Fall Guy

We suffered an annoying snafu at school today when as the result of poor planning we were directed to have all of our homeroom students phone home to schedule their parent-teacher-student conference for next Friday. Unaware that anything was out of the ordinary with this plan, my sixth graders were game to call their folks, but a little confused as to what to say. "Just say that we got the materials this morning and we want to let people know as soon as possible," I suggested somewhat disingenuously.

The first guy picked up the receiver and dialed confidently, probably because I often ask him to call home and ask his parents to remind him to bring in all manner of signed things from report cards to field trip slips. His mother answered, and although I could not understand the conversation word for word (it was in Tigre), I did understand that it wasn't going as planned. "What time does she want?" I asked after he hung up with a sigh.

"She didn't say a time," he answered. "She was mad."

"Why?" I asked.

"She told me I should have asked her about this yesterday, and we'll talk about it tonight," he said.

I nodded sympathetically. Right sentiment, wrong target.

On Walden Pond

Year by year the number of field trips and special activities we plan for our students is eroded by the time teachers feel they need to prepare kids for the tests they must take. It's hard to convince colleagues that this or that activity is worth the loss of instructional time in their classes, especially when they are being held accountable for their students performance on all manner of standard assessments.

As much as I sympathize, I just can't get on board with that kind of thinking. Maybe it's because as a writing teacher, I am reminded of Thoreau's observation: How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Isn't it our job to show the kids how to stand up to live, too?

Teacher's Dilemma Number 221

There was word today that a very challenging student is moving. Do we feel relieved? If so, do we feel guilty?

Words for Snow

We put the dog in the station wagon and headed over the bridge for a walk around the Tidal Basin on this sunny President's Day. It was busy but not crowded as we circled by the new MLK memorial, through the FDR, and past the Jefferson on the newly re-opened promenade. As warm as it has been, the cherry trees showed no sign of abnormally early blossoming, and for that I was glad. I don't know exactly what mankind is doing to the climate, but I worry.

Of the four short documentaries we saw yesterday the one that stayed with me most was called The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossoms. The film opened with horrific footage of a black wave relentlessly pushing inland, scouring away every car, every building, and every person in its way and tumbling them along as it moved toward the camera. The movie continued as a story about the unimaginable loss incurred by the survivors of the March 2011 tsunami until it took a rather skillful turn to the tradition and symbolism surrounding the cherry blossoms.

Who knew that the Japanese have identified ten separate phases of bloom and have a word for each? That the annual return of the blossoms is a treasured symbol of both renewal and endurance? That the countless petals that combine to create such a wondrous spectacle are considered representative of the innumerable and anonymous citizens whose efforts make Japan the nation it is?

In light of such awareness, it can't be a surprise that there are thousands of haikus written about sakura, or the cherry blossom season. Here is one by Issa:

Live in simple faith...
just as this simple cherry
flowers, fades, and falls.

Long Weekend Short

The best consequence of the continuing commercialization the Academy Awards is the release of 15 films we might never see otherwise. Animated, Live Action, and Documentary-- going to the theater to watch the Oscar-nominated shorts is always a highlight of our February. It is the antidote to all those big-budget blockbusters (as much as I love 'em), and a reminder that there is so much more to the art than the industry of the movies.

Gentleman Where Am I?

I love my iPad... except when I don't. An errant keystroke just deleted three paragraphs of tonight's post. It was good stuff, too, all about crazy right-wing novels, time traveling, and various ways of bringing Abraham Lincoln back from the dead, but now it belongs to the ages.

Spinning

A little after noon yesterday our school lost all phone and network connectivity. At first it was a minor nuisance, for example we could not produce grade reports for the parent conference we had scheduled at 1:30, but we apologized and made it through without any trouble. As the outage persisted, though, we were reminded again and again of how dependent we are on technology, mostly because we could not access most of the instructional materials and information that we have come to rely on.

Late in the afternoon, a couple of my colleagues who were going to be out today were trying to make sub plans. One wrote everything by hand, which took several hours, and the other made arrangements to email everything so that it could be printed out this morning. Imagine the frantic phone call I got after he tried to contact school and realized that everything was still down. He was on his way to California and there were no student rosters, no printable copy of the vocabulary quiz he was giving, and the computer labs he had booked for his classes were useless.

Of course we improvised and everything turned out fine. But as the network was slowly restored throughout the day, it was uncomfortable and a little disturbing to realize just how critical this fragile web we have woven is.