Solving for X

People are sometimes surprised to learn that math was my favorite class in school. While I love the romance of ideas that is the humanities, particularly the artistry of expression in literature, it was always the unequivocal absolute of mathematics that I enjoyed most. Math was easy for me, too, and perhaps that is why I spurned it in favor of what I perceived as more complex. It is for that reason that I understand completely why the vast majority of students turns first to math when it comes to homework. They, too, are drawn to its clear-cut expectations and right or wrong answers.

I always enjoy helping them after school or in TA when they need it. Although teaching strategies have changed, the answers are still the same. And when the daily math challenge is presented on the morning announcements, I can barely contain myself from shouting out the answer. "Come on guys! Math WOW with me!" I exclaimed just the other day, when my homeroom seemed completely indifferent to determining the volume of a cube.

The last couple of weeks I have been tutoring a friend of ours who has gone back to college to finish her degree. She's taking algebra, and the hours we have spent solving and graphing equations have been so much fun that I actually thank her at the end of the session.

Hm. 

For the Best

There was a wait of an hour fifteen minutes at the restaurant where we hoped to have dinner after the movie tonight. We gave them our name and number and headed back outside into the quiet rain to consider our options. Right across the plaza was another place that we had never heard of and they didn't look too crowded at all.

It could have gone either way. The place was more of a tavern, with a huge bar, high wooden booths, lots of basketball-filled flat screens, and some thumping nineties tunes on the sound system. I ordered the usual Saturday night dinner from when I was a kid-- steak, french fries, and salad-- and washed it down with a cold pint of draft beer, and when the first place texted, I replied with a satisfied Thanks anyway.

Selfie

There were five minutes left before lunch when a small group of students gathered around my desk. They were finished their work and excitedly looking at some of the writing challenge prizes that they might win next week. They were also examining the interesting doodads I have. They love my word a day calendar, my twenty year egg, my Zen wishes box.

I was paying a little less attention to them, perhaps than I should, caught up as I was, in monitoring and commenting on their classmates' fiction pieces in progress. I heard a roar of laughter and then a guilty giggle. "We took a selfie with your phone!" one student immediately confessed. "Sorry."

Yes, my phone, too, had been sitting on my desk, and no, it wasn't locked.

My first reaction was to be annoyed, very annoyed. "Give me that!" I demanded. They handed me the phone. I looked at the screen.

How could anyone stay mad at that? What an epic portrait of exuberance!

Also-- how did that even happen without my noticing?

AND, they promised it would never happen again.

The Romance

"It just makes me so sad," a friend of mine said yesterday. She had just finished a story about her sister who had confided that she was no longer in love with her husband; she wasn't really unhappy, and she had no plans to leave, she simply accepted that the passion was gone.

Certainly relationships change over time, and of course it can be worrisome. Just this evening Heidi came downstairs in the outfit she plans to wear to school tomorrow. "How does this look?" she asked. 

I glanced up from the cutting board. "Great!" I assured her.

"What would you think if you didn't know me?" she asked. It is a question I have answered many times before.

"Well, the blue in your sweater really makes your eyes pop," I answered, "so I would think, who is that with those pretty blue eyes and that great smile?"

"What would you do to get me?" she said.

I didn't hesitate. "I would find you the perfect dog, cook you all the vegan food you wanted, make fresh juice every morning, and pack your lunch every day," I replied.

She hugged me. "That would do it!" 

Auotbiography of a Student

When she wakes up in the morning, she is excited to go to class, mainly because she will spend the day with her friends. Lunch and the other breaks are definitely her favorite part of the day. In class, she is alert when she knows she might be called on and could probably answer a few questions correctly, and she participates good-naturedly in the group activities, but she is somewhat distracted by what she has to do once she leaves for the afternoon. To be honest? Next week most of the content covered will be a hazy memory.

Careful, It Bites

I heard a fascinating piece on the radio this morning about using statistics to help find missing aircrafts. Of course it was part of the flight 340 coverage, but the specific case they cited was the 2009 Air France plane that disappeared in the South Atlantic. It seems that using Bayes' Theorem, a statistical model that can compute a likely outcome when there are many competing variables (like where a missing plane might be), can be helpful.

Coincidentally, I also read an article today about a company that plans to use the data gleaned by tracking kids' responses to computer programs to develop a complete educational profile and action plan for every student. Education happens to be today the most data-mineable industry by far,” says their CEO in this video. "Every single thing in education is correlated to something else."

No doubt, they, too plan to use some iteration of Bayes' ideas to develop their automated response to students' needs. To many, that approach may sound ideal, but Arnold Barnett, a statistician at MIT, included this disclaimer in the radio piece this morning, "Bayes Theorem can't find the plane, period. It can, at best, change the odds."

And in fact, when they applied the theorem to the Air France flight five years ago, they "eliminated huge swaths of ocean floor because nobody heard a signal from the plane's black boxes. But it turned out, against the odds, both of the black boxes were damaged." It took two years to find that plane.

In the words of Colleen Keller, the mathematician working on that case, "Sometimes the probabilities will turn around and bite you."

Look out kids!

Heaven Forbid

"How come the fourth quarter is so much longer than all the others?" a student asked me today when I mentioned that we would be officially three-quarters of the way through our school year in less than a week.

"It's not," I explained, "but we do have spring break in a few weeks, and that adds a little time."

"Really?" She looked at me quizzically. "Isn't it, like, four months?"

"No!" the whole class cried.

"It's not four full months, " I told her as her peers practically writhed in agony at the very thought. "We have just a week in March, then April, May, and part of June."

"Oh," she shrugged, "I thought we went to July."

Daughters of Triton

I recently read that, in what seems to be a trend these days, Sofia Coppola will direct a live-action version of The Little Mermaid. It is rumored to be closer to the original Hans Christian Anderson story, and so much darker than the 1989 Disney cartoon. A screen writer is quoted as saying, it is so beautiful and exquisite and painful, so we absolutely have to have the original ending.

Twenty odd years ago I found myself on a spacious front porch in suburbia with my brother, sister, and our cousin, Sandy. All the outdoor furniture had been pushed aside and a fisher-price cassette player stood at attention on the top step, as we did too. Sandy's 7-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was about to perform an interpretive roller skate routine to the soundtrack of The Little Mermaid.

It was a very expressive performance, and once I got the giggles out, it kind of made me consider the movie in a new light. Personally, I did not find the story of Ariel very moving, but it was plain that Jennifer felt differently. If that resonance was representative of her generation, I'm sure the new, grown-up, movie will be a big hit.

Jennifer is a successful consultant these days, having earned her MBA from Wharton a couple of years ago, but you better believe that doesn't stop us from teasing her about the goofy stuff she did when she was a kid. That little skate show, so beautiful and exquisite and painful, is right at the top of the list.

'Cause that's what cousins are for.

Sunrise, Sunset

We took advantage of the springtime temperatures today to go for a walk. The National Mall and Tidal Basin were packed with like-minded folks, so on a whim I headed over to Haines Point, even though I hadn't been there in years.

IS this the pathway that I walked on?
Is this the place I rode my bike?

It was easy enough to find parking over near the NPS headquarters, although a golf ball from the public course across the way landed just a few yards from our car as we pulled in. We walked a short way over to the one-way road that horseshoes around the point and then crossed to the water.

I don't remember growing older.
When did it?

There was a clear high tide line in the grass leading down to the sidewalk that leads along the river. Obviously the point had been flooded over the winter. The cement of the walk way was in terrible condition. Huge gaps revealed the rebar and yawning holes beneath. Even so, there were quite a few other people strolling and fishing.

When did it get to be so broken?
When was it ever such a hike?

As we picked our way along the uneven trail, I was anxious to get to the end of the point, even though I knew The Awakening was long gone. Despite the beautiful weather and cheerful company, it started to seem like we would never get there. Finally we spied a playground and picnic area with lots of families enjoying the first real evening of spring. There the path turned back toward town, and we followed it back to our car as the sun sank lower in the western sky to our lefts.

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days

Like a Room without a Roof

Fantastic word today that Josh was accepted into the Corcoran School of Art with a pretty nice scholarship.

He and his parents will work out a separate financial aid package, but it looks like this prestigious, private school will probably end up being a better deal for his college education than the state school just down the road.

Everyone who cares about Josh is pretty tickled by the news; the congratulatory texts and emails and facebook posts have been flying all day.

I have to confess, though, that when I read his text this morning, it was definitely a bit of a paradigm shift:

accepted into the Corcoran with a $32k scholarship looks like im living with you guys!

But I quickly recovered and texted him back:

Yay! Congratulations!

Mm Mm Mm

It was impossible to recover my right-before-lunch class for the last ten minutes after one student made a very lewd gesture. Although I asked him to step out into the hall to discuss that particular choice, and despite the fact that they had a pretty engaging activity (if I do say so myself), all anyone wanted to talk about was what did he do!? and what did it mean!?

Some students tried to shrug it off and play it cool. "What?" said one boy. "There's nothing bad about that. It just means one girl likes another girl." Although I appreciated his open mind, I informed him that he was misinformed, and tried again to move on.

I was still a little grumpy a few minutes later when three of my female colleagues joined me for lunch, but at least I had a good story. We rolled our eyes and giggled as I told the entire tale, ending with that other student's remark. "I guess he was sort of on the right track," I shrugged.

"Hey now!" said one of the other teachers, "No need to be so limited! No need at all."

Oh my! My jaw dropped, and I can not remember the last time I blushed so hot and so red, but the four of us almost fell out of our chairs laughing.

Which is probably why we are middle school teachers.

Common

One of the first things I learned when I started teaching is that fair and equal are not synonyms. Perhaps Dr. Richard Curwin, co-author of Discipline with Dignity and contributor to EduTopia, can explain:

Students are not the same. They have different motivations for their choices, different needs, different causes for misbehavior and different goals.

No one would go to a doctor who treats all headaches the same, since the cause for one may be allergies and the other a tumor. Identical treatment for two students who don't do homework for different reasons -- one who has to help at the family business after school, and one who watches too much television -- is no different than that crazy doctor with the single cure for all headaches.

These days, though, there is a hard push toward standardization of everything school-related. Not only are teachers and administrators encouraged, or even required, to treat every student the same in regard to discipline and achievement, but we are also being herded into systems that require considerable homogenization of our teaching practice.

Today a presentation on the merits of common formative assessment was made to our staff by some of our colleagues as part of a school-wide book study. It was a well-intentioned overview of chapter 2, and one of the powerpoint slides offered a couple of definitions of the word "common."

One was, collective, communal, and the other was familiar, popular, general.

All very warm and fuzzy, but as an English teacher I know that's only part of the story. I was struck by the definitions they left out:

ordinary, average, unexceptional

not to mention

uncouth, vulgar, coarse, unrefined, unsophisticated

March Madness

Perhaps you've heard? Warren Buffet is offering a billion dollars to anyone who picks a perfect bracket for this year's NCAA tournament. (Don't worry-- those two 16th seed play-in spots are not included.) Even so, the odds, they say, are 1 in 128 billion.

If you are so inclined, you can do a little research to find out just how slim your chances are (the same as flipping heads 37 times in a row, for example), but I have another question. What would you do with a billion bucks? Or, if you take it in a lump sum, 500 million bucks, minus 39.6%? That seems practically unspendable to me, but perhaps my tastes are too simple?

I confess that I did enter the contest... fingers crossed I'll be able to answer that last question myself.

Anything is possible

until Thursday.

Popcorn

My dad was neither a good eater nor an accomplished cook, but he did have a few culinary specialties. On Saturday morning he would fry bacon and cut up oranges into eighths for us to eat while we watched cartoons. Later, when he took us grocery shopping for the week, store brand sodas were 10 for a dollar so each of us got to choose three and he picked the tenth. (It was always cream soda or root beer.)

We drank the sodas on nights when my mom was out at one of her meetings or another. Then, my dad would make popcorn on the stove and serve it with plenty of salt and butter in the biggest bowl we had. He set it in the middle of the three of us on the floor in front of the TV, and we would crunch and munch and wash it down with ice cold soda straight from the can. When the popcorn was gone, the unpopped kernels languished in a little puddle of butter and salt at the bottom of the bowl until it was wiped away one little fingerful at a time.

I took advantage of that one more unexpected snow day we had today to pop some corn over the fire. When it was done, I poured it in my big bowl, a twin to the one my dad used, and sat down on the floor in front of the fire to crunch and munch and enjoy the warmth, both of the fire and of the memory of those long ago evenings.

Silver Palate

Finding a table for a party of six at 7:30 on a Saturday night can be tricky in these parts. Most of the places we checked had at least a 90 minute wait, but then for some reason I recalled a review I had read a few years back about a Burmese restaurant in the area. The description of the menu, 200+ dishes that would take you on a gastronomic tour of Myanmar, had stuck with me, and I'd been meaning to try it for some time.

When I called, I could hear the clamor and clank of a busy Saturday service over the phone, but they told me that they could probably seat us in 30 minutes, so off we went. A few minutes later we found ourselves in front of a storefront in a strip mall. The sign either didn't work, or was turned off, but we pushed in through the standard plate glass door and waited for a six top to open.

I'm lucky to live in such a diverse area with so many ethnic restaurants to choose from. As kind of a foody, though, it's been a while since I have experienced anything completely unfamiliar as far as cuisine is concerned. That all changed when I took a look at the menu as I waited.

Myanmar is bordered by Thailand and Malaysia to the south, Laos and China to the East, and India and Bangladesh to the North. Consider, for a moment, the intersection of all those cuisines. Can't do it? Neither could I. Add to that my lack of experience with anything Burmese (except the python and Aung San Suu Kyi) and you might have an idea of how clueless I felt approaching the menu.

The six of us blundered through, though, and we had food that ranged from the sublime to something my brother politely spit into his napkin. It was both interesting and frustrating, and on the way home, Heidi asked me if I'd ever eat there again. "No way!" I told her and went on to explain my disappointment.

Later, though, I took a second look at the review I'd read so long ago. They had said that some dishes were uneven, and they had also provided a primer for the inexperienced. Two of the dishes we liked, ginger salad and chicken coconut soup, were on that list, but there were several others that we had not tried.

Oh all right! I'll go back.

What kind of a foodie would I be anyway to dismiss an entire cuisine after one try?

The Spice of Life

I can honestly say that I don't mind 60 degree weather one day and a possible snowstorm the next.

Bring it!

Wearin o' the Green

Was it just last year that St. Patrick's day was on a Sunday and April Fools a teacher work day? Talk about luck of the Irish-- in middle school, those have got to be two of the silliest days on the calendar, and missing them both in a single year? Brilliant!

This year, though? We're up da spout, lads, and St. Paddy's day is Monday. In an effort to prevent as much pinchin' as possible, I've loaded up on green pipe cleaners and beads, so that anyone who wants to court a little luck can fashion themselves a wee emerald charm.

If not? I recommend this little blessing:

May your neighbors respect you,
Trouble neglect you,
The angels protect you,
And heaven accept you.

Tony

It was windy when I left school this evening. The 50 mph gusts that had our light poles swaying earlier in the day had given way to calmer, but more sustained wind. As I crossed the parking lot, my eye caught a flash of buff and auburn against the blustery blue sky to my right.

It was hawk. At first I thought perhaps it was on the hunt, the way it powered its mighty wings into the wind, and then let go to soar like a glider on the upgusts. I watched it for a while, curious about its quarry, wondering what possible meal could be scurrying across the windblown asphalt.

The longer I looked though, the clearer it became that this hawk?

Just catching air, dude!

It Takes Two

My students are pairing up for a collaborative writing project over the next couple of weeks, so today I had them "interview" prospective partners and then submit their requests to me, along with a rationale as to why this particular duo would be a good match-up. Before they go to work, each proposal has to be approved by me.

Most kids pick their friends, which is hardly surprising; I know what I do when put in a similar situation. Still, I like to know what they're thinking when they consider the endeavor ahead; it can be very enlightening, and in some cases it helps me to explain why I haven't approved a certain partnership.

Today I laughed out loud when I read the following explanation:

I know he's a slacker, but he's got a BIG imagination!

That about sums it up-- seems like that student knows the risks and advantages, too.

Approved!

State of Mind

Perhaps I spoke too soon when I proclaimed a near truce in my decades-long battle with Daylight Savings Time...

(Actually its real name is Daylight Saving Time, or even more accurately, Daylight-saving Time; for a full discussion on this topic, click here.)

Anyhoo, even if I feel like my own personal transition to the abominable time change has been relatively painless this year, over the past couple of days there has been compelling evidence otherwise.

Exhibit 1: My own sister's comment on this very blog: I believe it is the karmic balance effect. It is killing me!

Exhibit 2: No fewer than 15 students have mentioned oversleeping or being verrrry tired in school in the last two days. Some kids can barely pick their heads up off the desks until third period!

Exhibit 3: From the mouths, or rather the keyboards, of children, here's what one of my students posted today:

Now, we have to get up an hour earlier, so I'm not 100% sure about school, and the teacher's state of mind. They're now probably not getting the right amount of sleep every night, what with staying up grading papers all night. 

He's right! What was I thinking? DST-- you still suck!

Not the Dinner I Planned

"How are you doing?" a colleague asked me after school today.

"Oh, fine," I told her.

"That's good!" she said, but then added "Really?"

"Well, you know," I shrugged and gestured to my empty classroom and sighed.

She knew what I meant. "We have an expression in our family," she said and told me the story of a time when a dear friend of theirs had a business meeting near where her in-laws lived.

They generously offered to put him up, and he brought her son and his along for a couple days. As it happened, the three were delayed getting on the road, and then one thing led to another, so by the time they arrived, it was quite late and her mother-in-law was standing at the door, arms crossed. "We're finally here!" the friend exclaimed.

"Well," said her mother-in-law, "it's not the dinner I planned."

But it was the dinner she served.

Going Gentle into that Good Night

Maybe all the time off we've had lately has left me well-rested, or maybe my fighting spirit has been dulled by all the slings and arrows and outrageous indignities of education reform, or maybe it's something else, but Daylight Savings Time?

Not too bad this year.

Constellations of Crows

Sometimes I imagine I hear them even when the sky is empty.

They must have many places to roost, because the crows who gather in these gray and blue winter evenings are neither daily, nor even weekly, visitors to the tall trees right across the way. When they do assemble, though, hundreds of birds band the branches, and it's thrilling to watch the woods fill up with crows. Arriving boisterously in small mobs, each influx disrupts those who have come before, and black clouds rise and resettle raucously until night finally falls, and the congregation stills.

In Praise of March

As I've mentioned before, March brings the annual Slice of Life Challenge. A month-long blogging challenge originally sponsored by Two Writing Teachers starting in 2008, it is not only the reason I post every day, but it has also inspired the writing challenge my students are participating in right now. AND, for the fifth year in a row, the other three members of my writing group have braved the contest as well, pledging to write regularly throughout the month.

Reading what they have to say is like unwrapping a little present every day. Our lives are so busy and we are too often preoccupied with details both large and small that prevent us from genuinely connecting. Just a paragraph or two shines enough light to span the time and distance between us. 

Write on.

Oblivious

I saw a former student at the grocery store yesterday; he was working as a bagger. He greeted me heartily and asked if I was still at the same school.

"Yep," I assured him.

"You must see my mom all the time then!"

I was stumped. "Who's your mom?" I asked.

"The cafeteria lady!" he told me. "She's been there for a few  years."

I don't really get down to the cafeteria very much at all, and I sheepishly reminded him that my room was tucked away in a corner where I don't often see many people.

He smiled agreeably, but an awkward silence fell as the cashier finished ringing up my order. "Did your mom enjoy her days off because of the snow?" I asked brightly, in an attempt to end the conversation on a happy note.

"Not really," he said. "If she doesn't work, she doesn't get paid, and she needs the money."

I nodded sympathetically, wished him well, and pushed my cart full of groceries toward my car. I don't think I'll ever look at snow days quite the same way again.

A Tale of Two Haircuts

It was the worst of haircuts.

I decided to make good use of my time off yesterday and get a quick haircut. While I am a bit picky about my hair, I've found that in general it is very forgiving. Most cuts look fine, and I can usually go a couple months before it is really really time for a trim. This was one of those occasions-- the static electricity that is so common in winter had only exacerbated my fly aways and split ends. So off I went to a budget salon not too far from my home.

When I entered, they were not very busy, but they still made me sit for a few moments and wait. After a little while, one of the stylists huffed up to the counter. "What does she want?" she asked the cashier, as if I weren't three feet away. "Cut and blow dry? I guess I can do that while she's processing." She jerked her head at a woman with foil in her hair reading a magazine.

I did not have a good feeling when she called me by name and beckoned me to her chair. I told her I wanted a similar cut to what I had, and that it had been a few months since my last trim. "Do you want go for the supreme moisturizing package?" she asked. "Since your hair is processed."

"My hair isn't processed," I said with irritation.

"Oh. I didn't think you were a natural blond," she shrugged.

I should have bailed then, but 20 minutes later I left with a weird greasy haircut, practically in tears. I know I should have demanded my "smile back guarantee", but looking in the mirror, all I wanted to do was flee.

It's not like I haven't had an unsettling experience at the salon before-- I know you get what you pay for-- but as I've said, my hair is much more forgiving than I am. In the past, I might go home and wash my hair and dry it myself, and leave it at that, but this time, the travesty seemed insurmountable, so much so, that I drove to another place and presented my abominable locks to them.

It was the best of haircuts.

The hair care professional there was much more amenable-- she talked to me a good five minutes and showed me pictures on a flip chart to be sure she understood what I wanted.

What I wanted was a change. She cut my hair much shorter than it's been in quite a while, and I really like it. 

Slice of Life Challenge FTW

Today (despite having a snow day) one of my students posted the following slice:

Yesterday, I went sledding after playing Madden 25 ultimate team. We went to Thomas Jefferson to go sledding. I had to push my dad down the hill, then I had to jump on to my dad's back. That did not work so well. Then we left early, because it was too cold! Then we went to Z-Burger. Yummy bacon cheeseburger with barbecue sauce. The burger tasted like someone sliced up heaven and let me eat it. I got lots of cold allegires on my back, arms, and legs. I couldn't sleep at all last night. By the way, I'm First!

To which I replied:

First again! My favorite line:
The burger tasted like someone sliced up heaven and let me eat it.
Nice writing!

To which he replied:

Figurative language FTW

Look at that! This little writing challenge is already working its magic.

(FTW? It means For The Win!)

Test of Time

"Was this nominated for any Oscars?" Josh asked.

We were spending a snowy afternoon watching The Sixth Sense. After spending three hours driving home from our awesome Oscar-party-at-the-beach through winter storm "Titan," and some more significant time on the phone trying to figure out if Josh's bus was running (those Greyhound folks are cagey when the weather turns... a crackling fire hot enough to pop corn and a movie seemed like a great idea.

Josh chose the flick. Years ago, when he and Treat were 8 or 9, and Riley was only a few years older, we spent a rainy August afternoon on Lake Erie baking cookies and watching movies. We had The Sixth Sense with us, along with some Star Wars and Pixar classics. "How about this one?" I asked.

I guess I was thinking about what a good movie it is and, of course, the epic twist, and perhaps my mouth was ahead of my brain. I back-pedaled. "It's kind of scary, though, we could watch something else."

"I saw part of it once," Josh chimed in. "It will make your eyes bleed!"

We ended up watching it, and although no one was scarred for life, I'm not sure any of us really enjoyed it, at least not fully. Today was a different story, though.

"I think it was nominated for a bunch," I said, skimming back across all those Oscar parties, then diving as deep as I could into the one 14 years ago. "Let's look it up."

It turns out that The Sixth Sense was shut out that year, despite nods for best supporting actor and actress, directing, original screenplay, and best picture. In many of the categories, including the top honors, it came up short to American Beauty. "What were they thinking?" I sighed.

A little while later, I wiped a tear as the credits rolled, and flipped to the onscreen guide for a suitable follow up. Believe it or not? American Beauty was playing. "Let's watch that," said Josh. 

"Really?" I shot him a skeptical look.

"Yeah!" he answered. "I heard it's better than The Sixth Sense!"

AND that lasted for maybe 10 minutes.

Quandary.com

So that big storm that's on its way? Sleet, ice, snow, stay off the roads and all that? Well it has hit at what some might say is an inconvenient time for us. We're supposed to pack up and go home tomorrow, but if the forecast holds, that might be impossible.

All day we've wrestled individually and collectively with this dilemma. Of course the responsible thing would have been to head home this afternoon to ensure that we would be safely there before the weather hits, but that plan would have made us miss the very thing we came down here for-- our Oscar party!

So, we've decided to hunker down here, bay side, and deal with the conditions that greet us when we rise in the morning. If we need stay an extra day? So be it. If we can get home? We will. School has already been canceled and we have plenty of firewood and food-- let the ceremony begin!

Let Evening Come

It wasn't long after the car was unpacked and our rooms chosen that we hit the beach. This year we decided to kick our Oscar Party up a notch and rent a place on the Chesapeake Bay just a couple of hours from home. The day had been sunny, but by the time we arrived it was growing late, and the light on the beach was almost as blue as the water.

This area is known for sea glass and fossils, and as much as I wanted to stretch my legs and walk briskly enough into the wind to warm away its chill, the long stretches of pristine sand and the piles of polished pebbles, broken shells, and other treasures were too tempting for me to simply stroll past. The dogs ran up and back at least ten times while I walked slowly, head bent, eyes scouring those caches deposited by the bay. 

I know better. Such a walk is never relaxing;  I can't shake the certainty that I'm missing something, and the truth is, I am missing something, something that sharpest eyes in the world wouldn't help me find.

Wood Anniversary

I'd love to stay and celebrate my 5 full years of daily blogging, but I have 55 slices of life to read and comment on! Year six starts tomorrow-- see you then!

Worthy

Today was the day when I introduced the annual 100 Day Writing Challenge to my students. This activity originated 3 years ago when I introduced the March madness we in the know fondly call the SOLSC or Slice of Life Writing Challenge.

Back then, at the end of the month, my students didn't want to stop posting a short daily anecdote about their lives. Even more, they didn't want to lose the feedback and comments they received every day from their peers and me. That year we figured out that a hundred days from March 1 is June 8, and they adopted that as their goal. We dubbed the kids who finished "Centurions," and a new tradition was born in my class.

Over the last couple of years the challenge has evolved. It is broken down into three month-long mini-challenges with three different levels of participation: required, optional, and challenge. There are small prizes to celebrate each month's successes, and the number of Centurions has grown.

Today, as part of my intro, I shared with my students that I'm a daily writer, too, and I assured them that there's no shortage of topics if only you look at your day with writer eyes. "So you're saying that anything can be "blog-worthy"?" one of my students asked.

I smiled at his invented word. "Pretty much," I answered, "the trick is finding something you have a reaction to. Maybe you think it's interesting, funny, infuriating, confusing, whatever."

"What about this conversation?" he asked with eyebrows raised. "Is this blog-worthy?"

"Could be," I shrugged. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

As it Should Be

If a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, why isn't it called a quadrigon?" one of my students asked the other day.

I liked how he was thinking! The whole purpose of word study, in my mind at least, is for the students to understand how many a word's parts fit together to build meaning.

"It's because quad comes from Latin, and polygon comes from Greek. Poly means 'many' and gon means 'angle'."

"But I thought multi meant 'many'," he said.

"It does," I answered, "in Latin."

"But if poly means 'many', how come Polyphemos was a cyclops with only one eye?"

"Well," I said, "remember cycl means 'round or circle' and ops means 'see or vision', so the word cyclops sort of describes that single eye."

"What about Polyphemos then? What did his name mean?"

"Good question," I said, "Let's look it up."

It turns out that phemos means 'spoken or sung of'; it's where the English word famous comes from. So Polyphemos?

He was one verrrrry famous cyclops!

Overheard in the Sixth Grade

"Dude! I have BO, too!"

Before you suggest deodorant, here's the reply:

"PS3 or X-Box?"

Now, here's the translation:

Student 1: My friend, I have the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops 2!

Student 2: Which game platform do you own, Sony's PlayStation 3 or Microsoft's X-Box?

But keep in mind, they're 12-year-old boys. I wouldn't rule out deodorant just yet.

After Hours

Our friend Amari stopped by my classroom today after school. She's in third grade and her grandmother works in the building. Heidi helps her with her homework a few afternoons a week, but today, it was my turn.

I don't remember sitting down after school to do homework as being such a hardship when I was eight. I think I liked it, probably because it was easy for me, and I also wanted to do the right thing. I was not prepared for any trouble over something as simple as homework.

Today, I know the same is not true for every kid-- hell, as a teacher, I know the same is not true for many kids at all.

Amari is included in that larger group, but I have to admire the strategies she has put in place for herself. Rather than mope around the table, she says things like, "Math! If I get this right I'll do a slam dunk! If not, I'll do two more problems before I get up."

It helps that I have a backboard and hoop in my room, but that's not always necessary. Word sort? How about if we do charades of the words before we write them in the proper column, or maybe we can play hangman on the whiteboard? She knows how to make homework tolerable, if not fun, for herself, and that is a golden skill.

It's Chemistry

When a friend of ours, who is a science teacher, had a baby last year, we gave her a set of blocks. Rather than the usual alphabet, these had the elements from the periodic table. Not long ago, our friend sent us a picture of her little girl playing with our gift.

Such a genius! I wrote back. She already knows the formula for fluoro-uranium carbotassium!

Yep, her mom replied. She's ready for kindergarten!

Litter Bugs

The weather here was beautiful today-- sunny and warm-- so we wanted to get outdoors for a little walk. Unfortunately, that weather combined with that other also lovely in its own way weather we had last week-- cold and snowy-- guaranteed a lot of mud.

Still, we tied on our boots and headed for a little man-made lake not far from here. The trail all the way around is 3 and 3/4 miles, a few ups and downs, but mostly a nice walk. It was a bit muddy, but it was also not very crowded, and that was a big plus.

Finding places to enjoy nature in such a populous area as ours can be challenging. It's rare to walk anywhere and not see some sign of human disregard. One must learn to overlook the floating bottles and other trash in even the best-maintained of parks. I'm not sure why that is, and when I encounter such blight, I usually just feel pissed off at all those anonymous miscreants. But, other times I nurture the hope that its just margin of error, and that most of the trash we see is somehow accidentally left behind.

Take that ten bucks I found on the trail today-- I'm pretty sure that was not intentional.

Voices

In their own words, here is what StoryCorps is:

StoryCorps is an independent nonprofit whose mission is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.

Since 2003, StoryCorps has collected and archived more than 45,000 interviews with nearly 90,000 participants. Each conversation is recorded on a free CD to share, and is preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps is one of the largest oral history projects of its kind, and millions listen to our weekly broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition and on our Listen pages.

Regular readers might recall that I'm a big fan of StoryCorps, (in fact, I have even used some of the recordings in my classroom as part of the memoir unit) and every week I look forward to sharing a couple minutes of someone else's life. When they gave the teaser at the top of the hour this morning I sat bolt upright in bed. This morning on StoryCorps we"ll hear the story of triplets, blind from birth...

Wow! There can't be too many of them! I thought, and indeed I was correct. It was a recording of some of our former students. Nick, Leo, and Esteban are in ninth grade now, but working to meet their needs when they were in middle school, especially sixth grade, turned our worlds upside down. Those guys left a huge mark on our school.

Listening to the two minute edit of their interview, I was struck mostly by how much was left out of the story. What they said was true, but I knew personally it was incomplete, so much so that it almost seemed inaccurate to me.

To be honest? I was a little annoyed, and for a moment, I even questioned the entire premise of StoryCorps. But then I realized that such inconsistencies actually embody the spirit of the project. Every voice matters, because we all hold a piece of the truth.

It Was Early, OK?

As expected, because of the snow last week, our teacher planning day next month has been canceled. The other morning, when one of my colleagues broke the news to her homeroom students that they would have to come to school on the teacher work day, there were a few sighs and a little grumbling, but one student raised his hand, confused.

"Wait. What are we going to do all day if the teachers are working?"

Carpe Diem

Have I written before about those halcyon days that come in the middle of each school year? If so, please indulge me.

There comes a time in every school year where the horizons become invisible. The beginning of the year was soooo long ago, and the end of the year is too far ahead to even imagine. That's when everyone in the class is working in the present, because there's nowhere else to be. The routine is familiar, the expectations are clear, and the level of trust is high-- everything works and anything is possible.

Teachers! Embrace these weeks! Though they are fleeting, their promise is true, and they are the gift of your commitment to the future.

Birds Flyin' High

You know what I mean.

After five days off, there was a lovely dusting of snow overnight that gave us a delayed opening this morning. At 9 AM, well-rested and well-fed, with the sun shining down on me from impossibly blue skies, as I brushed the light, fluffy snow from our cars, even I was ready to go back to work.

Did shortened classes with a quiz scheduled ease my transition? You bet. And when I left at 6 PM this evening after grading and entering all the assignments of the day, as well as pulling together, analyzing, and reflecting a load of data for a mid-year meeting with my administrator, I was still feeling good.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Usually I don't mind living such a densely populated neighborhood. I like to think that we're keeping our carbon footprint small by living in a small, economical place. Our complex is well-designed, too, so there is often the illusion of not only privacy, but also autonomy. And although I know that it is really just an illusion, it still upsets me when the curtain is pulled back and I am forced to confront how powerless I sometimes am.

Last night was one of those occasions. At 1 AM a car alarm went off in the parking lot directly beneath our bedroom window, and it continued honking for over three hours. There was literally nothing practical we could do to make it stop.

Really.

Think about that.

We certainly did.

And then we thanked our lucky stars that it wasn't a school night, buried our heads beneath the pillows, and tried to sleep.

The Documentary Zone

The theater is warm and the lights are dim when you walk in. The chairs are really no more than glorified folding chairs with a little extra padding and a single arm rest. The screen? By multiplex standards, it is quite small, but it is big enough. Even so, you choose seats in the first row so that nothing will obstruct your view, lean back, and relax. You are about to enter another dimension.

For the next three hours, you will be immersed in the lives of other people. There is a 69-year-old man who carves huge, wondrous caves from sandstone, an 82-year-old WWII vet who is serving life in prison for murder-- you will see him die, an impossibly optimistic 109-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, unarmed Yemeni protestors in Change Square who are gunned down by snipers, and an ex-Neo-Nazi and his friend, the gay former street hustler who he almost kicked to death 25 years ago.

These are this year's Oscar-nominated documentary shorts, a collection of movies both so personal and humanizing, that you will leave the theater a slightly different, maybe even better, person than you were before. That's the sign post up ahead.

There Is That

"We should have three days of school a week and four days off!" one of my students suggested the other day, at least 24 hours before a snow storm came along and granted his wish.

Many of the kids in the class nodded in agreement. I didn't blame them; who wouldn't want more time off?

"You mean have three longer days in school?" I asked.

"No!" he shrugged. "Just three regular days."

There were more nods, but at least one of his classmates was not convinced. Frowning, he raised his hand. "What are you going to do about being dumb?" 

A Logic of Romance

I heard today that the average American spends 133 dollars on Valentines Day, a figure that gave me pause because my own expenditures were so far below that number. A moment later, though, Jacques Torres, of chocolate fame, described the last minute Valentine shoppers who patronize his store. If they spend over a hundred dollars, I know they're in trouble, he said. 

I prefer to consider the contrapositive.

Y and X

A friend posted the following question on her Facebook page:

Predictions for school tomorrow? Weigh in.

Two men and three women commented as follows:

1. Forecast for rain and then more snow... Means frozen slush and 0% chance. Happy 5 day weekend/loss of teacher workday.

2. All the secondary factors like sidewalks blocked by plowed snow, covered parking lots, messy hills on bus routes, etc. make school very unlikely if it drops below freezing this evening. Plus the schools save many thousands by not turning the heat back up until Tuesday. I don't know if a state of emergency counts against snow days.

3. No way.

4. Nope.

5. Not happening.

What happened to men of few words?

Go Big AND Go Home

More winter weather is predicted for us tonight. Although we have had no huge snow events, this winter has turned out a string of minor nuisances. As welcome as the days out of school have been, by February our thoughts inevitably turn to the price we may pay once warmer weather returns.

Here's how our district has it all figured out:

One more snow day = no make up days; we've got five built into the calendar.

Two more snow days and we lose the teacher work day scheduled for March 31.

After that it's all up in the air with some days made up and others not, but at 10 days total, the state will give us an emergency dispensation, and nothing need be done to be in compliance.

Yes, please.

Not Black and White

At our school the morning announcements are broadcast via close-circuit TV. I often say, only semi-ironically, that it's my favorite show, because I really like seeing students both past and present on TV. Plus, I'm kind of a slave to the small screen.

In fact, I even get a little thrill when I meet one of the student broadcasters for the first time. "Oh yes," I'll say, only somewhat bashfully, "I've seen you on the morning announcements. Great work!"

One of the gimmicks of the show is to wish everyone a some-kind-of day-of-the-week. In the early days, it was a "wacky Wednesday" or a "fun Friday," but of course the stakes have been raised over the years. Thus it was that they wished us all a "Shirley Temple Tuesday" this morning.

"Awwwww," I said to my homeroom, "that's sad. She died yesterday."

"What?!" one of the students replied in shock. "What happened?"

"Well," I answered, "she was 85, you know." I shrugged.

"85? Then how is Betty White even still alive?" he demanded.

Pronoun Antecedent

After seeing Her yesterday, I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised when the self-serve kiosk at the post office today told me, "I'm sorry, but I can't print small labels right now. Will a larger version be okay?"

It was the pronoun 'I' that threw me off. Oh, I knew what it meant, but I still thought it was weird. 'I' who?

Now, maybe if the machine had actually spoken to me, perhaps in Scarlett Johansson's voice...

Two Stars Up

A movie review in one sentence:

We saw Her today, and it was definitely the best movie I've seen in a while; not only was it an interesting exploration of intelligence, humanity, love, and even the Singularity, but I actually liked the protagonist-- Theodore Twombley was a sweet guy-- and it was really refreshing to see a non-dystopian depiction of the future, a future where they must have invented privacy glass for high rise all-windows apartments, and where the clothes look super-comfortable.