No! Just No

Sunday night already?

Oh, weekend, I had so much more hope in you.

The Torch Has Passed

My dad was a big baseball fan, and so when I was growing up there was usually a game on in the background from April to October. Back then, if I watched at all, I associated the guys on the field with my dad or my uncles; Brooks Robinson? Tom Seaver? Reggie Jackson? To me, they were grown ups playing a grown up game. 

Later, when I had graduated from college and was living with my father again, the background became foreground, and we all became fans of the New York Mets. Those guys seemed more like older brothers, or cousins, and we celebrated right along with Lenny Dykstra, Mookie Wilson, and Keith Hernandez in 1986 when they won the World Series.

It's been years since I've followed baseball that closely, even though my town has been a MLB town for the last eleven years. People here love their baseball, and with both the Orioles and the Nationals in the playoffs, now seems like a good time to tune in. So tonight as I cooked dinner, I watched the Nats hang on to a tenuous one run lead into the top of the ninth. Oh, we're on pins and needles here, but all I can think about is when did the players get so young? Any one of them could have been a student in my class not so very long ago-- Ryan Zimmerman? 1996. Stephen Strasberg? 2000. That cute Anthony Rendon? 2002.

Go get 'em kids!

Children, Behave

If I were to file one complaint about my students this year it would be that so many of them find that annoying prank of hiding a classmate's pencil, paper, eraser, book, etc. to be so very entertaining. Upwards of 5 times a day I am called to solve the case of the missing whatever, and the culprit is nearly always the student in the next seat.

It was the last class of the week today when I had had quite enough of such shenanigans and so plaintively addressed the group, "Can we all just agree that we're not going to waste each other's time anymore by hiding the things we need to get our work done?"

My request was met by silence and downcast eyes, and several pencils were quietly slid across the table in return to their owners. One student, however, was not in total agreement, and although he did turn over the pencil in his possession to the boy who brought it to class. "How much time do you think it takes?" he asked me. "30 seconds?"

I shrugged. "That's 30 seconds of your life you'll never get back," I answered in rebuttal. "And 30 seconds of mine, too, since I had to resolve the situation."

"Yeah," he said, "but my thirty seconds were FUN!"

Critical Success

Today's lesson involved a "poetry sort." The kids in my classes were given a collection of action poems written by former students. The task was to read all of them, select a couple, and answer questions about them. The next step was to brainstorm lists of 20 of possible topics for their own action poems.

Here's the part I loved-- in every class, without exception, several students asked if they could keep the copies of the model poems because they liked them so much.

That's validation!

Friday Night Dinner

All week long I have been receiving ads and notifications on almost any web page I visit about a BIG event happening TODAY! Yes, friends, The Gilmore Girls is on Netflix. And, unlike all the men's underwear clickables I keep getting, I agree that this news actually is cool news, because I am one of the legion of folks who loooooved The Gilmore Girls, with its terrific writing-- so snappy, so smart,  and even though it's been over seven years since the finale, I miss them and all the other denizens of Starr's Hollow to this day.

This might be some binge watching I can get behind. 

Things We Do

At about 10:05 this morning I found myself in my darkened classroom, blinds drawn, lights out, and 24 children huddled beneath six tables. It was a lockdown drill. I have never reconciled with myself just where I ought to be on such occasions. Under a table or beneath my desk seems ludicrous: I can't really supervise anyone if I'm on the floor, but I don't want the police officers conducting the drill to bust me for being too visible. 

Today I sat in a rolling chair in the corner. There was a thin slat of light below the blinds in one of the four windows that looks out into the hallway, and I could see when someone was coming. Three bullet-proof vests strode by my door to the end of the hallway next door. I heard a radio squawk as they tried each of the three doors before mine. When they tested my knob it jiggled securely, but I dreaded what would happen should one of them lean over and peer into the gap that I was looking out from. Would he make eye contact? Perhaps a pointing gesture to show me that, in the event of a real intruder who might mean us harm, I would be a target? 

But there was no opportunity to find out, with the rest of the school waiting, they moved along to other, possibly less secure locations. Five minutes later, the drill was over, and notably, 24 sixth graders who have struggled with silence for the last four weeks had not made a peep. I turned the lights back on, and another lesson, the one we had been working on before the drill, resumed.

Meow

When I was a little girl, my mom was known for her novelty cakes. She was a master at baking a couple of layers, cutting them into pieces and then fitting them back together into recognizable shapes like Snoopy or a mod looking kitty cat. A layer of frosting and a few piped details later, the results were always impressive.

Flash forward 45 years: Heidi and I always make cakes for our homeroom students on their birthdays. While I opt for the classic bundt (not only is it quick and easy, but somehow a giant donut-shape seems a tad bit more breakfasty), Heidi is forever making flowers and such. Generally, she uses a shaped baking pan, but a couple of years ago, one of her students was obsessed with the Riddler and begged her for a green question mark cake. "No problem," I told her, for I had learned to bake in my mother's kitchen, where it was a simple matter to carve up cakes and put 'em back together, jigsaw fashion, into a whole new thing. Against my better judgment, a tradition was born.

Tonight, it's a throwback classic: