Buffalo for Breakfast

I ran into the parent of a former student yesterday. "What year is Amelia now?" I asked.

"A freshman in college!" her mother replied, and the two of us marveled at how quickly the time has passed.

This morning I recalled that conversation, and I thought back to 2015 when Amelia was in my class, mentally cataloging the consistencies and differences between then and now. We did do the 100 Day Writing Challenge, but it was housed on our old LMS, Blackboard, which we no longer have access to. 

For the umpteenth time, I felt a pang of regret for all that lost writing, and I reminisced about the early days of the online writing community that my friend Leah and I created.

The technology is certainly better now than it was in 2006 when we started, but the structure of kids writing and replying to each other is still in place in my class today. I laughed when I remembered one of our earliest assignments, a photograph that Leah found of a cowboy drinking coffee across a kitchen table from an enormous bison who was in turn eating out of a giant tin pan. We called it "Buffalo for Breakfast" and asked the students to imagine what was going on and write about it.

I had woken up a little uncertain about the lesson plan I had prepared for today. My classes are working on writing fiction, and they have been diagramming simple plots of children's books and animated short films to see how they work. I wanted them to be in collaborative groups, and I had planned a jigsaw activity with another short film. But the thought of that guy and his bison changed my mind. Instead, I found that old photo and had the young writers work together to brainstorm the plot of a children's story about it, using the plot diagram to plan instead of analyze.

It ended up being a fun and productive formative activity: the kids were creative and silly, and I was able to see from their work which elements of plot were still a bit confusing (Hello, inciting event and resolution supporting the theme!). So often, as teachers, we move on from assignments and activities when they become a bit dated or stale, but today I remembered that there is a difference between old and vintage, and sometimes it's worth a look back into the archives to retrieve some lost treasures.

Get Ready for the Red Carpet

For years it was an annual tradition for us to go to screenings of the Oscar Shorts with my brother and his family in preparation for our Academy Award Weekend at the beach. Back then, we would make plans to see the animated, live action, and documentary programs either after or before a great meal at one of our city's newest restaurants. 

Those outings always warmed up the gray days of late January and early February and it was fun going into the awards with knowledge of not just the major nominations, but some of the lesser ones, too: it felt like we were real insiders.

This afternoon when I sent out the streaming links to our group for all the animated shorts, I thought of how COVID changed all that. Even so, I figured if we couldn't re-establish our tradition quite yet, at least we might see those films before we head to the coast on Saturday. 

If you're interested? Here are the links:

Ice Merchants

A Seaman's Life Flashes Before His Eyes

An Ostrich Told me the World is Fake...

My Year of Dicks

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and his Horse

Be Realistic!

As we kick off our fiction writing unit, I asked my sixth graders what type of fiction they like best and was surprised when roughly 60 percent said that they preferred realistic fiction. At first, I wondered if their choice indicated some generational lack of imagination, but then I thought it might perhaps be a misunderstanding of the sub-genres, so I asked them to name some realistic fiction books that they liked. 

"The One and Only Ivan," one student answered immediately, mentioning the novel by Katherine Applegate.

"That's not realistic fiction," I said. "The animals talk!"

"True," he admitted, "but only to each other. It's not like they talk to any people."

No lack of imagination there!

While it Lasts

"Why did you want to come here?" Heidi asked as we started up the hill on the trail around Accotink Lake.

"One of my students wrote about it for the writing challenge," I explained, "and I remembered it's been a while since we've been here."

The time away from this regional park about 20 minutes from our home had been underlined when we arrived and parked only to find that the four mile circuit hike around the lake was out of the question since the trail over the dam was closed for renovation. The old, oft-flooded path was being replaced by a soaring concrete bridge.

"I don't know how I feel about that thing," I grumbled as we headed off in the opposite direction. Our revised plan was to walk 2 miles around and then turn back for an in and out. 

As we crossed the little sand beach and passed the shuttered boat rental and carousel toward the more woodsy section of the trail, I thought back to the first time I had ever been there. The year was 1975, and my older cousin's husband had brought my brother and sister and I as children to this park to play mini-golf and ride the merry-go-round. He told us that we could go fishing and canoeing on our next visit, but we were from out of town then, and as an adult I now understand how such promises fall by the wayside of busy lives.

It was 30 years before I would return to explore the park again, and since that time it's been a go-to dog walking destination two or three times a year. But, as so many of my friends have noted, COVID has played a lot of tricks on time, and I honestly can't remember the last time we walked beneath the sky-high railroad trestle to begin the familiar route around the lake.

We were surprised by a few other "improvements" along the trail. Along with a few more entrances from the growing neighborhoods bordering the park, much more of the trail had been paved, and we had to step aside more than a dozen times to allow bikes to pass us. Even so, the harsh calls of the gulls and geese, the hollow knocking of woodpeckers at the top of trees, the chirping of the earliest peepers in the warmer waters near the shore, and the sun sinking low over the water as we returned to our car, made for an agreeable afternoon.

Back at home, I was checking the weather on the Washington Post website when my eyes widened and my heart sank to see a link to an article published today: Officials ready to let urban runoff swallow a cherished Virginia lake. Looks like we better enjoy it while we can.

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?