Science Fair Madness

Tomorrow is the all-school science fair and since every student is expected to participate, 150 members of the community have volunteered to come in and help our staff judge over 600 science fair projects in just under 2 hours. All the teachers on our team have been working hard to support the science teachers and make sure that every student has a board and is prepared to explain the experiment and answer the questions of three judges.

You can imagine how hectic it's been in every room and the hallways as students spread their 4 x 4 presentation boards on every available surface to cut and glue all the components in their proper places. Scraps of paper, scissors, tape, and glue sticks are everywhere, and kids commute back and forth down the long hallway that runs the length of our school to the color printer.

This afternoon, it was all hands on deck for that final push. The science teacher was in my room helping one student with his data table, and I was helping another make a bar graph from his data, when a third boy burst into the room. "I've lost my purpose!" he cried in panic. We shrugged and shook our heads without much sympathy. "But, but," he stammered, "I don't have a purpose!

"Well," the science teacher told him, "print another one." Problem solved.

Earworms

Lately when I wake up in the middle of the night and find it difficult to get back to sleep, I realize that I have a song stuck in my head, too. It's not always the same one, but it is always nearly impossible to get rid of, and it definitely contributes to my sleeplessness. In researching this phenomena, I've found that it is called an earworm. No one knows why it happens, and there is no definitive cure. The number one piece of advice offered is to tolerate those haunting melodies until they fade off on their own. Um. No.

Years ago I had a friend who swore that singing Sister Christian by Night Ranger would knock any song out of your head, but even motorin' through that little ditty hasn't helped. Focused breathing, meditation, prayer, none of them help to disrupt the phonological loop bludgeoning my brain. Today I read that music on a non-western scale, such as Indonesian Gamelan or even Gregorian chanting, might work, and I intend to put some on my iPod right now and leave it next to my bed tonight.

Can't hurt.

Check Your Local Listings

I like football.

Not to watch, but because it empties the roads and stores and movie theaters for a few hours every Sunday, allowing me to delude myself that this area really isn't way overcrowded. I live the same fantasy during the summer when I'm off, too.

For that reason alone, I'm a little sad that the season is almost over, even though I don't care at all about the sport. I was, however,  really looking forward to getting a lot done with two high profile games scheduled for today. Unfortunately, I didn't check the game times before I went about my business, and I paid a high price for that oversight. The gym and every store was packed, packed! with people trying to fit their own errands in before the 3 PM kickoff of the first playoff game. In fact it was even more crowded than usual because of the big games.

I hate football.

Working Hard for a Restful Saturday

It's a lot of work to enter the 21st century. We decided to get a large-ish flat screen TV for Christmas, and the 46-incher was delivered last Monday setting off a cascading chain of events. It would not fit in the TV cabinet we have, and so we needed something else, BUT that was a nice piece of furniture, albeit obsolete now. We decided to move upstairs to our landing to provide a little extra storage in our space-challenged condo. It's much too heavy for us to carry alone, and the TV in there? A monster. We asked our handy man if he would mind doing the heavy lifting, and he agreed to come over this morning. The next question was to do with a perfectly good television that no one really wants. Best Buy would dispose of it for a hundred bucks; various other enterprises would recycle it for anywhere between 25 and 50 dollars; Goodwill would take it for free. We asked the handy man to drop it at Goodwill on his way home. Our DVR boxes are dinosaurs at the age of six, as is our cable box. The cable guy is coming on Monday to install some cards into the new HD DVR I ordered. It's optimal to have the DVR on our home network, but that requires a new wireless adapter, which I ordered, too, but then there was the requisite set-up wizard, this before we could activate the DVR. Then there's the hardwired set up: DVR, DVD player, cable box, and Wii, a total of 12 cables and cords. Ay yi yi-- like so many things, there's just so much to do before relaxing.

Six-Word Memoirs

This year I'm again using a studio approach to memoir, giving my students lots of opportunities to collect material through writing exercises and other short assignments. For example, yesterday we had a guest poet who did "I Remember" list poems with the kids, and today they composed six six-word memoirs each and posted them to our class's online discussion board. Here are some of my favorites:

The teacher never saw it coming.
That baseball bat was my favorite.
Never let Mom cut your hair.
Who stays frozen in freeze tag?
Bad things happen on slippery floors.
Geese hate sharing with each other.
Your parents are not good dancers.
Stay away from my pet monkey.
The foam cubes smelled like feet.
Bike + speed bump = crash.
Long car rides are worth it.
Jellyfish are like sneaky little spies.
My first yellow card was stupid.
The medal gleamed in the sun.
The diving board was my nemesis.
I will avenge my squished rabbit!
My name means victory in Arabic.
Ignore the question, "How many fingers?"
We got away from the police.

The final product will be a Tom Romano inspired multi-genre piece that incorporates the best of what each student has. They will take vignettes, maps, comics, poetry, and even a six-worder or two, and weave them into and around a more traditional narrative memoir. Constructing a multigenre piece requires the higher order thinking skills of analysis and synthesis, and also provides kids ways to organize and express their ideas using multiple intelligences.

That's the concept, anyway. This part is new to me, so I'll be interested to see how it all turns out.

So, here is my own half-dozen six-word memoirs:

Those tadpoles never had a chance.
Every beach house needs a kite.
Round one goes to the dog.
Watch out! Bigwheels don't have brakes.
Broken thermometers taste like sharp mercury.
He can't cross the street alone.

Good Call

A student walked up to me today and said, "You're going to give me a lolly pop." I raised my eyebrows, and she continued, "I have a joke I know will make you laugh."

"Let's hear it," I said.

Three guys were driving through the desert when their car broke down. They decided to walk for help. The first guy said he would carry the water in case they got thirsty. The second guy volunteered to carry the food in case they got hungry. The third guy started unbolting the door from the side of the car. "What's that for?" one of the other guys asked. 

"In case we get hot, we can roll down the window," he answered.

Yep. She was right.

Another Note to Self

I took the day off to run some errands and take care of some routine medical appointments. As it happened, nothing took as long as I thought it might, and so I arrived early for everything. What a revelation! I'm usually a one-or-two-minutes-late kind of a gal, but I found that when you're early it's a lot less stressful. So what if you can't find a parking space right away? You have time to spare. Who cares if the elevator is slow? No worries. I relaxed guilt-free in every waiting room until my name was called either right on time or even a little early.

I think part of my tardiness trouble may be the start time for school. To get everything I need done in the morning and be on time for work, I have to get up by 5:30. Even though I've been doing that for fifteen years, it still seems way too early for me, and I cling to those few minutes of extra sleep, so when I get up I'm already behind. Then, too, I fall into the trap of trying to cram too much into a day, so that I'm always rushing to finish this so I can run do that.

How can I make every day more like today?

PS-- I named this post before I checked to see if I had used the title Note to Self before, and it turns out that I had, almost exactly a year ago, so I retitled this one. I'm glad I checked, because that other post was good advice, too.