Seize the May

When we were kids, every neighborhood in our Levitt-designed township had a pool, right next to the elementary school. The pools opened the day after school got out for the summer, usually sometime in mid-June. My mom had a rule that it had to be at least 70 degrees to go to the pool, which made sense,  considering we were living in New Jersey where the average temperature in June could be a bit chilly. 

I thought of those days today as I walked throughout the neighborhoods around here, noting the progress each was making on readying its pool for our traditional Memorial Day opening. And I remembered the rule again when a friend remarked on how much she wished the pool was open after we had just finished some competitive pickleball playing, but I could not agree.

Oh, Mom would have let us go-- it was close to 80 today, with clear skies and low humidity-- but this spring has been so wonderful, mostly sunny, but cool, the kind of weather you can throw your windows open to, that I am in no rush to welcome summer just yet. 

Especially since we still have five weeks of school left!

Whaaaaaaaat???

Call me jaded (or old), but I can't remember the last time I saw something that truly surprised me. People, places, and situations of interest? Sure. Something unexpected? Maybe.

But this evening when I was running errands, I had a hold-the-phone!!!, what. is. that??? moment. So much so? That I whipped out my phone to take a picture.

Yes! 

That is a neon orange car. 

Way Back

 "You've been teaching here a long time, haven't you?" asked the guy at the desk when I checked into the rec center. 

"Thirty years," I told him.

"My name is Danny," he said.

"I recognize you," I replied. "You've been here a while, too."

"My kids went here way back," he said. "Brandon and--"

"Breaana!" I finished. "Wow! I taught Brandon and coached Breeana!"

"I knew I knew you," he smiled.

"You know what's crazy?" I said. "Brandon was actually in the first-grade class at Drew where I did my student teaching. I still keep school pictures of all those kids in my desk upstairs, because they were the first I ever taught."

"Oh let me see," he looked thoughtful, "that must be Lorenzo, Nikko, John,"

"Deonte, Charmaine, Akeyla," I continued. "When I started teaching here I couldn't wait until they got to sixth grade!"

"Well they're all 35, 36 now," he told me, "and a lot of them are still in the neighborhood and doing good."

"I'm glad to hear it," I said. "And the next time I come down, I'll put those pictures in my gym bag to show you!"

6-8 Who Do We Appreciate?

A colleague stopped by my room on her way out this afternoon. She recently announced she was retiring, and I congratulated her. What followed was a conversation I'm sure many teachers are having all over the country about the needs of the kids, their lack of attachment and social skills after being out (on top of the challenge of early adolescence!), and the dearth of support from administration and the community. 

This particular teacher moved from sixth grade to eighth grade last year, and since then she has faced two very tough classes of kids. Where sixth graders are still mostly sweet, eighth graders can bit a bit surly and rude, even in the best of times. Added to that, the eighth graders last year and this spent a considerable portion of middle school learning from home, and so their connection to the adults here, which can be tenuous at that age, is frayed and in some cases broken.

The behaviors she described were appalling: openly rude, physically threatening, and academically disengaged. Of course, I had heard the stories, but it was disheartening nevertheless. I tried to be optimistic-- the kids in seventh and sixth grade who have been with us full-time, seem much more like their pre-pandemic counterparts I remember. 

She nodded as she turned to leave, and noticed the teacher appreciation pennant on my door. It was covered in notes of gratitude from sixth graders. "I saw these as I came down the hallway from eighth grade," she told me. "There are more and more signatures on each one as you get closer to sixth grade. It reminds me of how different the younger students are."

She pointed to a note at the bottom of my pennant and read out loud, "English is amazing!" She laughed and added, "said no eighth grader, ever!"

Small Victory

I have a student who has been a reluctant writer this year. Unlike many of his peers, his sticking point is not a lack of know-how, for he writes beautifully whenever he chooses to. For him, it seems like more of an inability to engage with any task that is not somehow pleasing to him. His pleasures are not superficial or facile, and his insight and analysis are very astute and comprehensive, but he is eleven, and his refusal to even attempt a simple assignment (or at least look for its small advantages) often devolves into a confrontational tantrum.

BUT, this young scholar happens to love poetry and figurative language, and he also came up with a plot and illustration style for his children's story that he does find pleasing. This happy confluence of events has meant that, although the story was due nearly three weeks ago, he has willingly come most days at lunch and after school to complete the project. (Let's not get into why he won't work on it at home.)

AND, this afternoon at 4:15, he pushed back his chair and leapt up with a whoop of joy. He was finished, and he was pleased with the product, a first for this school year. "I have never been so happy to write one single sentence!" he proclaimed, beaming. Then he turned in his truly charming story (one of the best of the year) and packed his things to go.

I'm not sure if I have been happier to see a single sentence written, either. 

Educatorial

The brain break today involved chopsticks and superballs, a throwback to my graduate school days. Back then, I shared an office with 3 other MA candidates at ODU. We were all teaching Freshman Composition, and we had a lot of ways to avoid grading the awful essays we assigned. In addition to going out to lunch and drinking beer and shooting pool, when we were actually in the office, we often ordered takeout. 

It was one sleepy afternoon, after a heavy Chinese meal, when I plucked a superball from the junk bowl on my desk with an extra pair of chopsticks and bounced off the tile floor, trying to catch it. My colleagues, at first amused by my ridiculous attempts, were both amazed and delighted when I managed to pluck the ball from the air. 

After that, everyone was armed with chopsticks, and our superball collection grew every time we passed a gum machine with a quarter. It turned out that catching superballs with chopsticks was not a one-off, and we experimented with different game rules for Chopball, as we called it, throughout the semester, as well as gifting each other several sets of fancy chopsticks from Pier 1. For years I always had a tin of high-bounce balls and a bunch of chopsticks, but also for years, I have not owned either.

Until this week! Something reminded me of those Chopball days, and I was inspired to order a couple dozen superballs and sets of chopsticks. For under 20 bucks, I was up and running, but without a consistent game framework. Over the weekend, it occurred to me that we could adapt the rules of "Rob the Nest" and that is what we did. The quick little game was a big success, and I'll definitely add it to my collection.

Who says grad school doesn't prepare you for life?

Self-Care

It is mental health awareness month, and this morning's homeroom lesson was on stigmas: what they are and how to avoid them, especially where mental health issues are concerned. Our conversation turned to the recent tragedy in NYC where a man with a history of mental health issues was behaving erratically on a subway and one of his fellow passengers put him in a chokehold. It was a lot for sixth graders, but they were thoughtful and respectful.

Even so, I was relieved that we had also planned to plant some seeds this morning. It was an activity I had been promising for a couple of weeks and I finally had it pulled together today. The kids were excited as we filled small paper cups with soil, and they chose from pumpkin, sunflower, cilantro, beans, and peas. Then they wrote their names on popsicle stick markers, and we watered the cups and placed them on the windowsill in the strong spring sunlight.

In the final moments of the class, we all kind of stood there looking at our plants and perhaps reflecting on that simple act of placing seed in soil.

"I think this was good for our mental health," one student said, and I couldn't have agreed with him any more.