Original Recipe

My mother and I shared the same taste in Christmas cookies, and every year it has been a pleasant chore for me to spend a Saturday or Sunday in December baking our favorites, Russian Tea Cakes, Rugelach, and Mandelbrot to share.

Last year, as I plucked one of the almond-flavored, biscotti-like Mandelbrot studded with walnuts and glace cherries from the tin, I asked her if she liked them, for we had lost our traditional recipe and I had been trying to recreate it ever since. "No!" she told me without hesitation, "they are too dense and too floury."

"Noted!" I laughed. "I'll try to do better next year!"

The morning after my mom died, I restlessly roamed her condo as I waited for the coffee to brew. Opening a cupboard below the TV, I found a white, 2-inch binder and flipped it open. It was filled with recipes in page protectors, mostly photocopied or typed and printed both for convenience and to compensate the palsy that made handwriting laborious and barely legible the last several years of her life.

But the recipe I turned to first was near the middle of the binder and written on a sheet from a notepad in my mother's own hand. Mandelbrot, it read.

This year, my holiday baking is going to be a little less than in the past, because I'll be away from home next weekend to help organize my mom's estate, and then we'll be off to Buffalo the weekend after that. Even so, there are three varieties of cookies I will definitely bake, and I started this morning.

With the Mandelbrot, of course, which turned out to be crispy and light, just as my mother would have liked.

Re Re Re Re Reading

For the last four or five years we have used the same short story as a common text to teach our students about analyzing a literary character and crafting a claim to argue in an essay. I confess that the first year, I was not that impressed with "Raymond's Run" by Toni Cade Bambara; we used it because the Teachers College materials for writing workshop provided mini-lesson and materials to go along with it. 

BUT, after reading it, listening to it, re-reading it, and discussing it 5 times a day for a week, not to mention dissecting the character of Squeaky and guiding hundreds of students through writing a thesis statement to argue about her, I have changed my mind. Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker is a positive pistol of a person, and Bambara? Is a damn good writer.

Hard Reality

In general, I don't mind attending parent meetings, because I appreciate the time and opportunity to consider individual students and their needs. It's a good reminder of what we educators do for whom and why.

In particular, after two such back-to-back meetings this afternoon lasting from 1-4 PM, my butt literally hurts.

Documentation

"What are you writing?" asked the student I sat next to during class as my co-teacher led the instruction.

"Oh, I'm just taking notes about your behavior," I told him. "Want me to read what I have so far?"

"Okay," he answered with an impressive mix of hesitation and defiance.

"1)" I started, "doing the Macarena in the middle of the classroom."

"What's the Macarena?" he scoffed.

"That little dance you were doing right after the bell rang," I explained. "2) shouting "Do you want a Kiss?" across the room while the teacher was giving instructions."

"I meant a Hershey Kiss," he said.

"I know," I assured him, "but that's what you were shouting. 3) Offering candy to other students while the teacher was doing the lesson."

"Nobody got any," he shrugged.

I nodded. "4) standing up and pretending to put his gym shorts on over his jeans."

"Fine!" he said. "I'll follow the directions."

"Great!" I replied and waited a moment. "5) got his writing notebook and iPad out."

He raised his eyebrows, and picked up his pencil.

"6)" I said, "wrote some great observations about the character in the story!"

He smiled. "Keep writing!" he told me. "I can do a lot more."

Worlds Collide

Several years ago, so long I can't remember exactly when or where, I read (or saw? or heard?) about how physical touch can build community. Just a brief handshake can forge an unconscious positive connection. As soon as I discovered the notion I put it to use. Standing outside my door before each class, I greeted each student by name with either a hand shake, a fist bump, or a high five.

I'm pretty sure I had positive results, but like so many things in a busy teacher's day, that strategy fell by the wayside as I reset the lesson on the smart board, pulled up the class attendance, and pushed in the chairs and picked up any stray belongings from the class before (another useful habit, along the lines of the broken window theory).

But today, something there was that prompted me to give the human touch a try with my last class of the day, which is again this year my most challenging, mostly because of a couple of boys who are impulsive, negative attention-seekers with poor self-regulation skills. And so I stood by the door and welcomed each kid by name and offered him or her a high-five along with my sincere wish to Have a great class! My co-teachers walked in last, with big smiles and hands slapping as they wished each other a good class, too.

Did it work? I'd like to think so-- the two most troublesome students were pretty subdued (but that might have been due to the fact that their moms were coming in today and tomorrow).

And everyone else? Was... sort of on task.

Even so, the episode reminded me that I teach people, not classes, and every single kid is a whole universe walking around in jeans, sneakers, and a hoodie. To them, the 42 minutes they spend in my class is a blip, and I am mostly incidental.

Unless I choose otherwise.

Never Say Never

The activity was pretty simple: work in small groups and report out to the class evaluating claims to decide whether or not they could make strong argument strong essays. The choices were a little confusing, though: "too obvious" if few would disagree, "not defensible" if few would argue in favor, and "controversial" for that just right claim, but that's why we were working together.

The task was harder for some than others, but most had to give it some thought. Then there was that one kid who wanted to argue every issue, no matter how outrageous. Of course she knew she was tilting at windmills when she raised her hand to say that perhaps all middle school students in the US should indeed work full time in addition to their studies, and she understood full well the difficulties in arguing that only citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 should be allowed to vote, but she was grasping for a challenge and I couldn't fault her for that.

And when it came time for the independent assessment, she aced it in under five minutes. Looking around at the rest of her classmates working intently, she whispered, "What should I do now?"

"Why don't you start drafting your argument that only families with small children should be allowed in amusement parks?" I asked her. "Or would you rather argue that children of all ages should be able to drive?"

"I think I'll read my book," she laughed.

#HolidayReady

I thought the gym might be a little crowded on the Sunday after Thanksgiving-- maybe folks wanted to work off the extra pie? But that was not the case. The nail salon, on the other hand?

Was packed!