Were those tiny little snow flakes falling almost imperceptibly this morning?
You bet your keen sixth grade sense of observation they were. "Go ahead!" I shouted over the din of joy. "Take two minutes and look at the snow."
Within 90 seconds they were back to their seats, satisfied that although snow season might be here, that day off we all dream of this time of year was not going to be today.
Since our school implemented in-person block scheduling for the first time this year, I have been on the lookout for good five minute brain breaks for sixth graders. I've written lately about my mindfulness yoga challenges, but I thought it wise to branch out, so yesterday when I saw the game Whatchamadrawit at a discount store I added it to my cart.
Today, I opened the deck of wacky drawing challenge cards, and gave the kids three minutes to draw and post their work of art for the sweet little reward of a Jolly Rancher. My first period group had to sketch their version of an animal with a fish head, elephant body, and spider legs. Their products were remarkably recognizable and cute, but it was the kid that drew the elephant ears behind the fish's head that bowled me over with her visual problem solving.
The next group to do it was my class with many English language learners. They were super excited for the challenge until we pulled a card that read A princess sitting in an apple tree playing the banjo. "What is a banjo???" cried several students in dismay. Others searched up an image, and I pivoted to project a picture of a banjo on our screen before stating the timer.
When the three minutes were up, we had a nice collection of cartoon trees, basic apple shapes, and simple figures with crowns and giant lollipops on their laps. We all got the point across, and some of us? Learned a new vocabulary word.
Maybe this little brain break has broader applications.
Despite the reported Christmas tree shortage, I had no plans to get my tree until next weekend. "I refuse to put up my Christmas Tree in November!" I told Heidi when she asked me why.
And yet, there we were running errands this afternoon, and everywhere we went, they were all Christmased up. Still, my plan to purchase a tree next weekend was firm, although I did want to go to Home Depot to see about some new outdoor lights. Once we there, the wreathes and the swags caught our eyes. "They were all sold out of these by the time we were shopping last year, remember?" I reminded Heidi. With some evergreenery in our cart we headed inside to check out the lights. A lot of things were sold out all ready, and finding nothing we needed, we pushed our cart through the big sliding glass door and out to the garden center. There were no outdoor lights that I had to have, but there were quite a few Christmas Trees, and they seemed to be reasonably priced.
"We don't have to put it up until next weekend," I said to Heidi, "and it's not like anybody's going to get any fresher trees." With that, we selected a nice 7 1/2 foot tree and plopped it on top of our cart. A fresh cut and some plastic mesh later we rolled through the outside cashier station and came away with a tree, a wreathe, and a window swag for less than we paid for our tree last year.
"Can I help you put that on your car?" offered a tall young man in an orange apron.
"Sure!" we agreed, and he grabbed an enormous roll of plastic wrap and followed us into the parking garage. What followed was the most curious method of securing cargo I've ever seen. He pulled a length from the roll, opened the passenger side door and tied it to the handle on the ceiling. Then he passed the roll over the tree and to me, where I handed it through the car and back to him. We literally Saran wrapped the tree to the top of our car.
And, aside from the damage to the environment that any single-use plastic inflicts, we made it home without incident. The tree is on the deck, where it will remain until we turn the page on our calendar.
The dogs were a little anxious this morning as we packed up our beach house and loaded the car to go home. It was pretty cold and windy, so instead of heading down to the beach for one last walk along the water we sat in the sunny living room and basked a little in the remaining warmth of our vacation. When at last it was time to go, we all trooped down the steps one last time and crossed the small parking lot to our cars. As I opened the back door for Lucy, Rosie trotted over and waited her turn to hop (or be lifted) into our back seat.
"She did ride down here with us," Heidi noted, and it was true: Bill and Rosie road-tripped with us on Saturday because the rest of his family could not come down until Sunday.
"Do you want us to take Rosie back to Arlington?" we laughed, and with three travelers and a fully loaded car, it just made sense for Bill and Emily to take us up on the offer. And so the dogs curled up together in the backseat, Rosies chin resting on Lucy's shoulder. All the way home they snoozed and sighed an occasional satisfied sigh, almost as if they were still on holiday.
Brining the turkey in... buttermilk?
Sour cream apple pie?
No scalloped oysters?
This year Thanksgiving looks a little different for us. Since we had to contend with celebrating without my sister's family and a year and a half of an unsettled public health situation and all its crappy side effects, why not shake things up a bit?
Key phrase, "a bit"-- the other night we all laid out our must-haves, and the non-negotiables far out numbered the iconoclasms. So, there will be pumpkin pie, cranberries, rutabagas, butternut squash, spinach, brussels sprouts, stuffing, and of course mashed potatoes along with that buttermilk-brined turkey.
I'm sure it will be a wonderful meal.
We headed over to the "big city" of Rehoboth Beach this afternoon to grab lunch and shop some of the stores that were open on the main street of town. At lunch, Bill and Emily and Heidi discussed their displeasure with the Christmas music that dominated the restaurant's sound system. "It's not like there is even a wide variety of songs," Heidi complained. "There are just a few, and almost everybody sings them the same way."
"They should play Ray Conniff," Bill joked. "Nothing sounds like that!"
"They do have an iconic sound," I agreed.
A little while later I was browsing through some bins of old LP records outside Gidget's Gadgets and I came across an album by none other than that incomparable chorale. The price was right, too, one buck. When I showed it to Heidi, she was not impressed however, and I did not have any cash on me. "Don't you have dollar?" I asked plaintively. "Pleeeeeaaaaase?"
"I'm looking!" she answered, sharply.
"I have a dollar if you guys need one," a helpful voice interrupted from my left. I turned to find a friendly boy of about 15, reaching into his wallet.
"Okay!" I said.
"No!" Heidi said, handing me a folded single.
"Are you sure?" the kid said.
"Yeah," I laughed, "but thanks anyway! That was really nice of you."
I was still laughing as we went inside to pay. "That guy was going to give me a dollar if we didn't have one!"
Heidi shook her head. "Mmm hmm," she said. "That is some sad shit."
Years ago, I lived in a beach town. Back then, even though I was a restless 20-something, I kind of liked the slower pace of the off-season. Nobody missed the bumper to bumper and towel to towel traffic on the roads and on the beach, and with the exception of mini-golf, I never went to the tourist traps down on the strip that were closed from September to May, anyway. It was easy to adapt to shorter hours for restaurants and other businesses, and it was nice to have the town to ourselves for a few months.
This week, we are at the beach in Delaware for Thanksgiving. Our place is on the first block from the beach, snugged between all the lights and bustle of Coastal Highway and the low dunes that protect the wide and sandy shore. At this time of year, it's very quiet here, and it's easy to forget all the commerce that is just up the street and around the corner. Easier still to forget, because so much is closed for the season or operating on limited hours.
Today was a little frustrating because it seems that the schedule around here is for many places to close on Tuesday, which seemed strange to us. When we finally found a place to have lunch (a whole two blocks away instead of one, but we still passed at least 6 places that were closed) we discussed the phenomena. "Maybe it's their day of worship around here," suggested Treat, "since it's clearly their day of rest."
"Yeah," I agreed, "maybe to them it's Sunday, Monday, Deweysday, Wednesday!"
To make the best of our rainy afternoon at the beach, we decided to run a few errands and check out an outlet mall. The hour we gave ourselves to browse the deals was plenty, maybe even a bit generous, and I was empty-handed when I bumped into Treat. "There's nothing I want here," I sighed, aware of my privilege, but disappointed nevertheless. "I really want to go to that thrift store you saw across the street!"
And that's what I suggested when we all assembled a few minutes later. Our group was game, so we piled back into the car and headed over to the run-down textured concrete strip mall that must have been marvelous back in the early 80s when it was built. "Just because it's called the Treasure Chest doesn't mean it's going to be good," Treat cautioned us as we approached the shabby store front.
"I think it's going to be great!" I said, throwing any notion of managing expectations aside. "We are all going to find a treasure!"
The entryway was decorated with an assortment of holiday items, both quirky and sad. After pausing there briefly, the five of us separated to hunt around on our own. The place was not enormous at all, especially in comparison to the second hand places near us, but in the narrow furniture room my brother and I found a few mid-century early-American side tables that were eerily similar to those our parents had when we were kids. "Wouldn't it be funny if these actually were Mom and Dad's transported here by some twist of fate?" Bill said as I opened the hinged lid on one of them.
Back in the main section of the store, I found Heidi who was trying on a packable down vest from LL Bean. "That's exactly like the one I have at home!" I said. It fit perfectly, and at 20 bucks it was an amazing deal.
Meanwhile, Treat found a cream colored silk jacket that was cut somewhere in between a Members Only and plain old jean jacket, and Bill and Emily scored some cute little cocktail glasses and a jigger. Everyone was in line to pay, and although I was empty-handed, I had no regrets. Even so, I went back over to the sporting goods and tool shelf to pass the time until we left. As my eye passed over the 40 year-old jigsaw and hand sander, a flash of red caught my attention. I leaned over and pulled out a brand new bow saw. "Look at this!" I showed Treat. "It's only five dollars!"
It fit my hand like it was made for me, and so I took my treasure over to Heidi as she approached the register, so that she could buy it for me.
It was getting dark as we rolled into Rehoboth last night. “What should we have for dinner?” I had asked my brother when we were about 30 minutes out from our ocean front destination. We exchanged ideas and settled on some kind of seafood, since it was, after all, the beach.
“Let’s see what they have that looks good,” my brother suggested wisely, and I agreed.
“But I do kind of want potatoes,” I told him.
“Maybe we could do some sort of olive and garlic and tomato roasted fish on sliced potatoes,” he mused, and that’s what we were shooting for when we pulled into the seafood market a mile or so from our rental house. Inside, there was a fair selection of fresh fish in the case, and we opted for swordfish.
As the guy behind the counter was cutting and wrapping our selection, we explored the small grocery section where we found a small container of green olives, some pesto, and a jar of puttanesca sauce. With no potatoes to be found, we opted for a bag of enormous pasta rings (called 'calamari'), but I grabbed a bag of Mediterranean herb flavored potato chips on our way to the register.
"The flavor profile, is right," I told my brother, "and maybe we can do a little potato chip crust or topping on the fish."
Once we got settled into our beach house, we got cooking and before too long we were dining on potato-crusted seared swordfish served on a bed of artisanal pasta with green olives and puttanesca sauce with basil green beans on the side.
Even though it was not exactly what we had planned, it was delicious, and we congratulated ourselves for preparing such a meal with limited resources. "It might have been better that what we were planning," noted my brother.
"Having to cook with what we could find turned out great," I agreed. "What's that line from the Batman movie? They weren't the ingredients we needed, but..."
"They were the ingredients we deserved!" finished my brother.
I'd like to think so.
In this hot market, homes for sale in my neighborhood come across my news and mail feeds all the time. Sometimes I click the link out of curiosity, but most of the time I scroll on past. I don't know what it was about the place I saw yesterday that made me go even farther than usual.
It could have been the price, which seemed almost suspiciously below market, or it might have been the address, just up the hill and back into the neighborhood, or perhaps it was the size of the backyard, very spacious, or maybe the quirky style that came through in the 59 photos.
Whatever it was, I made an appointment to meet a realtor and see the place in advance of the open houses today and tomorrow. "There's a lot of interest," she told me on the phone. "They are expecting to open offers Tuesday, and I expect it to be gone by then. Are you pre-approved?"
I was not, of course, since we're not actually in the market for a house, but she assured me she could connect me with a lender and have us pre-approved by Monday, if we "fell in love with the place."
So off we went in the middle of packing for the beach to meet her at noon. A tiny 2 bedroom bungalow had been stretched out and added onto in the most peculiar way. Both bedrooms had been turned into little offices, and the attic had been expanded to an a master suite that overlooked the kitchen like a loft. There was also a mini-loft above the added great room that housed a pinball and slot machine and opened onto the upstairs deck.
But the decks! They were like the Swiss Family Robinson built them-- multi levels with wooden steps connecting them. At the ground floor of the house there was a sunken hot tub flanked by four seats salvaged from a baseball stadium and a tiki bar. Sliding glass doors led into a small space between the kitchen and one of the bedroom-cum-offices, and a trio of spiky potted plants hid a full-sized porcelain urinal. A hand-lettered sign read Fully plumbed! Move the washer and dryer here or maybe a butler's pantry!
After the mirrored backsplash, pressed tin ceiling in the kitchen, and cork floor, tile floor, and hardwood floor all leading off from the kitchen, I was not sorry we had come to see the place, but it was definitely a hard no.
"But you should get pre-approved!" the realtor said, so that you can move on the place you do love."
Maybe.
Is it better to give or to receive? I asked the students for the question of the day. As we enter the season of gratitude and gift-giving, I was curious about where they stood. Plus, the moral of the folktale we had read together about about Anansi the Spider was What goes around comes around, and I wondered if they would make a connection.
They did not disappoint me: by a margin of 52 to 24, these kids professed a preference for giving. Though I was careful to respect either position taken and argued in good faith, I would have been dismayed if the results had gone the other way. Some of their reasoning also touched upon the theme of our story. "If you give, some people may give back to you, or even to others, and it will probably come back to you," said one young writer. "I like to be a part of that," she added.
Even the kids who said they would rather receive did not have onerous reasons. "I don't have much to give," wrote one. "Especially since I'm just a kid."
"But you can give friendship or help or volunteer time," one of his classmates reminded him.
"Yeah," he admitted. "Can I change my answer?"
I have a recurring dream that I am at the airport to catch some international flight and I realize that I have forgotten my passport. Beyond that, the details change: sometimes I'm trying to fly to Paris, sometimes London, sometimes other places, and I always try to make it home to get my passport, by car or taxi or even bus, but the dream changes before I do.
Last night I had a dream where in the dream I actually dreamed I forgot my passport, and so I remembered it for the trip. I'd like to think that's progress.
I actually had a real experience that might be partially responsible for the dream. When I was in high school in Switzerland a lot of us took the 3 AM train to Zurich at the end of the fall term. The timing was right to make our mid-morning flights to the States, or Libya, or Tehran, or Algeria, or Nigeria, or, in my case, Saudi Arabia. A train full of teenagers in the middle of the night was pretty much a big party-- there was no sleeping, of course, and a lot of moving from one compartment to another, and some drinking, and we all were pretty bleary-eyed by the time the train pulled into the Zurich Bahnhof.
I got my plane ticket and passport out and set them on the small table beneath the window in the six-seat compartment, and pulled my orange backpack from the overhead rack. Shouldering the pack, I turned and followed my friends through the sliding door, into the narrow corridor, and down the folding stairs onto the platform. It was only when I reached in my pocket for the 5 franc coin I needed to pay for the airport shuttle bus on the other side of the station that I realized what I had left behind. I waved good-bye to my friends (they had planes to catch!) and ran back to the track we had come in on, but the train was gone.
What followed was a lot of me explaining my plight in English to people who spoke German. I finally ended up in a stuffy office within a cavernous luggage storeroom. A very stern looking man frowned at me as he punched the buttons on a putty-colored phone and held the receiver to his ear. He spoke at length, in German of course, to the person on the other end, as I fidgeted with my watch and wondered what I would do if I missed my flight home. "
Zey haff it," he told me when he hung up, "and zey are sending it on ze next train."
"What time?" I asked him, pointing at my watch.
"Drießig minuten" he answered.Thirty minutes.
It was tense, but I made the plane, and I had almost forgotten about the whole ordeal when we landed. My dad, who worked for the airline, used his badge to meet me on the tarmac, and as we walked toward the terminal he said, "What happened to your passport?"
I stared at him, speechless for a moment. "I left it on the train! How did you know?" I asked.
He just squeezed the back of my neck and shook his head. I was so tired, I let it drop. And to this day, I have no idea if he really knew what I had done, or if it was just a lucky vote of no confidence.
Recently I have taken to calling my students “Kid” as a casual alternative to using their given names. It is friendlier to the gender sensitive than Dude! or Girl! and for the most part they tolerate it, I think, especially since I keep my tone light and friendly.
The custodian tapped on my door a few minutes ago. "Are you still having trouble with your table?" he asked.
I tilted my head in confusion. "I don't think so," I said with a frown.
"It was this one over here," he pointed and walked toward the table by the window. "There was a note or something on it, but I accidentally wiped over it and then I couldn't see exactly what it said."
His description jogged my memory. "I think I did see a post-it over there yesterday," I told him, "but you know what? I think it was just something silly that the kids were joking about."
He jiggled the table. "Well, I tightened it up," he said, "but I wanted to make sure everything was all right. Just let me know if you ever need anything like that."
I thanked him, and as soon as he left I Googled, Oh no the table is broken, the phrase I remembered hearing some students laughing about. A ridiculous meme from 2018 popped up along with hundreds of parodies, many of them recently popular on Tik Tok, and a couple even with Squid Game theme.
Mystery solved-- that table's been broken for years, and it's not even in our school. But I do appreciate that conscientious custodian.
In general, spelling is much less of a problem for students now that it was in the early days of my career. The explanation, of course, is the judicious use of the autocorrect feature on the devices we supply each student with.
Not even 10 years ago, we had to encourage students to run spell-check, and extra step many were unwilling to take, but now their iPads give three options even as they are typing, and some students only key in a couple of letters before tapping the word they want and moving on.
I doubt I will ever compose like that: most of the time I don't even see the words at the bottom of my screen when I'm texting; my brain filters them out as unnecessary information to bother with. I also wonder what the long-term impact will be on a person's writing who doesn't even form whole words. Maybe research will show that there is no harm at all; that it's kind of like reading all those passages with missing and transposed letters, generally pretty easy for the fluent speaker.
But the question of fluency brings up another consideration, too. My students who are not native English speakers like to use the suggested spelling feature as they write, but they do not always do so accurately. Take today, for example. Kids were asked if they considered spiders to be good or bad and to provide three facts and some reasoning to support this mini claim.
Spitters are bad to the bone, one writer started with animation, because they can be Venmo's.
But, countered another, they do eat misquotes.
Recently the events of 2007-2009 have been intruding on our consciousness. Britney Spears' trouble with conservatorships and the like all started back then and were the subject of a podcast that Heidi was fond of listening to on road trips. Just over 10 years ago, times were different: Homeland Security and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were dominant; iPhones and social media were only emergent; the Great Recession, President Obama, and skinny jeans were right around the corner.
And Brittany Murphy was alive. Last night we watched a documentary about the sad ending of her life in late 2008 which reminded us of nothing so much as the fragility of young woman as they face the relentless expectation of our culture. And for the final show of the night? Well, recently the creator of The Sopranos (sort of) confirmed that the famous black out was indeed the end of Tony, as many have speculated over the years, and since I was already in a late 2000s frame of mind, why not revisit Tony Soprano's swan song from 2007?
A TV show we have been watching made the optimistic choice to frame its return to production after the COVID hiatus of 2020 as "Sometime in the future when COVID is behind us." Even so, the show, which is a medical drama, portrayed in flashback what the characters and the hospital in which it set went through starting in March 2020, when a sick man who has recently traveled from Seattle infects an ER nurse, and moving on to her fight for life, even as the ER and ICU are overwhelmed.
And although the story is no more harrowing than any of the dramatized illnesses and injuries that the show depicted in the episodes before the pandemic, for me? It was too much, too soon. But the fact that when the show was produced in late 2020 and aired in early 2021, its creators were looking forward to a time in the near future without the specter or even the consequences of COVID-19, made it even more painful to watch knowing how far off they were.
I didn't realize how traumatized I still am from living through the last 20 months.
"Do you like spending all day around kids?" one of my students asked today.
My eyebrows shot up in alarm. "Yes! Can't you tell?"
"Good point," she conceded. "Just checking."
I asked my students yesterday to name the "best" Pixar character and give three reasons why they thought so. I have to admit that I was surprised by the outcome. The character most often mentioned was Lightning McQueen from Cars.
McQueen garnered a lot of support from the boys, while the girls spread their arguments out over many characters. Those who wrote in favor of Lightning gave reasons like he's strong willed, he's hard working, he never gives up. Some made it personal: I'm a car guy, and he's a car, and I grew up watching him, and he's funny and fast.
And then there was the most poignant answer of all: Basically, he's my childhood, and those were happy times.
What a world it is when 11-year-olds express such nostalgia for a childhood that by all rights should not be over yet.
The lights were on and the door was open in my classroom when I arrived at school this morning. A large black tool bag sat on one of the tables, and as I entered, I could see a gray-haired man sitting behind it with the pieces of my disassembled clock laid out between him and the bag. "Yay!" I cheered. "You're here to fix the clock!"
He nodded. "You know what the funny thing was?" he asked without looking up. "I got here at 7:15 this morning, and your clock was right. I almost left, because I checked all the other rooms around you, and their clocks all said the same time. But when I got back, your clock still said 7:15, so I knew it was broken."
"Broken!" I said. "Wasn't it because of the time change?"
"Oh, no," he assured me. "The movement was totally frozen. I had a new one with me, though, so I'm replacing it right now."
"Do you think that clock is original to the building?" I asked.
"No," he said, "the original ones are like the ones that stick out of the walls in the hallways."
"Well it's pretty old," I told him, "It's been here at least since 1994."
"Yeah," he nodded. "This black plastic ring model was probably made in the early 80's."
"That makes sense;" I said thoughtfully, "that's around the time they added the walls to convert from an open-space school."
"This clock has been fixed a few times since then," he noted. "This movement I'm replacing was made in 2005. How long did you say you've been here?"
"This is year 28 in this room," I said.
"Well, I used to work for the company that makes these clocks," he continued, "and when I retired, the school system recruited me to work for them."
"How long has that been?" I asked.
"Over 15 years," he told me.
Before I could say another word, the bell rang, and kids started pouring in the room. He climbed the ladder to hang the clock back on the wall, and then packed his tools.
"Thank you," I said over the clamor of another new school day.
He nodded and left without another word.
Because we use the Toy Story short film"Small Fry" as a introductory text for our character analysis and argument essay unit, I was doing a little research for supplementary materials this afternoon when I came across a whale of an argument essay written about Pixar.
Have you heard this?
Every single Pixar movie takes place in the same alternate universe, and they are all connected! This is according to "The Pixar Theory" which blogger Jon Negroni first published in long-essay format in 2013, and has since added to as new Pixar films have been released.
Here are a couple of videos that will nicely bring you up to speed:
As for the argument itself, the claim is spellbinding, although unquestionably debatable. The evidence is colorful and engaging, consisting of clips and characters and plot lines from Pixar movies, and the reasoning? Well the reasoning is compelling with the extra attraction of uncovering a secret, complex universe the clues to which have been hiding in plain sight all along.
I like it!
The clock in my classroom was frozen at 7:15 this morning when I got to work. Over the years the clunky old analog system has had a little trouble adjusting to time changes in the spring and fall, but I never remember it stopping completely, and I was sure I would see the hands speed magically ahead to update. I hadn't realized how reliant I am on that good, old round school clock on the wall, but without it, here's how the day went:
7:15 Homeroom
A few oppositional kids are resisting the lesson on vaping, and as I patrol the room using proximity to keep them focused, I'm wondering how much longer until they will be dismissed. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell.
7:15 1st period
I tell the class they can have 5 minutes to copy the notes on the board and glance at the clock to start my mental timer. No dice.
7:15 still 1st period
I'm running a pair share activity and trying to gauge about how much time they will have at the end to write a paragraph with the information they have given and received, but it's a little hard to tell.
7:15 3rd period
The chat snap warm up activity seems to be running a little long; a quick glance at the clock tells me nothing.
7:15 5th period
This group came in with a lot of energy and I want to give them a couple of minutes to settle down before I raise my voice. I think I do.
7:15 still 5th period
This block is split by lunch, and I can tell that the bell will ring soon, but as I explain the concept of character analysis, I wish I knew how much time we had.
7:15 Lunch
After keeping a few kids for who knows how long to finish their notes, my colleagues join me for lunch in my room. Luckily they have their phones out and can check to see how much time we have. Even so, we are momentarily confused when there is a flurry of activity in the hallway. "Wait! They're back already?" False alarm, they were sent up a little early.
7:15 Planning Time
I re-read the email I received earlier, subject line: Classroom Clocks may be a little off, still synchronizing to time change
Please not that some clocks are still adjusting to day light savings time. Please give it 24 hours and then let me know if it's not correct.
The notion that clocks need any time to adjust let alone 24 hours seems absurd to me. I send a terse message: The clock in room 275 is still stopped.
In return I receive an equally clipped reply in all caps: GOT IT. THANK YOU.
7:15
As the sun slants in through the western facing window, I pack my things to go home.
If there's anyone who deserves an extra hour to her birthday this year, it's my wife Heidi, tireless champion of kids and animals alike, and a girl who never met a battle she didn't choose.
Mwahhhh!
And, never fear! I'm all buckled up for another trip around the sun with that one.
Since January, I have been practicing yoga and meditation most mornings. Courtesy of my sister, I have connected with a Kundalini yogi who offers a 45-minute live session at 6 AM. After tuning in and a few warm-ups, she leads us through 20 minutes of breath work, mantra, poses, and mudras (hand movements), and then 15 minutes of meditation. It has been a positive way to start my day, and I feel lucky to have found such a good fit. Sometimes the kriyas, or routines, are a little challenging, and that's okay, too; alone in our spare bedroom (cum-office, cum-guest-room, cum-yoga-studio) I do my best and give myself grace and props just for showing up.
That's what happened on Friday when we were challenged to hold our arms straight out, one palm up, one palm down, for 5 minutes straight. We were balancing our energy, our hands representing the sun and the moon, (or the light and the dark, or the sky and the earth, feminine and masculine, and so on-- yogi's choice of opposites!), but I confess to dropping my arms a couple of times.
And my shoulders were still a little bit sore a couple of hours later when one of my students complained of something being hard. "You want to try something really hard?" I asked, rubbing my upper arm. "Listen to what I had to do in my yoga class this morning!"
One thing led to another, and soon my whole class was standing at their seats arms spread open wide with a three minute timer on the board. "What do we get if we can do it?" somebody asked.
"Besides balance and a sense of accomplishment?" I replied, my own arms floating above the floor. "A piece of candy, I guess."
Well! They were in! And with the exception of one student, they all accomplished the challenge. A few minutes later, with jolly ranchers slipped in their mouths behind their masks, they settled down to work, and I was amazed at how quiet, focused, and productive they were.
Right before the bell, as the class was packing up to go, one of the kids asked me if I was going to do the "mindfulness arm thing" with my other classes.
"Yes!" I answered, "because you guys were so great at it."
"But what about your arms?" he responded with concern.
"I'll be fine!" I told him, because I knew there was no way I was going to drop my arms in front of the class. And by the end of the third time I did it? I knew that I could easily go for two more minutes.
"Did I really give you a headache?" one of my students asked this morning.
I looked at her confused. "What do you mean?"
"When I said reading so much was giving me a headache, you said my complaining was giving you a headache."
I had forgotten our exchange in homeroom earlier in the day. "No," I told her, "it wasn't a real headache; it was metaphorical, like yours."
"What does that mean?" she asked in alarm.
"Your headache wasn't real," I explained. "You were comparing the feeling of doing something you really didn't want to do, in this case reading, to having headache."
She shifted her eyes away.
"And I was doing the same," I admitted. "I really didn't want to hear you complain about something that wasn't real."
What I was saying was not a surprise to her; she knew what I meant in homeroom, but she was put out by my tone. When I was thinking about it later, though, I realized that her reaction was part of a pattern. The kids this year seem more fragile than in the past, less able to take negative feedback, whether it is constructive or not.
Maybe it's because before this year started, the last time they were in a regular classroom was 4th grade, when they were nine. Middle school? Is a whole different dynamic; we expect the kids to have a bit of a thicker skin.
But they don't right now, so I'm going to have to be more mindful of my sharp tongue (at least for a while).
We laughed a little last year when the proposed school calendar included a day off in observance of Diwali. Maybe it seemed a little over-responsive, but who were we to turn down a day off?
Yesterday, though, one of our homeroom activities was to watch a short video explaining the holiday to students and, in my case, staff, too. I knew it was a festival of light, but I was genuinely moved by the symbolism and beliefs behind the celebration.
"Diwali tells us we will make it through these dark times by our internal light," said one of the narrators.
"It's a reminder that you must nourish your own inner flame," said another. "Diwali is a symbol of hope for humankind. May it bring universal compassion, inner joy of peace, love and awareness and unity to us all."
Joy, radiance, acknowledging the sweetness of life, the triumph of light over darkness, and letting bygones be bygones? I'm in!
And, how, just how, have I missed Diwali until now?
In sixth grade English, the first assignment of the quarter is always a reflection on the writing done in the weeks behind us. In order to help the young writers analyze their own writing critically, I take some time to give them my own perspective on areas of strength and places to improve. I put my observations in writing on the comments of their last summative assignment of the quarter, and I invite them to consider my perspective when forming their own evaluations.
Some do, some don't. A few are actually very perceptive and take the time to offer evidence and reasoning, without prompting, to support their judgments. And it's a good thing they do, because they will be assessed on their analysis.
One particularly serious student shook her head in wonder this morning as she reviewed her writing. "I think I'm going to get a better grade on my reflection about my writing than I got on my actual writing!" she marveled.
"That's a good step toward better writing in the future!" I told her. "What's your goal going into the second quarter?"
"I'm going to dig deeper and find more meaningful topics!" she declared.
I smiled. That's just what I suggested.
I took the car in to get it serviced today, and so I had a couple hours in the waiting room. I brought my laptop and graded essays as I sat there, but the TVs on the walls were a little distracting. To my right, a line up of game shows filled the screen, subsiding to soap operas in the afternoon. To my left, it was cable news and entertainment shows.
When I was a kid, daytime TV was targeted at stay-at-home moms, and the ads were full of sparkling kitchens, wholesome food, clear skin, clean laundry, and cute kids. Now it seems like most of the people watching are those who are interested in Medicare supplements, cheap life insurance, and easy to use "Smart" phones. And the contestants competing for the showcases, new cars, and cash are not the fun, excited folks I remember from summers on the couch, but rather desperate, manic people trying way to hard for a windfall.
Or is it me?
In advance of election day tomorrow, we had a voting activity today in homeroom. "I don't care about politics!" an eleven-year-old sneered, and I sighed and readied myself for argument. To be honest, his attitude is not uncommon and never has been over the many years I've been teaching.
And it's hardly a surprise, either. In the last 50 years, voter turnout in the US in presidential election years has been below 60%, and a little under 67% of eligible voters was considered a record in the 2020 presidential election. Here in our little county, (inside the Beltway, mind you) the turnout in 2020 was 79%, a bit below the 82% in 2016. But in an off-year like our gubernatorial race always is? It's only somewhere between 40 and 49 percent of the electorate in Virginia who participate.
Civic engagement can be fostered by schools, but ideally it begins at home, because although there aren't many issues that directly affect middle school students, the same cannot be said for their parents. A little dinnertime discussion about the issues would go a long way in sparking the interest of kids in elections.
Even so, the roadblock that I often find myself up against when trying to instill the notion that it is important for all of us to pay attention to the issues and the candidates as best we can was removed today.
"Remember when COVID started and all the schools were closed from March to June?" I asked the student who didn't care about politics. He nodded and so did everyone else. "You know who made the decision to do that? The governor. The same person some people don't think is important enough to vote for."
I saw by their expressions that I had personalized the election for them.
"Who are you going to vote for?" someone asked.
"I can't say," I answered. "Go ahead and vote for the candidates you think would do a good job. "
"I hate this guy's commercials!" someone laughed pointing at a name on the mock ballot.
"Oh yeah," I nodded. "My sister went to high school with him."
The class was incredulous.
"Is she going to vote for him?" a student asked, wide-eyed.
"She doesn't live in Virginia," I told them, "but if she did? She would never vote for the guy."
They gasped. "She knows him and she wouldn't vote for him?" somebody shook his head. "He must be pretty bad."
