A Star to Steer By

One of the kids is doing a teacher for a day project on cicadas because, well, Brood X. "Did you know that some cicadas have blue or green eyes?" I asked when she was working on the "fun fact" portion of her presentation.

"No they don't," another student scoffed. "Their eyes are red."

"Why would I tell you that if it wasn't true?" I asked him.

"You can't trust anyone," he shrugged. "Where did you hear that anyway?" 

"Pretty sure it was a NY Times article," I answered, "but it may have been Scientifica American. They are both pretty credible sources."

Meanwhile the first student was busy researching. "They can have blue or green eyes," she reluctantly admitted, "but it's RARE."

"I know," I said, "because that's what I read in the article."

This conversation came just a day after one of my homeroom students told us that he was skeptical that men had ever landed on the moon. "I'm not saying it didn't happen," he shook his head, "I'm just saying that 1969 technology really wasn't up to the job. Think about it."

As the only person in the room alive in 1969, I did think about it, with some concern. 

When some of his classmates pushed back a little, he retorted with a facile, "How do you know? Were you there?"

The issue of fake news, trusted sources, and firsthand experience will be one of the central issues of this generation. As a global community, we have to agree on some basic facts, but that very consensus is being eroded by the same technology we rely on to provide us with information. People who are just a little older than these kids grew up in a world where most of us did trust the majority of information from verified sources and we did not assume that other people were intentionally misleading us. 

Without such an anchor, we can only do our best to prepare these kids and provide them the tools they will need to invent new navigational systems that will allow them to move forward through this storm of information.

That's New

 I was standing outside my classroom door greeting students as they entered for class.

"Happy Pride Month!" waved one student as she approached.

"Thanks," I answered.

Let Them Think So

To round out the year, our sixth graders are doing a series of mini-projects that they have selected themselves. Today I was checking in with a student who was getting ready to pick his final activity of the year. 

"Which project are you going to do?" I asked him.

"Just to make you happy, I'm going to do... Teacher for a Day!" he answered.

"Yay!" I cheered. "That does make me happy! But how did you know it would?"

"Because, obviously, you're a teacher," he told me. "Of course you would be happy for someone else to do it for you."

At Least We Got That Straight

This morning I opened an electronic message from a student that was sent yesterday. "Do we have any asynchronous work?" it read. "I can't find any."

As luck would have it, the student walked in the door at just that moment. "I was just reading your message," I told him. "No assignments yesterday-- it was a holiday!"

"Thanks," he said. "To be honest I have no idea what any day is anymore," he laughed.

"But," I added, "you are missing that mini-project that was due a couple of weeks ago. And you have another one coming up today."

"I haven't had time to finish that," he said quickly.

"Really?" I asked. "Why were you looking for new work yesterday, when you knew you had this to do?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. 

"I guess you just like to know what you're not doing!" I shook my head.

"That sounds about right," he nodded.

Flying Over the Chesapeake

 Riddle: What do you call a bird that flies over the Chesapeake?

A bay-gull!

Look what I made today:

Growth Mindset

After an afternoon spent battling mugwort, just the latest skirmish in an 11 season war, I came home, scrubbed the dirt from beneath my nails and turned to the internet. There I found a source for mugwort seeds (!) (noooooooooooooo!), but also several articles on the medicinal and culinary benefits of the very weed that has been the bane of my garden from the moment I began to clear it for planting. 

I want to appreciate this plant, I do, and I am impressed that it can be used to treat congestion, stress, headaches, poison ivy, and even breech births, not to mention stir-fried, added to soups and salads, mochi and rice cakes, used to season goose and even to bitter beer instead of hops. I want to flip my perspective and see mugwort as a crop instead of an invader, or at least a volunteer, but...

I’m just not there 

Yet!

Not Fair

 What do you call 52 degrees and rainy on the first day the pool is open?