Rock Me

It's so funny what you know and don't know, what you're interested in and not. Years ago, identifying birds became something I wanted to do, next it was plants, of course animals (and, yes, their scat), seashells, and so forth. Every time we go to Maine, we collect rocks, and it's easy to pick out the pink granite that is visible on Cadillac mountain or the fine-grained black stone that will always win the smoothest rock contest, but I have to confess that my knowledge of them ends there. I like rocks, but I've never been moved to catalog my collection.

Today we went to the Natural History Museum with our god-daughters. Our idea was to show them the nature photos and the titanaboa exhibit, but they wanted to go to the insect zoo and the gems and minerals, too. The bugs were fun-- I love the bees, and we saw a zebra butterfly emerge from its cocoon. I was a little skeptical about the rocks though.

I shouldn't have been. Because of the late hour, we only saw about a third of the exhibit, but it was fascinating. It showed me how much I do and don't know about the stuff that makes up 99% of the earth. Of course I recognize diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and opals, but I have no idea what most of them are made of or what they look like unpolished and uncut. I've seen geodes, sand roses, and all sorts of crystals, but I have never bothered to organize my knowledge of them into any meaningful kind of framework.

My life-long lack of engagement in this topic crystallized for me when I approached a single case. Herkimer Diamonds said the tag, and reading the display materials about these rare six-sided crystals that are only found in a small area of Upstate New York was like a prism refracting a single now into so many thens. I remembered hearing my father talking about "Little Falls Diamonds" on more than one occasion, but I could not recall when or why.

Something about digging ditches and building the Thruway, maybe? I don't know... my memories have been almost completely buried by time, and it's going to take some excavation to uncover the story. That's okay. I want to know, and it is just such a desire that polishes simple facts into meaningful information.

Anthem

When I was in high school, every senior got half a page in the yearbook. We were able to pick a candid photo and any other content we wanted. Most kids chose a quotation, and I did, too. Mine was from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: But now, said the Onceler, now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better-- it's not.

I liked it for it's altruistic idealism, and to be honest, I still like it today for the same reason.

Last year, when the CGA movie version of The Lorax came out, I read the reviews with interest. There was a soft spot in my heart for the book, but I couldn't see how a feature length film was possible. The critics were split, and so I stayed on the fence, although when one of my favorite students strongly recommended the movie, I totally took notice.

Flash forward six months and hundreds of other movie and DVD releases-- tonight the god daughters, Allyn and Delaney arrived for the weekend, and eight-year-old Delaney was all about The Lorax. She was all set to recount the whole story word-for-word and sing the songs, too. Her enthusiasm elicited a lot of heavy sighs and eye-rolling from her mom and sister, but it resonated with me. In my family it was I who often over-shared the details of books, movies, and TV shows that I found especially moving.

So tonight? We watched The Lorax and it was good, really it was, but more gratifying was watching the delight in Delaney's eyes as she  mouthed almost every word. 

Too Much of a Good Thing

Hard to believe that there is only one more day of summer vacation left. It's tempting to look at all the things I have not accomplished and to wish for more wide-open days of sleeping in, movies, and food trucks. In fact, today at the pool I let my reluctance slip a bit when I was talking to six-year-old Savannah.

"Are you excited about school starting? Is first grade going to be great?" I asked, trying to make conversation.

"Oh yes!" she said.

"I'm not that excited," I told her.

She was confused. "Why?"

"Because school is a lot of work," I replied. "I might just like to sleep late and go to the pool every day instead. How about you?"

If I was looking for an ally, I was in the wrong place. "School's not hard!" she scoffed. "It's really fun... maybe even more fun than the pool."

I sighed and nodded because I knew she was right.

A Room of One's Own

The past six years have seen a swelling enrollment in our school system. Even though it wasn't really that long ago that it seemed as if they might close our middle school, now the opposite is true: we are running out of space. As our school becomes more and more crowded, a solution is for teachers to share classrooms. We teach 5 out of 7 periods of the day, but the rooms are in demand even when we are not teaching.

I understand the problem, but what that approach does not take into account is that we have other duties to perform during the non-teaching time, and our classrooms also double as our offices. It is unreasonable to think that we can get as much work done when we are forced to be away from our desks, our phones, and our materials.

Before this, our rooms have been commandeered for use after school and on the weekends by various organizations for classes, meetings, and youth groups. Besides having to pack up and leave whether I am through for the day or not, over the years I have had things damaged and lost by the people who use my room after hours.

To be required to share our professional space is at best an inconvenience and at worst a lack of regard for teachers and their time. With growing enrollments, added accountability measures, and shrinking funds, each year we are expected to do more with less, and now there will be times when we won't even have a place to do that.

Best Practices

One of my pet peeves about educators is that we rarely apply our knowledge of human nature and learning to adult audiences. So many of our presentations for "grown ups" are auditory, made to a sedentary audience. If we want to add pizzazz, we do an ice breaker and a power point.

Seriously?

That's why today, at the midpoint of an all-day meeting, I jumped at the chance to try an activity that one of our PTA members brought back from Alice Water's Edible School Yard Academy in Berkley. At the lunch break, I had seen the gorgeous weather-- all sunny, breezy, and blue skies-- through a window, but when it came time to go outside, our agenda still had several items left, and our principal kindly opened the activity to a vote: Do we have time for this? she asked us.

I knew that for me, time outside would clear my head and probably make the remaining work we had to do easier, so I raised my hand as a yes, and gleefully headed out when the votes were counted. I recognized that some of my colleagues wished we would just get on with it, so that maybe we could leave a few minutes earlier, but they were good sports once we got out there.

The activity was simple, a gentler, more reflective version of musical chairs that I could easily imagine using with students. We sat in a circle next to the garden and under the shade of a couple Magnolias, and everyone laughed and joked and switched seats whenever the wind blew for us.

And perhaps it's just my opinion, but the rest of our meeting was very productive, and we even got out early.

Making Good Time

We pulled out of my sister's driveway in Atlanta at 9:30 this morning. The day was clear and traffic was light from the start, and we made our way 500 miles up I-85 to Petersburg, VA in about seven and a half hours. From there it was just a couple more hours to home. Our luck held, although the weather did not, and despite torrential rain, we were back in town by 7 PM. A long day, yes, but good conditions, good company, good snacks, and good radio made it a practically pleasant day.

Editorial Integrity

We got an email the other day that a colleague of ours, another teacher at our school, is to be featured in a local magazine. The article is called Lessons Learned: Advice from Veteran Teachers, and it profiles seven educators from our area with some bulleted gems of wisdom from each.

Without exception, every  co-worker I have discussed it with has made a gagging gesture. Let's just say that we know the guy, and we're not convinced that he is necessarily the best representative of our profession. He takes a pretty picture, though.

I think that Alfie Kohn might say that this is what kids feel like when we give awards recognizing a few among many. They are often baffled that anyone might make such a decision and resentful of what they consider to be the undeserved recognition of a peer. Such feelings render the entire exercise meaningless. Rather than motivating everyone to strive for the ideal, we are often undercutting the effort instead. We are also establishing ourselves as arbitrary authority figures who are not to be trusted.

What is the fall out of such a dynamic? Well, I'm canceling my charter subscription to that magazine. Clearly they don't know what they're talking about.