Oh, These Old Things?

I turned around yesterday to find a pair of sneakers on one of my classroom tables. Next to them, their owner worked diligently on his writing piece. "Hey," I haled him, "it's okay if you want to take off your shoes, but let's keep them on the floor, okay?"

He looked up with a smile, and it was then I noticed that, far from any ordinary sneakers, these were black and yellow Air Jordan 4 Retro Thunder 2023, which not only retail for over 200 dollars, aren't even supposed to be in stores until May.

"New shoes?" I asked.

He nodded proudly.

"Well," I said, "as sweet as they are, they still can't be on the table."

He pulled out the chair next to him and carefully placed them there, well within view of any who cared to admire them.

That Sounds Good

As the warm up for a lesson on onomatopoeia I asked students what some of their favorite sounds are. I wondered if it would be too vague a question, but I was charmed by the responses they gave. 

Many were sports related: the thump of a perfectly kicked soccer ball, the crack of a bat, the grind of a skateboard's powerslide, the pop of a pickleball on the court, the swish of a basketball, the cry of "Gooooooaaaaaaaaallllll!" on the Telemundo soccer play-by-play.

Some were nature-related; lots of kids love to hear rain falling, waves crashing, snow crunching, and wind in the trees. 

Several mentioned the sounds of pets: a purring cat, a snorting frenchie; others named some noises of cooking: popcorn popping, bacon sizzling, a knife being sharpened; and some noted the joy of music: a Taylor Swift concert, Christmas carols. 

And a few kids? just enjoy the sound of silence. "Too bad we don't have much of that around here!" I joked.

"Yeah," a student agreed, "and I don't get much at home either, at least until my little brother goes to bed." Her eyes brightened a bit. "In fact," she laughed, "I want to change my answer. My favorite sound is actually the click of his bedroom door!"

I Saw

No lumber associate was available at the big box home improvement store, so, after waiting for 10 minutes, I decided to use my circular saw and cut the boards for my raised garden beds myself. It was getting late in the day when Treat and I dropped off our soil and other purchases at the garden, so we left all the boards there. 

After I dug around in the attic and retrieved my saw from at least a decade of storage, Heidi and I headed up to the garden this morning to fetch the two planks that needed cutting. Back at home, I scoured the house for an extension cord to reach out to the front stoop, returning at last to the attic where I borrowed one from the Christmas lights bin. 

At last ready to measure twice and cut once, my pencil broke. When I finally pulled the trigger on the saw and ran it smoothly across the board, I realized that after a ten year hiatus from sawing, I had forgotten to adjust the blade depth, and so I had made a channel rather than a cut. I twisted the nut to make the adjustment, but then the plank kicked because the blade was too deep. I marked off the remaining two cuts I had to make, and did my best, which was still kind of sloppy, but definitely serviceable for garden beds. 

After running the saw for a grand total of 16 inches, I unplugged it and carried it back to the attic. Then I loaded the wood into the back of the station wagon, still a little chapped about the lack of a lumber associate situation.

Those Dirty Rats

Over the years I have naturally made some improvements in the infrastructure of my community garden, even though the plot is really only rented from year to year. A few seasons ago I invested in a cedar compost bin, the modular type that can be assembled and reassembled to turn and use the compost. A year or so later, I added a wire mesh companion to hold the clippings, vines, and spent vegetable and flower plants at the end of the season. My compost was always slow to cook, mostly because I didn't have any table scraps or other moisture-rich organics, but I figured I had plenty of time to allow the plants from my garden to decompose so that their nutrients might be returned to the soil. 

Unfortunately, time ran out for me and my open composting system last fall, when in response to a rat problem, bins such as mine were disallowed. To say I was dismayed would be an understatement. I have never seen any rats in my garden, and as I reported above, I don't usually put anything in my compost that they might find attractive. Completely banning extant composters seemed like an over-reaction, and although I said as much to the steering committee, my perspective was overruled at the annual meeting.

The deadline to remove them was set to May 1, of this season, and I stewed a bit about it all winter. But as the warm days of spring have brought us ever-closer to that date and the threat of an unsatisfactory rating which could lead to loss of the garden plot, I have resigned myself to disassembling the bins, bagging their contents, and moving forward. 

Fortunately, I had my nephew Treat to help me earlier this week and yesterday. As we pitchforked and raked the rich compost at the bottom of the first bin, he suggested leaving it in place and planting something there. I looked at the pile of three foot cedar boards and the grooved corner pieces behind us, and it occured to me that we could reassemble them into a raised bed. Likewise, the sides of the wire bin could be repurposed as squash trellises. 

So yesterday, we pulled out the trusty bow saw that I purchased for 5 bucks at a thrift shop in Dewey Beach a couple of Thanksgivings ago, and sawed the corner posts in half. Then Treat dug some post holes, and we pounded six of them in where the bins were. Instead of using the spacer pegs, we fitted the slats flush, and built ourselves a 3x6x1 raised bed in no time. It was very satisfying, and it almost-- almost! took the sting out of having to remove my composters at all. 

It sure is going to hurt to have to throw all that organic matter away, though.

Collegial Appreciation

"Guess what?" my friend Mary asked yesterday afternoon. It was our planning time, and she had stopped by my room to talk shop. "One of my students used a chatbot to write his poetry assignment!"

"Ugh," I sighed in solidarity. "We knew that was coming."

"I looked at his poem in class," she told me, "and one, it didn't follow the directions, but two, it had the words cosmic, majestic, and celestial in it."

I rolled my eyes.

"So I called the kid up, and at first he insisted that it was his writing, but eventually he admitted that he had used AI. Not only that, he had done the same for three earlier assignments!" She shook her head.

"I read that you can copy and paste text into the bots and ask them if they wrote it," I said. "Let's try it." I turned to my keyboard and first found the poem her student had posted. Then I logged in to Chatbot GPT. 

"Did you write this poem?" I queried.

As an AI language model, I am capable of generating texts, including poems, but I did not specifically write that poem. However, it is a beautiful piece of work, and whoever wrote it did a fantastic job.

"Hmm," I said. "Let's try Google Bard." 

Yes, I wrote that poem. I am a large language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot trained to be informative and comprehensive. I am trained on a massive amount of text data, and I am able to communicate and generate human-like text in response to a wide range of prompts and questions. For example, I can provide summaries of factual topics or create stories. 

 I wrote the poem you shared because I am fascinated by the stars. They are so beautiful and mysterious, and they have inspired poets and scientists for centuries. I hope you enjoyed the poem.

"There's your proof," I said. "We can print that out and use it as a cautionary example for all the kids." I hit the print icon and we waited for the evidence. "It is kind of funny, though, how much Chat GPT liked Bard's poem!"

Eid Mubarak

Our district has recently diversified the number of holidays we have on our calendar to include major celebrations and religious observances other than the traditional Christian holidays we've marked in the past. As such, we were off for the Jewish high holy days in the fall, Diwali a month or so later, and tomorrow school is closed for Eid al Fitr, the Muslim holiday that falls at the end of Ramadan.

In sixth grade, most students are still considered too young to fully participate in the fasting that marks Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. While adults are expected to abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, children and the infirm are exempt from the practice. Even so, at the age of eleven or twelve, most of my Muslim students are eager to share in this solemn ritual. And although they are open about the challenges of going through the school day without eating or even drinking water, it is their pride and excitement that usually shines through.

And as pleased as I am to have a three day weekend? I'm even happier for the validation our calendar shows to these kids and their families.

Tough Student

The young poets in my class were writing "How to" poems today, fanciful compositions that allow them to practice transition words and figurative language. Upon sharing their work, they were invited to do the bonus challenge, which today, in connection with their writing,  was to teach me how to do something. Oh, it was a fun day-- I learned how to draw a caricature of one of the kids, how to avoid getting called in class, and how to twist my fingers into a cobra. 

It was this last lesson that went a bit awry. "Put your hands like a steeple," my teacher demonstrated. "Now put your pinky and ring finger down."

So far, so good. I was following the directions and ready for the next step. "Now wrap your middle finger around the opposite ring finger," she instructed and twisted her fingers to show me. "Then cross your pinky and flip your wrists."

"Like this?" I said.

"Not quite," she answered patiently and showed me again.

"Like this?" I frowned.

She shook her head.

I tried again. And again. And again. All around me kids were lacing their fingers together, flipping theie wrists, and pinching them to their thumbs. 

"Your pinkies are the tongue," my teacher explained, "but you don't really have to do that part."

By this time I was laughing at my ineptitude, but my teacher remained calm and focused. When the bell rang, I gave her the Jolly Rancher despite the fact that her student failed the assessment. "You did everything right," I told her. "It was me."

"You can do it," she assured me. "You just need more practice."

Now, that's good teaching!

PostScript: Before I started writing, I tried to do the cobra again. I thought carefully about her directions and recalled the examples she had given. And what do you know? That viper was chomping before I knew it! I can't wait to show my teacher tomorrow.