Zonked Out

After a fun day of vacation, I slept soundly last night. In fact, I only woke up once in the middle of the night-- I needed to pee and put my laptop away, which was still on my lap, powered on, and open to the Sunday crossword puzzle. Were my fingers still on the keyboard, too? Hard to say; I'm just grateful the lights were out, and the machine didn't fall to the floor like my books sometimes do!

Be Healed

Usually, I am an inveterate beachcomber: sometimes, there's nothing more satisfying than walking the shore and scanning the middens pushed up by the tide, looking for a hidden treasure. But, such focus can also be a distraction from the splendor around me, or worse. Many's the time I've left the beach with a stiff neck and a headache and not much else.

This morning felt a little different to me. It's the first day of our week-long vacation at the beach, and I just wanted to walk. With the early morning sunshine reflecting off the ocean, Heidi, Lucy, and I set an easy pace, walking and talking to cover the mile-and-a-half to the pier. We were on our way back when somehow the conversation turned to our aching joints and the stiff gaits we sometimes have to push through. 

"When I've been sitting in the chair too long, it's like," I mimicked an exaggerated toddle.

"How is it again?" Heidi laughed.

I paused and stooped over, resting my hand on my hip, ready to limp forward, but there on the sand at my feet was a big, perfect shark's tooth. I scooped it up, whooped with joy, and did a little happy dance. 

All my aches and pains were gone.

The Week that Is

Should there be a Saturday road trip on the agenda, I always look forward to listening to the AT40 70s edition broadcast. The nostalgia of hearing songs from my childhood seems to fuel the journey, making even the longest trip shorter. 

I was disappointed today, though, when the show was a rebroadcast from this week in 1970. Generally, the earlier in the decade the countdown, the less satisfying I find it. In 1970, I was eight, and although I recognized Black Magic Woman by Sanatana (#40), the next few numbers were disappointing, and so I turned my radio down and drove in silence. 

But soon, my mind turned to what I might have been doing Thanksgiving week in 1970 when I was 8. Back then, our family always took a road trip from our home in South Jersey to see family in DC. I imagined the five of us packed into our blue 1964 Ford Falcon heading south. I remembered that one year, we left so early that we actually stopped for breakfast at a roadside diner, which was not our usual routine. I could picture myself sitting with my brother and sister on one side of a booth, waiting for our pancakes, looking out the window at the cars whiz by in the bright November morning sun, and feeling the excitement of the holiday bubbling through my brain.

Back in the present, I navigated the flow of traffic under the pale blue November sky and felt the excitement of the holiday bubble through my brain.

Putting it in R

I spent a chunk of today making returns: I dropped off some components of Heidi's Halloween costume that didn't quite work at UPS, returned a power staple gun that wasn't right for the job at Home Depot, a glue gun at Michaels, a sweater at Costco, and another Halloween thing at TJMaxx. 

Before, when I worked full-time, running such errands could be time-consuming and stressful, but today's activity offered all the satisfaction of accomplishing a list of chores AND more! Instead of spending money and bringing bags of stuff home, I cleared out bags of stuff from the house and got some money back. 

The Bird in My Hand

I had Lucy today when I stopped by Treat's school to pick something up. "We're going to take a walk around the neighborhood," I said, "any interest?"

He was game, so the three of us set out from the upper parking lot onto a paved trail winding through the woods. "I had no idea this was here!" I said.

"Neither did I," Treat said. "We got a strongly worded email last week reminding us that we must never take the students out of the building during instructional time," he added, shrugging. "So I haven't spent much time out here."

The trail meandered above the school and then turned up the hill toward the elementary school. Soon, we found ourselves in their parking lot. "It's been years since I've been over here," I told Treat, "but my very first classroom was here."

I recounted the tale of how, after getting my teaching degree and license and subbing for six months, I still had no offers by June. "I wasn't even in the candidate pool," I sighed. Then, a woman who worked at the ed center and had become an unofficial mentor to me offered me a summer school position teaching kindergarteners at that school. "I jumped at the chance!" I laughed, recalling how I told my little class of 12 that they were not in kindergarten anymore-- this was the first day of first grade! Back in those days, there was no curriculum, so I used all the strategies and activities I had learned during my student teaching in first grade to plan my program. The kids wrote every day, I read to them, and we sang and danced and walked out in the field (which was currently occupied by four trailers) looking for inspiration. 

It was great, and the five weeks flew by. Lots of teachers stopped by to ask me where I taught during the year, but every time they did, my face fell. "Nowhere," I answered. On the last day of summer school, I still didn't have a job, and no one from HR had even come to see me teach. I cried as I loaded my boxes in the car and drove home.

A few days later, the same lady intervened again. "Write me a thank-you note," she suggested. "Not because I want one, but I'll forward it to HR and tell them what a great job you did."

The next day the phone rang and the director of personnel herself was on the line. "I read your gracious note," she drawled, "and if there's one thing we want in our teachers? It's good manners." 

That is how I got into the candidate pool. Once I was eligible to be hired, I had a job teaching sixth-grade English the next day. 

And you can bet I kept it.

Big Picture

The doorbell rang at 8:30 this morning. When I swung the door open, a man dressed in white stood on the stoop. "We are painting your unit today," he told me.

I nodded. The project had been going on for over a month. We had been power-washed several weeks ago, and now it was time to replace any rotting wood and paint the rest. "Can I just move things away from the railing?" I asked. "That's all you're doing, right?"

"No, Miss," he replied, "it's the flooring, too."

Now, that was a different situation: one that required me to move a lot of stuff completely off the balcony, either into the house or through the house. I raised my eyebrows. I was not unfamiliar with the details of this project, especially since Heidi is on the board. "I thought this building was scheduled for next week," I said. "I'm sure got an email that said so."

"They must have sent the wrong schedule," he answered politely, but his expression was clear. This is happening, Lady.

I sighed and thanked him, then set about clearing the decks. Later, as I sat surrounded by lawn chairs, cacti, deck boxes, and flower pots, I pulled up my email. According to that communication, our building was scheduled for the week of November 25. I was not wrong. Looking more closely at the message, however, I noticed that the building before ours was scheduled to be completed on the 18th, and there was no work listed between the 18th and the 25th, an apparent oversight.

I hadn't picked up the mistake because I was only focused on my unit rather than the overall project. Such a perspective is unsurprising, but in this case, it was also unhelpful. Oh, and to add insult to the situation, they didn't even paint our unit today, so the stuff is still just sitting on the tarp in the house.

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.