One More Pivot

Just as the students were arriving for their first day in the building this morning, some sort of HVAC catastrophe had the halls outside my classroom roaring like an airport runway. With my door closed, the thunder was manageable, and when the noise quit, I assumed it was fixed. 

Not so fast, though! The principal knocked on my door a little while later. "We're going to have to move your class down the hall while they work in the ceiling to replace the part," she told me. "It's for safety reasons. Have the students pack up." 

In another time, the request might not have seemed so complicated, especially since there were only 4 kids in the room with me. But concurrent teaching and all its attendant technology had me dismantling my carefully calibrated set-up: unplugging several cables, turning off the SMART board, and leaving my extra monitor and the webcam and mic behind. 

"We'll be back on the call in a minute!" I told my virtual students and led these brand new students to an unfamiliar classroom with only laptop and iPad in hand. With no other choice, I propped up my laptop on a student desk, almost as if it was the fifth student in the class, and taught from the front of the room.

Oh, the lesson went fine, and it was actually quite liberating to get up from behind my fortress of a teaching station and move around a little. By the end of the class period, the repairs were complete, and I was able to return to my classroom and reconnect the whole apparatus before the next class began... 

...and dream of a time when the room is filled with kids agin, and all that technology is no longer necessary to do the job.

Not so Free Market

"I need to work on getting more commissions at lunch today," a student told me this morning. Although I have been teaching him remotely since September, this was our first face to face interaction.

"What do you mean?" I asked him.

"I draw humanoid figures," he explained with a bit of impatience. "Customers ask, I go home and do it, and they pay me two dollars when I give it to them."

"Hm," I responded. "I like your initiative, but I'm pretty sure kids aren't allowed to sell things to each other here at school."

"Oh," he dismissed my concern, "that would just be faulty logic. I'm sure it's fine."

"Well," I responded. "I'd hate to see you get into trouble. Why don't I check the rules to make sure?"

Signs of Life

For their fiction project, the sixth graders in our school write and illustrate a children's book for an audience a few years younger than they are. It gives them a chance to apply the elements of fiction and all they know about creating characters and conflict and setting in a simple, but creative way. Throughout the unit we read and analyze published books as models and mentor texts, again, a simple and accessible way for students to solidify their knowledge of fiction and its structure. 

Today we read A Place for Pluto by Stef Wade, a book that checks all the boxes for the assignment. Once he is stripped of his planet status, Pluto wants to find a place to fit in, so he talks to comets, meteors, and asteroids before finally meeting the other dwarf planets. The resolution is a two-page spread with all the planets, plus the Sun and Halleys Comet answering the classic question Where are they now? with a little joke for each. For example, the Sun says, "You all make me dizzy!" 

I like to go through the page and ask students to explain why the lines are funny. "Because the planets spin around the sun," they'll say. 

But when we get to Mars, it's a little tougher when he says, "Let's celebrate with chocolate!" Not many kids make the connection between the planet and the candy company of the same name. 

Even so, I had to laugh when one of the students who was here in person this morning mused, "Did they find chocolate on Mars?"

But ever an exemplar of growth mindset, I recovered my composure quickly and answered, "Not yet!"

What the Devil?

When it came to TV and the movies, I used to love a good serial killer or true crime drama. Malicious or mean, villains and their evil actions were as easy to watch as the popcorn was to munch: hot and salty and forgotten the moment the house lights came up. These days, though, with all the negativity in the real world, I have found it almost impossible to escape into the fictional world of TV. Everything is too sad, or too spiteful, or too violent, or too callous, or too unjust to enjoy. I've even taken a break from The Crown; they lost me when the queen told her son that no one, in the kingdom, the palace, or the family cares what he thinks. 

Googling "nice shows" will only get you so far, but there are a raft of sites that will tell you what to watch next based on what you liked before. Somehow, through a combination of scrolling and clicking, I found my way to a list that had the show Lucifer on it. Perhaps you, like I did, might think that a show about the devil is the opposite of what I was looking for, but we, friends, would be wrong. 

Based on a character created by, well, God, and a situation invented by Neil Gaiman for DC Comics, the series is about how Lucifer, having grown tired of Hell, moves to LA and opens a nightclub. Through a series of events, he becomes a consultant to the LAPD, using his unique abilities to question people of interest and uncover deeply buried clues. The show is irreverent and funny, with playful dialogue and silly situations. And although he expects selfishness and cruelty from all he meets, Lucifer Morningstar (as he is redundantly known) is more complex than either Milton or the Books of Ezekiel and Isaiah would lead you to believe. 

We are only a few episodes in, but redemption is a big theme. What could be more positive and feel-good than that?

Consider the Sweet Potato

I.

The best way to cook a sweet potato, according to Nik Sharma, on the podcast the Genius Tapes, is to both steam and roast it. Steaming it breaks down its fibers and gives the veggie a creamy texture, but roasting it “releases at least 17 more aromatic molecules than boiling or microwaving.” As such, Sharma recommends a hybrid, 2-stage method involving aluminum foil. The result? A creamy and complex sweet potato. I have tried it myself, and I can vouch for the technique.

II.

When I was growing up, the one time a year that sweet potatoes were always served was on Thanksgiving. Then, my aunt would boil and mash them with butter and brown sugar and top them off with mini-marshmallows toasted under the broiler. They were gooey and sweet, any child’s dream, and I couldn't stand them.

III.

My sister has a friend who went through a phase in college where she ate a big baked sweet potato for dinner every single night. She literally turned a light shade of orange from all the beta-carotene. 

IV.

There is a difference between sweet potatoes and yams, but no one is quite sure what it is. One is starchier, one is sweeter; one can be purple or orange or white. One is monocot, and one is dicot. I used to think the orange things we ate at Thanksgiving were sweet potatoes, then a few years later I was sure they were yams, but now I think they were definitely sweet potatoes. Maybe. 

V.

Every year, we get at least 10 pounds of sweet potatoes from our winter CSA share. It might seem like a lot for a couple of little 50-something ladies to consume over the course of a few months, but they keep very well, and we find lots of ways to use them: diced in soup and stew, mashed for muffins, riced for gnocchi, grated for pancakes, home-fried with onions and eggs, spiraled and crisped browned in the oven, minced and added to risotto, and of course, both steamed and roasted. Don't worry, we get that vitamin A!

Coda

We've only been back in the building for a few days, but already the weekends are filling up like a bucket under a leaking roof. Where does the time go?

Fortunately, there is no remedy for a busy day like a simple supper. Hello scrambled eggs, salad, and toast!

Mask-capades

Perhaps the hardest part for me so far of returning to the school building is wearing a mask all day. I have a wide assortment of face coverings, but I haven't found any that remain comfortable for much longer than 30 minutes. So, I always take advantage of the rule allowing us to remove our masks when we are alone in a classroom with the door closed.

But I was halfway down the hallway at school this afternoon when I realized I wasn't wearing a mask. Even though the building was almost deserted, and no one else was in sight, my eyes widened and I began to feel a little panicky. Just then, a colleague turned the corner. 

"I forgot my mask!"

"You're not wearing a mask!" we said in unison.

I spun on my heel, clapped one hand over my nose, and then pulled my turtleneck up and over my mouth, speed walking back toward my room. "Sorry," I added over my shoulder.

Back in my room, I grabbed one of the many masks on my desk and put it on. I sighed, plopped down in my chair, and put my hands in the pocket of my hoodie, where I found a mask that was in there all along. Shaking my head, I stretched my legs and stuffed my hands into my side pockets. There was another mask in the left side. 

Evidently? I know myself well enough to be prepared for those moments of forgetfulness, but not well enough to think that I actually am prepared for those moments of forgetfulness. 

Maybe I'll just keep my mask on at school.