Mindfulness Exercise

"I ordered some pink pickleballs, because I like yours so much," I told my brother Bill today. We were in the middle of a match at the time.

"We can play with the pink one," he said. "I have it with me."

"That's okay," I answered. "I don't even know what made me think of that."

He missed his next serve and cussed. "I need to stay focused!" he said. "I was thinking about the pink pickleball and a whole story I was going to tell you." He shook his head.

I knew exactly what he meant. I, too, have found how easy it is to lose focus on the game! I will see someone I think I know, or notice something on the next court, or wonder what I'm going to make for dinner, and with my mind off the task at hand? I will make a dumb, unforced error.

"I just don't remember the same problem when I was younger," I laughed and then noted, "Yet another reason this game is good for us: it forces us to be present!"

Hangry

"I'm starving!" Heidi stomped down the stairs and grabbed a bag of popcorn. "Tracey never feeds me anything!" she said to our friend Lauren.

Lauren laughed knowingly. "What are y'all having for dinner?" she asked.

"Fried shrimp and salad," I reported, "and there are chocolate chip cookies in the oven."

Lauren turned to Heidi. "You are so neglected!"

KO-ed

"How many times have you been knocked out?" I overheard one student as another the other day.

"Knocked out?" his friend replied. "Do you mean actually unconscious?"

The other kid shrugged. "Yeah. That's what it is."

"Um, never," said his buddy.

The other kid looked bemused. 

I stepped over to them with a bit of concern to investigate. "How many times have you been knocked out?" I asked.

"Just twice," he replied, and he seemed relieved that someone understood that such things happen from time to time. "Once I went over the handlebars of my bike and landed on my head, and the other time I was skateboarding and I crashed into a pole," he willingly elaborated. 

His friend and I nodded thoughtfully.

"You know that doesn't happen a lot," his friend said.

Again, there was confusion in his face. Then he turned to me with a help me out kind of a look. "How many times have you been knocked out?" he asked, perhaps confident that a person of my age must have hit her head a little too hard a few times.

"Never," I told him.

He sighed in disappointment.

"Dude!" his friend said. "You probably should be a little more careful."

School Rules

As the warm-up for a lesson on Freeverse Poetry, I asked students if they could be free from one school rule, which rule would they choose. Predictably, many wanted to be able to use their phones at will, but none could justify their desire academically. Some wanted to carry their backpacks, some to eat in class, and others to chew gum.

To this last group, I simply said, "Look under the table."

"Ewwwww!" was the common reply, because their illicit gum-chewing peers have left wads on the underside of almost all of the tables. Jerks!

One kid wanted to bring her dog to school, which is a sentiment I could behind, but not as enthusiastically as I could support the suggestion that we should allow cussing. "Hell yeah!" I agreed, before taking it all back.

"You know I really love the rules," I told each class.

"That's easy for you!" one kid responded. "You get to enforce them."

Slow on the Uptake

I've been reading Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls, and it wasn't until Eddie, the frail, young heir to the larger-than-life, red-haired, and bearded Duke Kincaid, died, and his eldest sister Mary and her husband Philip came to town to take over the business that I got it. 

The story is set in rural Virginia during Prohibition, and it just so happened that Mary's mother was briefly married to the Duke's older brother before he died, and then later Mary and her mother were sent away by the Duke so he could marry his second wife, Annie. 

Now Annie is the mother of the main character, the Duke's second daughter, and rumor had it that the Duke killed Annie for infidelity, and shortly after that, he married, Jane, Eddie's mother.

Do you see what I missed?

Maybe the fact that one of the epigraphs is a quote from Queen Elizabeth I is a hint I should have caught. Or perhaps knowing the Duke's given name was Henry? Or that his next wife after Jane died was Katherine? 

Don't worry, though, I've got it now, and spoiler alert! I don't think Mary is long for this world.

Better than Best

Our principal likes to tell the students that "We are the best of the best, better than all the rest." While I don't appreciate the idea that quality must be comparative, her turn of phrase is catchy and memorable, and the kids often chant the ending with her in assemblies.

Today and yesterday as the hook for a lesson on hyperbole, I asked students to post something they thought was the greatest thing ever. On Monday morning, it was hardly surprising that many kids mentioned sleep and food as it got closer to lunch. But other kids also mentioned the sound of Christmas carols, or birds singing in the morning, video games (of course), talking to their friends, going to Chik-fil-a on Friday after school, the moon landing, science, the beach, and the 100-day writing challenge. 

Then there was the kid who simply posted "You guys" meaning all of us in her English class. "Awwwwwww," was the collective reply, and for me, her words cast a much warmer light on what it means to be one of the best.

User Error

 More often than seems possible, a student will be working furiously on some writing assignment they need to post online using our LMS when a loud cry of distress rings through the room. "I just lost everything I wrote!" they will groan. 

I confess that I am not always very sympathetic in these situations. For one, I always advise them to use the browser version of the site rather than the app, because it has more functionality including an autosave feature. For another, they usually don't have that much to write, and it seems like little more than an aggravation to have to recreate their thoughts.

Yesterday, I was pushing an end-of-month deadline to get some professional learning done when I was interrupted by something. I returned to the task, a couple paragraphs written in response to a book I had read, after dinner and carefully crafted my reply. When I clicked the post button, I got a message that I had been logged out of the site because of inactivity. 

You guessed it! I lost all my work.

Maybe I'll be a bit more empathetic with the kids in the future.