The Easy Button

Last week we had a conference with a student and his parents and discovered that this particular eleven-year-old does not have an easy time accepting responsibility for his missteps either at home or at school. We talked at length about how it is okay to make mistakes and that most people actually learn from their errors if they can admit them. He nodded along with us, and hope springs eternal.

Today, he did not follow the directions I gave at the beginning of class and was unprepared when I came around to check. "How did that happen?" I asked.

What he was prepared with was a litany of excuses. "I was late," he started. "I missed that part."

"No you didn't," said the helpful student next to him.

"Oh," he said, "Well, I was sharpening my pencil."

"No you weren't," said the other kid. "You don't even have a pencil."

"I was writing down my homework?"

"Nope."

At last I intervened. "We do the same thing every Monday," I started.

He looked directly at me; the eye contact was stunning. He sighed.

"My bad," he said.

"That's okay," I told him. "You'll do better next week."

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

I'm FaceBook friends with a former student of mine who is now in college. In general I can't keep up with the number of links and photos she shares, but I did get a laugh from one of her status posts today and the subsequent comments from her other collegiate friends:

two hours before my flight back to school, my younger brother and I get into an argument over community building. we aren't talking currently. I don't know if we will be by 2:30pm. I guess there's always the next holiday break.

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My brother and I got into an argument about Penn State and the male complex. Then we argued about rape and how he thinks women more often than not put themselves in a position to be raped. We're also not talking; see my status "it amazes me how unintelligent people are"

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i got in a heated argument with my sister and mom when i tried to explain how miss piggy and amy adams in the new muppets movie were weak female characters because their stories revolved entirely around the leading male characters, they totally didn't get it

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I got into an argument with some friends online about whether using a negative cultural stereotype about a minority group for a joke on a billboard is acceptable; didn't make any headway either.

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I'm not allowed to talk politics in my family. To them "liberal arts" = talking about feelings instead of talking about things that matter in society.

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my brother and I got into an argument about the Occupy protests. he currently thinks I'm a communist hippie and won't do anything good with my life.

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My grandpa made a joking comment about transsexual housing as I sat there awkwardly. I still don't think that whole side of my family knows I'm liberal. :P

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my brother made the statement "i think child abuse is over talked about" while we were at a mexican restaurant. yelling ensued over mole.

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This weekend my grandpa started talking about what is really wrong with society. i got up from the table and went to play with the cat.

I hope those kids learn to agree to disagree, because I know from experience that such lively debates don't just go away, even in the most like-minded of families. My brother and I also kicked off the holiday with a friendly disagreement, and ours was actually about the value of a college education-- is it an over-priced credential or accurate indicator of employable worth?

If you know that I am an educator, you might be surprised about which side I took in our discussion, but for the record, after reading these comments, I may just have to change my position.

Just a Minute

Punctuality and I have a long and complex relationship. Kind of like Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland, temperamentally I'd like to shrug at fussy promptness, but it's impossible to ignore that pervasive social cuckoo clock of timeliness.

I don't have the type of job where flex time is an option-- the teacher pretty much has to be there when school starts-- but it's always a little embarrassing to slip into a meeting after they've started, and I try to avoid being late, even by a minute or two, because that means that all I needed was a minute or two somewhere else in my day, and somehow that seems even lamer. Thirty seconds less on the snooze button, a minute off in the shower, and a slightly quicker pace on the dog walk and I would have been right on time.

The same rule unfortunately applies to many other things-- five minutes earlier to the theater tonight and we would have enjoyed Descendants from somewhere other than the front row.

M

A picture is worth a thousand words. A thousand pennies is ten bucks. A thousand seconds is a little less than fifteen minutes, and a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Today marks a thousand days of Walking the Dog. When I mentioned the milestone to my sixteen year old nephew, he couldn't decide if that was a long time or not, but I'm pretty sure that it's time to stop counting and just keep writing already.

Around the Block

We all have indelible memories, moments from our life that are completely unforgettable although many times you would be hard pressed to say why. Among mine are eating McDonald's french fries in the dark back seat of our car when I was four, the fist-shaped holes in the walls of the dilapidated Victorian house my parents visited when they were in the market for a fixer-upper, and a walk I took with my Uncle Tom one evening after Thanksgiving dinner. There must have been fifteen or more of us at the table, but when he asked who wanted to take a walk, it was only he and I who headed out into the frosty November night.

The moon was full as I jogged down the sidewalk trying to keep pace with his impossibly long legs, and I could see my breath as I huffed along. We did not talk; I doubt that the two of us ever had a complete conversation as long as he lived, and at the age of only seven, I felt a little awkward running through Pine Springs in pursuit of this legendary man-- WW II pilot, Kennedy administration justice department lawyer, and husband to our beloved Aunt Sis, and even if the light from the windows had been less golden, or the sound of the voices upstairs in the living room less warm, I still would have been happy to get back to the house.

Model Shopper

I like to think I'm a pretty good shopper, so was it just my imagination today as I was bombing my way through the grocery on a last minute holiday run that as I stepped decisively up to a display to choose my item, some of my fellow shoppers selected the same thing for their own carts? At first, I wondered if I was being a little too pushy elbowing past their indecision, but then I overheard this conversation:

Boy: Do we need bacon Dad?
Man: Yeah.
Boy: What kind?
Man: Hmmm. We'll just get whatever that lady gets.

Always happy to help!

'Tis the Season

The first report cards of the year went home last Thursday, and traditionally that means several parent-teacher-student conferences will be scheduled for the next couple of weeks-- not a very jolly time.