My Two Cents

Like many school systems nationwide, our local district has been wrestling with student phone use. Several schools, including my former school, are piloting lock pouches, but the interim policy for all schools is no phones during the school day. The district provides a personal device for instruction to every middle school student and a laptop to every high school student. Those can be distracting and disruptive enough, but kids (like many adults) are attached to their phones, and many will use them almost constantly if allowed.

When the policy was first discussed, many kids expressed extreme anxiety at being separated from their phones, which they considered a necessity, but many parents allso support students having access to their phones, mainly in case of emergency or danger.

Anecdotally, I have heard from my teacher friends in middle school that the younger students do not have as much of an issue with the restrictions as their older peers, which is predictable. Teachers, on the other hand, are mostly in favor of the new policies, especially since they were the ones who had to enforce the old rules, often resulting in the loss of instructional time and the goodwill of their students.

Not surprisingly, the survey data recently released by the school district shows just that. The student and teacher approval ratings are inverted: 14% of kids find the policy favorable, while 86% of teachers find the same. Parents are split 50-50. 

Because I worked with 11-year-olds for so many years, I know that what a group of kids find "normal" and "acceptable" can change rapidly based on experience and expectations. Children are resilient and adaptable, plus they are only at any given school for so long, so it's possible to shift the culture in just a few years. (For the better or the worse.)

The very fact that this present group is struggling with giving up their phones for part of the day makes me inclined to agree that schools should limit their use as much as possible. That way, it will be a non-issue in the near future for the kids who are coming up.

I'm Baaaack

I noticed a charge on my credit card that I didn't immediately recognize this morning. A little investigation revealed that it was an annual subscription to Screencastify, which I used sporadically when teaching. Although I have no specific recollection, I'm sure I signed up for a free trial, which had been auto-renewing for the last couple of years. 

I knew I had most likely enrolled using my school email, which was disabled, so accessing the account to cancel it would probably be more onerous than necessary. I sighed and tapped the sign-in with Google option, hoping it would somehow skip the school authentication. It did not, but when I clicked over to the next screen, I gasped. Rather than an error message, I got the two-factor screen just as my watch dinged with an access code. I had been reauthorized! 

Even though my substitute onboarding has not been officially completed (HR is notoriously slow in that respect), my account has been reactivated, and I can access all my school stuff again. Aside from being available should the ideal sub position (Is that an oxymoron? I think it might be!) open up, that's all I really wanted anyway. 

So, no rush, APS. I got what I applied for. Oh, and I canceled Screencastify, too.

Social Caterpillar

When I used to spend my days at work surrounded by hundreds of people, the last thing I wanted to do in my free time was socialize. Things are different now that I'm home alone all day. One of my former colleagues invited us to a happy hour on Friday evening, and not only was I willing to go out and see people, but I was actually looking forward to it.  

Heidi and I planned on making a polite appearance, but we ended up staying at least two hours later than we expected, and I really enjoyed the gathering. 

As an introvert, I have long understood that spending too much time in a crowd can be draining, but it wasn't until recently that I realized that spending too much time alone is not ideal either, even for me.

Look out, world!

What a Beauty

I looked up from where I was sitting in my chair. The daylight had faded completely as the three of us, Heidi, Betty, and I, had spent the afternoon chatting, and it was night. There, framed perfectly in the window, was the November full moon, also known as the beaver moon. It is also a supermoon this year, and the last we'll see until October 2025. It was still low enough in the sky to be huge, golden, and stunning. 

And I didn't even have to get up to behold it.

The Ghost of November Past

It wasn't until yesterday that I even thought about NaNoWriMo, the November writing throwdown that challenges people of all ages to write a novel of 50,000 words or more in 30 days. The novel does not have to be good, mind you, but it does have to be complete, which is arguably the heaviest lift for some, myself included. 

As regular readers know, I'm a big proponent of challenges, and I always thought I could possibly complete this one if I had enough time, but I totally forgot about it this year. November came so quickly and with so many fraught feelings. In fact, I only remembered when I was revisiting my writing from November 2009

Ah well, maybe 2025 is my year to write a [good, bad, or otherwise] novel. We'll see.

Short Ribs

“Let’s have short ribs,” suggested Mary when I mentioned it was about time for our writing group to meet, “at your house.” 

I lifted my eyebrows and shrugged non-committally. “We should have it at my house. It’s been a minute.” 

“I’ll send the text,” she offered. 

Although I didn’t promise, I did plan to make short ribs. I’d made them once before for the group many years ago. Then, I’d seen beautiful boneless short ribs on sale at the grocery store, and they seemed like the thing to cook. I had adapted a braised lamb shank recipe, and in my memory, they were effortlessly delicious: perfectly tender in a savory sauce enriched with mascarpone cheese. 

That’s what I was planning this time, too, but I decided to order the meat from a local farm that delivers dairy, meat, and produce. Their beef is sustainably and humanely raised and very flavorful. Two frozen blocks of bone-in short ribs were delivered last week, and the first part of the recipe was make-ahead, so I thawed the ribs a few days ago and planned the first cook for yesterday. 

I knew I would have to cut the ribs to separate them myself, but I wasn’t prepared for the thickness of the fat cap on them. Rather than marbled, they were layered, and each rib had a slightly different proportion of meat to fat and bone. When I thought about it, I knew that such irregularity is to be expected when you source your meat from a farm. Unlike in the grocery store, all of these ribs came from a single cow. Because of the sheer volume they supply, grocery meat distributors can package meat by like size and shape by trimming and sorting through cuts from many animals. 

There is an adage recommending giving a task you really need to be done to a busy person. The notion is that the busy are more efficient and productive. Accurate or not, the folks in charge of education seem to have taken that one to heart: as much talk as there is about taking things off teachers' proverbial plates, in the years that I taught, our responsibilities were regularly compounded. The time it took to do my job as well as I wanted to was one of the main reasons I retired. 

As unsure as I am about the busy person maxim, I have found that the inverse is true, at least for me. The less I have to do? The less I get done, especially since retiring. No deadlines, means, well, no deadlines. But with the actual date of writing group fast approaching, I found myself with a hard to-do list, and spent yesterday catching up on the housekeeping I’d been putting off since we cut our cleaning lady’s visits to once a month. Even so, I did not feel stressed, because? I’m retired! 

Depending who you talk to, or what recipe you read, short ribs are either one of the easiest dishes to make or else they are a somewhat tricky entree to pull off. The conflict lies in the cut itself. Short ribs are cut from the first five ribs of the cow, which is also in the chuck section, or the side of the chest. That area has a lot of muscle and fat, so the meat is tough, but marbled with fat and collagen that break down and tenderize it with long, slow cooking. That’s why most recipes call for braising short ribs-- just pop them in a low oven or slow cooker, set the timer for several hours, and voila!

The tricky part is this: if you don’t cook the ribs long enough, they are super-tough and chewy, but if you are overdone, they can be cottony and dry. The exact timing can vary, too, depending on the ribs you get. All told, however, the braising liquid can be forgiving, so overcooking is less of a problem. 

It was around six last night when I butchered the ribs and began searing them in my new cast iron braiser, all the while cooking our dinner for that night, too. “Are you going to have enough time tonight?” Heidi asked. “Weren’t you going to try to do those earlier?” 

“Yes and yes!” I answered confidently, straining the bone broth I had simmered all afternoon for the braise. “The recipe says they only need to cook an hour and a half tonight.” And that’s all I gave them. Even though they seemed tough when I pierced them with a fork, the recipe also called for cooling them overnight in the braising liquid, and I was hopeful that would do the trick. 

This morning, when I geared up for phase two of the dish, the short ribs were still very tough and chewy, even after a night in the broth and an hour in the marinade. There was much more fat than I remembered, too, but that was easily discarded. I hoped they would tenderize in the short cooking time remaining, but I was disappointed 20 minutes later when I checked. Uh oh. It was time to improvise. 

And I did. Another hour in the oven seemed to do the trick, although I would have to tweak the sauce a bit. Fortunately, I had made another bit of beef stock with the bones I’d lifted from the ribs. And there was the mascarpone, standing by to pull it all together. Dinner was saved, but was it because I was busy or because I had all that time?

It's a Twin Thing

Maybe it's because I spent so long in middle school, or maybe it's why I spent so long in middle school, but I kind of dig kid lit. We needn't debate its comparative merits here, but let's agree it has some: there is some great writing out there intended for young audiences.

Anyhoo, this morning when I was browsing through one of the several emails I get from folks recommending books to me, my attention was captured by Let it Glow, a collaborative middle years novel co-written by Marissa Meyer and Joanne Levy. Meyer I was familiar with, having read both her Lunar Chronicles and Archenemies series, and the book was billed as a "charming, Parent Trap-esque holiday romp," so how could I resist?

I downloaded the audiobook and listened to the tale of twins separated at birth as I cleaned house today, and it was delightful until... the girls decided to switch places! Oh, sure, I should have expected it, especially with the blurb and all, but really? Why would anyone put themselves through such an awkward experience?

I taught many sets of twins over my career, several of them identical. In the early days, it was school policy to put those siblings on separate middle school teams to give them time and space to develop their individuality. Later on? Parent requests to have their kids in the same classes took precedence. Their reasoning? Convenience. It was an extra layer of effort to keep track of different assignments and expectations. 

But back before that, I taught a student named Patricia who had a twin, Anne on the other team. Even though my best friends when I was in middle school were identical twins who were as easy for me to tell apart as anyone else in the world, I have never been able to consistently and definitively identify the twins I've taught, and these kids were no exception. 

I taught Patricia, so I didn't know her sister, but when they were together, it was only the glimmer of familiarity in Patricia's expression that clued me in. (That, or I remembered what outfit she was wearing that day.) There were times in class, though, when Patricia seemed kind of out of it, and I wondered if she had some attention or focusing issues. Most of the time, though, she was on target, and just another of the 21 students in the room.

Years after the twins left middle school, I ran into one of their friends out in the community. After we caught up on what she had been doing, I asked if she stayed in touch with any of her friends from our class. Sure enough, she mentioned Patricia and Ann and filled me in on their lives, too. 

Then she laughed. "Did you know they used to switch places all the time in middle school?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Really?" I answered. "I had no idea." 

She chuckled again. "They were so bad!" she said.

Later, after we parted ways, I thought about the girls trading places and I realized that all those times when Patricia seemed lost and uncomfortable, it was probably because it was her sister. I got a knot in my stomach just thinking about it. 

Then I shrugged and sighed. I hope it was worth it.