Seeing Orange

"What's with all the carrots?" Heidi asked the other day, spotting the shaved, orange rounds quick pickling on the counter. "We sure have had a lot of them lately."

"I have to eat carrots every day until June 8," I reminded her. "It's one of my 100 day challenges."

"What are the rules?" she asked. "Is there a certain amount or preparation?" 

I shrugged. "Not really," I answered. "I'm just playing it by ear. I saw carrots in my broccoli soup the other day, and then there were some in the kimchi I used for fried rice. Those counted."

"How about some carrot cake, then?" she suggested. "Let's enjoy those carrots to the fullest!"

On the Cusp

 We saw more snow falling today than we have all winter! 

A spontaneous road trip to Carlisle, PA took us north through central Maryland  and up through Catoctin and Gettysburg where the soft rain misting through the leaden skies turned first to sleet and then to big, fat flurries melting upon contact with our warm windshield. The car thermometer informed us that it was 36 outside, and at midday in March we knew there was no chance that the snow would stick, so we simply enjoyed the flakes as they swirled us along the rolling road.

Back home this evening it seemed like a perfect idea to draw the curtains against the lengthening day and use the last of the firewood to enjoy one more winter's night.

Sixth Grade Sense

To help with creating a theme for the children's books they are preparing to write and illustrate, I asked my sixth graders to share an important lesson they have learned in their lives. As usual, I was amused and impressed by their wisdom. 

The number one answer was don't steal, and I think there may be more than a kernal of autobiographical inspiration in those backstories, but these 11 and 12 year olds also know that it's important to be kind and accepting, to stand up for yourself, listen to others, do the right thing whenever you can, know who your real friends are, forgive yourself for mistakes, let others have their opinions, and appreciate your family. 

These young writers also understand that it's a good idea to eat healthy, ask for help when you need it, and. Some noted that we should never give others the satisfaction of knowing they've bothered us, we can't always have what we want, and we should go ahead and take care of our responsibilities before playing. Others pointed out that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and there are also times when you just have to be mean. 

There was practical advice as well: look both ways before crossing the street, don't use crutches on the stairs, never look directly into the sun, and never swim alone. Although the student who wrote the last one was torn between two lessons, and what she actually shared was Don't ever go into the pool without a stranger!

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.