Ukes for Sale Chapter 3

"When my ukulele comes, please don't open it! Don't even take it out of the mailing box!" my student requested.

"Okay," I agreed. "Why?"

"Because I've been watching ukulele unboxing videos on YouTube," she told me, "and I want the experience!"

Ukes for Sale Chapter 2

"I brought the money!" my student told me earlier this week. "And I know exactly which ukulele I want. My dad helped me pick it out. AND, I'm getting the exact same tuner that you have."

I pulled the merchandise up online, verified it with her, and placed the order. She handed me a baggie with 42 dollars.

"You owe me 35 cents," she said. "When will it be here?!"

"Thursday," I informed her, depositing a quarter and a dime in her outstretched palm.

For the next two days, she asked about the status of her order every hour or so during the school day. "Still coming Thursday," I told her every time.

Tuesday night, I was shopping for writing prizes and found a tiny ukulele for 5 bucks. Given the current ukulele craze in my class, I could not pass it up.

As I carried the shopping bag of fabulous prizes into school the next morning, my student hailed me. "Did it come yet?"

I held up the small plastic toy I had purchased the night before. Her face lit up, froze, and then fell. "That's my ukulele?" she asked.

I paused, prolonging her dismay just a little bit, and then laughed. "No! Yours is coming tomorrow!"

She clutched her chest. "I was abouta say!"

Channel 5

We thanked our dog walker profusely for bringing Lucy over for a play date with her dog, Beckett.

"No problem," she said, "I want him tired! And this was actually a great day for him because another of his favorite friends, Hazel, was here, too."

"Lucy and Hazel?" I laughed. "Who wouldn't love to spend the afternoon with two classic sit-com characters?"

Ukes for Sale Chapter 1

"Will you order me a ukulele, and then I'll pay you back?" asked a student last week. It was after school, and I was practicing the strum pattern for All My Loving. 

"Nope," I answered without looking up.

She let out an exasperated sigh. "Why not?"

"But if you give me the money and a note from your dad," I continued,  "then sure."

"I saw one I like for twenty dollars," she told me. "You can order it, then bring it in, then give it to me with 2 pieces of chocolate."

"Why would I do that?" I asked.

"You're selling used ukuleles!" she said. "You can't expect to get full price!"

Victim of a Victimless Crime

I did a little last minute prize shopping at the dollar store last evening, and although my students enjoyed the rewards of their poetic labors, I suffered a bit from unexpected negative consequences.

"Are you expecting a call from the credit union?" the secretary asked when I answered the phone this afternoon.

"No," I answered, "but I'd like to talk to whoever is calling."

A click and a ring later I was speaking to a representative of the credit fraud agency who had detected a number of suspicious charges on my debit card. All of them were from today when I was verifiably in school, dancing to Celebration by Kool and the Gang, awarding prizes, and playing poetry Kahoots. Even so, a knot twisted in my stomach, and the all the fun of the day drained slowly away as he recited a litany of local grocery stores, gas stations, and banks where my card had been (mostly) declined.

At last he got to the charges I had actually made last evening: Total Wine (don't judge!) and the dollar store. "I made those purchases," I told him, and immediately I remembered that guy who just couldn't pick a line at the dollar store.

I watched him on his phone as he drifted around the checkout area, wondering if he was waiting for someone or what. When it was my turn, I looked at him and said, "Weren't you ahead of me?"

He held up his open soda. "I only have this," he said.

My handbasket was overflowing, and so I gestured for him to go ahead. He made unnecessarily awkward conversation as he dug through his pockets for exact change. "Have a nice evening," he said, stepping aside, but not actually leaving the store.

At this point, I noticed that I felt uncomfortable about him, but I figured it was my own dollar store bias, and I concerned myself with my own transaction.

Was that guy an RFID skimmer?

Who knows? Someone got my debit card info today, and more than anything, I'm grateful that the card company caught it so quickly and that my bank will cover the charges that went through.

Poetry by the Numbers

As April draws to a close, I spent some time this afternoon crunching some numbers on the Poetry Challenge.

Here's a bit of the data:

130 students wrote 1223 poems!

41 wrote 20+ times and won a spin of the prize wheel;
21 others wrote the required 10 poems or more;
67 wrote at least one poem,
and 11 did not participate.

Overall? I'd say the month was a qualified success, and there was some amazing writing as always. The results are pretty similar to last year's group, which is pretty remarkable considering that then I had 80 writers to oversee and now it's sooooooooo many more.

One big difference is that last year, there was only a single student who never shared a single poem, and this year there were eleven.

The voices who choose not to be heard are always the ones I miss most.

Golf Clap

I ran into four of my male colleagues congratulating themselves on their performance in a student-staff football game today.

"I'm guessing you guys won?" I said.

"Sometimes you have to take the 8th graders down a peg!" one of them explained.

The others laughed.

Do you? I thought. Do you?

Would the math teacher show a student how much quicker he could solve a problem?

Would the social studies teacher feel the need to demonstrate his superior knowledge of history?

Would the IB coordinator want the students to focus on just how little they understand compared to him?

Would the assistant principal want students to exclude younger kids because they don't add anything to the group?

Since they are all very good educators, I'm guessing the answer is No.

Then why is it such a victory for a group of men to beat 13 and 14 year old boys on a football field?