Oh No! Our Table- It's Broken

 The custodian tapped on my door a few minutes ago. "Are you still having trouble with your table?" he asked.

I tilted my head in confusion. "I don't think so," I said with a frown. 

"It was this one over here," he pointed and walked toward the table by the window. "There was a note or something on it, but I accidentally wiped over it and then I couldn't see exactly what it said."

His description jogged my memory. "I think I did see a post-it over there yesterday," I told him, "but you know what? I think it was just something silly that the kids were joking about."

He jiggled the table. "Well, I tightened it up," he said, "but I wanted to make sure everything was all right. Just let me know if you ever need anything like that."

I thanked him, and as soon as he left I Googled, Oh no the table is broken, the phrase I remembered hearing some students laughing about. A ridiculous meme from 2018 popped up along with hundreds of parodies, many of them recently popular on Tik Tok, and a couple even with Squid Game theme. 

Mystery solved-- that table's been broken for years, and it's not even in our school. But I do appreciate that conscientious custodian.

A Feast for Spitters

In general, spelling is much less of a problem for students now that it was in the early days of my career. The explanation, of course, is the judicious use of the autocorrect feature on the devices we supply each student with. 

Not even 10 years ago, we had to encourage students to run spell-check, and extra step many were unwilling to take, but now their iPads give three options even as they are typing, and some students only key in a couple of letters before tapping the word they want and moving on. 

I doubt I will ever compose like that: most of the time I don't even see the words at the bottom of my screen when I'm texting; my brain filters them out as unnecessary information to bother with. I also wonder what the long-term impact will be on a person's writing who doesn't even form whole words. Maybe research will show that there is no harm at all; that it's kind of like reading all those passages with missing and transposed letters, generally pretty easy for the fluent speaker. 

But the question of fluency brings up another consideration, too. My students who are not native English speakers like to use the suggested spelling feature as they write, but they do not always do so accurately. Take today, for example. Kids were asked if they considered spiders to be good or bad and to provide three facts and some reasoning to support this mini claim. 

Spitters are bad to the bone, one writer started with animation, because they can be Venmo's.

But, countered another, they do eat misquotes.

Late Aughts

Recently the events of 2007-2009 have been intruding on our consciousness. Britney Spears' trouble with conservatorships and the like all started back then and were the subject of a podcast that Heidi was fond of listening to on road trips. Just over 10 years ago, times were different: Homeland Security and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were dominant; iPhones and social media were only emergent; the Great Recession, President Obama, and skinny jeans were right around the corner.

And Brittany Murphy was alive. Last night we watched a documentary about the sad ending of her life in late 2008 which reminded us of nothing so much as the fragility of young woman as they face the relentless expectation of our culture. And for the final show of the night? Well, recently the creator of The Sopranos (sort of) confirmed that the famous black out was indeed the end of Tony, as many have speculated over the years, and since I was already in a late 2000s frame of mind, why not revisit Tony Soprano's swan song from 2007? 

Too Soon, Not Soon Enough

A TV show we have been watching made the optimistic choice to frame its return to production after the COVID hiatus of 2020 as "Sometime in the future when COVID is behind us." Even so, the show, which is a medical drama, portrayed in flashback what the characters and the hospital in which it set went through starting in March 2020, when a sick man who has recently traveled from Seattle infects an ER nurse, and moving on to her fight for life, even as the ER and ICU are overwhelmed.

And although the story is no more harrowing than any of the dramatized illnesses and injuries that the show depicted in the episodes before the pandemic, for me? It was too much, too soon. But the fact that when the show was produced in late 2020 and aired in early 2021, its creators were looking forward to a time in the near future without the specter or even the consequences of COVID-19, made it even more painful to watch knowing how far off they were.

I didn't realize how traumatized I still am from living through the last 20 months.

Transparency

"Do you like spending all day around kids?" one of my students asked today.

My eyebrows shot up in alarm. "Yes! Can't you tell?"

"Good point," she conceded. "Just checking."

Deciding He's Done

I asked my students yesterday to name the "best" Pixar character and give three reasons why they thought so. I have to admit that I was surprised by the outcome. The character most often mentioned was Lightning McQueen from Cars. 

McQueen garnered a lot of support from the boys, while the girls spread their arguments out over many characters. Those who wrote in favor of Lightning gave reasons like he's strong willed, he's hard working, he never gives up. Some made it personal: I'm a car guy, and he's a car, and I grew up watching him, and he's funny and fast.

And then there was the most poignant answer of all: Basically, he's my childhood, and those were happy times. 

What a world it is when 11-year-olds express such nostalgia for a childhood that by all rights should not be over yet.

Old Timers

 The lights were on and the door was open in my classroom when I arrived at school this morning. A large black tool bag sat on one of the tables, and as I entered, I could see a gray-haired man sitting behind it with the pieces of my disassembled clock laid out between him and the bag. "Yay!" I cheered. "You're here to fix the clock!"

He nodded. "You know what the funny thing was?" he asked without looking up. "I got here at 7:15 this morning, and your clock was right. I almost left, because I checked all the other rooms around you, and their clocks all said the same time. But when I got back, your clock still said 7:15, so I knew it was broken."

"Broken!" I said. "Wasn't it because of the time change?"

"Oh, no," he assured me. "The movement was totally frozen. I had a new one with me, though, so I'm replacing it right now."

"Do you think that clock is original to the building?" I asked.

"No," he said, "the original ones are like the ones that stick out of the walls in the hallways."

"Well it's pretty old," I told him, "It's been here at least since 1994."

"Yeah," he nodded. "This black plastic ring model was probably made in the early 80's."

"That makes sense;" I said thoughtfully, "that's around the time they added the walls to convert from an open-space school."

"This clock has been fixed a few times since then," he noted. "This movement I'm replacing was made in 2005. How long did you say you've been here?"

"This is year 28 in this room," I said.

"Well, I used to work for the company that makes these clocks," he continued, "and when I retired, the school system recruited me to work for them."

"How long has that been?" I asked.

"Over 15 years," he told me.

Before I could say another word, the bell rang, and kids started pouring in the room. He climbed the ladder to hang the clock back on the wall, and then packed his tools.

"Thank you," I said over the clamor of another new school day.

He nodded and left without another word.