and she's been known to get closed in. No Tibby. I made my way upstairs, and the kitty cry got a little louder. Where is she? I wondered and poking my head in the master bedroom saw that all the closets and the bathroom were open, but the meowing was definitely coming from somewhere nearby.
Could she have gotten out on the deck? I thought, but dismissed the idea-- I had been out there briefly to water the plants, and despite the fact she had tried to dash out there I had deftly used a foot to block the way. It's too hot out there, I told her and stepped away closing the door behind me to keep the ac in. Even so, I pulled the door open to check, and there she was-- not on the deck, but squeezed between the screen and the door.
Oh! There was a lot of white fur floating, and the screen was well scratched when she dashed into the house, no worse for wear and probably no wiser either.
I spent a little time lounging on the upper deck this morning. The sun was warm but a light breeze kept the heat from being too oppressive. Of course I was a bit wary of the cicadas, their chorus was robust, and gazing up, I could see dozens of them flitting from tree to tree, but with the sun shining through their wings they looked for all the world like tiny sprites or fairies glimmering in the blue sky. It was a sight I may never witness again, and I appreciated the moment just as it was.
I was standing outside my classroom door greeting students as they entered for class.
"Happy Pride Month!" waved one student as she approached.
"Thanks," I answered.
To round out the year, our sixth graders are doing a series of mini-projects that they have selected themselves. Today I was checking in with a student who was getting ready to pick his final activity of the year.
"Which project are you going to do?" I asked him.
"Just to make you happy, I'm going to do... Teacher for a Day!" he answered.
"Yay!" I cheered. "That does make me happy! But how did you know it would?"
"Because, obviously, you're a teacher," he told me. "Of course you would be happy for someone else to do it for you."
This morning I opened an electronic message from a student that was sent yesterday. "Do we have any asynchronous work?" it read. "I can't find any."
As luck would have it, the student walked in the door at just that moment. "I was just reading your message," I told him. "No assignments yesterday-- it was a holiday!"
"Thanks," he said. "To be honest I have no idea what any day is anymore," he laughed.
"But," I added, "you are missing that mini-project that was due a couple of weeks ago. And you have another one coming up today."
"I haven't had time to finish that," he said quickly.
"Really?" I asked. "Why were you looking for new work yesterday, when you knew you had this to do?"
"I don't know," he shrugged.
"I guess you just like to know what you're not doing!" I shook my head.
"That sounds about right," he nodded.
