Singing Along with the Me Decade

Earlier in the week Heidi discovered she had a stress fracture in one of her feet, and so she has been relegated to a "boot" for at least three weeks. Never one to allow such a thing to slow her down, she has been clunking all over the place including around the Tidal Basin yesterday and all the way to the farmers market and back today.

That last journey must have been a bit challenging, because when we got home she lay down on the floor. "If I have to, I can do anything!" she said through gritted teeth. "I am strong!"

I nodded and frowned. Where had I heard those words before? "Did you mean to quote Helen Reddy?" I asked her.

We laughed when she admitted it was unintentional, and then through the miracle of music streaming we listened to I Am Woman.  It had been about thirty years, and the tempo is slower than I remembered, but the words are pretty powerful for such a catchy tune. We did not stop there, however. After listening to Delta Dawn, Angie Baby, Leave Me Alone, and You and Me Against the World, we put it in I Am Woman radio mode and were treated to an algorithm-curated playlist of songs of the seventies, many of which I hadn't heard since then, but nearly all of which I could identify by artist and sing along with.

I'm talking to you, Mac Davis and Rita Coolidge.

10-4 Good Buddy

Our staff spent several hours on Thursday and Friday in a workshop teaching us cooperative learning "structures" that we are expected to use with our students to keep them interested in our lessons. Some of the strategies were sound, but I have objections to this commercialization of education that pushes artificial bells and whistles to manipulate and trick students into learning rather than genuinely engaging them in meaningful content.

Sigh.

One of the most onerous aspects of the program is the page in the manual (just $36.66 on Amazon) devoted to cheers. Ranging from the literally cheesy (hold an imaginary cheese grater in one hand and an invisible block of cheese in the other; making a grating gesture call out grate, grate, grate!) to the ridiculously complex, I would never ask students to praise anyone in that way.

We were sitting out front a few days ago when a new neighbor stopped to introduce himself. His name was Marty and not only was he a high school English teacher, he also presented us with some cards from his website. "Check it out," he told us. "I'm pretty sure it will exceed your expectations."

Curious, I visited the site after dinner and found a number of videos of Marty in cafes and other open-mis venues riffing in sort of a hybrid slam-poet-performance-artist way on a number of topics. Since I didn't really know what to expect, it's hard to say if what I found exceeded my expectations, but it was kind of interesting in a contemporary expression sort of way. We English teachers seem to work hard at that.

We ran into Marty again this afternoon on our way out to run errands. "Did you have a chance to check out my stuff?" he asked right away, clearly no stranger to assessment.

"Yeah, I did, " I told him, no stranger to accountability myself. "I watched the clip of you riffing about eating. I think it was recorded in Fredericksburg? Good stuff!"

He beamed, pleased with the evidence that I had watched with attention. "I'm going to spend some time this weekend working on new material," he said.

I nodded and then asked him about a local open-mic night that is within walking distance. "I'm going to check that out soon," he smiled.

"Let us know when you do," I shrugged. "Maybe we'll come down and support you!"

Or, I could have pulled on an imaginary trucker horn and cried HONK HONK HONK, and then grabbed my invisible CB radio and squawked, "Great job, Marty!"

Case in Point

This afternoon my friend Mary and I gave a ride to a new teacher at our school who has just moved to the area from Wisconsin. "This place seems so big!" she told us as we made small talk on the way to our county-wide department meeting.

"I know it does," I laughed, "but it's really much more of a small town."

"Especially teaching middle school," Mary agreed. "You'll be surprised at how many people you know in a year or two."

"So no honking or flipping off people," I warned her. "You never know who it might be!"

A little while later, the facilitator of one of my breakout sessions directed us to form groups of three with people around us. "Make sure you pick people you don't know very well," she told us firmly.

I looked to my right and made eye contact with a high school teacher I know slightly. He happens to be married to a former colleague, and both of his daughters went to our school. The two of us formed a group with a nearby teacher from another high school.

We introduced ourselves, and through the course of the conversation we discovered that not only had I taught both of their daughters, the other guy had taught my nephew and was a current colleague of the first guy's wife.

On to Y24D2

Observation from Year 24, Day 1:

Wow, that was a lot of sitting!

Coming Soon...

There are many pros and cons to the grade and data collection programs that most school districts use these days, but allow me to focus on one feature I really enjoy:

I LOVE seeing pictures of my students whenever I open my gradbook, and that goes double for these busy days when we teachers spend so many hours preparing for their arrival. Sure, we have access to a lot of important information, but I t's really nice to put a face to a name.

And kids?

I can't wait to meet you!

Ready to Go

Josh will be 21 next month and we couldn't think of a better way to mark the occasion than by getting him a passport. Since they take 4-6 weeks and we're all on summer break for now, today was the day that we filled out the paperwork, got the photo taken (twice), were turned away from one post office, found another that accepts walk-ins and drove half an hour to get there, took a number (67 when they were on 49 with 2 clerks), and sat our asses down in the assemblage of chairs to watch and wait.

Sure, it took hours and I missed a meeting, but then it was done, and we had a nice lunch, bought him some groceries, and took him home.

And it was all worth it!

Because international travel should always be an option.

Last Days of Summer

On a perfect sunny and 85 degree day, we took a bike ride this morning, went out to lunch and a movie, played a board game with Josh and Victor, and then enjoyed a family dinner. Were I to deliberately wring every last golden drop from summer vacation, I don't think I'd have had a better day.