Greed

What is it about money? We have out of town visitors, and so we got tickets for the Bureau of Engraving tour. As our assigned-time group of thirty or so walked through the facility where half of our nation's paper currency is printed, the avarice was palpable. In fact, I wish I had ten bucks for every time someone said Do they give free samples? because then? I'd be rich!

Reciprocity

I had such vivid dreams last night that I woke a little disoriented. They were the kind that make you wonder, sort of like Karen Blixen, if they could possibly be one-sided.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa-- I thought,-- of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel on the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Blockbuster

Nearly seven months ago I wrote about how the trailer for Toy Story 3 brought me to tears. Today the preview delivered it on its promise to make me cry: I sat in the same seat in the same theater and wept through the whole dang movie-- boo hooed at how Andy is no longer an imaginative little boy, at the toys' moving response to mortal danger, at a final sacrifice for the good of those you love-- aye yi yi, the movie was devastating!

Was my weepy response genuine emotion? Could it have been stress or hormones? Take your pick, but in any regard, I vigorously scrubbed the tear stains from my cheeks as the lights came up. Maybe it was just the Gipsy Kings' rousing rendition of Yo Soy Tu Amigo Fiel.

Maybe not.

Effulgence

Summer vacation has come, as it does every year. Never one to relish transitions, my initial reaction is that of a teacher without a class: What meaning is there in that? I wonder.

Oh, I'll adjust. Soon, I'll be a gardener with a garden, a hiker on a trail, a reader with a book. Everything will find its equilibrium, and everything will shine.

Unexpected

Yesterday I told my students that we would spend most of our last day in homeroom groups. "Will we have cake?" my homeroom wanted to know, but I told them that we had no June birthdays. They were disappointed until someone said, "Hey, isn't your birthday next week?" I nodded. "Will you bring a cake for yourself?" he asked hopefully. I frowned and said no, but they were welcome to bring anything they liked to celebrate. In the general lack of enthusiasm that followed, we dropped the subject and moved on to when they would get their yearbooks.

My birthday was the last thing on my mind this morning in the mayhem of a last day with a few key staff absences. Running around trying to get several things settled at once, my patience was wearing thin when the same student I wrote about in my last two posts came running in out of breath and drenched in sweat. Chronically tardy, here he was-- late for the last day of school. I sighed with a little exasperation as he burst through the door. "Did I make it?" he gasped.

"You're fine," I told him, realizing that another unexcused tardy more or less was inconsequential. "C'mon in."

"I missed my bus!" he huffed. I made a sympathetic face.  He held out a plastic bag. "I missed my bus because I ran to the grocery store to get this, and when I got back to the stop the bus was gone, so I had to run all the way to school with my skateboard. Here!" he offered me the bag. There was a smashed up apple pie inside. "It's for your birthday."

Wow. I did not see that one coming.

Turn About

Today was the last day of regular instruction and my classes returned to those logic puzzles that I wrote about yesterday. What a difference a couple of days can make. The same boy who could not get over Keith and his doll became very engaged with the puzzles when I mentioned that his older brother had been good at solving them. He worked diligently on a complex matrix only to be frustrated by finding an error when he got to the very end. He asked me for another copy as the bell rang for lunch. I told him that he didn't have to finish-- it was really just for fun-- but he was determined, so I offered to go through it with him and he accepted. We sat side by side solving a scenario about five hikers, trying to determine the color of their t-shirts, their shorts, and what snack they had in their pack. It only took a few minutes for him to figure it all out, and he didn't even mention the fact that Frank was wearing pink shorts.

Diversion

Since most of the students have wrapped up their last writing pieces, we did a little logic puzzle in class the other day. This was a Perplexor, a matrix puzzle that starts with a brief scenario and then lists all of the possibilities in each category. To solve it, you use clues to both eliminate the incorrect and identify the correct answers.I thought it would be a fun way to spend a little time.

The puzzle that I chose started with the following story: Kathy, Keith, Ken, Kyle and Kirk all had a dumb habit of bringing toys to school so they had something to do while they were wasting time in class instead of paying attention. They brought cards, marbles, a toy car, a doll, and a yo-yo. They were all failing a different subject-- either math, reading, science, history, or English. Then you are supposed to use the clues to match the children with their toys and the subject that each was failing.

Working through the puzzle, it becomes apparent early on that Keith has a doll. I was shocked by the number of kids who took issue with that as we were solving it together in each of my classes. In the first group, one girl actually crossed doll off of all of the boys' lists simply on the strength of her belief that they shouldn't and wouldn't have one. In the next group, a student said that she didn't have a problem with Keith and his doll, because her grandfather was "like that" too. When pressed, she rephrased to tell the class that her grandfather was gay; even so, she could not accept that any heterosexual boy might have a doll.

When it came up in my third period class, one particular boy snickered loudly and giggled. "That's just wrong," he laughed.

"Why?" I asked him. "Why do you care if Keith wants to have a doll? What difference does it make to you?"

"I wasn't raised that way," he said. His eyes narrowed. "I can have my own opinion, right?"

"Right," I said, "but why are you judging someone based on what they like? Why can't he have a doll without having to worry about it?"

"He shouldn't worry about what I think," he answered.

"True," I conceded, "but would you treat him differently because of the doll?" I asked. "Would you make fun of him?"

"Maybe," he shrugged.

"That's bigotry," I told him. "You do have the right to be a bigot, but do you want to be one?"

He thought about it long and hard. "I still think it's wrong for a boy to play with a doll," he said. The bell rang, and he went off to his next class.

So much for a fun little puzzle the last week of school.