A Bit of an Overstatement

Today, when the lesson was on hyperbole, the fun challenge was to find your "superhero name" based on a silly list and your initials. I know my audience, though, and the activity was very entertaining for all of us. In fact, coupled with the warm-up question, What is the greatest thing in the world? (sleep, the weekend, food, love, friendship, yo mama?), it provided all sorts of inspiration for humorous hyperbole poems.

According to the list, my alter ego is Professor Marshmallow, an identity I embraced with a homemade nameplate and a modified Patrick-Stewart-as-Dr-X accent. And when a table of kids was a little too chatty? 

Quoth Professor Marshmallow: "Don't make me go all hot chocolate on you!" 

Since 1665

"I need to clean off the deck," I sighed this morning, cringing at the clutter of empty hanging baskets, pots for plants, dead leaves, and the remains of an empty bird nest I had recently knocked from the rafters. As I mentally added the task to my ever so long list of spring chores, I took a deep breath and remembered what I realized this morning: When I retire? There should be nothing stopping me checking off everything on my to-do list. I may finally organize my life.

"This place is going to be spic and span when I retire!" I told Heidi, who raised her eyebrows and nodded appreciatively. "Spic and span!" I repeated, and then wondered where that phrase (as accurate as it was to describe my post-retirement aspirations) came from. I haven't heard it in a while, I thought. Is it some kind of slur I should remove from my vocabulary?

Thank goodness for the internet when it comes to questions like that. A quick search revealed that the phrase was first seen in print in 1665. It derives from "spiksplinternieuw" a Dutch expression about brand new ships and their spiky wood splinters. My research also led me to a nifty feature that the Merriam-Webster website has, called Time Traveler. There you can read all the words that were first seen in print in any given year; it is like a time-elapsed view of the evolution our language.

What other words were first published in 1665? Notably to me on the list of 94 were amok, biography, fossil, putty, rationalize, and volcano, but the list is fascinating, and you would certainly be intrigued.

Playing around with it, instead of cleaning the deck, (rabbit hole: 1938) I also discovered that zip code, T-ball, salsa, ramen, and porn weren't part of the language until 1962. What a year of innovation that was!

Where's Lucy?

I was looking around, without much luck, for an electronic copy of a recipe I haven't made in a while. I searched my Google drive, my phone messages, my email, and finally my DropBox account with no luck. But I did find the picture of Lucy that the breeder sent before we got her, along with a group shot of her whole litter: five sleepy red puppies propped adorably against each other. 

"Which one do you think is Lucy?" I asked Heidi, a question we have pondered several times over the years, whenever our attention is returned to that family photo. 

We compared her solo shot to the group pictures, looking at eyes, fur, nose, and while there was something recognizable in her portrait, we just couldn't be definitive about which puppy was her in the other one. "We can't even recognize our own dog!" I said.

TBT

I forgot to post an extra challenge yesterday, and to be honest, I was inclined to skip the whole routine, especially because the deadline for the children's book project was looming at the end of class. But when the kids asked about it, I decided to go ahead and throw something up. 

Or rather I should say, throw something back. I made the challenge a Throwback Thursday and asked any who were willing to post pictures of themselves when they were younger. If I had thought it through, I would have realized that such an activity is almost the definition of distraction, and it did take away much more of our class time than I wanted. 

BUT, it was extremely motivating, since everyone had to post a poem before they could share a photo, and it was a community builder: almost everyone was very engaged with the activity. Plus? My students were really adorable little kids, and who wouldn't want to wrap up the first week back after spring break with such a warm and fuzzy bow?

It's the Little Things

"Do you have a stylus I can borrow?" one of my homeroom students asked this morning.

"I think I do," I said, and went over to open my top desk drawer. Another student was standing nearby as I rummaged through a collection of pens and pencils that was probably twice her age. "Here ya go!" I said, producing a stylus that was a teacher appreciation gift about 5 years ago.

"You have so much stuff in there!" the student said, and agreeably I started to pull a few of the trinkets out. There was a fidget counter that everyone competed with to see who could get the most clicks in 30 seconds. There were 2 yo-yos and a rubber popper that were also very popular. Way in the back I found the working catapult-pencil sharpener that a friend brought back from England a decade or so ago. I also had some clown noses that I bought at the suggestion of one of my homeroom students in 2011 as prizes for a joke-telling contest. 

"Why do you have all that?" asked one of the kids.

"Because it's fun!" I answered. 

He couldn't argue with that logic.

Gotta Do

Community spread of COVID is increasing in our area, and so I have returned to wearing a mask in school. 

It was just ahead of a likely pitched battle with the newly-elected governor that our district implemented a three-tiered mask policy. When numbers are low, masks are optional, when they are medium, masks are recommended, and when they are high, masks are required for staff. Since we are going to be living with COVID for the unforeseeable future, such a policy makes sense to me, and so after a year of masking, I removed mine when the data indicated it was safe to do so. 

At school, kids were more hesitant. Proportionately? They have been wearing masks for a pretty large part of their lives, and removing them seemed strange. They also looked to their peers, and not many kids were unmasking. The same was true for my colleagues: the vast majority of them continued to wear masks at school. 

And at first, when I pulled the elastic straps of my light gray K94 mask over my ears yesterday and greeted the kids returning from spring break, no one even noticed. "Why are you wearing your mask again?" a student asked at lunchtime.

"The numbers are up in our area," I said. 

"They are?" he replied with some alarm. "I'm going to start wearing mine again, too."

A Lesson in Sharing

Our school is a mixed-use facility, which means, among other things, that groups can rent space and use our classrooms on weekends. As such, it's always been a bit irksome to me to arrive at school on Monday morning and find this or that out of place, or this or that left behind. Some of my reaction is undoubtedly related to the proprietary feelings I have for this room I have occupied for so many years, but it is also the failure to respect my professional space: I doubt that the principal or building administrator would be happy if people used their offices when they weren't there. 

Anyway, a few weeks ago I came in on Monday to find my room in disarray and the screen on my iPad smashed. I took photos and sent them to the facilities manager, along with a request that my classroom be removed from the rotation for a while. In return, I got a tepid apology and no assurances. When some unkind words were scrawled on my chalk board a couple of weeks later, I sent another picture and received the terse reply that no one was scheduled in my room that weekend.

But today when I returned from 10 days away over spring break, my room was neat and orderly, better than I had left it. I was thankful, too, until a colleague a couple of doors down came by. "Was there a bubble machine in here this morning?" she asked.

"Huh?" I replied.

Just then the guy across the hall came in. "I had one in my room, too," he nodded.

I had to go see them! Sure enough, the folks who used their rooms had left behind devices about the size of an electric pencil sharpener that when plugged in? 

Generate a steady stream of soap bubbles! Which is obviously way better than vandalism and graffiti. I am going to have to borrow those.