Little Data

Once a colleague told me that, in an effort to help herself make an important decision, she created a one question Google form for herself that she filled out everyday asking how she felt about making the change she was considering. 

"How's it looking?" I asked her.

"Right now?" she replied, "It's 50-50."

I Laughed when she told me, both at the quirkiness and the genius of her approach, but in the end she collected months of data and was able to analyze the trends and aggregate record of her thoughts and feelings and use them to help her make a decision that she was happy with.

I thought of her today as I was sliding into a mid-week trough of online teaching. After a pretty good day yesterday, today the same lesson was less effective, and after a meeting during my planning time, it took me much longer than I expected to prepare my next set of lessons for tomorrow and Friday. Now that they are done, I'm feeling a little bit better, but who knows how tomorrow will be. Writing about the challenges and small victories of this time will offer a record, no doubt, but as we go through? I think a daily check in might be a good idea, too.

Cue the Google form!

So Close and yet so Far

A colleague turned her camera on in a meeting this afternoon. Behind her I saw an orange umbrella, a patio, and brick buildings beyond the open gate of her wooden fence. It was all so familiar, and when I asked, it turned out she lived not 1/2 a mile from here. Another colleague on the call lives just a little past that, and another about a mile in the other direction. Just then, yet another colleague who lives only about a block or two from me joined the call. All told, five out of the six of us in the meeting were within a circle with a radius of just a mile or so. 

But it didn't really matter. We were still all stuck in our houses staring at the glow of a computer screen.

More of the Same

For just a moment this afternoon I thought our luck had turned. 

Caught off-guard by a sudden downpour despite sunny skies, I pulled Heidi and Lucy under a big Pin Oak to wait out what surely couldn't be a very long storm. And, almost as if on cue, the rain stopped and we stepped out from our shelter, completely dry,  and back into the muggy afternoon. Not far from home, we continued on our way, laughing at the close call. 

Until the skies opened again, and this time? 

We

were

drenched.

To Do Someday

One of our young neighbors was sprinting through the courtyards this afternoon with his mom. We made this little family's acquaintance at the pool this summer, and since his mom is a teacher, too, we've been spending a little bit of outdoor time with them whenever 7-year-old Elijah zips down to our end of the complex. 

He has lots of energy and imagination, so these short visits are always entertaining. Today it was Truth or Dare, only-child style, where Elijah told us both what we would have on our turn, and what we would have to tell or do. The game was pleasantly wacky, with his questions and directions ranging from kiss your dog on the lips to what do you do when nobody is looking? and go to Mexico and drink ghost pepper milk. 

Eventually we renamed the game "To Do Today" although the tasks did not get anymore doable, much less today. Even so, it was a fun little while, and despite the fact that I couldn't make armor with a silver shield and sword and then travel the world looking for adventure, the thought of adding it to my to do list was unexpectedly appealing.

Keeping Our Distance

One of the few benefits of the COVID crisis has been the accessibility of the National Mall to us. With most offices and all the museums closed until recently, parking has been a breeze and the wide walkways and lack of visitors have made social distancing easy. It's been a joy to put Lucy in the car and go for a long walk through and around some of the most monumental real estate in the world.

I guess that's what I was expecting when we headed down there around 4:30 today, too. Sure, it was a weekend, but the weather had been muggy and overcast, threatening drizzle all day, and it was getting late. As soon as we approached the mall from 14th Street, though, it was clear something had changed. Throngs of people milled about, and loud music was playing from a brightly lit stage flanked by two JumboTrons. My jaw dropped; clearly this was a festival of some sort. 

Traffic was slow, but moving, along Jefferson Drive, and as we rolled along, I couldn't help but stare. It was a scene from another time-- lawn chairs, picnic blankets, children playing, food trucks lined up along the cross streets, with very few face masks to be seen. 

"I guess we won't be walking around here this evening," I said to Heidi, stating the obvious. 

Bumper Crop

Ever since I've had a garden, I've been dreaming of growing my own Halloween pumpkin. Perhaps, like Linus, I want to believe that I have found the most sincere pumpkin patch-- not only found it, but cultivated it myself.

Unfortunately, for the first several years, the vines either didn't sprout, or they withered in July, or they thrived without setting a single fruit. Then there was the time when I had that perfect pumpkin, just the one, and right before it was perfectly ripe and ready, I returned to my garden after a few days away only to find it collapsed into a rotten heap of squash and seeds. 

Last year, I finally got my first pumpkin, a wee little kettlebell-sized thing grown from a kit I got in my stocking. It was a nice fall decoration until I roasted it for pie. I did save the seeds though, and planted them in a three-sisters mound last spring. This year? I have seven pumpkins! All on the small side, but seven!  

"What are you going to do with all of them?" a colleague asked me today when I showed them to our online class. 

"Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins," I started. "And, since it's National Quesadilla Day," I told her, "I might make pumpkin quesadillas." 

She and the kids laughed. 

"No seriously," I continued, "seven is a lot of pumpkins! I'm going to make pumpkin curry, pumpkin tacos, pumpkin fried rice, pumpkin pasta... 

"Pumpkin fries," she suggested.

"Yes!" I agreed, "and pumpkin tots, pumpkin rings, pumpkin kebabs, pickled pumpkin." I paused to think.

"You're like the Bubba Gump Pumpkin Company!" she said.

Right? And if I save the seeds again, next year I could have 49 pumpkins!

Paradise Lost

 Almost three weeks in, I think I'm making distance teaching and learning work. It's not easy adapting lessons and activities, but it is teaching, and as I shamelessly wrote yesterday: I'm good at that. 

Connecting with the kids is getting a little better, too. Even though most days I still find myself earnestly talking to my own tiny picture in the corner of the laptop screen, laughing at my own jokes, and listening to the hiss of the speaker while the students stay muted and offscreen, I sense a shift: a few more cameras on here and there, a couple more virtual hands, lots of good ideas posted in the chat, and even several kids willing to share what they've written or answer my question when I ask them directly. It's not a classroom, and calling it a community is way too much of a stretch, but it is something, and it is improving. 

Even so, some of my more wistful moments this week have been when I explain what the routine is now and compare it to when we are in the building. Then my voice takes on a dreamy tone as I describe that shining bastion of education that is my classroom. 

"You guys," I'll say, "when you come in the door, the announcements will be on the screen in the front of the room, and I won't have to take roll, because I'll be able to see you! Then I'll ask you to clear your desk of everything except your writing notebook and something to write with. And guess what else? You'll have to keep your iPads OFF until I tell you that you need them!"