Choice Words

I was helping students organize their binders when I overheard a couple of guys having what I considered to be a questionable conversation.

"I'm not saying you're actually fat," said one to the other, trailing off meaningfully.

"What are you saying, then?" I asked.

"I wasn't talking to you," the student responded, and his disrespect took me a little aback. I was not, however, at a loss for words.

"Well, I was listening to you," I told him, "and I did not like what I was hearing."

He took a breath. I could see by his face he was thinking about his next words. I made eye contact. He turned to the other student. "Sorry," he said.

Joining 'Em

As I took attendance on the first day of school I came across a name on my roll that I had never had in my class before. "Marco?" I called.

"Polo!" several students answered.

Marco himself looked a little grim as he gave me a little salute along with his mumbled 'Here'.

"I think he's heard that one before," I said. "So let's not do that anymore."

Still, I knew it would be hard, mostly because I, myself, had the impulse to cry out that famous rejoinder whenever I said his name.

It's been a couple weeks, now, and the problem has faded considerably, at least from my perspective. Or at least that's what I thought until I looked through a stack of assignments that the kids had turned into my substitute last week.

There was a name scrawled across the line at the top of one sheet that I couldn't make out. I squinted trying to match the squiggles with letters and the letters with students' names. Is that a 'P'? I wondered, and indeed it was.

Looks like someone has re-named himself Polo.

Reinvention

It was a bit chaotic at Orlando International Airport this morning as we waited in line to drop our checked baggage. People from all over the world are drawn to the many theme parks and resorts the region is known for, and Sunday must be the last day of many a vacation. Lines were long and accents were loud and various as our flood of travelers flowed toward so many homes.

I idly scanned the crowd as our queue trickled along. I was surprised to see a woman of about my age actually carrying her soft-sided Samsonite up to the scale. Looking around more carefully, I also saw a couple of guys hefting big, olive drab canvas duffle bags, and even someone with an aluminum-framed backpack. They were all bags that my family had packed around 30 years ago.

I glanced at my own luggage, upright and wheeled, rolling them smoothly along as we moved up in the line, and considered the many forms of progress.

Flock Together

After another extravaganza of a day of Disney rides and shows, someone asked me what I liked best about my park experience. "Honestly?" I replied, "it was the bird show."

He raised his eyebrows skeptically. "Was it that good?"

"Oh yes," I assured him.  "Two middle-aged ladies and a bunch of animals trained to do clever tricks?" It was my turn to raise my eye brows. "You betcha it was good!"

So 1982

As iconic as that giant geodesic sphere might be, I must admit that, although I have been to Orlando a few times since 1982, I had never actually been to Disney's EPCOT park until today. I did not know, for example, that the name is actually an acronym of  Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, and that Walt Disney actually purchased his 27,000+ acres of swamp land in order to establish an innovative community model with which to shape the future urban life. After Disney died in 1966, his vision was revised by the corporation he created into something that can be best expressed as "more theme parks and resorts."

And so it has become, but EPCOT is a bit of a muddle, if you ask me. Sometimes described as a "permanent worlds fair," it is divided into two sections of a figure eight: Futureland and a ring of faux nations full of gift shops and restaurants. Futureland suffers a bit from the fact that it was designed in the 70s and built in the 80s, and that future has come and gone. The buildings and attractions seem quaint and dated, like the Jetsons might feel at home there.

Thematically, the connection between Futureland and the rest of the park seems tenuous: visitors cross a bridge and are swept off to either Mexico or Canada, depending on whether they turn left or right. After that, it's on to facsimiles of Norway, England, China, France, Italy, Morocco, America, and Japan. These attractions, too, seem a little aged, but it isn't as noticeable. Plus the folks at Disney have an education incentive program to attract young people from all of these nations to come and work in that section of the park. Their presence definitely lends some authenticity to the experience.

We had a fun day, but after years of hearing about how great EPCOT was, it seemed like we were a little late to the party.

Stockholm Syndrome

What does it say about the state of air travel that when we were lucky enough to get a couple of extra legroom seats on our flight this morning  it seemed like there was almost too much space? So much room that the tray table actually had to have an extension to reach me. How quaint!

Morgan Freeman is my Co-Pilot

My students were working on the first little project of the year this afternoon. Their task was to come up with 30 nouns and/or adjectives that described them in some way, and when the lists are completed, trace their hands on a piece of paper and then scribe the words they have chosen along the outline. The last step is to decorate the hand, cut it out, and mount it on construction paper for display.

This simple activity provides enormous insight into their classroom skills and their work habits, and the products end up being a wonderful snapshot of each student-- their hands, their designs, their words, but it was the work habits I was monitoring today when I told them that they were free to talk as they worked as long as the work got done. A little while into the period, one table was pretty chatty, but as I listened, their discussion seemed relevant to the task.

"I'm going to put 'Christian' on mine," said one boy, "because I am."

"I don't believe in God," responded the girl next to him.

"You're not going to go to heaven," warned another student.

She shrugged. "I don't believe in heaven."

The first boy was not alarmed by her statement at all. "You don't have to be Christian to go to heaven," he assured her sincerely. "You just have to be good."

The other boy nodded in agreement, but the first student wasn't done. "And then, when you get to heaven..." he paused for effect. "...you'll find out God is real!"

The girl seemed unconvinced, and then the conversation took a silly turn. "No!" he continued, "You'll find out God is me!"

The girl gave him a long look and then raised her eyebrows. "Funny," she said, adding purple to her paper, "you don't look anything like Morgan Freeman."