50,000 Hours or So

Malcolm Gladwell famously posited that it takes 10,000 hours or more of practice to make someone an expert, and the way I figure it, I've done my time in teaching.

So, as we enter the last couple weeks of school and the teacher-for-a-day lesson ideas start to come in,  "Come talk to me!" I always tell the kids. "I've been doing this job a long time, and I've got some mad teaching skills. I'm ready to help!" 

"I want to teach the class to make a pillow fort for my lesson," a student told me today. 

"Hmmm," I responded, "what will you use for the hands-on part of the lesson?"

She gestured grandly to the four pillows I have over by the windows.

"That doesn't really seem like enough for everybody," I said.

Her face fell.

"What if..." I continued, thinking out loud. "What if we made little pillows so that they could create models of their forts?"

She looked skeptical. 

"Hand me a piece of paper," I said, grabbing some scissors. I folded the paper in half and then cut it in half. I stapled it closed on three sides. "Does this look about the right size?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Now we need some stuffing." I looked around the room and my eyes landed on a tissue box. I pulled a few out, wadded them loosely, and gently pushed them into the pouch. A couple more staples produced a pretty little paper pillow.

Now the student was smiling. "Do you think this will work?" I asked.

"I really do!" she replied. 

After we talked a bit about presentations and rubrics, she returned to her seat to finish her planning.

On the way out the door at the end of class, I saw her show the prototype to a classmate. "I'm doing pillow fights for my lesson," she said, "and these are the pillows we're going to make!"

"That's actually pretty genius," said her friend.

Genius? Perhaps, but I prefer to think of it as expertise.

The first kid looked at me, and I gave her a chin nod.

"Thanks," she told her friend.

Deep Roots

Today was the state math test for sixth graders and the luck of the draw had me proctoring a group of kids I did not know. At this point in the year, that situation could go either way. Either the students will be quiet, because they are unsure of me, or they will consider me a glorified substitute and challenge me. I can certainly handle either, but who wants to spend almost 5 hours locked in a room with a bunch of antagonistic tweens?

As I took attendance, I made note of a few of the last names. "Do you have a brother in 8th grade named Max?" I asked one student. "Do you have a sister in high school named Ava?" I asked another. "And your sister is out of college, right?" I said to a third.

By this time, the group was pretty impressed. Even if I didn't know them personally, I had some juice through my connections. That's when I got to the last kid. "Do you have an aunt named Tasha?" I asked him.

"She's my mom!" he said. There was a low suspiration of approbation from the crowd, and the testing continued without a hitch from there. 

Bible Belt

“Do you have a charger I can use?” One of my students asked in class today. 

I’m a pick your battles kind of a teacher, always with a ready supply of pencils and paper and you name it- whatever a student needs to do the job, I think we should provide it. But after all that, and an iPad, too, when a kid consistently can't manage to bring either a charged device or the equipment she needs to charge it? Well, that's just annoying. 

Spoiler alert: I gave her a charger. 

But before I did, I also gave her some grief. "What happened this time?" I asked, a little crossly. 

"Well I was reading in bed last night," she started.

I raised my eyebrows, because that would be very unusual for this child. 

She saw my reaction and continued anyway. "I was reading," she repeated, "I was reading the Bible!"

"No you weren't!" I said.

"I was, my dad made me!" she insisted.

"But your family is Muslim," I cried.

"True," she shook her head, momentarily at a loss. "But--"

"Here's a charger," I said. "Go do your work."

Standing By

I was working in my garden this afternoon when I noticed a wee old man standing in the corner watching me. It's hard to say how long he had been there; I was listening to an audiobook and between it and the work I was rather oblivious to anything else. But there he was, hands clasped behind the back of his faded, baggy overalls, regarding both me and my garden not unkindly. I squeezed my right airpod to pause the book, and stepped over to him. 

"I'm Jim," he introduced himself.

"Tracey," I replied.

"Stacy?" he asked.

"Tracey," I repeated.

"I'm one of the head gardeners here," he told me.

"I know!" I laughed. "I've seen you on Zoom. You're like a celebrity to me, someone I've only seen on TV."

He shrugged modestly. 

What I didn't say was that he was much shorter, and older, and frailer than he seemed on those calls. Far from being impressed or intimidated, I was a little concerned at the heaviness of his breath and the sweat on his brow. We made small talk about weeds and mulch and, when I mentioned that I was a teacher (who would have my garden shipshape once school was out),  kids and education and the world today. Eventually he gestured to the mulch pile and wheel barrow a couple gardens away and said he should return to that task. 

"Nice talkin to you," I said and squeezed my airpod again, but I kept on eye on his progress and noted the many breaks he took. At one point, I reviewed the first aid training that I had been required to take this year for recertification. Then, it seemed unlikely that I would ever need to rescue someone in distress, but this afternoon? It seemed like a good skill to have.

Life Imitates Life

Since Survivor first aired in 2000, Heidi and I have seen every single one of the 42 seasons. Even so, I wouldn't call us super fans so much as super critics. In fact, here's what I wrote about the show back in 2009:

...the mixture of conniving, false alliances, physical strength, and sheer force of will was riveting. I still watch today, although I confess that there comes a point in every season where I declare my hatred for the show and its premise, and I swear I'll never watch again. It's ageist. It's sexist. It's racist. Contestants are forever getting their feelings bruised by others who excuse their hurtful behavior by insisting that it's just a game or that there are a million reasons why they've done what they have. There's no such thing as trust in Survivor. It's not fair. It never turns out the way I want it to. Still, I watch.

For the first two decades of reality TV, most shows seemed to focus on or exploit the worst of humanity, but I have noticed a shift lately. My evidence is purely anecdotal and based only on the two shows that I watch, Survivor and Top Chef, but in the past season, both of those programs have had the most congenial and respectful casts I have ever seen on reality TV. Win or lose, they are thoughtful, introspective, complimentary of the competition, and most of all, grateful for the opportunity and the experience being on the show has offered them. 

My theory is that ever since we actually elected a reality TV personality president, we have been exposed to so much nastiness in our real public discourse, that we don't need to see it on TV, but my hope is that there is a change coming.

Minimart

Before the pandemic, we would regularly drive half an hour or more to shop at our favorite grocery store, Wegmans. But along with a lot of other folks, our shopping habits have changed over the last two years, and now we generally buy our groceries much closer to home now, usually at a store we can walk to. Even so, there was excitement in our household when a couple of weeks ago a new Wegmans opened only 20 minutes from us. 

Today was the day when we made our first visit to that new store. The route was familiar; 22 years ago a huge movie theater opened in the same area, which was then the end of the yellow line of the metro, and for over a decade it was our go to. Over the years that outpost became more desirable and it no longer made sense to have a three acre parking lot for a theater, an office building, and a few restaurants. So that's where they built a 15 story apartment building with a Wegmans on the ground floor. 

Founded in 1916 in Rochester, the chain expanded slowly throughout Western New York. Their first Buffalo location opened in 1977, and it is through Heidi's family that I first became aware of what can only be described as the amazing grocery shopping experience they offer. For most of their history, their stores were big and sprawling, indicative of the inexpensive commercial real estate in those locations. 

When Wegmans first arrived in our area, the stores were in the far outer suburbs, hence the drives we were willing to make. A couple of years ago, Wegmans opened a smaller, store out at Tysons Corner, also on the metro line. The design of that location was scaled back and curated to accommodate a smaller space, but it is not the same shopping experience. 

And that is the layout we found today at the newest Wegmans. Heidi was very disappointed, despite the fact that we can get most of the items on our list, she missed the wide selection that we have come to expect. On our way home, we passed a few neighbors and rolled down the windows to chat. "We were at the new Wegmans," Heidi reported. "It was stinky!"

They looked surprised, especially the guy from Rochester. "So WegMANs wasn't very manly?" asked another of them.

"Definitely not!" Heidi answered.

"More like Wegboys," I said.

Crazy 8s

 Most of my homeroom had other things to do this morning: a couple were absent, others had SOL remediation, running club, math help. I invited the few kids who were left to play cards with me. "What games do you know?" I asked. 

"Uhhh," one student hesitated, "Spoons?"

I had taught a larger group that game a little earlier in the year, but to me, Spoons is the word search of card games-- an empty exercise, lacking any challenge or necessary skills. It is easy to teach, though, and kids love it.

"What about Crazy 8s?" I suggested. "Do you know that one?"

They did not, but the fact that Uno is based on Crazy 8s made it another relatively easy to teach game. We began with a shuffle and a deal, and I watched with interest as kids arranged their cards in several ways both in and out of their hands. "You hold all 8 cards so that only you can see them," I explained, and we were off.

As we played, it became clear that determining suits and face cards was another challenge, as was noticing when they picked up an eight. Even so, we played on. The student to my right was very into the game, but she was too candid in her verbal processing. "Oh no!" she cried when the suit was changed to spades. "I only have two cards left and they're both hearts!"

"I don't think you want to tell us that," the kid on the other side of her said, changing it to diamonds. Still we played on; I modeling the best demeanor and strategy I could, often asking if they had the same number or an 8 in their fistful of cards when they expressed dismay at not having the same suit at their turn.

At last someone, not me, won. "That was fun!" everyone agreed. "Can we play again?" 

Fortunately, the next game was a lot smoother, a little more like the thousands of hands of Crazy 8s I played with my brother and sister and neighbors and cousins and friends when I was growing up.