Name That Tune

 It was around 6 PM when we pulled up to a light beside a car that was literally rocking. The windows were rolled down and I could see a young woman in the driver's seat singing at the top of her lungs. Her eyes were reflected in the rear view mirror, but they did not meet mine; they were focused on the little girl in the backseat who was singing along. Their joy? Was contagious, and I wanted a little of what they had. I rolled down the window and listened to the song blasting from their car. "I don't know that," I confessed to Heidi. "Do you?"

She didn't, and right then the light changed, and they were gone. "Hey Siri!" I called, waiting for that amorphous purple cloud to materialize. "What song goes like this?" and I sang a few bars.

To my amazement, Siri gave us a title an artist right away. 'Wow!" I said to Heidi. "She recognized my singing! That's pretty good!"

And so I tested her again by asking her to play the song, so that we, too, might roll down our windows and sing as loud as we could to the warm October evening. But the song that came on was not the same, and it was time for us to get on the interstate, so we rolled up the windows and headed home.

Bare Faced

Today was picture day at school, and although I went after the final bell had rung I still found myself in a kind of a long line. I made the best of it by chatting up a student I had only met earlier today; she is a bit of character who carries around a tiny black lump that she has named Mr. Bean in a little plastic box.

"Can I call him Senor Frijoles?" I joked, because she is a Spanish speaking student.

"No!" she insisted. "He is not for me to eat! He is dried slime!"

As we waited, I asked her if she was going to smile for the camera.

"I'm not going to show my teeth!" she said, and explained why, but I couldn't really follow her. I was a little distracted by the site of the students on the stage; as we got closer I could see them posing without their masks. 

And although I didn't know too many of them, I was a little excited about the prospect of seeing the new pictures of the students I do teach when they update my grade book in a few weeks. Even though we're all used to seeing the masks, once in a while a kid will pull theirs down to take a sip of water and another student will say, "I did not think you looked like that under your mask!" and I'll realize that I totally agree. 

Flex Time

I asked the sixth graders to post a single word that best described how they were feeling today, and the most popular word by far was "tired." 

I sympathize with them. As I wrote a few days ago, last week was the first full, five day, in person week since March of 2020, and I'm feeling it, too.

When I shared my observation with the students, one kid was all over it. "I know!" she said, "But I didn't even have a full week last week!"

"Because you broke your arm," I nodded.

"Right!" she said rapidly, like she says everything. 

"Then this is your first full week?" asked the student beside her.

"Nope," she fired back. "Early release yesterday. I won't have a regular week until next week."

It was actually the next item on our agenda to talk about schedule changes for next week. Because of state-mandated testing, we are about to implement the seventh and eighth versions of schedules for the sixth graders. In addition to Block A, Block B, Anchor, A, Anchor B, Early Release Anchor A, next Monday and Tuesday we're having Testing Day Anchor A and Testing Day Anchor B. (Which should be easily recast as Delayed Opening Anchor A and Delayed Opening Anchor B-- but who knows?) 

"What time is lunch?" the fast talking kid asked when I told them about the testing.

"12:45," I replied.

"What! That's so late! Yesterday we ate at 10 AM and next week we have to wait until 12:45? Why??" she dramatically dropped her head to the table in mock despair.

But again, she had a good point. The Early Release schedule does call for the sixth graders to go to lunch after a compressed timetable of five 21-minute classes. But to be honest? I kind of love it. My teaching day is over when they go, leaving plenty of time for planning and grading.

In fact, when my CLT met for professional development yesterday afternoon, I was in exceptional humor. "It's the schedule!" I explained. "If I could teach these hours every day? I'd be good to go for another 10 years!"

Service Industry

"I'm not sure how they cook it," a student told me the other day when he was writing about a traditional family food. "We always buy it."

I scanned what he had written "Injera?" I said. "I think they cook it on a huge, flat stone or griddle."

"Like a pancake?" he confirmed.

"Yep," I answered, "and they use a special grain called tef."

He nodded.

"Does your family cook the food that you have with it?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" he replied.

"Like, do you have doro wat or something that you make it home?" 

He shook his head and frowned. Suddenly he laughed. "Do you mean do do wet? Chicken stew?" 

I laughed, too. "I guess I didn't pronounce that very well." What I had said sounded like door-oh-watt. "How do you say it again?"

He patiently coached me until we both agreed that I was much closer than I had been at the beginning of the conversation. "Thank you," I told him. "You taught me something important today." 

And I meant it! Especially when I think back on all the times I ordered that dish from an Ethiopian restaurant, butchering the pronunciation on every occasion, and considering how patient the waiters were with me.

Of course it was their job to understand me and help me to get what I needed and wanted.

Just as it is mine.

Three Squares

At our school, the final project for the first unit of sixth grade English is a personal narrative that is somehow related to food. Since kids have been writing personal narratives since 3rd or 4th grade, our team made the decision a few years ago in an effort to shake our young writers away from their go-to topic. Plus, food is universal, we reasoned, everyone eats every day and there is a lot of untapped material there.

Today was the day when I revealed that parameter of the assignment to the students, and to be honest? They were underwhelmed and even a little resistant to the idea, and as confident as I am in our choice and reasoning, by the end of the day I was a little weary of defending it. 

That is, until in the waning minutes of the last class, when we were wrapping up, a student walked over to me to ask me a question in a semi-private conversation."Can I tell you a fun fact about myself?"

Sure!" I said and turned from what I was working on to look at him. 

"I do not like cake or cookies or pie or ice cream or anything sweet!" he declared.

"Wow!" I answered "That is unusual! What do you like?"

"Mostly Asian food," he told me.

"Your family is from Vietnam, right?" I said. "What are your favorite foods?"

We talked for a few minutes about Pho (he likes it with tripe!) and summer rolls and my favorite, cha gio (Spring rolls). He told me his mom is a great cook, but she has a Bolivian friend who is so good at making spring rolls that they always get her to do it. He also told me that his mom had lost her job because of COVID, but that his dad was still working, and they were doing okay.

"It was really nice talking to you," I said as the bell rang and he gathered his things.

"Can I tell you something else?" he stopped at my desk before he left. "You're my favorite teacher!"

And as pleased as I was to hear him say that, I'd really like to think it was the food talking!

Low Bar

 The question of the day today was What did you have for breakfast? Which to me seemed like a quickie to me, but the chorus of "What if you didn't eat anything? was louder than I thought, and convincing students that "Nothing" was an acceptable answer in that situation took a little time. And I might have seemed a little more frustrated than usual, because, in an astute social maneuver, one of the kids asked me what I had for breakfast.

"I bet it was Eggs Benedict, right?" she guessed.

I laughed, wishing I had that much time in the morning.

"I don't even know what it is," she continued, "but since you used to be a chef it sounds like something you might make."

After I explained what it was, and subsequently gave a quick run down on poaching, and then refereed a heated debate on the desirability of runny yolks, I pulled the class back together by announcing my morning menu.

"Actually, I had avocado toast and iced coffee for breakfast today."

The class sat in stunned silence for a moment.

"Lucky!" scoffed one student.

"What kind of bread?" asked another enviously.

"It was sandwich bread I made myself," I shrugged.

"Wow! You really are a chef," the first kid said.

Recalibrating

Now that we've survived that first full in-person week since March 2020, today I've realized there's a bit of a nasty corollary:

The first real two-day weekend since March 2020.

Ouch!