Oh, Baby

Where usually we have the weekends to ourselves puttering, relaxing, and, oh yes, catching up on the crushing workload of teaching, today we had not one, but two, social engagements. Coincidentally? They both involved children between the ages of three and twelve months. 

We started at 11:30 at an Alice in One-derland themed birthday party for one of our favorite little girls. The sun shined through the windows of the airy community center party room as the 40 or so guests gathered to feast on cupcakes and tea sandwiches. Most of us were adults, family and friends there equally to wish the birthday girl well and to congratulate her mom and dad on making it through their first year as parents.

After the cake was cut and we had played a couple of rounds of Giant Jenga with  4-year-old Jenga Genius named Nell, it was time to dash home and prepare our own tea sandwiches for another get-together. This time the group was my brother and sister-in-law and our cousin and her husband in town from Charlotte with their three-month-old daughter, Mary Grace. 

We all took turns dandling the baby, and rocking her, and feeding her when she fussed, waiting for her elusive smile. It was nice to catch up with her folks, but really we were all about the kid. The sun had set and a full moon rose in the warmish March night as we headed home, a little sour milk on our sleeves but a sweetness about us, as well. 

Check the Settings

I was using my own iPad to mirror my screen and lead students through their conference slides when a mom looked at me curiously from the other side of the table. "I'm afraid your iPad dropped the presentation," she said and turned it quickly toward me. 

There I saw my lock screen with a text message notification. I'm having a colonoscopy on Tuesday, it read, and so I won't be able to take Lucy.

"Oh! That's from my dog walker," I laughed, then pulled the slides back up, swiped down, and tapped Do Not Disturb. 

Gosh I wish I'd done that first.

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.