Cookies Win

I was double-booked after school today when both the girls' mentor group and the committee examining the feasibility of maintaining teams in our middle school were meeting. I like cookies, and I enjoy being a mentor to one of our sixth graders, but I dropped off my lemon squares and made my apologies to my mentee, and headed off to the committee.

Splitting a grade level into several interdisciplinary teams is one of the foundations of the middle school model. Both research and my personal experience over the last three decades have shown that a smaller group of educators who share a single team can better support the students we all know and teach. Academic intervention, behavior management, activity planning, and school-home communication are all more effective and consistent with a team. Kids in sixth grade in particular make the transition to middle school much more smoothly when they are assisted by a common cadre of teachers,

Even so, the team model is threatened at our school by district requirements for intensified and inclusion classes which make staffing and scheduling a challenge, so hell yeah I skipped the cookies. Unfortunately, less than half of the volunteer committee showed up, and we were unable to make much progress on our goal of gathering information, problem-solving, and offering a recommendation. Several of the no-shows were actually at the mentor meeting, which I'm afraid does not bode well for teams.

Uncomplicated

I recently updated the operating system on my smartwatch, and,  as I always do, I eagerly checked to see what new watch faces were available. Clicking around in the watch app, I soon landed on a cute little snoopy face and I tapped to add it to my favorites.

It was really just a gesture, though, because, for the last many years, my watch face has been the analog time superimposed on my activity rings. Seeing my progress at a glance has become second nature, if not always as motivating as it used to be, and I wasn't inclined to make any changes. The "complications" or other widgets I kept on the face were the timer, the weather, in the upper corners, and the exercise tracker on the bottom, and I liked having those apps literally at my fingertips.

But when I put my watch on for the first time after updating, Snoopy skated across the face with Woodstock fluttering behind. That's cute, I thought, and swiped to return to my old standby, which for some reason didn't happen. When I looked again, Snoopy took off from the minute hand with helicopter ears, which made me giggle a little. 

I looked to see how to add other widgets to the Snoopy face, but soon found I could not. Flipping my wrist to examine my watch, I observed Beagle Scout Snoopy jump off the hour hand with five little Woodstocks behind him, and I was charmed enough to keep the face for a while.

Over the last week, I've enjoyed dozens of animations that change with the time, the weather, and the season, and so far every one tickles me whenever I check the time. I've discovered I don't need to be ready to set a timer at any moment, or instantly know the details of my activity or the temperature outside, or even track my exercise with a single tap. Just watching Snoopy fish from the minute hand and catch Woodstock is enough.

For now.

Olden Days

"What does this mean?" a student asked, pointing to the story he was reading. 

I looked at the text, I slammed down the phone, it read.

"Why would anyone slam their phone?" wondered the student. "Wouldn't it break?"

"I can understand your confusion," I laughed, "but he's talking about a landline." I walked over and picked up the receiver on my classroom phone. "You know how to hang this up, right?"

He looked at me in confusion. 

"She means, end the call," another student supplied.

"Right," I agreed putting the receiver down. "This is called hanging up, and sometimes when people were mad or excited they would slam down the receiver." I picked up the handset and demonstrated.

"Ooooooh," said the first student. "I guess that makes sense?" 

"That was a good question," I assured him.

He went back to reading, and I shook my head. It had recently occurred to me that I am 50 years older than the people I spend most of my time with, and boy! Was that half-century showing!

You Oughta Be an Editor

As I mentioned earlier in the week, there actually were several typos in many of the stories I hastily converted from PDF to text last week, and today I put a bounty on them. Explaining the situation, I told the students that any reader who could find a mistake in a story could have a piece of candy if they knew how to correct it, too.

Oh my!

I have never seen such a close reading of any text! Not only did they read the stories carefully for meaning, they went back a few times to make sure they hadn't left any candy on the table. 

When the assistant principal stopped by to observe for a few minutes I explained what was going on. "To be honest," I told her, "I'm thinking about purposely adding typos to everything from now on!"

Still Got It

I'm always surprised when I bring back a brain break from years past, and it doesn't go as I thought it would. Perhaps it is to be expected; I know from experience that I must tweak my lessons and units from year to year to accommodate the different learners I have, so why should other activities be any different?

Today, I dug out the chopsticks and superballs for the brain break, and it just wasn't quite as much fun as it was last year. The kids still had a good time, and it was an effective movement break, but it was a little flat. 

I stood holding a super ball in a pair of chopsticks and pondering the situation as my last class settled back to work. When the ball slipped from my grip, I automatically grabbed for it with the chopsticks, and to my surprise and delight, plucked the ball out of the air.

"Whoa! Did you see that?" one kid gasped. "Can you do it again?"

"Maybe," I laughed, "I used to be able to do it all the time."

"When?" asked someone.

"In graduate school," I shrugged, "about 40 years ago!"

"Can I record you?" said the first student.

"Go ahead," I agreed, and it took a few tries, but I managed to catch it again. "Let's see the video," I said.

The student pulled it up and scrolled forward to the point right before I successfully caught the ball. "Whoa!" she said again. "Do you see the look on your face?"

It was pure delight.

As it Should Be

"There's a typo in this story," one of my students complained today.

"Show me," I asked him because I knew it was entirely possible. I had spent a tedious couple of hours over the weekend converting PDFs to text so that they would work with the read-aloud function of our learning management system. This particular student was someone I knew would benefit from both hearing and seeing the text of the story as he read.

He pointed to a word on the page and said, "I think this must be spelled wrong. I've never seen it before."

The word was 'ought', and I nodded at him. "I can see where you might not know that word; we don't really use it that often, but it means 'should'."

"I learned a new word today!" he marveled.

"It's a good one," I agreed. "You should know it."

"Do you mean I ought know it?" he laughed.

"Yes!" I answered. "We would say, 'You ought to know it.'"

"Well, now I do," he assured me, and went back to the story.

Do I Know You?

A substitute walked into my room yesterday morning. "I'm here for your co-teacher," she said in a friendly and confident voice.

"Great," I answered, "but she has a homeroom of her own, so I won't see you until 8:30."

"Riiiight," she replied, "but I will see you soon!"

I was impressed again by her manner when she returned for first period. She was so helpful and engaged, both with the kids and my instruction.She also seemed very at home with me and the class. When it was time for her to go to her next period, I thanked her warmly. "Best sub ever!" I laughed, only half joking.

"I don't have a login," she told me as she picked up her bag, "so I couldn't get the announcements to work for homeroom this morning."

I nodded sympathetically.

"Was Annika on?" she asked. 

That's when it clicked! She seemed familiar, because she was the parent of a former student who is now in 8th grade. "No, she wasn't," I told her, "which is a shame, because I do love seeing the kids, especially after they leave my class."

"It's fun for me to see her when I'm here," she agreed, and I was able to nod with understanding. When she was gone, I wondered if she brought her daughter up so that I would know who she was. If so, I was grateful for her tactful approach.