Parts Per Million

There seemed to be more masks than usual in school today, although I didn't really notice at first. It was more than half an hour into the day that I overheard two students talking about air quality. Listening to their conversation I realized that there was a whole environmental crisis brewing right outside of which I was not aware. 

How did I miss these wildfires in Canada? Why had I not questioned the smudgy red ember of the sun rising through the hazy morning? How could I overlook my sandy eyes and scratchy throat? Our air quality today was among the worst in the world, smoke from a thousand miles away casting a murky golden fog over our forecasted breezy blue skies. 

And now that I know it's here? I can't wait for it to be gone.

This Magic Moment

 A cheeky student was sitting behind my desk this afternoon after the bell. "I'm Ms. S!" she proclaimed. "Do you want a Jolly Rancher?"

"Come out from there," I directed her. 

She complied, but on her way, she grabbed the ukulele. A few kids were hanging around before they headed home, shooting baskets and putting golf balls, mostly. Another teacher came in; she needed to leave, but she had a student who was willing to stay and work on a project coming due. I shrugged and invited him to find a seat.

"Will you play the ukulele?" another kid asked. 

I had forgotten I was holding it after I had confiscated it from the student exiting my desk. I looked over at the new arrival; he had set his violin down and was opening his iPad to work. "Do you play ukulele?" I asked him.

"Actually, I do play a bit," he answered and so I handed him the instrument. He plucked the strings and hummed, then asked what note each one was. Clearly, he did not play, but soon he was fingering chords and strumming a little melody. "Now we just need some harmony," he said, more to himself than anyone else.

Scanning the room, his eyes lit up when he saw that one of the other kids was a fellow violinist. He handed her the ukulele. "Play a melody!" he said as he unpacked his violin.

She took the instrument and ran her fingers across the strings. She tried a violin chord that sounded very dissonant, then another that was lovely, minor, and moody. She strummed a 4/4 beat while he rosined his bow. And then he began to play, and she did, too, moving her fingers and varying the rhythm. He matched her improvisation with his own, and then a couple of other students pulled out a clarinet and a flute, and all of a sudden we had a little wind and string ensemble of our very own.

Oh, it was over in minutes (they are only 12), but it was pretty amazing while it lasted. then they got back to bickering about stickers, writing for the 100-Day Challenge, and finishing their other work.

One More Monday 'til Summer

I don't know what made me think of it, but once I did? I had to have a little mini-golf course in my room for a brain break. 

So I went to the thrift shop and combed the sporting goods section. there I found six putters for three bucks each and a bag of seven neon golf balls for another three dollars. In my classroom, I used duct tape, solo cups, and ring toss rings from a previous brain break (found in the Target dollar bins) to set up a six-hole course with chairs and tables for obstacles. To complete the activity I printed nine-hole mini-golf scorecards for four players. 

The two-par course has a four-stroke limit, and 20 kids can get through it in a little over 10 minutes. Okay, there's no windmill, but not for lack of trying-- my colleague next door searched her cupboards for the motorized pinwheel she had years ago for some science experiment, but just couldn't find it. She did give me some extra foam core, though, and now I'm dreaming of bumpers and ramps.

Eight more days to go!

How Many Does it Take?

Tibby saw it first. Or was it Milo? Hard to say, but last night around 10 PM our cats were super-interested in the living room rug. It wasn't long before Lucy hopped off her bed and went over to investigate.

"What are they looking at?" Heidi asked with a bit of alarm.

I glanced over from the couch. In the light of the TV, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. "Who knows?" I shrugged.

Heidi was not as easily dissuaded. She turned on some lights and squinted at the pattern in the carpet. The cats were all perky-eared and swishy-tailed. Lucy was play-bowing. I still saw nothing. 

"There!" Heidi pointed at a crescent that almost matched the rug. On closer examination, we saw legs, a hundred legs.

"A house centipede," I identified the intruder, and, grabbing a tissue, scooped it up, and sent it on its way outside. 

Go, team!

Mother Duck

We took a late afternoon walk around the Tidal Basin today. The weather was fair and breezy, and the crowds were relatively thin, even more so the closer it got to that traditional American dinner hour; as many times as we have been down there, we knew it would probably be so.

As we set off, the tiny cherries on and beneath the trees took me by surprise-- could it be possible I've never been down there this time of year? Surely not! But it had to be, for I had no idea that our cherries, so famous for their ornamental blossoms in the spring, were of a fruiting variety. 

Around by the Jefferson Memorial our company was more avian than human-- a hundred or more ducks and geese swam and waddled on the beach formed from the crumbling retaining wall. There was only one mother duck: she was small and slim, barely an adult herself, but I admired the way she steered her two tiny ducklings firmly toward the water. She was young, but she was competent and resolute.

I was reminded of one of our family stories. When I was not yet four,  and my brother was just two, and my sister was an infant, our family moved to Philadelphia for my dad's job. Before our house was ready, we stayed a couple nights downtown in the Sheraton. My dad had been in Philly for a month or so, leaving my mother to pack the house care for 2 toddlers, and oh yes, give birth. 

My dad was at work when we arrived at the hotel, and my mother put us all down for naps. But who could sleep in such a wondrous place? My exhausted mother, perhaps, but not us! My brother and I got up from our beds, still in our t-shirts and underwear, walked past my sleeping mother, and opened the door. Outside there was a long hallway lined with doors, and we were eager to explore. Of course, the door locked behind us, and once we set off, there was no way of knowing which of the doors was ours.

A hotel maid found us and somehow knew which room to return us to. She knocked quietly and then used her master key to open the door. Inside, she found my mother, still sleeping. Mom woke up to the three of us standing over her. "Oh," the kindly maid was shaking her head, "she's just a baby and she has three babies of her own!"

Unquestionably

"Do you know Ms. W?" a student asked the other morning in homeroom. "She's my testing teacher and I want to know if she's nice."

"Oh, yes!" I answered. "I know her well! She's very nice."

"I don't know if I can believe you," the student replied doubtfully.

I tried not to be offended. "Why not? Don't you trust my judgment?" I asked, wondering why she had bothered to ask me at all.

"It's not that!" she said. "It's just that, now that I think about it, you're cool with everyone!" She shook her head. "I'm definitely not that chill."

"First of all, thanks," I laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment. But also, don't worry-- Ms. W. really is nice!"

Stacy Knows Best

"Stacy told me," one of my students remarked the other day.

"Who's Stacy?" asked the kid next to him. I was curious, too. I know of no Stacys in our school.

"Oh," the first boy shrugged, "she's my moral compass. Always has been."

"What?" said the other kid.

"She's the voice in my head that tells me right from wrong," explained his classmate. "Everybody has one. Mine's just named Stacy."

I looked carefully at him to see if he was joking. He didn't seem to be, and neither did he seem the least bit self-conscious about revealing this detail of his life.

"Why?" asked the second student. "Why 'Stacy'?"

"I don't know, she just is," answered the other kid. "She's an adult with two children of her own, so she has a good idea about what I should do." 

The student next to him nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and went back to his writing.