Around the Bend

In addition to consciously not worrying about the election results, I spent a big chunk of the last four days grading and commenting on the first "big" writing pieces that my sixth graders have composed. As such? It's been a bit of a slog.

But reading my friend Joanne's blog post about hope and the election reminded me this morning that Martin Luther King said "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," and her optimism, and his, made me feel a little better.

And at the end of reading all that earnest, sloppy, wonderful, imperfect writing I was reminded that, in my experience, the arc of sixth grade is also long, but it bends toward literacy. 

Onward!

Tired Truth

"Who do you think will win the election?" my sister asked me as we FaceTimed yesterday.

"I refuse to say," I answered. "I just don't have it in me to speculate. It would make the outcome even more disappointing. I just want it to be over."

"I know," she said and held up her phone to show me a meme that a friend of hers had shared. 

Yah. 

In the Ring

As I mentioned, one of the decluttering chores I did yesterday was to install the Ring doorbell I received for Christmas. For the last 10 months it's been languishing in its box as I wrestled with whether or not to keep it. For while I am kind of interested to catch a glimpse of the fox and deer that are rumored to pass by here, I liked the doorbell we already had, and I wasn't sure if the time and hassle of installing the ring would be worth it. So, the box just became one of those things that got moved when it was time to tidy up-- from the side board to the desk to the sideboard again, always placed somewhere that I would see it so I wouldn't forget about it and find it 15 years later. (I'm talking to you evaporated milk!)

Yesterday I made up my mind and reclaimed that 72 cubic inches of real estate. The installation, while not the snap they portrayed it to be in the directions, was not as complicated as I feared, and within 45 minutes my Ring was ringing and recording and reporting it all to the app on my phone and watch. 

No doubt the novelty will wear off, but every couple of hours I feel the need to check the footage and see who's been passing by. And while there has been no wild life, I have found cause for alarm. 

"Who are these sketchy guys lurking in the courtyard at 12:34 at night?" I asked Heidi, indignantly thrusting the phone over to her. 

"Um, isn't that our next door neighbor and the guy who's been staying with them?"

"Oh, yeah," I agreed, "that is them. But look at this! They delivered the paper at 3:11 AM! Why so early?"

"So it will be here when you get up?"

"Fine! but who's this guy in slides and bath robe?"

That stumped her for a minute. "Is he smoking?" she asked, squinting at the tiny screen.

I looked, too. "I think so."

"He's the other neighbor, all the way at the end. He must have gotten up and gone out for a smoke."

But mostly, the camera just captures us: me running out in the rain to rescue the pumpkins and the Halloween decorations, Heidi taking Lucy out, me locking the door before we go walking, us carrying groceries up from the car, mundane actions somehow elevated by the simple fact of their recording.

Cottage Industries

I spent some time tidying up this morning. My 10 x 10 work space had become pretty cluttered, and I was feeling overwhelmed. In addition to the two monitors, iPad, pens, pencils, notebooks and folders that comprise my school set up, there was a little rock-painting station, 4 pumpkins, 3 spaghetti squash, several butternut squash, and some ripening tomatoes over on the sideboard, a six-pack of home canned tomatoes and 2 jars of jam, a bag of mason jars and bottles, some murder boxes, a crate of teaching books from my classroom, another crate of airheads, envelopes, cards, and stamps, a shopping bag with some items I want to have framed, and the ring doorbell that I got for Christmas and couldn't decide if I wanted to install-- all this, in addition to things that were in this space before it became such a multi-purpose area. 

To be honest, there wasn't a lot I could do, but I started by organizing the pantry to find space for the canned goods. Then I painted a few rocks and cooked the spaghetti squash, which we will have for dinner. Next I went through the shelf of books next to my desk, finding a couple to drop in one of the little libraries around the neighborhood and another few to toss. Then I painted some details on my rocks, read some of the books I was undecided about,  and replaced the books I was getting rid of with my school books. After that I installed the doorbell and painted my rocks some more. 

Believe it or not, there actually seems to be a little more space in here, but it must be some of the most productive square footage in the county!

Freezin Friday

It seems like all of a sudden those warm days of late summer are long gone and winter is on its way. I shivered in my teaching chair all day long, bundled up in flannel and fleece but only warming up briefly with a hot cup of strong tea. 

I may have to move my one room schoolhouse operation closer to the fireplace!

Letting out all the Cold

The other thing I did with my homeroom yesterday was to take a NYTimes quiz. The premise of the challenge was to look at a series of photos of the inside of refrigerators and guess whether they belonged to Trump voters or Biden voters.  

Every few pictures you are asked to click on one item in the refrigerator that influenced your guess. At the bottom of the quiz there is data about the items that were most frequently associated with correct and incorrect guesses. 

The whole feature was fascinating to me and to several of my students. Beyond the voyeuristic curiosity of looking into a stranger's refrigerator, it was an interesting way to reframe our ideas about other voters with whom we broadly agree or disagree politically. 

I would never draw any but the most general conclusions from the pictures, but those refrigerators did remind me that I have some things in common with people I disagree with, and that is a slippery idea to hang on to in these polarized times. At the very least, we all have to eat.

Who is that Data Point?

One of the supports we are offering students during distance learning is a dedicated 35 minutes a day with a teacher adviser. Known as TA in our school, this contemporary version of homeroom, and pillar of the whole-child, middle school model, has undergone a lot of ups and downs in the 28 years I've been a teacher. For example, since it is not purely academic, advisory is often the first thing to be cut in the name of remediation and test prep. Even so, the simple truth that spending time with a small group of kids with the intention to forge a personal relationship is a positive and supportive equation has managed to shine through in the darkest of times. 

At our school, we are provided with a lot of guidance as to how to use the time we have. In addition to the conferences and IB orientation we do with our students, this year we have also been given some mindfulness routines and some current events activities, too. Not surprisingly, the current events piece has been very focused on the election. Such discussions are always unpredictable with 11-year-olds living inside the Beltway, many of whom are from other countries. 

Over the years I've learned a few strategies to approach that potential minefield. "How many of you guys have an opinion on the presidential election?" I asked today. "I don't want you to tell me who it is, I just want you to raise your hand if you support one candidate over the other." 10 out of 14 virtual hands flew up, but I felt like I had to check in with the other four. "So you're saying you don't care who wins the election?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral. They all confirmed that was the case.

Later, I considered who those kids were. In my homeroom I have six girls and eight boys. Three of the girls identify as Latina, one is Ethiopian, one is white, and one is from Nepal. Of the boys, three are white, one is of Eritrean descent, and the other four are Latino. It was the last four who did not have an opinion on the presidential election. If we had been in the classroom, there might have been some peer influence on answering my question, but one aspect of virtual teaching and learning with sixth graders is that the students don't really pay very much attention to what the other kids say, and I feel like my informal survey was pretty accurate.

I'm not really sure what the significance of the data is, though, because although advisory is meant to be a time to build relationships, the process can be slow, even in person, and I don't have a lot of context, other than the four of them are hardworking young men who want to do well in school.

But 100% in a demographic? That's got to mean something.