By the Seat of My Pants

Today our team was supposed to go on a field trip to a corn maze, but our plans were dashed at the eleventh hour when the farmers called and said the place was flooded. They had been up since 1 AM digging trenches to drain the labyrinth in time for 130 sixth graders to attempt to navigate, but at 8:45 Am, they knew it was, literally, a wash and called the school. The young teacher who had coordinated the trip appeared at my door white-faced. I excused myself from the group of kids industriously making corn husk dolls in my room and stepped into the hallway to receive the bad news. What could we do? It was back to a normal schedule for the disappointed students and some serious improvisation for their teachers.

I chose Jeopardy as my fall-back activity, and it went pretty well. Here are the categories and questions if you want to play along at home:

Parts of Speech
100 a person, place, or thing
200 an action
300 a word that describes a noun
400 a word that modifies a verb or and adjective
500 a word that tells the relationship between nouns-- like over, under, between, in, or on.

Series and Authors:
100 Harry Potter
200 Percy Jackson
300 Diary of a Wimpy Kid
400 The Hunger Games
500 Twilight

TJ Teams:
100 the other sixth grade team
200 the 7th grade team named for a sea mammal
300 this team is named for a flightless bird
400 the only team named for a reptile
500 this team shares a name with our national bird

Pixar Movies:
100 Woody and Buzz
200 Marlin and Dory
300 Dash and Violet
400 Sully and Mike
500 Remy and Linguine

Writers Toolbox:
100 details that tell how something looks, tastes, smells, sounds, and/or feels
200 a comparison between two unlike things using the words "like" or "as"
300 a comparison between two unlike things that does not use the words "like" or "as"
400 a figure of speech which gives human qualities to inanimate, or non-living things
500 Nouns that refer to specific objects, not abstract or general things

State Capitals:
100 Richmond
200 Annapolis
300 Austin
400 Sacramento
500 Juneau

It was lots of fun, and I was surprised when in each class, some students predicted the answer and wrote it down before I asked the question, based on their knowledge of the category, and, I can only assume, their knowledge of me. Often, they were correct.

Sic Semper Tyrranis

Sickening footage today of the death of a horrible man-- Libya is at last free of its ruthless dictator of 43 years. There is evil in the world, yes there is, but I have to say that I believe that humans compound violence when they address it in turn. I will never be in the same league with Gandhi or Dr. King, but I am on the same page.

Con-cussed

I met with a parent today about a head injury her son sustained playing soccer a couple of weekends ago. Athletes with concussions have been prevalent in the news lately, but this is the first case I've had personal experience with. Coincidentally, we also saw a brief informational video on the same topic today at our monthly staff meeting.

Concussions can impact behavior, critical thinking, and learning in a variety of ways. Depending on their severity, and there is no way to definitively tell just how severe they are, their symptoms can last for months or even years. Like so many other invisible conditions, it's hard to know how best to treat someone with such a diagnosis-- the danger is in believing they could do better if only they would.

Tattle Tale

Any teacher will tell you so: the adults in the building are usually more difficult than the students. Case in point? Each teacher on the team is supposed to sign up to supervise eleven after-school study halls. I have written before about our brilliantly fair method, and yet... the lynchpin to the entire scheme has proven to be unstable. One certain person who, it must be said, doesn't want to do her share, is holding up the list. It is halfway finished and she has had it for six weeks. Six weeks!

At first, I tried to reassure the restless members of our group that it didn't really matter; we were scheduled until November. "Why do we care?" I asked them.

"I'm registering for graduate classes," one answered.

"I need to set up doctor appointments," said another.

"I have to arrange child care," explained a third.

All of us have busy lives and full schedules, and there comes a point when

we. need. to. know.

I empathize with every one! This person in question has professional issues with the arrangement, personal issues with the timing, other school commitments, she is young, what have you, but I have emailed, spoken to her personally, sent emissaries, and emailed some more without result.

Yep. It's time to tell on her.

Not So Sunny Day

I haven't mentioned Tolerance Club in a while-- October is National Bullying Awareness Month, and so that fits in with our mission quite well. Today we showed the kids a Sesame Street clip where Big Bird gets an invitation to join the "Good Bird Club" and is all excited until the mean pigeon, blue jay and robin reject him, at first because his feet are too big.

We had a little technical difficulty streaming the video on our WiFi network, and so to fill the time while it loaded, I asked the kids to guess what might happen. "He's going to try and change his feet," one confidently predicted.

"And that won't be enough for those birds," another added. "They're going to make him keep on changing."

I was super-impressed by their accuracy. "Have you guys seen this before?" I asked.

"No!" they answered (and they totally would have said "duh," if they didn't just know it was rude). "That's what always happens with bullies."

Window Seat

I practically grew up on a plane-- my dad worked for TWA and my parents took full advantage of the travel benefits. When we were kids, my brother, sister, and I used to fight for the window seat, but now I'm lucky that Heidi just lets me have it, partially because she likes me, and partially because she hates to fly, and the window freaks her out a little. On the rare occasions that I travel alone, I always select the window seat, too; I don't care about the delay in disembarking; I'm all about the view.

My favorite part of the flight is the takeoff-- I love how it feels as the plane gathers speed down the runway, the g-force pushing you back in your seat, then that gentle tip and a little rocking and all of a sudden you're airborne. After that, my nose is pretty much pressed against the window, as long as there's something to see. My brother and I recently had a disagreement about how easy it is or isn't to tell where you are on a cross-country flight. He flies a lot more than I do, but it's hard for me to let go of the illusion that I am a human atlas.

Today I flew home from Minnesota, where my mom lives. There were two legs to my journey; I changed planes in Chicago. From the air, the city of Chicago reminds me of the Emerald City: so often it rises majestically from the prairie mist with the sunlight gleaming off of Lake Michigan behind it. Then, as our plane climbed to its cruising altitude, I happened to be listening to a song with some orchestral arrangement and the strings swelled at the very same moment we broke through the clouds and into the clear blue sky. I gasped at the dizzying grandeur of the moment and wondered why on earth anyone would ever choose an aisle seat.

Hopeless

A couple of summers ago we came out here to Minnesota to visit my mom and to take a trip "up north" to the source of the Mississippi River and the Boundary Waters. While we there, we visited a bear preserve in Ely, and I was captivated by the story of Lily, the wild bear that the center's researchers were tracking by radio collar. They had been able to place video cameras in her den, as well, and so they had a pretty thorough biography of this young black bear. They even had footage of her giving birth to two cubs, the subsequent death of one a couple of months later from illness, and the growth of her remaining cub, which they named Hope.

They actually have a fan page on Facebook, which I joined, but the supporters of Lily and Hope are so enthusiastic that I eventually turned notifications off for the group. Even so, I would check in every few months, and so I knew that the two had become separated when Hope was barely one, that they were reunited a while later, that in the spring Lily bore another cub, named Faith by researchers, and that the three were living together as a not uncommon bear family unit.

On the radio this morning I heard a piece about bear hunting. Today is the last day of the season up here and bear-bagging is down this year about 25% to 2,000. Hunters only killed one radio-collared bear, too, compared to eight last year. (It is not illegal, but highly discouraged to shoot collared bears in Minnesota.) But there was another research bear casualty. The yearling, Hope, slipped her radio collar and was killed by a hunter about a month ago.