CSI: The Bunny Trail

After a few scary events, my sister and her husband in Atlanta upgraded their surveillance camera set-up to a pretty comprehensive system. It's great for their security and their peace of mind, but my 8-year-old niece has other ideas.

"We'll finally be able to see what the Easter Bunny really looks like when he hides the eggs in the yard!" she told me the other day.

"That's a problem!" my sister said when Annabelle was out of earshot.

"Why?" I shrugged. "Isn't the Easter Bunny "invisible" sometimes?"

(Here I made air quotes, which amused me, because I can't use them without thinking of the student who actually called them "bunny ears" in conversation. It took me a while to get what he was saying, but his description fit this situation really well!)

"Yah," my sister answered, "but we aren't! And that's who's going to be on camera hiding those eggs!"

Good point.

The Time It Is A-Changing

Regular readers are well aware of my loathing for this day, the day when not only do we lose an hour of the weekend, but we are also forced to rise an hour earlier every morning until October. Over the years I have spun every argument I could, raging against the postponing of the light, although, to be honest, they all go something like, Why? Why? Why?

Slowly, it seems that people are coming around to my side. Just yesterday the NYTimes ran a timely article debunking both the agrarian and energy-saving rationales and quoting citizens who consider DST a prime example of "government over-reach" Some states are even questioning whether it is truly the wisest expression of Federalism (thank you, Alexander Hamilton 😕).

We live in a time where it seems like radical change is becoming common. Who knows? Maybe the day is coming when I'll have to look harder to find a writing topic on the second Sunday in March.

Ooh! Ooh!

Despite gray skies and the fact that the famous cherry blossoms are still a week or more away, there were a lot of folks at the Tidal Basin when we headed over there to walk the dog this afternoon. It seemed like a mix of locals and tourists, but to be honest it was a challenge to tell who was who in this very diverse area, and we heard a rich variety of languages as we ambled around the trail. In such a situation it's always fun to people-watch and today did not disappoint: there were plenty of cute kids on scooters, lots of smiling dogs, and no shortage of selfie-takers.

As we passed the Jefferson Memorial I noticed two women pointing across the water in confusion. "Do you know what that is?" one asked a young father with his toddler daughter on his shoulders.

I literally had to stop myself from waving my hand in the air to show that I knew the answer to their question. Instead I watched intently as we approached to see what would happen.

"No, I don't," the guy answered, and just then I caught one of the women's eye. The poor guy was still apologizing, saying something like, "It must be kind of new, because I've never seen it before, either..." when I jumped in.

"That white thing?" I asked pointing, and when she nodded, I continued breathlessly. "It's the Martin Luther King Memorial!"

"Thank you!" she said.

"You're welcome," I replied as we walked past. "I love knowing the answer!" I told Heidi a minute later.

"I know you do, Babe," she said. "I know you do."

As Writers Do

My students are doing the Slice of Life challenge this month, and that has given us a lot to talk about. Not only am I privileged to read 100 words or more of personal writing from each every day, what's even better are the conversations we have about writing. In addition to highlighting golden lines and showing them exactly why it's important to use punctuation and capitalization, we talk a lot about how to find a topic every day.

"But nothing exciting happens to me!" many have cried.

"That's not the point," I tell them. "The idea is find something, maybe big, maybe small, and write about it. Experiment! Try figurative language, or sensory description, or adding dialog, or making a connection to another time. Write about what annoyed you, or what made you happy for even the smallest moment. What surprised you? What made you think?"

And they have responded. "Look!" one student called me over. "I wrote 150 words about 30 seconds! It took me much longer to write it than it did for it to happen!"

"You exploded the moment! Awesome!" I congratulated her.

Other kids are really getting it, too, and we are beginning to converse as writers do. Yesterday I had my ukulele at school, and so I pulled it out and strummed a few cords right before lunch. Everyone laughed at the silly song I made up. "Are you going to write about that?" one of my students asked.

I shrugged. "Maybe. Are you?"

"Maybe," she shrugged back.

Later I saw her outside with her PE class. It was a beautiful day and I was taking a quick walk before a meeting. "Are you going to write about walking?" she called.

"Maybe!" I answered. "Are you going to write about this gorgeous day?"

"Maybe!" she answered.

Busy Town

As I walking the dog this morning, the world was full of activity: robins bobbed on greening grass; squirrels scampered and scurried up and down trees in sets of two and three; young professionals checked their smartphones as they waited at the bus stop; children practiced soccer on the field up at the school.

Something about it reminded me of Richard Scarry's Busy Town, a book my brother, sister, and I loved when we were little. In fact I half expected to see a calico cat in a white jacket delivering milk. Scarry's books were a combination of large-scale illustrations of complex scenes in between pages with explicitely-labeled single images from the big pictures, and looking back on it, I learned a lot of vocabulary from them. For example, I never rode a train until I was 14 years old, but I knew what a conductor was. Likewise, I was familiar with a toboggan and a trowel, and a lot of other things that gave me a foot up on reading comprehension.

Yesterday our language arts meeting was focused on authentic vocabulary instruction, and the presenter mentioned the 32-million word gap that many children in low-income families experience by age four. In essence, researchers found that the affected children heard on average 8 million fewer words spoken to them a year, so that by the time they were four and ready for preschool, they already had a 32 million word deficit, which translated into both a more limited vocabulary and a more limited capacity for learning vocabulary.

We didn't talk about it, but one instructional intervention to help those kids catch up with their peers is to use visuals alongside key vocabulary whenever possible. The situation also may explain the rise in popularity of graphic novels, particularly among below-grade level readers.

That Richard Scarry was really on to something!

First-hand Knowledge

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.
~Sam Ewing, American humorist

Google inspirational quotes, and you will find quite an assortment attributed to one Sam Ewing. Who is that guy, anyway? I don't know, but I have a slightly different version of the inspirational quote above, courtesy of my winter CSA:

Too many turnips spotlights the character of people: some turn the turnips into soup, some turn the turnips into pickles, some turn the turnips into delicious blueberry muffins, and some turn the turnips into compost.

A Stroll through Time

I took advantage of the high-70s, warm-breeze weather we enjoyed today and went out for a little walk around campus before my after-school meeting this afternoon. There were plenty of folks with the same idea on the half-mile trail that circles the grounds. At one point I passed a double stroller filled with twins who looked to be about 6 months old. Eleven years from now? One or the other will probably be in my class, I thought as I waved.

Making my way around to the back corner, I smiled when I saw the infield sprinklers damping the red clay of the diamond; tonight will be a good night for softball. They also reminded me of a sixth grade picnic several years ago.

Back then the turf soccer field we have now was a crushed gravel pitch that had to be watered regularly to keep it playable. There were timed sprinklers all around the perimeter, and right at the end of the picnic they all came on. The students let out a collective cheer and flooded on to the field. The teachers let out a collective gasp and tried to wave them all away, but it was no use. In the end it was so hot it didn't matter-- everyone cooled off AND dried off by the time we had to go back inside, and as a group they were exhilarated.

I walked back in with a trio of girls, still chattering about the dousing. "That was awesome! Did you guys plan this special for us?" they asked.

I laughed and said nothing, because in a way? I wished we had.