Enrichment

After considering all the suggestions that came in from my students for my 100 day challenge, I finally narrowed it to three, with the advice of my homeroom. I had to go with eating carrots every day, because it's so nutty, and the boy who proposed it was so earnest. "You'll have HD vision!" he promised. 

With that decided, my homeroom students pushed for some sort of daily drawing. "We're the Dolphin Team," they pointed out. "Why don't you draw a dolphin every day? They're pretty hard to draw."

I've learned how right they are over the last 22 years of dolphinhood, and so I accepted that challenge. "Should it be the same dolphin over and over, though?" I asked, but they told me it didn't matter.

My final 100 day dare will be to play a game every day. My homeroom and I have bonded on Fridays over Taco or Burrito, Quicktionary, Bananagrams, and Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, and my English classes often have a playful brain break in the middle of a block period, so these kids know my love of games first hand. 

I'm confident that I am going to be a better person on June 8-- how could anyone go wrong with 100 days of carrots, drawing, and games?

And So It Begins

As I begin my annual participation in the SOLSC Challenge so kindly hosted by the folks at Two Writing Teachers, my students are embarking on the first leg of their 100 Day Writing Challenge, a sixth grade tradition here at our middle school which stretches from March 1 to June 8. Like me, the first of their three month-long challenges is slice of life writing, (which will be followed by poetry in April and Alphabiographies in May), so over the last few days I gave the young writers some time to warm up and practice the genre before kicking off the challenge proper today. 

Yesterday, as I circulated through the writing workshop answering questions and giving suggestions, I noticed a couple of boys whispering at the corner table. 

"Dude! How do you do it?" asked one urgently. "Do you have to sign up or sign in?"

I immediately suspected some illicit game play on their devices and I stepped over to investigate further. "What are you guys trying to sign up for?" I asked.

"Oh nothing," the first kid said innocently. "He was just helping me with something for another class."

He had closed all the tabs on his browser, but rather than search his history, I turned to the other student. 

"It was ChatbotGPT," he admitted immediately, and I inwardly cringed. I had hoped I could avoid dealing with AI generated work at least for a while, since it's only only sixth grade.

"Did you think you could get it to do your writing for you?" I asked. "Because I'm pretty sure I would be able to tell whether or not you had written it. This writing is supposed to be about you and your life."

"Oh no," he assured me, "I would never do that." He paused and then added. "It would be way too perfect."

I guess we'll see.

Or This

The rest of the suggestions for my 100 Day challenge came in today, and I like to think I kept the kids on their toes by telling them that if they proposed something boring just to get a Jolly Rancher, I would smash the candy and only give them half of the dust. Oh, they laughed until I reached behind my desk and pulled out the gavel someone gave me back in 1996. Then I pulverized a green apple to demonstrate my commitment to their creativity.

In the end, only a few Jolly Ranchers had to suffer for the greater good, and I got some worthwhile ideas. Here are they are:

draw the same thing every day to see if I improve
put a song suggestion box in my classroom and listen to a new song every day 
sing karaoke every day
dance for 10 minutes a day
read 25 pages a day
eat something hot and spicy every day
do something I've never done before every day
crochet every day
cook a new recipe every day
learn a new fun fact every day
bake a french pastry every day

I'm not sure which I'll choose; each proposition promises to be fun, fattening and/or otherwise enriching. I do like my friend Mary's suggestion from yesterday to learn Welsh while eating carrots on my two mile fast walk. 

Why limit myself to just one?

Maybe?

As the 100 Day Writing Challenge kicks off on March 1, I have again asked my students to suggest a 100 day challenge for me, since I write every day already. I'll be gathering ideas through tomorrow, but here are a few of the suggestions I've gotten so far:

10 free throws a day
10 jumping jacks a day
walk 2 fast miles a day
keep a daily gratitude journal
write a poem a day
read a poem a day
make a sketch a day
stretch for 10 minutes a day
watch a baseball game every day
eat carrots every day
learn Welsh
do as many push-ups as I can every day
write part of a novel every day

Any thoughts?

Two More Days and a Pat on the Back

I did little maintenance around this ol' blog today, getting it all spruced up for the annual slice of life story challenge that starts March 1 and the additional readers the SOLSC usually brings. Mostly I just switched out the logo I made for the challenge last year for the new one, which I designed this afternoon. 

Creating the badges is kind of silly, but it feels celebratory, almost like decorating for a holiday. In that spirit, I also added thumbnails of the logos I've made since 2018. And, I added a caption to one of the elements on the site, but I'll let regular readers see if they can spot that themselves.

Dress Appropriately

I wore shorts to the grocery store the other day. I had been playing pickleball after school, and hey? 77 degrees said don't even worry about it. Still, I felt a little odd shopping in shorts and a hoodie on February 23rd. And when I ran into a neighbor, I sure wished my legs were a little less flabby and a little more tan. 

Somehow, the gradually warming days of spring into summer make the transition from one season's wardrobe to another more graceful.

Even so, I needn't have worried about it, because this afternoon? As I walked Lucy through the snow, shorts were the farthest garment from my mind.

Unreliable Sources

I introduced the 100 Day Writing Challenge today, and as inspiration, (and a bit of a brag, I guess) I told the young writers, as I always do, how many days in a row it has been that I've written (5,109). At this point, the number is beyond their life span and hence beyond their comprehension, but they, like past groups, become fixated on finding my blog. "It's public," I tell them, "But it's also my personal writing, so you are welcome to read it, if you find it."

Over the years, I've done a pretty good job of scrubbing any searchable connection with my name and this blog. Not perfect; it's been found before, but not easily. Today the search took on familiar outlines of years past. "Is it your facebook?" someone asked.

I shook my head.

"Your pinterest? Your Twitter? Your Instagram?" 

"Is it this?" They show me a picture of myself from the school website. 

Then a kid raised his hand. "I'm only telling you this for your safety," he reported quite seriously. "Here is your address! And your age! And people you know!" The identity website he had found astounded and alarmed him.

"That's just a website based on public records," I told him. "You could probably find similar information about your parents. Stop looking for my blog and start writing."

A little while later, while kids were supposed to be composing their first slices of life, I noticed a girl staring at her screen, both hands covering her mouth in horror. "Is this true?" she asked in a low voice. "How could it be?" and she began to weep.

I stepped behind her to see what she was looking at. It was an identity website with the name of a woman who shared this student's last name. Her age was reported to be 93. "Is that your great-grandmother?" I asked. 

"My aunt," she told me, "but I thought she died! How can she be 93?"

Both I and the girl next to her tried to reassure her that the site was a mechanical gathering of information. It didn't really know anything, but we were unsuccessful. That kid left her half-believing that a woman who died in 2016 was alive and well somewhere.

"Talk to your parents about that website," I told her as she walked out the door.

"Oh, I will, she said. "I sure will."