Adventure Planning

 "Does anyone even know the rules of curling?" I asked my homeroom the other day. It was opening ceremonies -11 hours and we were all exploring the Winter Olympics website with the direction that we would each share something of interest after 15 minutes. I discovered that the preliminary rounds of curling had already began. In fact they were going on right then. "What are the brooms for?"

"To sweep the ice so the sliding thing will go where you want it," someone told me.

I clicked on the video feed of the United States versus Norway, and we watched as the athletes aimed their stones and slid them down the ice toward the target area. "What are those shoes?" I asked as their teammate followed the stone along with something that looked like more of a Swiffer than a broom, sometimes polishing the ice ahead, sometimes not. "They can literally walk on ice with them!"

"I think they're like little skis," one of the students suggested.

"Maybe," I said doubtfully as the stone knocked a couple other stones away and people cheered. "It's like Bocce, right?" I noted. "Whoever is closest to the center wins the round, and they score points for all of their stones that are closer than the other teams?" I nodded. "I get it now. It looks kind of fun! With the right shoes, I mean." I walked over to my desk and jotted "curling" on a post-it note.

A little while later we were talking about the things we had noticed, and one student showed us several mascots from past games. "Where are the next Winter Olympics?" I asked. 

A few kids tapped their iPads. "Milano-Cortina?" someone answered.

"Really?" I said. "That's awesome. It is beautiful there!" I went back to my desk and added "Cortina 2026" to my post-it note. Why not? I thought. 

The Legend?

I was cooking dinner when my phone buzzed.

AND what I didn't say?

I did win that t-shirt for trivia on the Alaska cruise!

Banking It

I was making sub plans this afternoon because I'll be out tomorrow. Heidi is having a minor surgery on her foot, and it's my spousal privilege to be there for her. 

Over the years, I've developed a template to make sub plan writing quick and easy: I keep all the old documents and edit them for the next job. That means I have a record of all of my planned absences, and with the exception of my mom's illness, I've been fortunate that, over the last 29 years, they have all been planned. I've accrued myself quite a bit of leave since 1993, knock on wood I never need it. 

For instance, this will be only the third day I've missed this school year, which is pretty good for February. Say what you want, though, about virtual teaching, but last year? I had zero absences. And that's a record.

A Long Way Around

We were talking about the Lunar New Year in homeroom this morning. Most of the sixth graders are tigers, too. It's a fun coincidence that sixth grade is the year when most kids turn 12, and so that year is always their year. "I'm a tiger, too!" I told them in the spirit of connection and community.

"What tiger are you?" asked one particularly savvy celebrant.

"Water," I answered.

"That's this year, too," she noted, and then paused. "But don't they only repeat every 60 years?"

"Wait, what?" another kid interrupted. "Does that mean you're 60?"

"Almost," I admitted.

"I can't believe it!" several students said.

"Me neither," I told them. "Me neither."

The Inner Groundhog

Since tomorrow is Groundhog Day,  I decided to ask the sixth graders to make a prediction. Most were willing, if not eager, to play along, but not all were. "Oh, I can't," said one this afternoon. "I don't celebrate that holiday."

Fortunately, I anticipated gaps in the students' knowledge and understanding of the day, and so I had a short video that detailed its history and traditions. One of the many interesting facts that we discovered was that statistically? The groundhog is only right anywhere from 30-40 percent of the time. A coin toss is more accurate.

Asking a group of sixth graders what they predict has proven to be more accurate as well. By the end of the day, they were evenly split on whether the weather would bring us six more weeks of winter or if, maybe, spring was right around the corner.

Time will tell which half was right, but at least half of them will be right. Take that, Punxsutawney Phil!

A Tiger in Your Tank

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Lunar New Year starts today. But what I didn't say was that this year? Is my year! 

Not only is the Year of the Tiger for me and everyone born in 1928, 1940, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, and 2010, but it is also the year of the Water Tiger, which only comes every 60 years. 

According to Feng Shui Web, we water tigers like to take part in a wide range of activities and are always willing to experiment with new ideas or satisfy our adventurous personalities by traveling around the world to distant lands. We are adaptable, perceptive and have a humble nature about us. 

We will remain calm in a calamity but can sometimes be very indecisive. We communicate very well with others and through our vast range of capabilities and convincing nature will usually achieve what we want in life. We are highly inventive and are often extraordinary writers. 

And while your own year may be unlucky in Chinese tradition, a tiger year generally favors the bold. Any who are ready and willing to move forward with passion could be well rewarded this year. Go big or go home, Tiger.

You Must Remember This

When the scholars in my class need help remembering things I often advise them to set a reminder on their iPads. It's a strategy that I use myself, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Most recently, I set an hourly reminder when my homeroom and I were trying to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in ASL. Whenever my watch chimed, I paused to practice the signs. Well, most of the time, and definitely enough to become pretty familiar with the gestures.

A few days later, I reset the app to remind me to practice daily, but I must have tapped something wrong, because I started getting 2 reminders every hour. Even so, it's easy enough to ignore them, although that does defeat the purpose. 

A few months ago, I set a daily reminder to "Plan the big 6-0" so that I would stop procrastinating on finding and finalizing a place for our family to gather at the end of June this year. It gave me a bit of pause, though, when Siri read the reminder out loud. Plan the big six-nil, she intoned, reading my coming age as the score of a soccer match or something. What does that even mean?

Probably the oldest, continuous reminder I have on my phone is from the summer of 2018. Then, my mom gave my a gift certificate to a restaurant downtown. Reservations were notoriously elusive, opening at midnight on the first for the month to come, and I set a daily reminder to try to book it. "Did you get one?" Mom would ask when we talked, but I never did. Six months later, my mom got sick and our time and attention were otherwise occupied. And then she died, the pandemic came, and, well. 

I don't even have the gift certificate anymore; I have no idea where it went. But every now and then? I still get a reminder to make that reservation.