On Your Mark

A little spray adhesive, some scrapbooking paper, a few alphabet stickers, and my writing notebook is good to go!










(In case you're wondering about the inside cover?)

Living on a Prayer

"I never did see that national parks IMAX movie," Heidi remarked as we walked home from the grocery store this afternoon.

"Let me see what time it plays," I said. "That might be a fun thing to do this weekend." By then we were nearly home. "Oh my gosh! There's a show in 20 minutes! We can make it if everything goes perfectly. Wanna try?"

"Sure!" she answered, and we threw the perishables in the fridge and raced to the car. Although the theater is less than five miles from our house as the crow flies, making it in time for the movie was not a sure thing by any means. To begin with, we had to cross at least one bridge and then find parking in downtown DC on a holiday weekend. Fortunately, though, Labor Day is a traditionally dead time in our nation's capital.

Despite a couple of jerks on the road and a few clueless pedestrians, I made it to the city in under ten minutes. Trolling Constitution Avenue for a spot near the Natural History Museum was unfruitful, though, and so I rounded the corner hoping for a spot right on the mall. Bazinga! Just a little down and across from the sculpture garden was a perfect space. In I pulled and we headed down the sidewalk, up the steps, through security, and into the great hall with three minutes to spare. There was only one person ahead of us in line.

And then it all fell to pieces.

One customer. One staffer. One hundred questions. Ten tickets. Ten minutes too late.

The American History Museum was awesome though! 

Safety First

I've spent a lot of time in my classroom this week, hanging posters, moving furniture, organizing and putting it all back together after packing it up in June. This is the start of my 23rd year teaching in that very room, and when I moved in there in August 1994, the building itself was celebrating its own 23rd year. I still have the same tables, chairs, and teacher's desk that I started with, and I know they were original to the building, which makes them 46 years old-- vintage, if not antique.

I thought about that today as I fulfilled one of the first week requirements for teachers in our district by watching a 13 minute video on safety. According to the recording, teachers number more than six million in the United States and make up the largest workforce in the nation. Unfortunately, we are also a workforce without any formal safety training, and as such, 300,000 teachers are injured on the job every year.

The number one cause? Slipping and falling at ground level, but close behind is falling off something else.

Like maybe 46 year old tables?

Unforgettable

"When were you in sixth grade?" I asked a former student who was all grown up and accompanying her younger sister to the open house this afternoon. "Was it 2005?"

She thought for a moment and then laughed. "No! It was 2004. Remember? My mom was in labor during our conference." She nodded her head toward her sister. "And look who showed up the next day!"

Every Soul a Star

The sixth grade counselor poked her head into my door this afternoon. "Hey!" she said. "Can I ask you a favor?"

Our counselors loop with their students, which means that at any given grade level you only work with any given counselor every three years, or less, when there's turnover in the department. So, even though this is Erin's third year, she's new to our team.

"Of course!" I told her. "Name it!"

"I need to know how many gifted students you have in each class," she said. "The system is kind of glitchy, and it's waaaay easier if you just tell me."

My gradebook was already open and with two clicks I was able to see the information she requested.

"The gifted students have a star by their pictures," she told me, unnecessarily. I nodded, because any teacher who's used the platform before knows that.

"How many stars do you have?" she asked.

"They're all stars!" I answered, messing with her. "In their own ways!"

She laughed.

We're going to get along just great!

The Twain

This year one of my students is the son of one of the other English teachers in our school. Oh, I like her a lot, and I'm really looking forward to teaching him, but it's going to be a little bit of a trip.

For example, this morning in a department breakout session, we were wrangling with how to align the IB MYP with the TCRWP (yeah, they pay us for that!). A main objective for my first writing unit is for students to recognize that their experiences and voices are important, a valid, but hard-to-measure goal. Beyond that, we want to meet the students where they are in terms of skills and crafts and individualize instruction and assessment as much as possible.

Such targets are hard to quantify working with the language and the unit planners we are required to use, but bless her heart, our facilitator was determined to find a way.

"But what do you want the students to learn and know?" she repeated.

Finally I looked at my colleague and smiled in exasperation. "I want Edwin to know his story matters!" I told her.

Please, Tell Me More

Ironically, I never saw Gene Wilder's version of Willie Wonka, but the first R rated movie I ever saw was Blazing Saddles. To be honest it happened by accident: on a hot summer day when I was 12 somebody's mom dropped us off at the Fox Theater down at the Plaza, the outdoor shopping center in our area. In those days, nobody had air conditioning and the nearest mall was half an hour away, so the movies was the only alternative to the pool for cooling off.

I guess someone else picked the movie, and I just followed the crowd and settled into my scratchy red seat with my Goobers, lemonade, and popcorn. When the lights went down I had never heard of Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little, or Gene Wilder, but 93 minutes later I would never forget them.

It wasn't just that the humor and language was so obviously inappropriate for our group, although it really, really was, it was also hilarious. From that day forward, that crazy hair and those pale blue eyes would be instantly recognizable to me, and even in the dumbest movies with the broadest humor, he made me laugh.