7 is for Heads Up 7 Up

Did you ever play this game in school? The teacher chooses seven kids to begin, and the rest of the class puts their heads down (they are supposed to close their eyes, too) and one of their thumbs up. In fact, the teacher says, "Heads down, thumbs up!" to begin each round. The chosen seven roam the room; they must surreptitiously tap someone on the head and return to the front. Once tapped, your thumb goes down. When all seven kids are back in front, the teacher asks the seven who were tapped to stand. Now they must guess who tapped them, and if they are correct, they take the tapper's place in the next round.

Okay:

What...
is...
the...
point...
of...
THAT...
game!?

I ask both as a teacher and a former kid.

Here are my kid questions first: Doesn't it seem like the teacher always picks her favorites to begin? Then, those kids usually just pick their friends, right? Seriously, some kids never get to play.  Next, people cheat and peek at the shoes going by to try and figure out who tapped them, don't they? Finally, even if someone guesses right, the tapper can always lie-- nobody's keeping track. What's up with that?

Here is my teacher question about this game: What is the objective here? (It can be very loose, I don't care, just give me a hint what you were thinking.) Why do we play this game?

Life Lesson: Question authority.

5 is for 5th Grade

My fifth grade teacher's name was Mrs. Nallin. I liked her well enough, mostly because she liked me, I think. She was pretty old then, older than I am now, with teased-up bleached-blond hair and reading glasses that made her eyes look huge. You could see her mouth wrinkles clearly when she frowned. She was old school, very stern and very strict, and she definitely had her favorites. Not surprisingly, she seemed to favor the kids who did their homework and followed her directions. Let me tell you, friends, that was definitely me.

Life was pretty easy in her class if she liked you; there was a lot of praise and positivity. The same could not be said for the other kids. Oh, I'm sure there was a middle ground between her pets and her peeves somewhere, but I have no idea who was in it. I do know the person who was her least favorite that year, though. It was Eddie Bubble-head. Well, that's what she called him. His real name was Eddie something else with a B.  He was always in trouble for something, but as far as I can remember his number one crime was not knowing his multiplication tables.

Mrs. Nallin had a wheel posted on the closet door. It was divided into twelve segments, with the numbers 1-12 written in each. In the center was a circle, and next to the wheel was an envelope with twelve numbered disks. There was also a pointer. The activity varied. At times Mrs. Nallin would place a number in the center of the wheel and as a class we would stand and recite the multiplication fact as she wielded the pointer like a sword. Faster and faster we would go, sometimes in numerical order and other times at random, spewing products in unison, beautiful in our precision.

Other times it was an individual trial, and alone you stood, pointer in hand, delivering the multiplication facts to the class. One was a joke; two? A breeze. Three was a bit harder, and four could be tricky. Five was an oasis-- who didn't know those? Six, seven, eight, and nine were respectably tough. Ten was ridiculously easy, and eleven and twelve were for the pros.

I was good at it. Eddie was not.

Could that have been the difference between being the golden girl and being the bad boy?

Yep. Pretty sure it was.

Last I heard, Eddie was a very successful businessman.

Life Lesson: Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. It's what you do with them that counts.

3 is for 3 Day Weekend and 3 More Weeks

Traditionally Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer, but around here, not so much. Because of our opening date in September (Labor Day really does mark the end of summer for us), we'll still have more than three weeks left when we return to school on Tuesday. I'm not complaining-- I'm not in any rush to say good-bye to my students. Even though I'll see most of them next year, it won't ever be the same again. How could it be? Spending 180 days working so closely is an intense experience and when it's over, it's over. I'll be their "old teacher" and they'll be my "former students."

Sure, we've had some ups and downs, and some days have been way better than others, but in general, it's been a great year. So, while I'm enjoying my three days off, I'm thinking about school, too, and I'm looking forward to three more weeks with some really amazing people.

Life Lesson: Enjoy it while it lasts.

J is for Jersey Girl

From the time I was 4 until I was 13 my family lived in New Jersey. Personally, I was very happy there, and I had a lot of pride in my state. In middle school I joined a history club called the Jerseymen, and we even went to a convention in Atlantic City where I was elected Lieutenant Governor for Burlington County. A few months later, my family moved to Saudi Arabia, and I had to resign my office.

In Saudi, my brother and sister and I went to an international school with kids from all over the world. There were kids from all over the United States, too, and it was there that I met my first Texan. We were actually pretty good friends, best friends, really, so you can imagine my surprise the first time we ever talked about how great our homes in the States were. "New Jersey?" she sniffed. "What could possibly be good about New Jersey?" And then she laughed before she continued. "Now, Texas..." and blah, blah, blah, she was off on how much bigger and better everything was in Texas.


"New Jersey is just as good as Texas!" I insisted, "If not better!"

"Ha!" she answered. "Let's see. We have Houston." She looked at me like, top that.

"Well, we have... um, we have... well Philadelphia and New York are close by."

"They don't count. We have the Alamo."

"We have Atlantic City?"

""OK," she shrugged. "We have blue bonnets."

"We have blueberries. New Jersey is the Garden State."

"Who cares? We have Dallas."

"We have the Pine Barrens," I said, "AND the Jersey Devil!" It was my turn to look triumphant.

"What are those?" she said. "Wait, it doesn't even matter, because nobody outside of New Jersey even cares." She laughed at her own joke and then looked at me, her best friend. Her expression became kinder. "Oh cheer up!" she said and threw her arm around my shoulders. "Nobody here even cares if you're from New Jersey!"

But I cared.

Life Lesson: Pride doesn't have to come at the expense of someone else.

K is for Kansas

The Wizard of Oz has long been one of my favorite movies. When I was little it was only on TV once a year, and for my brother and sister and me that night was a very special occasion. It was almost like a holiday. All day long we waited in anticipation; we drew pictures of our favorite characters and acted out our favorite scenes. That night, we were allowed to stay up late and have popcorn and soda when it was on.

I liked the Scarecrow best; the lion and the Wizard really annoyed me. I thought Toto was the bravest, and the flying monkeys were super creepy. Of course the witch was... terrifying!  I had nightmares about that scene where Dorothy sees Auntie Em in the crystal ball and right as she's trying to talk to her the image changes to the Wicked Witch of the West. Eeeeeeeeee!!!

Most of all, I loved the part where the movie turns from black and white to color, and I remember when I "got it" and understood that by doing that the film makers were communicating something important about the difference between Oz and Kansas. Even so, I was never sad when it turned back. There was always something comforting about those warm shades of grey.

Life Lesson: (What else?) There's no place like home.

I is for In the Weeds

The end of the school year seems hectic to everyone. Students feel pressured to prepare and do well on standardized tests, teachers feel that deadline, too, and the change in everybody's schedules makes things feel a little off balance. In the food business, there's an expression for being waaaaay behind in your work. When that happens, you're in the weeds.

Every other job I've ever had besides teaching has been food-related: Before I was a teacher, I worked as a professional cook, and before that I waited tables, and before that I was a student manager in my college cafeteria, and before that I had kitchen duty in high school. So you could say that I know what it's like to be in the weeds.

In addition to my regular planning, teaching, and grading, I have a lot to do in the next 29 days-- meetings, unit plans, observations, field trips, team activities, and lit mags all need to be checked off my lengthy list. Wait! What's that I see all around me? Yep... it's definitely the weeds.

Life Lesson: The view is worth the climb.

O is for One Way Trip

In the science section of The Washington Post this morning, there was an article about journeying to Mars. It seems that some scientists believe that people will be ready to go and explore the red planet a lot sooner if we don't have to worry about getting them back... Yes, you read correctly. The mission to Mars would be one way. Explorers would have everything they needed to survive and start a colony, except a way back to Earth.

Nobody thinks that life on Mars would be easy, or even last very long, but it would undeniably be one of the greatest exploratory expeditions ever. In fact, over a thousand people have already informally volunteered to be a part of the project.

Think about it though: how different would the experience of going to Mars be than that of most people who immigrated to America a hundred and fifty years ago? Not much-- leaving your family then was almost always a last good-bye, and yet millions of people made that choice. In fact, most of us wouldn't be here if they hadn't.

Life Lesson: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

W is for a Wild Animal in My Garden

It's funny how kids become famous in a family for certain things they said or did when they were little. My sister used to say "Mo," when she meant "No," and my brother was well-known for his fish face-- the extreme pout he put on when he was verrrry displeased.

Our next generation have all had their memorable moments and quotes as well. When he was two, my nephew Riley fell flat on his bottom after trying and failing to give our cat a good kick in the butt. We scolded him soundly, of course. "What were you thinking!?" we asked.

"I just wanted to kick him over," he answered honestly.

His brother, Treat, is remembered for many things he said when he was a wee beastie, and one of them was, "I'm just going to skip time out... yeah, that's an option." It really wasn't.

Our godson Josh desperately wanted a pet hamster, unfortunately, the one he got was not a very friendly fellow-- he would bite anybody who even tried to pick him up. "He's not a ho'din hamster," Josh would tell us sadly.

Kyle, our nephew, used to call our dog Isabel, "Lisabel," and Lizzy is still one of her nicknames.

When he was very little, my youngest nephew, Richard, loved diggers and trucks. One day, as a dump truck rattled noisily past the house, he ran to see what it was, then turned to us with two thumbs up. "That guy was movin!" he reported.

His sister Annabelle, once saw a possum in the back yard. To this day she'll tell you about it, breathlessly: "I saw a wild animal in my garden!"

Life Lesson: Kids say and do the darnedest things, and even if they usually don't remember them, no worries-- that's what the older people are for.

L is for Lee's Woods

Arlington National Cemetery might be one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. More than 300,000 people have been buried there in the last 147 years, but few people know that it was designated as a cemetery in part to punish Robert E. Lee. Until the Civil War, the land that ANC lies on today belonged to Lee and his family. Their mansion still stands on the hill overlooking Washington, DC and surrounded by thousands of graves. When Lee made the decision to fight for Virginia and the Confederacy, his land was confiscated by the Union. Montgomery Meigs, a former friend of Robert E. Lee, and the Quartermaster General of the Union Army ordered the first soldiers buried in what had been the Lee's garden, because he knew that once that was done, the Lees would never return to live in their family home again. Meig's son had been killed in the war, and Meigs was so angry with Lee's betrayal that he wanted to make sure he lost his home.

It's amazing to think about all the history of that location-- both human and natural: because the grounds used to be private property, there is a stand of woods that is one of the last old growth forests left on the east coast. (Most woods in the United States have been cleared and farmed or settled at one point, and have now returned to forest, but an old growth forest is one that has never been cut down.) Right across the street from the mansion, are some woods, and some of the trees growing there today were standing when Robert E. Lee was alive, 150 years ago and longer. There is also a huge wild raspberry patch-- don't ask me how I know-- but around the fourth of July, you can pick ten pounds of berries if you know where to go. Watch out for the poison ivy, though.

Life Lesson: The life of humanity is so long, and that of the individual so brief... it is history that teaches us to hope. ~Robert E. Lee

D is for Doomsday

The beginning of the end of the world did not happen today. Despite the predictions of a small but vocal group of religious fundamentalists, half of the people on earth did not disappear leaving the others to face five months of turmoil before the ultimate apocalypse.

There was no catastrophe back on January 1, 2000, either, even though many people told us there would be a huge problem when lots of computers thought it was 1900 instead of 2000. New Years Day was as quiet and uneventful as usual.

Our next date with doom is on December 21, 2012. That's when the Mayan calendar supposedly ends, and with it, some people think, the world as we know it. Whenever someone asks me what I think of such predictions, my usual reply is something like, "I don't think so, but what do I know?"

Life Lesson:

Fire and Ice
By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

R is for Remains

We were fascinated in my third period class this week when one of the students came in with the tale of confiscating a relatively fresh skull from her dog. According to her, there was still some hair and tissue, but otherwise the thing was not very recognizable (although her dad thought it might be a cat!). All those police and detective novels I've read kicked right in, and after questioning her for a few more relevant details, I started googling images of small mammal skulls, but without any luck. It wasn't a cat, a squirrel, a possum, a raccoon, or a puppy (thank goodness...). It was always the eye size that was wrong-- whatever it was, it had pretty tiny eyes. When the bell rang for lunch, I sighed and gave up.

Fortunately, she brought a cell phone photo in today, and before I ever got to see the picture, one of the other kids recognized it as a skunk. We searched again for an image to confirm his hypothesis, but it was never 100%. There was too much gore on the one in her picture to make a positive identification. LAter, though, I did some more research and found that skunks do indeed have very small eyes. They rely on their hearing and smelling more than sight.

Coincidentally,  I heard a story on the radio this morning about why mammals have such big brains, especially compared to reptiles. Millions of years ago, dinosaurs were hunting in the day, so anything that could hunt at night had an advantage, because it wasn't prey or competition to the dinosaurs. The theory goes that mammals developed a strong sense of smell to help them hunt in the dark, and that the sense of smell takes up more brain space, so their brains grew to be larger and larger. Later, some mammals evolved into daytime predators, and they have larger eyes, but not the skunk. Good job, Skunk!

Life Lesson: Do what you're good at.

2 is for the 24 Game

The premise of the game is simple-- each card has four digits and players must use each number once and add, subtract, multiply, and/or divide to get 24. The cards often have more than one solution, but there are no answer keys, so the only way to figure it out is to figure it out.

Our sixth grade team has an annual Challenge 24 tournament and as that time of year approaches, we dig out the brightly colored blue, yellow and red cards and start playing with our homerooms to get them in practice for the competition. To be successful, good mental math skills are helpful, but not required. Over the years I've become convinced that the best way to win is to look for the patterns, especially 8 x 3 and 6 x 4, although this year I have a student who is all about 16 + 8-- that combination seems to work for him pretty often.

I found out today that there is actually an app for the game and of course I downloaded it right away. At first, playing electronically seemed harder, somehow, and I was really slow. It took me a while to notice that all the numbers are right side up on the iVersion of the game. I think that difference was disorienting enough to slow my brain down until I became accustomed to it. The longer I played, though, the better I did.

Life Lesson: Sometimes our brains work in strange ways, but that's okay as long as they work!

X is for X Marks the Spot

Do you think it would be fun to follow clues leading to a hidden treasure? If your answer is yes, then Geocaching is for you! Geocaching is an international game where people hide "caches" all over the world, then they post the GPS coordinates of these hidden stashes on a website called geocaching.com along with clues to help other geocachers find them.

Once you find a cache, you sign the log book and post your discovery. Some caches have trading items-- you take a fun trinket from the collection inside and replace it with one of your own. Some of them have "travel bugs." These are things that travel from cache to cache-- your job is to help them on their way by taking them from one site and placing them in another. For example, once I found a Red Sox keychain that was trying to travel from Florida back to Boston in time for the world series. Fortunately, I was going that way on vacation, and so I dropped it off about 10 miles west of Fenway Park.

You would be amazed how many caches there are-- it's over 1.3 million worldwide. You can find them almost anywhere you go-- in my small town alone, there are over 500, and one of them is even on the grounds of our school. When I first started geocaching, you needed a special device to play, but these days, many smart phones have GPS capability, and some of them even have an app to help you play, so it's easier than ever to get started with this fun hobby, so what are you waiting for?

Life Lesson: There's treasure everywhere!

Q is for Quite Quarrelsome

Dear Students,

Can we just agree that if you were not doing something that should be corrected then I wouldn't be redirecting you? That alone would save so much time.

You wouldn't have to act like you were completely mystified that I spoke to you in a bit of a sharp tone: What did I do? I wasn't doing anything! Who me? 

I wouldn't have to point out the obvious in exasperation. Really? You're surprised that I object to you wandering around the room when you should be writing? 

We wouldn't have to debate over the tiny details: I wasn't "wandering!" I was looking for paper, going to sharpen my pencil, getting a tissue, etc.

Honest, I did not become a teacher to arbitrarily control your life. There's a method to my madness, but I'm pretty sure you know that already. Right?

Life Lesson: An error doesn't become a mistake until we refuse to correct it.

N is for Netflix

Today at the gym I watched a movie on my iPhone. Usually I listen to music, but for a change I decided to just pick something from my Instant Queue on Netflix and that was that-- I was entertained as I plodded along on the treadmill. When I was a kid, if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the theater, and if you wanted to watch a particular TV show, you had to be in front of the television when it was on. There were no recordings of either of those. It's obvious that over the years, technology has really changed the way we view things, but I have to confess to a moment of amazement this afternoon when I looked down at the tiny screen in my hand and saw those credits roll.

Life Lesson: Today is the tomorrow we only dreamed of yesterday.

V is for Vegan

Vegans are people who only eat plant-based food. Unlike vegetarians, vegans do not eat eggs or any kind of dairy products like milk or cheese. Today I went to a movie called Forks Over Knives. Its premise was that eating animal products is the cause of almost all of the heart disease and cancer in the world. They also claimed that switching your diet to a completely vegan one can reverse those diseases, even in people who are deathly ill.

Like most documentaries, this film made a convincing case, but even as I was sitting there, I started to wonder about what a vegan diet would include, but more importantly, what it would exclude, too.

Never mind the obvious loss of chicken, steak, burgers, chops, and seafood-- start with breakfast: besides the usual scrambled or fried eggs, there would be no muffins, pancakes, or waffles, and no milk for your cereal. At lunch, no cheese means no pizza or lasagna, and almost every kind of baked dessert has eggs, too, so no more cookies or cakes, and of course there would be no ice cream, either.

That would be a tough adjustment, even if someone was convinced it was the right thing to do. Most of the people they spoke to in the movie were in a life or death situation, where changing their diet meant a chance at saving their lives, so to them it was worth it. Even so, they all said that they felt much better once they made the change, AND... they were still alive.

As for me? I'm still thinking.

Life Lesson: What's easy is not always what's right, and what's right is not always what's easy.

U is for Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet lights have many uses.  Forensic teams use them to test for blood or other body fluids that may be invisible to the human eye, and there is is also a security strip in US paper money that will glow; the treasury puts it there to prevent counterfeiting. Doctors use them to diagnose certain skin conditions, too. Sometimes they are found at clubs and concerts, and they are also used in some plays and other performances, just because they are cool-looking.

UV lights are better known as "black lights." If you've ever been to the planetarium over by the high school, then you know what I'm talking about. Black lights are those purpley lights they have when you exit that make light colors glow. Personally I love being in ultraviolet light-- it's bright and soothing at the same time, and the way it makes white shine gives you the illusion of seeing in the dark.

Life Lesson: There is more to most things than meets the eye.

T is for Trusting Technology

I was a little crabby this morning when I got to school and discovered that our network was experiencing outages because of a website upgrade. My lesson plans relied upon being able to access our web-based course, and that was not happening. Today was also the last day for three-and-a-half weeks that students will be able to use computers in class-- since all of our mandated testing is online, the labs and lap tops are reserved for that use until June 8.

Of course I adjusted (paper and pencil will not become obsolete any time soon in my classroom, despite what all the pencil-less students might believe), but it was a hectic way to start the day and end the week. This inconvenience also came on the heels of Blogger being down indefinitely. I haven't missed a day of posting in just over 800, and I was feeling some anxiety last night as I checked every fifteen minutes or so to see if it was back. In the end, I realized I could just post to our class discussion board, and that is what I did.

Choose your own Life Lesson:

Adapt or perish. ~HG Wells

OR

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. ~George Bernard Shaw

E is for Everything I Want to Write About is Taken!

Today is my sister Courtney’s birthday, but I can’t write about that, because the S, the C, and the B are already taken in my alphabiography. Nor can I write about my brother, Bill, or book reviews, or corn on the cob, or SOLs, or Survivor, or scolding students for being sassy when they should be silent. I can’t write about my magnificent mother, either, because the M is gone, or people without pencils, or getting good grades, or zipping zippers, or having headaches, or yackety yacking. I might have been forever fooling with fruitless fantasies, except for the existence of the ever-excellent E!

Life Lesson: A little alliteration is always a last alternative.

P is for PostHunt

The fourth annual Washington Post PostHunt commences on Sunday, June 5, at 11:30 AM. What is that? you ask? Well, the PostHunt is kind of a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt that anyone can participate in. If you want to play, you just have to show up at Freedom Plaza on that day.

The premise of the whole crazy thing is to "challenge participants to solve five ridiculously complex puzzles plus a final End Game in less than four hours. Finding the answers to those puzzles requires following a clue, possibly scrambling to another location, pausing to scratch your head and consider what it all means, then repeating."

My nephew, Treat, and I have joined the competition each year since it started back in 2008. We have had varying success, never solving fewer than 4 of the 5 puzzles, but never solving the end game, either. On the Saturday before, we pore over the Washington Post Magazine for the first clues, familiarizing ourselves with the official map, and making note of anything that may play a role in one of the puzzles. Then on Sunday morning, we hop the metro and join the throngs that are gathering for the challenge. The weather does not always cooperate-- we have been drenched, frozen, and fried, but it doesn't really matter, because it's really a lot of fun.

Maybe we'll see you there this year?

Life Lesson: It's the journey, not the destination, that counts.

G is for A Gift from the Sea

On the first day of our vacation in South Carolina, my mom called us down to the beach to see all the sea stars. There were hundreds, and since this was our first time there, we had no idea if it was a normal thing in those parts. In any case, it was exceptional to us. Over the course of the week, the starfish became much rarer, and we turned our attention to finding sand dollars and shells. I did pull a live whelk from its hiding place in a tidal pool, but as tempting as it was to keep it for its shell, after a few photos I reburied it with a wish and a prayer.

I recognized the whelk from a day trip I took to the Outer Banks one February a long time ago. On that day, it was sunny but freezing, and the beach was deserted. Huge, unbroken whelk shells, the kind and size you never find just lying on the beach, were everywhere-- so many that we couldn't carry them all to the car.  I wasn't worried though, because I was coming back in a few weeks, and I planned to fill a bucket with them then. I would have, too, except they were all gone.

Life Lesson: The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

B is for Bike

My first bike was a purple Huffy with high handle bars, a banana seat, and coaster brakes. It never had any training wheels-- my parents taught me to ride it by running along beside me holding on to the back of the seat and then giving me a push. After that, I got my momentum by starting on the downhill of the driveway, but it wasn't long before I could ride by myself. I loved that bike.

A few years later, my brother and I got bright yellow ten speeds for our birthdays, and they were nice, too, but never as comfy as my Huffy. We raced the ten speeds around the block, but it was always too close to call, so we decided to race in opposite directions. That was an epic crash.

In high school, I didn't own a bike-- it was a boarding school in Switzerland, after all-- but the school did offer bike trips, and two of the best weeks of my life were spent on a bike, first riding through Tuscany in the fall, and the next spring touring the south of France.

After college I lived at the beach for a few years, and I had a sweet beach cruiser in those days. It was black with hot pink detail, padded handle bars, a wide comfortable seat, and again with the coaster brakes. I rode it up and down the boardwalk and all over town, but when I moved up here, it was just no good on the hills and I had to get rid of it.

Now I have a nice little hybrid. It's the prettiest pale shade of robin's egg blue, and with eighteen speeds it can comfortably take me as far as I'm inclined to go. It has a loud bell for passing folks on the trail, a water bottle cage, and a rack on the back. It even has a bracket for my iPhone on the handlebars. I can't say I ride it as much as I'd like, but I enjoy it every time I take it out, and just like all of the others, I LOVE my bike.

Life Lesson: Keep on rolling!

F is for Finders Keepers

I found a five dollar bill on the ground today; it was just lying there all alone, and there was not another person in sight. Now I consider that pretty lucky, although I do feel a little bad for whoever lost it. When I was little, finding a penny was a pretty big deal, but back then a penny would buy a piece of candy or at least a gumball from the machine at the grocery store. A dime was a small fortune, a quarter untold wealth, and a dollar? Forget about it!

I pocketed the five, but these days when I walk past pennies in the parking lot or on the pavement, they are hardly worth bending over for, and I usually leave them there. I confess that I feel a little guilty every time, though. In the back of my mind I wonder if there will come a day when that one single cent would have made all the difference.

One time when we were kids my sister found two hundred bucks on the tarmac as she was walking out to board a plane. She reported it to the crew, and they said that if no one claimed it during the fourteen hour flight, then it was hers. Guess what? She got to keep the money and spend it with a clear conscience. Now that was a fun vacation for her!

Life Lesson: Whatever is found has also been lost.

C is for Cooking

I don't know why people think cooking is hard. I love to cook--you just get your ingredients and slice, chop, dice, toss, saute, grill, bake, season, marinate, dress, flambe, and/or sauce them, put them on the plate or in the bowl, grab a fork, spoon, knife and then enjoy. What could be hard about that?

Now writing on the other hand... that's hard!

Life lesson: When the going gets tough, the tough sit down and have a nice meal.

M is for Milkweed

When I was a kid we used to call the silky puff balls that would occasionally float by on the wind "wish bugs." We believed that if you caught one, you could make a wish on it and then blow it gently back into the sky. Your wish would come true as long as it didn't land on the ground.

Later I found out that those silky little parachutes are part of the milkweed plant and worked just as the puffs on a dandelion do to carry the seeds. But even now I still feel a strong impulse to chase after any wish bugs I might see, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure most of them end up on the ground, especially since that's what they are meant to do.

There's a poem called The Milkweed by Richard Wilbur that I really like:

Anonymous as cherubs
over the crib of God
white seeds are floating
out of my burst pod.

What power had I
before I learned to yield?
Shatter me, great wind:
I shall possess the field.

I love this poem because of the second stanza. The idea that sometimes you have to yield or bend to be successful is something that I find easy to forget. I also like the image of all the milkweed seeds floating over the field: it makes me think of teaching. The seeds are our students going off into the world in all different directions, and even though we might not know where they land, they "shall possess the field."

Life Lesson: Sometimes you have to yield to be successful.

Y is for Yeah, I've Got That

"The table is squeaking!" three girls in my first period class complained this morning.

"Keep writing," I told them, "I'll fix it when the timer goes off." To be honest, after seventeen years in my classroom with these ancient tables, I rarely notice the annoying ee-ee ee-ee ee-ee anymore. Soon, the beep beep beep beep of the timer broke the quiet. Everyone shared the title of the Alphabiography chapter they were working on, and then I told them it was time to go back to writing. I brandished the timer. "Ready?"

"Um? The table?" one of the girls reminded me.

See? I don't even hear it, but I opened a metal cabinet and got out my can of WD40 and affixed the red plastic straw. I gave the metal plates where the legs are screwed into the wooden table top a couple of quick squirts, and the irritating squeak was gone. "And now back to your writing!"

The time that I've been in my classroom is longer than I've lived in any house, and to say that I'm settled in would be an understatement. Over the years, I've collected almost anything I might need in most imaginable situations, this in addition to the usual trove of school supplies. The WD40 is a good example, but last year when I had to pack up everything and move out of my room for two months because they were renovating the building, I had the chance to inventory what I have:

spare socks
a screw driver
an electric tea kettle
lotion
hand sanitizer
several rolls of duct tape
static guard
a lint roller
thank you notes
plastic knives, forks, and spoons
band aids
air freshener
a can opener
batteries
nail clippers
a flashlight
antacids
aspirin
a new toothbrush
toothpaste
dental floss
eye glass repair kit
glasses cleaners
latex gloves
needle and thread
saline solution
spare contact case
paper cups
napkins
paper plates
plastic table cloth
cough drops
tic tacs
tissues
pencil lead (three sizes)
a large supply of chocolate
a bag of dum dum pops
pliers
allen wrench set
dream catcher
corn husk doll
gavel
and a magnetic felt figure of myself

This is only a partial list, and my co-workers know it. They all come to me sometime and ask the same question: "Tracey do you have...?"

Life Lesson: There's no such thing as being too prepared.

Z is for Zoo

On a warm sunny afternoon the laughter of children fills the air as they excitedly run from one exhibit to the next. I want to see the lions! I love the gorillas! Let's go to the elephants next! But there is an unseen cloud overshadowing this seemingly perfect day-- in my opinion, the zoo is nothing more than a prison for animals.

"But I love the zoo!" you might say, and sure, some people also say that zoos conduct valuable research and protect endangered animals, but that doesn't necessarily benefit the animals that are actually stuck in the zoo. How would you like to be the individual forced to suffer for the good of your species?

The gorilla house is a perfect example. Anyone with a shred of empathy can see that those great apes are miserable. And why shouldn't they be? Think of how they live-- trapped in a small, glass-enclosed space where not only is there very little to do, but hundreds of people gawk at them every day.

And what about the elephants? In the wild an adult elephant might walk up to 40 miles a day, but at the zoo they spend their time in a space smaller than a soccer field. This unnatural confinement causes foot problems and arthritis in many older elephants, as well as other health problems that can lead to their early deaths.

While there may be some animals whose needs can be more appropriately met by the zoo, I would still argue that these individuals would be better off if allowed to live their natural lives in their native habitats.

Life Lesson: It's wrong to sacrifice an animal's quality of life for our entertainment.

9 is for 9 Lives

One of our cats is almost 18 years old. His name is Bingo, and he has had quite a life. Besides the hundreds of mice and birds he's stalked and killed, he's been hit by a car, overcome diabetes, coughed up a two foot piece of grass, nearly died twice, and caught a bird right through the second story window screen. (Yes, through the screen!)

In his glory days he weighed sixteen pounds, but now, at 17 and 3/4, he's super skinny and feels as hollow as a little bird when you pick him up. His long hair sticks out all crazy, too, like the old dude he is, but he hasn't lost any of his spirit. Long ago, Heidi told him he wasn't allowed to die, and it seems like he took those words verrrrry seriously. Every day, he eats like a horse and he can still jump up on the counter to find more food. His favorites are waffles and green beans. In fact, he was pestering me tonight (actually climbing up my leg in the kitchen!) as I cooked dinner, and why? Because I was fixing beans.

Life Lesson: Go for it every single day!

S is for Substitute

Why is that kids always misbehave for a substitute? I remember when I was in school and our teacher was out-- the kids in my class turned into people I barely knew. The day was always full of chaos and I soon came to dread the sight of some strange adult sitting at our teacher's desk on any given morning.

Once when I was in fourth grade, we had a substitute. As usual, my classmates were like the rabid zombie versions of themselves, but I just kept my head down and tried to get through the day. Right before the bell was going to ring, the sub asked me and the girl who sat next to me to come over to the teacher's desk. She seemed frazzled and annoyed, and I was sympathetic-- the kids had been awful to her. She frowned and held up our spelling tests: both were 100%. "I do not believe that these were written by two people!" she accused us. "Look at that handwriting! It is exactly the same. You obviously both cheated!"

We were stunned. First of all, our penmanship was not that similar. Secondly, we got A's on spelling all the time. We tried to tell her that, but she didn't believe us. She scolded us in front of the class until the bell rang and we could go. I felt humiliated and angry.

When our teacher came back, she knew we hadn't cheated. She recognized our writing and she knew us well enough to know that cheating wasn't our thing. She shrugged it off as no big deal,  but that didn't really make it any better.

For a long time, I was mad at the substitute, but now I don't think it was really her fault. She didn't trust us because most of the students she tried to teach did not behave in such a way to earn her respect. If I wanted to hold a grudge,  I should have blamed the other kids.

Life Lesson: Hey! Students! Leave that sub alone!

H is for Hoe

After one year, I would not say that I am an experienced gardener, and lately, when I have driven by our community plot and seen how the weeds have done their best to take it back, I almost want to give up. Enter the hoe. A little internet research convinced me that this tool should be my best friend, and today it was. I found the sharpest one in the shed, and just as I had read, I let the hoe do the work, swinging it lightly at the tangle of weeds aiming just a fraction of an inch below the surface. Soon I had piles of weeds strategically located all throughout the garden. We scooped them into those big brown paper gardening bags, taking care not to overfill them. After three and a half hours of chopping weeds, though, my forearms were shot, and carrying the bags to the curbside was out of the question. Enter the wheelbarrow...

Life Lesson: There's a tool for that... use it!

A is for Alphabiography

I've issued another writing challenge to my students for the month of May:

	An Alphabiography tells stories of your life in short chapters, with each chapter focusing on someone or something important to you. We will work on this challenge for the month of May. You are required to post at least two chapters each week (for a total of 10), but you can post a chapter every day if you want to. CHALLENGE: Post a chapter for all 26 letters of the alphabet and four numbers to win a prize! Each chapter will end with a short “Life Lesson,” something you believe, something you’ve learned, something you want to teach the reader, or an explanation of why the subject of the chapter title is important to you. Each chapter will have a title that begins with a new letter of the alphabet.  The chapters will vary in length. The minimum is 75 words, but two of your chapters must be at least 250 words.  In response, my students issued a challenge to me-- that I complete the assignment along with them. How could I say no? Watch this space for the results.

Oh Lord!

Today the Tolerance Club sponsored another movie-- this one called New Muslim Cool. It's about a Puerto Rican-American rapper who has converted to Islam. Given the age and ethnic diversity of our student body, we thought it would be of interest, and we had about 50 kids stay after school to see it.

Later, three of the other sponsors of the group and I were brainstorming appropriate titles for our last film of the year. We have shown five documentaries, and our thought was that a more main stream movie that conveyed a message might be a good way to finish the year. As we talked, three of us were using our smart phones to look up information on the titles we were considering. IMDB turned out to be a handy resource for us, but we had to laugh at how the "Parents Guide" information was presented. For example the section on profanity lists all of the swearing in a movie, out of context, like so:

At least one slang term for breasts (as in "It's as cold as a witch's t*t"), 6 damns, 3 hells, 3 craps, 1 ass (used with "hole"), 1 turd, and 2 uses of "Oh my God" and "Oh Lord" and 1 use each of "Jesus Christ" and "Oh God" as exclamations. 

Holy cow! I guess that's good to know, but can you imagine having that job?

Crap Shoot

The other day I saw a bumper sticker that resonated with me: More Fun, Less Stuff. Probably one reason I was drawn to it is because I have a lot of stuff, and although I feel like over the last few years I have getting better, in essence that really only means that I am accumulating junk more slowly. I'm not sure how to break the habit, because like many people in affluent countries, I want what I want when I want it. Big ticket items are the easiest to resist; I think carefully before spending over a certain amount. It's the little things that are easy to toss in your shopping basket and that are currently cluttering up my house, my attic, and my classroom, because once they're paid for, it's hard for me to throw them away.


All of this is the prelude to my annual complaint about the PTA fundraiser our school does. We ask homerooms to choose a them for a "basket" and then the kids contribute items. The baskets are raffled off for a dollar a chance at our big international celebration. It's hugely successful, and why? Because people want stuff.

The Power of the Board

The chalk board is a powerful symbol of a teacher's authority, and as such, I confess that I do not like it when my students write on the board, and I rarely allow it. But kids LOVE a chalk board, perhaps for the same reason.

Today I was doing a lesson on the relationship between words and visual images. The students were supposed to take a passage from their books and parse it over the panels of a cartoon, and then illustrate the words. It can be a powerful activity to discover that rather than the proverbial thousand words per picture, sometimes one single word is worth a picture, and a rather detailed one at that.

In the class before lunch, a second language student asked me what a shingle was. Then she asked about a cape. I deduced that it was a cape-style house, and I drew a picture of one on the board; as a good measure, I added a few cedar shakes to the outside. "Can I finish the shingles?" a student asked, and I nodded, having better things to do than detail a chalk sketch.

My assent opened the floodgates. Along with the exterior of the house, kids wanted to add trees, a garden, tornadoes, earthquakes, and a chimney fire. Not to be outdone, other students started drawing things from their books until soon the board was transformed into a fantastic mural. "Stop!" I protested, but half-heartedly, since they were actually pursuing the objectives of the lesson, if only in a tangential way. "I'm just going to erase it when you leave," I finally threatened.

There arose a collective "Nooooooooo!" and so I told them that the only way they could save their masterpiece was to start their group discussions and do them very, very well. They flew to their seats and did a great job in the minutes that remained. As the bell rang, one of them asked me if I would take a picture of the board, and I promised I would. Off they went, quite proudly, to lunch. A nice story, but it doesn't end there.

During lunch, a few other students entered the room to drop off or pick up their things. They were stunned that any kids had been allowed to write on the board. "You like them better than you like us!" they accused me, and I tried to tell them it wasn't so, but in nothing short of outrage, one picked up an eraser and started to obliterate the chalk art. The others joined in with their bare hands until chalk dust powdered the tables and the board was an empty cloud.

"You didn't really need to do that," I said, a little shocked and perplexed. They wanted to write on the board themselves, but I took all the chalk and put it away. "Go to lunch," I told them.

Of course the first group was mad and disappointed to find their work was gone. "That's what happens when chalk is your medium," I told them lightly, but unconsoled, they had some choice words for their eraser-happy classmates.

Maybe my next lesson should be on symbolism.

Q-tip?

Our school is organizing an origami crane drive to benefit the survivors of the Japanese Tsunami. In support of the effort, the Tolerance Club learned how to fold them yesterday. The idea was that we would make some ourselves, but we would also teach other people how to make them, too.

First of all, those critters are complicated, but like skinning the proverbial cat, there are many ways to make the necessary folds, and since learning the skill, I have done my part to spread the word of the crane. Yesterday afternoon, two boys came to my room after track practice, one sorry he could not have been to the meeting, and the other just tagging along. "She's going to show us how to make origami cranes!" the first kid told his friend.

"What??!" his friend asked with profound confusion.

"Origami cranes," I repeated, but still he frowned.

I showed him one that was already finished. "Ooooooh," he answered, "origami cranes. I thought you said origami brains."

I laughed and crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it at him. "Here! We can make those, too."

Pep Talk

In the last class of the day today there were a couple of kids absent and several who were pulled for a meeting with the Gifted Coordinator. That left me and seven sixth grade boys. Tomorrow we are administering a reading test, the results of which will help determine whether kids take a foreign language next year, or continue on with reading, and I gave them the same spiel I had delivered to all of my classes. "A standardized test is like a snapshot..." I started.

My point to the kids was that there's no shame in doing their best on the test and finding out that it would help them to postpone taking another language for a year, but it would be a shame for them to blow off the test and miss out on the chance at a high school credit. I also reminded them that if they did take a language, then their grade would be important when they applied to college.

This group was confused. "What do you mean "apply"?" asked one.

"Well," I answered, "colleges don't have to let you go there. They get to choose who they want based on an application that you fill out.They look at a lot of things, but they definitely look at your grades."

"Whaaaaaaat?" said another student. "You can't just go somewhere?"

I shook my head.

"Did you go to college?" somebody asked.

"You can't be a teacher without a college degree," I shrugged.

They were unusually quiet for a moment, but then the silence was broken. "Let's get to work!" one guy suggested, clapping his hands in encouragement, and it was a very good class.

The Easy Part

I just can't shake the sense that as a culture we over-burden ourselves. As an example, what does it say about us and the way our lives are organized that it's quite common to hear folks say that they need a vacation after their vacation? It seems that we put so much time and energy into relaxing, that we miss out on the down time. I know I'm guilty of that; in fact, I'm feeling it right now. Fortunately, as a teacher, I have considerable time off in the summer, and not surprisingly, knowing that I don't have to go right back to work after a trip makes everything much less stressed.

I wish I knew the solution, but for now, I'm going to have to content myself with identifying the problem. I'm too busy to do anything else!

Resilience

I like to think of myself as a pretty positive person, steady in the face of crisis, even, but time and again, it's the little things that can get me down. Today I stoically bid my family good-bye and drove 9 1/2 hours through terrible traffic, only to arrive home and find my refrigerator not working. Sigh.

Yesterday at the beach I counted six iPhones, three iPods, an iPod touch, and an iPad in our group. Apple must have seen our family coming. Earlier in the week, my sister and I met the next door neighbor and his dog, a cute, nine-year-old, golden retriever-chow mix. Later, while walking with our mom, we saw the dog out in the yard, and my sister and I spoke of her in very familiar terms. "How do you know that?" my mother asked.

"We did genetic testing on her," I joked.

"We scanned her with our iPhones," my sister added.

"Yeah, there's an app for that," we laughed.

Eventually we explained about meeting the owner, but we were off and running on all sorts of app ideas. (Who Shat That? is still my favorite.)

Personally, I believe there is not only an app for most things, but a poem, too. Here's mine for the broken refirgerator:

Meditation on Ruin

by Jay Hopler

It's not the lost lover that brings us to ruin, or the barroom brawl,
           or the con game gone bad, or the beating
Taken in the alleyway. But the lost car keys,
The broken shoelace,
The overcharge at the gas pump
Which we broach without comment — these are the things that
           eat away at life, these constant vibrations
In the web of the unremarkable.

The death of a father — the death of the mother —
The sudden loss shocks the living flesh alive! But the broken
           pair of glasses,
The tear in the trousers,
These begin an ache behind the eyes.
And it's this ache to which we will ourselves
Oblivious. We are oblivious. Then, one morning—there's a
crack in the water glass —we wake to find ourselves undone.

Fair to Middlin'

Tonight was our last dinner at the beach, and as we gathered around the table, someone proposed that each person share the highlight of the week for them. Next it was the low point, which was sort of negative, but still interesting, and then five-year-old Richard suggested that we tell the middle of our vacation.

We asked him what he meant by that, and he explained that it was something kind of good, but kind of bad, too. He went first. "My middle was when a wave hit me in he face," he said.

Fifteen-year-old Treat was skeptical. "That was the mid-point of your week?" he asked. "Half of the week was worse than getting a face full of salt water? You couldn't have had a very good time."

The adults around the table wanted to jump in and defend Richard, but we were silenced by his explanation. "Treat," he said, "that was my middle because I was a big boy when the water hit me."

His answer clarified the task for us, and next Treat told us about the horseshoe crab tail that he carried all the way back from his bike ride only to discard it in disappointment when he found that everyone else had left the beach to go home.

Emily paused a little before she started. "What was my bittersweet moment?" she wondered aloud, and that word, bittersweet, really helped the rest of us get it. As it turned out, there was much more discussion about those in between times that each of us described than of any of the the highs or the lows, and those stories somehow seemed a lot more revealing and true, too.

What a good question, Richard!

Southern Fried!

This afternoon we were treated to a good old coastal thunderstorm. With the thermometer pushing the upper 80s earlier in the day, it sure felt like summertime, and even though that's why we chose this place for this vacation, I was reminded of what one of my students posted just a few days ago: Are you ready for summer? I need some spring first. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Anyway, the boomers passed through, and we ran around the house closing all the windows. Unfortunately, one of them was not securely latched at the top, and as I pulled it down, it swung in and smacked me squarely on the bridge of the nose. For a long moment all I could do was loosely cup my palms over my face and hope that nothing was broken. I barely had the ice pack applied before there was a loud crack, and Treat and Richard raced wide-eyed down the stairs to report a bright flash of light and the faint smell of smoke in one of the upstairs bedrooms. Next came Jordan out of the downstairs bedroom with the tale of a laptop power cable that had just popped and flamed. As the smoke alarms screamed, we checked the unfamiliar house for signs of hazard or catastrophe.

As best we could figure, lightning had struck very near. The TV was down for the count, and a few power cables were fried, but it seemed like it was only the things that were drawing power at the time of the surge that were damaged. Even so, I considered how quickly things can go south-- that window, like the lightning, hit hard and without warning, but when it was all over, it could have been so much worse.

Southern Fried

My grandmother was from Mississippi and her fried chicken was legendary. Whenever we visited her, she would make it for us to have on the three hour car ride back home. Once, she ran out of time and sent my grandfather to KFC to buy the chicken. Family tradition has it that the four-year-old me knew something was amiss from the first bite. "This is not Grandma's chicken!" I reportedly exclaimed.

I don't have any memory of the incident, but I always thought of it as a testimony to remarkable chicken rather than a remarkable palette. My grandmother died 39 years ago, long before I started cooking, and her chicken recipe was lost to me for about twenty years, until I had the occasion to ask her youngest sister about it on one of her rare trips up north. She told me how she made hers, and how their mother made hers, and that she reckoned my grandmother's recipe was somewhere close to in between.

It was almost another 19 years until I put her method to the test. Skillet frying a chicken just always seemed like a lot of trouble. But on this family vacation to South Carolina, we planned to celebrate my brother's birthday, and making fried chicken the way my grandma did seemed like a perfect menu choice.

My original idea was to use a deep fryer, but I left the cord at home, and so I was forced to fry it on the stove, just as she did. Honestly? I'm glad I did, because it turned out really well, and it wasn't the hassle I always thought it would be. In fact, I may not wait another 19 years to try it again.

Believe It or Not

I gave my students the option to keep posting throughout our spring break, and I was curious to see if they would and what they might say. I told them all it might be fun to check in with the group, especially since we wouldn't be seeing each other every day. It has been interesting-- kids have posted from Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah with tales of their journeys. Other kids have written about the adventures they've had at home, but it only took until today, Tuesday, for an underlying emotion to come to the surface. "I miss school," one person wrote, and after that, every kid who went online replied with how much they missed it, too.

And the best part is that I have it writing.

We Do This Because

Today was the beginning of Passover. My brother-in-law is Jewish, and we have shared a Pesach Seder dinner with my sister's family for the past few years. I like it; the customs, although unfamiliar, are comforting in their ritual, and I appreciate feeling connected to two thousand years of history, even if it isn't my own. Tonight was no exception-- my sister made a wonderful meal; my niece and nephew shone with the excitement of the festivities, and their dad led us through the traditions of the holiday.

We were raised Catholic, and although I have some serious issues with the church and its social policies, I always loved the rituals and traditions of mass and the sacraments. I know that they can be mystifying to the uninitiated, though. Years ago, a friend of mine, who happened to be Jewish, and I were invited to the wedding of another teacher on our team. The ceremony included a Catholic mass, and when the priest asked that the gifts be brought to the altar my friend looked at me in panic. "I left mine in the car!" he whispered.

Rubbernecking

Our trip down to South Carolina was about an hour and a half longer than we hoped, mostly because of traffic backups in North Carolina. Oh, we made the best of it: the weather was glorious, cloudless blue skies, warm sun, and cool spring air; the van was comfortable and of course, the company was excellent. Still, we were in a place that many travel, but few actually see, and details that anyone would have been forgiven for missing at 80 mph were unmistakable: the way the pavement gleamed, studded with the broken glass from countless accidents, the dead dog nearly obscured by the tall grass, it's tail fluttering gold in the patch of fluttering green.

The cause of our delay? Violent storms and tornadoes had ripped through the area yesterday, and their devastation was visible from the highway. In one spot, people wandered aimlessly through the shattered remains of a trailer park, presumably trying to help put somebody's life back together, and we on the interstate were a legion of vehicles, passing by in a column ten miles long, slowed to a crawl so that we could see.

I Love a Minivan

How did the minivan get such a bad rap? Almost all of my friends and family with kids are waaaay too cool for the grand caravan and its ilk; you should see the faces they make when someone suggests that they might like to own one. It's impossible to tell what provincial stereotypes they wrestle with, but as a mature adult without children, I am free from those surly bonds.

I have merrily rented a van or two every summer for the last eight in order to pile all the nephews in and head out for some awesome kids-and-aunties-only vacation. It's hardly surprising then that to me a minivan represents nothing other than enough space for everyone and the dog to hit the road for some F-U-N! What could be the stigma in that?

Blood on the Ice

"How many years has this been?" someone asked me today on our annual sixth grade skating trip.

"Let me think about it," I answered. "I remember them by the injuries..." We eventually figured that this was number five, but not before a little girl fell and cut a couple of fingertips open on her skate. Despite the blood, it was no more than a band-aid injury. A friend asked me earlier in the week if we'd have an ambulance standing by, given our track record of stitches and sprains. "Shut up," was my witty rejoinder to her.

Still, there's something strangely satisfying about taking 200 sixth graders ice skating and to the food court, despite the inevitable exhaustion at the end of the day. This trip seems to offer the perfect balance of positive risk-taking and independence for the age group, and the kids love it, almost unanimously, despite the bumps and bruises and the gentle and not-so-gentle reprimands.

And each year as I lace up my skates with a simple prayer, Don't let me fall in front of my students, it gives me an appreciation of how hard it must be to be a kid in school.

Foraging

When I was a kid, Euell Gibbons was a household name. Maybe it was the Grapenuts commercial where he looked fondly at that pine tree and drawled,"You know some parts are edible...", but whatever the case, old Euell was the punchline to many jokes. Later in life I was introduced to his book, Stalking the Blue-eyed Scallop, but even then, appreciation was not my primary response.

I'm not sure when I realized what a smart guy he was, but for years, I have been consciously cultivating my knowledge of the plants around me and what we can eat. Just tonight the neighbor kids and I spent a merry half hour trying to reach all the red bud blossoms we could from the tall tall trees in our courtyards, both to nibble on out of hand-- the pink buds are a little sweet-- and also to toss in our salad.

I kind of like the fact that they might look at a tree and think that some parts are edible, without a trace of irony.

Annual Riddle Poem Edition

Each year my students write riddle poems. Here are a few pretty good ones from this round:

I smell as though a thousand years
I can be sad and bring many fears
Romance, fantasy I'm sometimes called
I'm creative and with me people have bawled
I make new worlds that are real and fake
I am as great as my creator make
Many shapes and sizes, skinny or plump I do come in
But the real great treasure is the one within.
A book

i am clear as a diamond
no color or shape
too much of me is deadly
but if you dont have enough of me you can die
many people try to run away from me
and they just cant because i am too fast. 
what am i?
water

Good times never last,
I should never have let you go,
I'll never forget my careless mistake,
All the time I prayed for your reappearance,
But you never floated back home.
A balloon

It is fluffy in the inside,
soft on the out.
In the night it has a head,
But when the morning comes,
then it does not.
What is this?
A pillow

The Real Treasure:
Yes, I'm partially in gold,
and in some part of diamond
Look at what it takes to get victory.
Yes I'm somewhat in money.
Check in these things
and you will see
my true identity.

What Am I?????
Love

(The answers appear in ghost post below each riddle.)

Buyer's Remorse

The other day in class the attendance secretary came to fetch one of my students. His dad was there to pick him up for a doctor appointment. He gathered his belongings and then hesitated at the door. With a concerned expression he turned around and approached my desk. The other students were working quietly on an assignment, so he whispered his request. "Will you tell (here he named another student) to give me my money?"

It was my turn to be concerned. "Why does he have your money?" I asked.

"Because we traded," he explained.

I was confused. "What did you trade?"

"I gave him my money and he gave me those cards." He pointed to the table where a deck of cards still lay.

"We call that 'buying' when we trade money for something," I told him, and looking sternly at both boys, I continued, "and we don't use class time to conduct that kind of business."

"But I changed my mind," the first kid said with a slight whimper, "and I need my money back. My dad will be mad."

The card seller had the sense to look abashed, but he kept the cash in his pocket. I sighed and canceled the transaction. "Give him his money and get back to work."

Here and Now

We've reached a point in the year where some of the students are in the habit of seeking me out either before homeroom, at lunch, or after school. They just want to talk, or tell me something, or take a shot at the mini-hoop I have hanging by the door. I welcome this attention, both because building relationships is what we do, and I genuinely like all of my students. Also, it's kind of fun to hang out with kids.

Our interactions are interesting, entertaining, and enlightening, and they feel meaningful to me, but it's weird when I think about it, especially if I try to recall my own sixth grade experience. Chances are, these kids won't remember anything of what we say. They are growing and changing so quickly that even in a year or two, when they are in seventh and eighth grades, this time will seem like ancient history to them. Who knows what will stick?

I guess that's all the more reason to be present in the present.