Only So Much Spirit

Secret Spirit Week the subject line read, and the email contained details about staff dress each day. But don't tell the students! the message ended. 

The idea was a novel one to me, something that we have never done in the many years I've been teaching at this school, and all but one of the themes were easy for me to get behind: Monday dress in school spirit wear, Tuesday wear all black, Wednesday wear a hoodie, Thursday wear plaid flannel, Friday dress for the prom.

It was fun to see so many of my colleagues dressed alike all week, too, although as Heidi predicted, none of the kids even noticed. Today at the basketball game, as we stood on the sidelines in our plaid flannel shirts, one of the other English teachers stopped to chat on her way out. "You know what I noticed?" she said.

I raised my eyebrows expectantly.

"We are all dressed like you!"

"And we have been all week!" I agreed. 

"That ends tomorrow though," I told her.

"No prom for you?" she laughed. "Well, I guess I expected so."

Fair Rap

Students were working quietly when I decided to try my hand at composing a Titanic rap using the required vocabulary (accommodations, ambitious, evacuate, luxurious, plague, sound, tragedy) and the knowledge of the ship we had gained over the last few sessions. I had already offered kids the opportunity to put on a beat and share their work, if they wanted to, and it seemed like having a model might be helpful.

I was pretty pleased with what I composed, so I decided to risk sounding like an old white lady posing and step up to the figurative mic. (Click here for a version of what my classes heard.) 

And I was gratified at how much the kids appreciated my effort. But what was most cool was how many students went right to work, eager to share their own compositions. 

Two guys even made an album cover for their single. "Don't worry," they told me. "We'll sign you to our label!"

Dig if You Will

"What can I do for candy?" asked a visiting seventh grader after school today. "Can I show you something amazing?"

He cupped his hands together and whistled a low tone. 

"That's pretty good," I agreed. "What kind of bird calls it supposed to be?"

He shrugged. "Owl? Dove, maybe."

"Let's see how close you are," I suggested, pulling out my phone to open my bird ID app. I tapped record and he warbled away. No bird identified, the app informed us.

He tried again, varying his pitch. 

"Maybe you should listen to some calls and try to imitate them," I suggested.

For the next five minutes, he cooed and quacked and cheeped and peeped his heart out, but he could not fool the microphone. 

"Here you go," I laughed, handing him a Jolly Rancher. 

"But I didn't match it," he sighed.

"You didn't have to," I told him. "Your attempt was entertaining enough."

Titans of Rhyme

"What rhymes with luxurious?" a student asked me today. She was working on an assignment about the Titanic where students were asked to write a rap using some key vocabulary words. 

"Curious? Furious? Penurious?" I suggested. "That last word means 'cheap,' by the way," I explained.

"The ship was luxurious, but with the lifeboats they were penurious," she tried.

"That's pretty good!" I laughed.

"I can't find anything for plague, though" she sighed.

"The vocabulary word doesn't have to be at the end of the line," I told her. "You could say something like, 'No problems plagued the amazing ship..." I paused for a moment to think. 

"Until the hole the iceberg ripped!" she finished, nodding. "What about ambitious?" she prompted.

"The plans for the ship were ambitious," I began, "but now she sleeps with the fishes."

She gasped and the kids around her who had been listening to our conversation, did, too.

"I'm going to use that!" said one.

"No! I am!" said another.

"Nobody can," I shrugged. "It's my line. Come up with your own."

A little while later the bell rang, and as she was packing up to go a student caught my eye. "You should stick with that rapping," she advised me. "You never know what might come of it."

Northern Wisdom

We keep a few snow shovels in our attic for those rare times we have to dig out, and they have been waiting optimistically on the porch since early January. They haven't been necessary in either of the two recent storms; the light and fluffy snow was easy enough to brush off the cars and drive over. 

There is a plow service for our community, though, and it has been cold here since the snowfall, so although we have avoided slush, there is quite a bit of ice in our parking lot. Unfortunately, when we tried to make the way to our cars a bit less treacherous, our snow shovels were not up for the job. 

No worries though: my wife is from Buffalo, and they know a few things about getting rid of snow and ice up there. So off we headed to our local big box hardware store and, back in the garden tools, scored ourselves a long-handled chopper/scraper. 

Back at home, the ice never had a chance. I chopped and scraped and Heidi shoveled the chunks away and sprinkled ice melt on the damp pavement.

"Thank you for your public service," a neighbor said as he walked the newly cleared pathway to his car. 

"It was my pleasure," I said cheerfully because, really? There's not much more satisfying than having the right tool for a job.

Unsubscribe

I ended up on some travel mailing list that sent me an intriguing offer this morning. It was an all-inclusive resort with luxury amenities: spa treatments, healthy locally sourced meals, and all sorts of recreational activities, for under 300 bucks a day. It seemed much too good to be true, so I did a bit of research it.

Turns out, the place was in Australia.

The exchange rate, 66 Aussie cents on the US dollar, made it even more of a bargain. The airfare? Was a dealbreaker.

Right Track

Back in the late 90s nylon track pants were all the rage. Lightweight and waterproof, people wore them all the time either as an over-layer or just as workout pants. The zipper pockets and cuffs were definitely a plus, and between the two of us Heidi and I owned four or five pairs. 

By accident, we realized how they could easily double as snow pants, a garment that neither of us owned. Oversized in that 90s way, track pants could be pulled on over leggings or even sweatpants, and the nylon offered protection from both wind and water so we wore them in bigger storms to shovel out our cars, or go sledding with the boys, or walk the dog.

In fact, it was on an early morning walk with our first dog Isabel that I had the notion to slide down the big hill by our house. Having no sled, I figured the track pants would do, and I was right. That nylon cut the friction to a fraction, transforming the hill into a huge sliding board. After that, Isabel and I gleefully swooshed our way home every time we had the chance.

It's been a while since those days, but when we woke to the quiet beauty of tiny flakes blanketing our world this morning I asked Heidi if we still had those track pants. Turns out they were stowed away in the same little drawer they've always been in, just waiting for a day like today. So I pulled my favorite pair over my warm and comfy sweats and headed out with Lucy into the muffled morning.

And you can bet we took that hill in all its pristine glory, all the way from the top to the parking lot.