Slow News Day

For the second time this summer, I had a showdown with a toaster, and this time, the toaster beat me. My problem has to do with thin slices of toast slipping down under the slot, but not far enough to come out with the crumb tray. What is one supposed to do in such a situation? Toaster tongs are ineffective in removing the errant slice, as is a fork or a knife. Trying to pull it back up is like hitting reverse once you're in the rental car return lot-- damage will occur, and you'll never make it out anyway.

The first time, I ended up literally shredding the piece of toast with a steak knife until the pieces were finally small enough to shake out the top or to slide out the bottom. They and several years worth of crumbs from the toaster at the beach rental house scattered all over the kitchen one morning during our vacation. That was a treat to clean up. This morning, it was my own toaster that turned on me: a little piece of toasted rosemary bread twisted just wrong when it popped up and then slid irretrievably into the nether regions of the toaster, where it remains despite my best efforts, a victim of poor design. I demand a rematch.

How 'bout it toaster? Best two out of three?

No Adult Left Behind

I had a meeting at school today. Two and a half weeks out from our report day, this was just me, the other sixth grade team leader, and our director of guidance. At 11 AM, there were probably 4 other people working full time in all the building, and that summer ghost town vibe was still going strong. We decided to sit at a table in the library, and it took a few minutes to actually locate a few chairs to pull up to one of the tables. With only half of the lights turned on and a dozen or more overhead projectors staring at us from in between the stacks like so many cyclops, it still felt good to look decisively forward to next year. Kids names, test scores, and placements felt real and immediate. Information about the master schedule, pre-service week and colleagues? All very relevant.

Our conversation wandered a bit, as summer talks have the luxury of doing, and we touched a little on the challenges of building a cohesive staff with a common vision from 85 disparate individuals and the subsequent impact such attempts have on overall morale. It has long been my opinion that, as educators, we must expect no more and no less of the adults we try to reach than we do of our own students. It is hypocrisy to criticize teachers for giving up on hard-to-engage students, when we dismiss them as burnouts in the next breath. "High expectations for all" is a credo that might best be extended to colleagues as well as kids, and don't even get me started on parents.

Crisis Identified

I finally finished my piece of the adolescent development project. Yay. After all is said and done, I'm more pleased than displeased with my work, but that could just be a loss of perspective. One unexpected outcome of this project is that it is forcing our central office to at least consider sexual minority students. As I compiled my research on identity formation, it was my job to look at the impact that ethnicity, race and gender had on identity, but sexuality was an issue as well.

I sensed a little surprise and a little pushback when I got the first feedback on the draft of my powerpoint. In the last three years, our school system has committed to "courageous conversations" about "cultural competency," primarily in order to address the achievement gap. Sexual minorty is usually a neglected component of these conversations.

I teach in a middle school, and many people feel that kids who are only 11-14 years old are too young to be concerned about, much less engaged in any conversations about, sexuality. But the truth is, at that age, most kids who are gay, know it, and refusing to talk about it only reinforces their feeling of isolation. Unlike other minorities, gay kids don't usually come from gay families, and often they are afraid that not only will their families not understand and/or support them, but may even reject them because they're gay. Their peers use "gay" as a derogatory term, and in a time when fitting in is vital, their feelings about being gay are nothing they want to share with their friends. In many cases, gay middle school kids have no support at all during this crucial developmental period.

I think our school system should acknowledge that and do something about it.

Cat Walk

There is a guy in my neighborhood who walks his cat. I'm not sure why this is so odd to me, but it is. The cat doesn't have a leash or anything; he just skulks along behind her like the secret service or something as she sniffs her way through the parking lot. Honestly? It could be the Hawaiian shirt and flip flops that he wears well into December, but more likely it is the suspicious look he gives me when I step out my own front door with my... gasp... dog! (Hey-- she's gotta go out sometimes. I'm sorry-- I didn't expect you and your cat to be hanging out on my stoop.) That look is nothing compared to the alarm and downright horror on his face should I drive my car through the complex at cat-walkin time. Buddy! Relax-- I see your cat.

Listen, I'm all for keeping your pets safe. I would never allow my dog to roam about unleashed, and after witnessing a beloved cat of mine struck by a car, I will never have an outdoor cat again. I believe that the needs of a cat can be met indoors with love and proper attention. It's too dangerous for them outside-- no matter the setting. One of my best friend's cats was killed by coyotes on their property in Maine. Maybe that's why the catwalker bugs me so much. Dude-- you can't keep her safe outside, and I don't want to share your anxiety.

Is That You?

We went over to the National Portrait Gallery today. I'm beginning to love these hot August days in D.C.-- nobody's around, so not only did we get a parking spot right in front, but we had the whole third floor to ourselves, just us and the 20th Century Americans. I've decided that I like a good bust. (Minds out of the gutter, people-- I mean a marble or bronze head.) In fact, if anyone should ever choose to immortalize my visage for any reason, I want it to be a bust. (That sounds kind of amusing, too. Ha ha. Let's just get it all out... Bust, bust! bust, bust. Ready to continue? OK.) Here's why: my features will be, by definition, chiseled, and my hair? Why, my hair will look great! Marble and bronze hair always looks fabulous. For that hair, I could put up with those creepy blank eyes. So make it a bust, friends, unless I live to be over 80, and then I'd like a nude portrait like Alice Neel's. (I especially love the toes on her right foot.)

Ha! I Knew It.

Back to the Adolescent Development thing. I had hoped that the title of this post would be Identity Crisis Resolved, and it almost is, but not quite. So, instead, I'll share just a tiny fraction of the research that I've been trying to synthesize:

The following is an excerpt from a report entitled Child and Adolescent Development Research and Teacher Education: Evidence-based Pedagogy, Policy, and Practice which was published in 2005 by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES and National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE):

The field of child and adolescent development lacks mechanisms for disseminating research findings and information to sources readily available to teachers, administrators, and other school personnel. Scholarly articles are often difficult for non-scientists to follow and require translation into language that pre-service teachers find meaningful, and that practicing teachers and administrators can put into action. Policy makers, parents, and other lay stakeholders need objective and informative overviews of current research in child and adolescent development and appropriate application in classrooms with clear rationales for those applications.

Yeah, NFK. Give me a call when you get around to providing that.

Details, Details

I reconnected with a childhood friend on facebook last night. She and her husband still live in the house next door to the one we lived in when I was in middle school. We chatted a bit online, posting back and forth on each other's walls and filling in the largest of the gaps of the last thirty-three years. Somewhere in the conversation, it occurred to me that today was her younger brother's birthday, so I asked her about it, and she confirmed my memory.

I was telling my mom about it this morning, and she wondered whether our former neighbor had been surprised about such a remarkable recollection. "She didn't seem to be," I reported and then laughed. "Do you know how I remember that?" I asked my mom. "Because the day that Nixon resigned was his eighth birthday. That made a big impression on me at age twelve."

"Didn't we go to Great Adventure that day?" my mom responded.

"Yep, and out to dinner for Chinese food," I added. "Remember? Granddaddy was there, but he didn't go with us. He paid for everything, though. And then the president resigned."

So, Happy Birthday, Bobby.