Sunday No Funday

We went out to run a few errands today and ended up shopping in

five!
different!
stores!

That's too many.

Uh Odes!

I spent a bit of my morning reading over and commenting on the odes that my students wrote yesterday in celebration of Earth Day. In general, I would say the opportunity to go outside for inspiration and details paid off-- their odes were sweet and concrete.  When it came to conclusions, though, there were a few challenges. See if you can tell what I mean:

O'Earth thank you for all you have done to the animals--
have a great day!

or

Even though you are insignificant
in the cosmic scheme,
we will always love you

or

O' little blue marble,
what would I do without you!

or

you are glorious
and glamorous
and yet
we still destroy you.
Oh Earth.

or

oh earth I will never forget your gifts that you share with us
thank you and happy birthday.

or

As we run, walk, and jog,
you are the birthplace
and home to thousands of people.

or

thx for being a
wonderful planet

and my personal favorite:

I feel the air is pushing me back and forth
O earth what would the world be without you?

Happy Earth Day to You

Last weekend when the girls were here, they both told me separately how proud they were of their long-distance running parents. "What about you and your sister?" I asked the oldest. "Do you guys do anything like that?"

"Oh, no," she told me, "we're more inside people."

I thought of that conversation today when I told my students that in honor of Earth Day we would spend part of our class outside gathering details for the odes we would write to our home planet when we came back in. Do we have to? sighed at least one student in every class.

Then there was the litany of concerns:

I have allergies. 
I need sunscreen. 
I'm afraid of bugs. 
It's too cold. 
Isn't it going to rain? 

"Guys!" I snapped them back. "We're only going to be out there for 10 minutes, 15 tops!" And off we went to explore the back field of our school where we found:

maple seed helicopters (that you can also stick on your nose)
buttercups (which many were unaware could show if you like butter)
dandelion seeds to send flying
redbud blossoms to sample
cedar foliage to feel
clover to search for lucky four-leafs
breezes to refresh us
mulch to pinch our noses at
smooth crape myrtle trunks to admire (it looks like mango! someone noted.)
holly leaves to beware of
pink dogwood flowers to commend
anthills to architecturally acclaim
crabgrass to metaphorically contemplate
and lots of
birds
and squirrels
and trees
and people

And when we came back inside each group was absolutely silent as they composed their odes to our home.

Royals

How strange that on the day that the longest reigning monarch of England, Queen Elizabeth II, turned 90, the artist once and for all known as Prince passed away.

One who was forced to grow up so early has grown so old, and the other who seemed somehow forever young will never truly grow old.

What a world.

Cause for Celebration

The day before National Poem-in-your-Pocket-Day is a busy one in my classroom. Students browse through thousands of poems in over a hundred poetry collections to find the perfect opus to carry with them the next day. They are also welcome to revisit all the great writing they have posted to our online poetry challenge and select an original work.

For some reason, these sixth graders were more excited and engaged than any other group I've ever shared the activity with. Can we have more than one? Can we trade with our friends? Can I pick something another student has posted?

The answers were, Yes. Yes! and YES! 

"It's like any holiday," I joked with them, "you can celebrate it any way you like!"

Yay! they cheered.

When I told my friend and fellow English teacher Mary about it? She said, "Look at you, creating a community of writers!"

Yes! Yes! and Thank you, Mary!

Kids These Days

Yesterday, I was recounting a bit of misconduct on the part of a particular student who happens to have Down's Syndrome, on our recent all-school field trip to a colleague who wasn't there.

"He just grabbed the map and speed-walked away into the crowd! So when I caught up with him, I grabbed his lunch box strap to make him stop, and then he tried to yank it away from me, telling me to let go or else! And the next thing I know we're standing in the middle of the convention center completely surrounded by thousands of kids from all over the area, and he's yelling that he doesn't want to fight me."

"Wow," she said only half-joking, "You're lucky nobody was filming you with their phones. That could have gone viral!"

Plane Food

While researching today's post, which was going to be about how addictive those Tasty food prep videos on BuzzFeed are, I stumbled upon a list of anti-glam food sites, and it was there that I was introduced to inflightfeed on Instagram.

Yes, it is all photos of airplane food! As current as the pictures are, there is a bit of nostalgia to the site for me as well, since here in the US, we don't have meals served to us on airplanes anymore. Speaking as a former air line cook, I recognize how that state of affairs may give us all one less thing to complain about, but it's still al ittle sad.

Don't worry, though, it seems that we just shipped all those tiny dishes overseas, because all the shots on inflightfeed are from Air India, Malaysia Air, Lufthansa, KLM, Azores Air, etc, en route to and from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Oslo, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Lisbon, and other such destinations.

And, while it doesn't look like the food has improved much in the last 25 years?  I sure would like to travel on a few of those flights.