E is for Educational Experiences Everywhere

 My mom is in town until tomorrow, and since she lives so far away, it just seemed like a missed opportunity to go to work while she was still here. So I took the day off, and we decided to explore a couple of the lesser-known attractions in our very historic and cultural area.

First stop? Woodlawn Plantation, a home that was built in 1800 by George Washington's nephew and his bride, Martha Washington's granddaughter. Originally the main residence on a 2000 acre farm that Washington gave the couple as a wedding gift, today's much smaller property is only about three miles from Mount Vernon. The house, with its two-foot thick brick walls, survives today despite being abandoned in the late 1800s, and is actually grander than Mount Vernon in some ways.

On the very same property, there is also a mid 20th century dwelling designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright. The Pope-Leighey House was originally constructed in 1949 in Falls Church, but the expansion of Route 66 in 1967 created a move it or lose it imminent domain situation that was resolved by an imaginative deal with the US Register of Historic Places which resulted in moving the home piece-by-piece 20 miles to the south and rebuilding it on a corner of the Woodlawn property. This design is an example of Wright's Usonian ideals, or a small, functional house for a regular family (as long as they didn't Have any furniture or need any storage!). It was cool, though, and it would have fit right in with a current episode of Tiny Houses.

Our next stop was Gunston Hall, George Mason's home, built in 1750. It, too, was a pleasant surprise. Remarkably preserved and restored, the house looked deceptively compact from the outside, but it has 2400 square feet on each level. It's main hall, eight bedrooms, formal dining room, and two parlors were gracious and spacious. In fact, the main parlor is one of the 100 most beautiful rooms in America, according to Helen Comstock's book. It's hard to disagree when you stand beneath the 12 foot ceiling, surrounded by intricately carved walnut moulding, crimson silk damask walls, deep blue paint, and gilded trim.

On a Monday in May, we had each of these places, these gems, practically to ourselves, and besides being a really fun day? We learned a lot! Plus I got to spend the day with my mom.🙂

Life Lesson: "There's treasure everywhere." --Bill Watterson

F is for Finding Fun

Today was the 9th annual Post Hunt, a crazy puzzle-palooza that sends participants scampering around downtown trying to solve big, silly puzzles. My nephew, Treat, and I have been doing it together since it started back in 2008, and over the years we've enlisted Josh, my mom, and this year, my brother Bill joined the team!

Before leaving the convention center, the five of us cheerfully watched an ear-splitting performance from a tuba, oboe, violin, and piano (answer: tu o vi pi, or 206314) and then found ourselves in the middle of a demonstration by the rainbow coalition brandishing colorful signs with rebus symbols on them. (In ROYGBIV order the signs read: pea-knock-L deck mine-s golden rings, 43 of course.)

Even the pouring rain couldn't dampen our spirits as we searched out a giant white square with a little 76 in the upper lefthand corner, and we huddled under the umbrella a long time before making an association with the crossword puzzle in the back of the magazine. Solving the two clues gave us fen and fight.

The letter F just didn't seem right, but we decided to move on to the next one. On the way, Treat connected fen and fight with one of the illustrations on the map, and we made a detour. There we found an identical square with an E where the F might be. Stumped, we continued on our way to a park where a volunteer held this sign:

 C-11 on the map was the Reflecting Pool, so Mom whipped out a mirror and, upon examining the lower left-hand flourish, backward, we read Date of Abe's Address (answer? 1119)

We were walking to our next challenge, still thinking, considering, and pondering the one we hadn't solved, when Treat realized that if we swapped the E for the F in the crossword, we had een and eight, or eighteen.

The last puzzle was a web address that, once pulled up on our phone's browsers gave us the warning, Watch your temperature. You’re almost freezing. You’re risking hypothermia. You need to be normal. Hint: Get the blood circulating. Walking around may help!

It was basically a high-tech version of the warmer-cooler-burning up game we used to play as kids, and we knew that we were looking for the place where our reading would be 98.6. There we found a giant blue C, which we took to mean that we needed to convert our temperature to Celsius. (37 was correct!)

Satisfied at solving the first part of the hunt we grabbed a table at the convention center, ate our picnic lunch, and mulled over the five clues we had. With half an hour to go until the final clue and the commencement of the end game, it seemed like anything was possible, but I didn't care if we won; the day was perfect already.

Life Lesson: “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” ~Dale Carnegie

G is for Get Ready!

On a day in late May when the skies were wet and leaden, and a jacket was a necessity, we chose to go to the movies. There the posters and previews promise hot hits and blockbusters fitting for the scorching days ahead. A quick shopping stop reveals that the dollar section at a Target is loaded with red, white, and blue trinkets, and next week's forecast calls for temperatures approaching 90. Seeing as we are halfway through the end of the year testing, and on the downhill side of the fourth quarter, I would have to say it's pretty much undeniable:

Summer is coming.

Life Lesson: “One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by." ~Jeanette Walls

H is for History

As we were planning our end of the year field trips, our social studies teacher put together a visit to Ford's Theater and the Petersen house across the street where the wounded president was carried and died. There was a little extra time at the end of the day, and so she decided to include an IMAX movie at a near-by museum . One of the choices was Dinosaurs! In 3D.

"That's the one!" she said.

"Lincoln AND dinosaurs??" I teased her. "What a span! Is your theme going to be, Well, THAT happened...?"

"Yeah!" she told me. "It's all history!"

Life Lesson: “If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree. ” ~Michael Crichton

I is for It's Hard to Explain

"If 'Good is the enemy of Great,' then how come 'Life is Good' is good enough?" a student asked the other day, looking around at some of the inspirational posters I have hanging in my classroom.

It was a good question.

No.

It was a great question.

"Good is the enemy of great," I told her, "because if you settle for good, you'll never work for great."

She nodded expectantly.

"But, 'Life is Good' is an overall philosophy about life in general. It's not just 'good;' it's 'gooooood'." I made a smooth motion with my hand in the air. "See what I mean?" I tried to explain.

"You mean that says, 'Life is Goooood'?" she asked.

"Yeah!" I told her. "It's to remind us to appreciate the good things in life!"

She shook her head. She still didn't get it.

Fortunately, the bell rang right then.

Good timing!

No, great timing

Life Lesson: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough." ~Albert Einstein

J is for Just One More Thing

If you ask me, any assessment should be low stakes because, like Heisenberg famously asserted, you change anything by trying to measure it. That principle is especially true when it comes to middle school standardized tests. We make such a big fuss over them that it seems to hard to believe they could possibly be an accurate measure.

Oh, we are always motivated by good intentions; the tests have become so important, that we just want our students to do the very best they can. And so we give them boot camps, review sessions, and pep talks in the weeks leading up to the test, and then on the day of there are wristbands, pencils, bookmarks, and a free breakfast for everyone.

So today, after all that, when we finally sat down to actually start the test, one student raised his hand. "Do we get mints?" he wanted to know.

The answer was actually yes; I was saving them for a little later, but I really couldn't help myself when I replied, "Oh my gosh! Is this the SOL or an all you can eat buffet??"

The group laughed, and I gave them their Wint-o-green Lifesavers before starting my script, Today you are taking the sixth grade reading SOL... and crossing my fingers that they would all pass.

Life Lesson: "An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them." ~Werner Heisenberg

K is for Keep this in Mind

It's personal profile time in my little corner of the sixth grade world, and that means students are conducting (and giving) interviews so that each can write a 500 word journalism piece, with a specific focus and theme, about another member of our class. In sections where there are an odd number of students, for the sake of logistics, I get to participate, too.

So, this morning I was being interviewed by a fledgling reporter who asked me what I considered my greatest strength to be. I was stumped by the question.

One of the reasons I value being an active part of the project is that it allows me to model what I want my students to achieve, but the bigger pay-off is that it puts me in their shoes. "Um, I guess, I'm curious?" I answered. But then I recovered, delivering some good evidence as to how and why such a description fits me. Even so, it's hard to be interviewed!

Later I thought about that conversation when I looked at the recipe for gambas al ajillo that I wanted to make for dinner. Take 20 cloves of garlic... it started. That seemed like a lot to me, but I wanted to prepare the recipe according to direction before I made too many changes. Peeling that much garlic though? That would be a pain!

Fortunately, I remembered reading about a clever way to peel garlic which involved putting the cloves in a container and shaking them vigorously until the papery skin fell away. I grabbed a jar, dropped my 20 cloves inside, screwed on the lid, and proceeded to swing that baby up and down until every little piece of garlic was stripped naked. It only took about 10 seconds.

Wow! I thought. I should have said my greatest strength is that I have a good memory!

Life Lesson: "Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality." ~Susan Sontag