Ow!

For the second time in 6 months, I'm pretty sure I broke my toe last night. This time it was when I accidentally kicked an 8 pound dumbell on my way to the bathroom. I keep the weights tucked near the closet so I can do 5 quick minutes of curls and flies every night, and I guess I stubbed my pinky toe just right, because when I was done hopping and cursing, it was clear that some buddy taping and ibuprofen were called for, too.

Back in the spring, the same thing happened to the fourth toe on my left foot. That time, I approached the couch a little too quickly and cracked my foot on its foot. Not surprisingly, that round went to the couch. It was painful, but it hurts for a while, and then it heals. 

To me the bigger lesson is that I should be more mindful. As I age, I've noticed that my body awareness is not quite as automatic as it once was. Just the other day, I tripped and fell up the stairs, spilling my coffee everywhere: maybe because I wasn't used to wearing my slippers; maybe because I wasn't paying attention. 

I need to pay more attention.

And for the next 4-6 weeks? Every little twinge of pain from my pinky toe can remind me to do so.

Guidance System

"That was fun," my brother Bill said as we pulled out of the parking lot and started the hour trip home. We had been visiting my aunt who was recovering from back surgery. "It was nice to see Harriett, and Larry was as funny as ever."

"It was great that Courtney called while we were there, too," I agreed. "I think Mom would have been really happy that we went."

"Well," he shrugged, "I think she would have expected it."

"Yes," I nodded, "but she was usually pretty good about letting us know that she was happy we had met her expectations."

We rode in silence for a few minutes, listening to the top 8 songs from this week in 1979 and scanning the landscape for familiar landmarks. Alternate route available, flashed the screen of my GPS. Do you want to save 5 minutes?

I punched YES and made a quick right. We rolled across a bridge over the new cross county expressway and past a sign for the metro. 

"That was the Rockville Metro," my brother commented as we stopped at a light.

"Oh, are we in downtown Rockville?" I asked looking around. "Isn't that the church where F Scott Fitzgerald is buried?" I hadn't been in this part of Maryland since my mom had moved from here to Gaithersburg in 1988. "Hey Siri!" I called, interrupting Michael Jackson singing Don't Stop Til You Get Enough. "Where is F Scott Fitzgerald buried?"

"St. Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland," she intoned.

"Right there." Bill pointed to our right. 

I looked at the directions. We were on Viers Mill Rd about to cross over Rockville Pike. The next turn would be Maryland Avenue.

"I was listening to This American Life a few weeks ago," I told Bill. "The theme was something about getting places with guidance or expert assistance, and the opening anecdote was about a woman who was driving her parents to the hospital. Her mother had been battling cancer and the doctor had recommended she be admitted. Even though none of them thought it was a big deal, she ended up dying in the hospital a week later."

The light changed and we drove on. "Anyway," I continued, "the daughter put the hospital address in her GPS to find the best route from their home in Long Island, and even though she had driven there hundreds of times, it took them there in a way she had never driven before, which turned out to be right through the neighborhood her parents had grown up, dated, and gotten married in. They both reminisced about their wonderful life all the way to the hospital."

I looked at my brother. "I think this route is going to take us right by Mom's old place."

He tapped his phone. "Was it called Newmark Commons?" he asked.

"Maybe?" I shrugged. "That sounds familiar."

"Then it's right here on the left," he pointed.

We both looked at the blocky wooden sculpture marking the wooded entrance way. "That's definitely it," we agreed.

"I guess Mom really was happy that we went to see Aunt Harriett," I said.

Rusty

I was feeling a bit rusty this morning when I sat down at a table in my room for my first conference. It was hardly surprising: for the last 2 years we have conducted conferences virtually. Even this year, we offered families a choice between in-person and remote, and I was a little surprised that only one of my eleven chose to call in. All the others made their way to school for our 20-minute, student-led conference. 

Earlier in the week I had thought a lot about how these meetings would go. The last time I held in-person meetings, all the material had been on paper and, as we sat down together, I presented each family with a packet that their student had prepared. 

This time, the kids had done all their preparation on their devices, which they had when we were virtual. But working on a video call allowed me to share my screen and control the pace of the meeting, so that I could better support the students. Without that option, I was worried about how it would go.

During some sleepless moment on Wednesday night, it occurred to me that I might use my iPad as a second monitor mirroring my laptop, and so I could show the presentations and move them along at a productive pace. And boy! Was I glad I had figured that out, because it quickly became clear that I had not explicitly directed any student to bring their device. Freudian slip or not, it all worked out for me, and I quickly remembered how much easier it is to interact with people in person.

So much so, that I was glad I had a few extra minutes before my one virtual meeting. It turned out that I was very out of practice using those tools, too!

Writing to Unpack

 "Excuse me," said one of my students this morning. "I can't do this assignment."

"Why not?" I asked about the checklist of key features for a successful narrative. We had just listened to an audio version of a short story as the students had read along, and now they were supposed to work with their table groups to analyze the story with the same checklist we had used on two other mentor texts, all in preparation to write their own personal narrative.

"It's too sad," he sniffed.

I was a bit surprised. The story, which involved a boy hunting a blue heron with his dad, even though he didn't like killing birds, and then subsequently rescuing a chick, hiding it in the hayloft, and then jumping in front of his dad's shotgun to save the bird, had been very popular with the other sixth grade readers.

"I know it's a little sad in the beginning and scary at the climax, but everything turns out alright in the end, right?" I pointed out.

Tears were dripping down his cheeks. "It's just too sad," he insisted. "I can't even think about it anymore."

I took a deep breath and nodded. "Could you do the checklist without adding evidence from the text?" I suggested.

He grabbed a tissue and blew his nose loudly. "I guess so," he agreed, returning to his seat and making quick work of checking 'Yes' for every category. He had found it a successful narrative, for sure.

"We're going to talk about the story some more," I told him quietly a little later. "Is that going to bother you?"

"No," he answered, and in fact he participated quite a bit in our discussion, naming the author's purpose and even answering a question about when the main character showed courage.

"I think it took courage to take care of that baby bird," he said, "even knowing that if something went wrong it might die, and then he would be really sad. I'm not that brave," he finished, shaking his head vehemently.

It was not a typical sixth grade exchange, but his parents had warned us that he 'emotes freely', which was clearly the case today.

Not Exactly My Point

Today, a student used both empathy and sympathy to describe why people tell stories. "What's the difference between those two, in your mind?" I asked him.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "It just sounded good.

"It can be a mistake to use words that you're not sure you know," I warned him. "Let me give you an example. Yesterday, one of my students greeted me by saying, Hola, mi amor."

The Spanish speaking students in the class gasped.

"I know, right?" I agreed with them. "When I told the student it was inappropriate to talk to a teacher that way, they said they didn't even know what it means."

"They didn't know they were saying they love an old lady?" asked one of the kids. "That's messed up."

One in the Win Column

 "Double or nothing!" a former student challenged me this afternoon. 

He had come by after school looking for some candy. He remembered I like trivia, and so he had already asked me one. "What day and time did Abraham Lincoln die?"

"Uh," I said, "I do know it was April 15, 1865. I'm not sure about the time, though. 1:30 in the morning?"

"Wrong!" he reported gleefully. "It was 7:22 in the morning!"

"OK," I shrugged and reached for my bag of Jolly Ranchers. I didn't care that I was wrong; I'm still really happy to see the kids from last year. These new students haven't quite managed to take their places, yet.

"Double or nothing!" he replied.

"Sure!" I accepted, but he couldn't think of a question. Another teacher from the team was in my room watching the entire exchange with amusement. 

"Do you speak Spanish?" he asked. 

"No," I confessed.

"Wait!" said the other teacher. "I think she got that one right! Doesn't it count?"

We all laughed, but the kid looked a little crestfallen at having missed his chance to get two pieces of candy.

"I forgot you speak French," he said.

"But you remember that now?" I asked, impressed. "I think that earns you a couple of Jolly Ranchers! It makes me feel good that you were paying attention. Those are good social skills!"

I happily handed over the candy, and he happily took it. 

Festival of Lights

The homepage on my browser is the NYTimes. The setting works for me because I am generally interested in current events, and that page informs me of any pressing matters I may not have been aware of. I like it, too, because it's like picking up the newspaper anytime I go online, and often I'll spend some significant time reading articles that capture my attention, no matter what my original task was. 

That's what happened tonight when I launched my browser to write this very blog post. I had a vague idea of topic, but the item that derailed me was on Diwali sweets. After getting this Indian holiday off for the first time last year, I was all in for the traditional festival celebrating the triumph of light over darkness. Even just reading about the joyous celebration made me happy.

And this evening, when I read about the South Asian sweet shops across the country that are flooded with business as celebrants purchase mithai, traditional sweets of Diwali (for what better way to celebrate such a victory?), I found myself getting right into that holiday spirit!