I Detect a Trend...

I came home from our annual sixth grade open house all ready to write. It was a really positive night-- good energy and great kids had me looking forward to next Tuesday, the first day of school. Beyond that, though, I knew just what I wanted to write about: how the preservice week had been fraught with problems and all the attendant stress and negativity, but how all of that fell away, almost like magic, when the kids arrived. Yeah. I was going to write the heck out of that, but the more I thought on it, there was something about it that seemed almost too true, so I searched the archives and I found what I wrote just fifty weeks ago.

Eerily similar, right?

So that had me thinking. It's such a cliche to say that the stuff that happens outside the classroom is what unnecessarily complicates teaching, but anecdotally? Lookie here. Just because it's a cliche, doesn't mean it's not a valid concern. Perhaps the opposite is even true.

Confirmation

Here's a conversation Heidi had recently with our two-year-old neighbor, Chase:

Chase: I missed you, Heidi!

Heidi: "I missed you, too!"

Chase: "Did you say, I miss Chase?"

Heidi: "Why, yes, yes, I did."

Chase nods, satisfied.

Rules of the Game

I suppose it's a necessary evil, but signing up for things is so often a huge headache; somebody always feels shafted. It is considered the epitome of fairness and free choice, especially in the education world, but no matter the rules of play, people are dissatisfied with the days they have to do hall duty, the hours they get in the computer lab, the month they have to provide snacks, whatever.

First come first serve? Whoever got there first had inside information and whoever was last had an unavoidable conflict. Limit the days? So and so got his friend to sign up for him and that one over there booked the time and never showed! November? That's Thanksgiving! January? It'll probably snow.

What can you do?

Nine or ten years ago, my sister-in-law gave me the European Board Game of the Year (I know, right?) for my birthday. The complexity and critical thinking that Settlers of Catan requires made it perfect to play with my nephews. Before the game starts, players roll a die to see what order to place their two villages on the board. Here, both strategy and luck are involved, because whoever goes first only gets to put one village down, and they will go last in the next round.

Every school year at this time, the teachers on my team have to sign up for eleven hours of after school Homework Club, and taking a page from those hearty settlers of Catan, we do just as they must: half up front and the other half in reverse order. Getting the days you want requires strategy and luck, but nobody complains.

What Else Is There?

Over the summer, our school system implemented several technology upgrades. Such an ambitious project rarely goes online without a few hiccups, and this one was no exception. Last week at our team leaders' meeting we received the following update: The new system is up and running, except for problems with saving, printing, the electronic grade book, and other applications.

Today when the whole staff arrived for our first pre-service day of the week, the message was not much amended, except to add that there is mandatory technology training tomorrow.

Lookin' forward to it.

Until Next Year

Blustery skies gave way early this afternoon to what is easily the prettiest day of the summer, all sunshiny, breezy and blue, and so the question became what to do with this, the final day of our summer vacation. In the end, summer ended as it has passed: a walk with the dog, a bit of reading and writing, a trip to the gym and the grocery, and time spent at the pool with friends. Soon there will be a glass of wine, a nice dinner, maybe a movie on TV, and then it will be time to set the alarm for the first time since June.

Storm's A-Comin

My mom called yesterday to see if we were all set for the hurricane. "Kind of," I said, "in the sense that we're not really doing anything to get ready."

"Not even filling the tub with water?" she asked.

"Nope," I answered. "I don't really see the point. Anyway, the worst that might happen is that we could lose power, and I've already had to dump the fridge twice this year, so I feel ready for that."

My mom got into the spirit right away. "At least your garden will get a lot of water," she said.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I just don't have a bad feeling about Irene. The last hurricane that had any impact on our area was in late September, 2003. Many people in the county lost power for a week or so, but we didn't. We got a day off from school and took the opportunity to drive to Pennsylvania and pick up our puppy. We named her Isabel, after the storm, and it all worked out pretty well, as anyone who's ever seen Heidi and Isabel together can confirm.

In fact, I wouldn't entirely rule out a puppy Irene.

G-L-O-R-I-A... Gloria!

Twenty six years ago I was in Virginia Beach and bracing for Hurricane Gloria. I was living about three blocks from the ocean with my dad, who was terminally ill, my sister, who was in college, and our two geriatric cats. It fell to me to carry out the recommended preparations for what they were calling the storm of a generation. I bought tape for the windows, batteries for the flashlights and radio, and water to drink. I filled the tub, secured the porch furniture, and when they recommended evacuating our neighborhood, I panicked a little, mostly about the cats.

"What should we do?" I asked my dad.

"You can do what you want," he said, drawing an X on his hurricane tracking grid (they put one in the Sunday supplements every week from June until November), "but I'm not going anywhere."

And so we stayed to literally weather the storm. It was supposed to hit sometime around midnight, but after all the running around I had done, I passed out about 10, after moving my bed away from the windows, of course. I remember waking up once and squinting out the window. The night seemed darker than usual, but when it came into focus, I saw trees bent over almost double and rain pelting horizontally. It looked like a typhoon on Gilligan's Island and I lay back down and went to sleep.

The next morning my dad and my sister told me about the storm-- how they had stayed up and the power had gone out and they had retreated to an inner hallway when it was at its worst. In the end there was no damage and as they went off to bed exhausted by the ordeal, I headed down to the freshly scrubbed beach to see what the storm had left.