A Tiger in Your Tank

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Lunar New Year starts today. But what I didn't say was that this year? Is my year! 

Not only is the Year of the Tiger for me and everyone born in 1928, 1940, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, and 2010, but it is also the year of the Water Tiger, which only comes every 60 years. 

According to Feng Shui Web, we water tigers like to take part in a wide range of activities and are always willing to experiment with new ideas or satisfy our adventurous personalities by traveling around the world to distant lands. We are adaptable, perceptive and have a humble nature about us. 

We will remain calm in a calamity but can sometimes be very indecisive. We communicate very well with others and through our vast range of capabilities and convincing nature will usually achieve what we want in life. We are highly inventive and are often extraordinary writers. 

And while your own year may be unlucky in Chinese tradition, a tiger year generally favors the bold. Any who are ready and willing to move forward with passion could be well rewarded this year. Go big or go home, Tiger.

You Must Remember This

When the scholars in my class need help remembering things I often advise them to set a reminder on their iPads. It's a strategy that I use myself, admittedly with varying degrees of success. Most recently, I set an hourly reminder when my homeroom and I were trying to learn the Pledge of Allegiance in ASL. Whenever my watch chimed, I paused to practice the signs. Well, most of the time, and definitely enough to become pretty familiar with the gestures.

A few days later, I reset the app to remind me to practice daily, but I must have tapped something wrong, because I started getting 2 reminders every hour. Even so, it's easy enough to ignore them, although that does defeat the purpose. 

A few months ago, I set a daily reminder to "Plan the big 6-0" so that I would stop procrastinating on finding and finalizing a place for our family to gather at the end of June this year. It gave me a bit of pause, though, when Siri read the reminder out loud. Plan the big six-nil, she intoned, reading my coming age as the score of a soccer match or something. What does that even mean?

Probably the oldest, continuous reminder I have on my phone is from the summer of 2018. Then, my mom gave my a gift certificate to a restaurant downtown. Reservations were notoriously elusive, opening at midnight on the first for the month to come, and I set a daily reminder to try to book it. "Did you get one?" Mom would ask when we talked, but I never did. Six months later, my mom got sick and our time and attention were otherwise occupied. And then she died, the pandemic came, and, well. 

I don't even have the gift certificate anymore; I have no idea where it went. But every now and then? I still get a reminder to make that reservation. 

Year of the Which?

This Monday is the start of the Lunar New Year celebration for 2022. As kids we were fascinated by the "Chinese Zodiac" printed on so many placemats in so many Chinese restaurants. In between nibbles of fried noodles we would lift our little cups of tea and read the tiny descriptions for each of the 12 animals that represented the cycle. 

I was a tiger, "aggressive, courageous, candid and sensitive. Look to the Horse and Dog for happiness. Beware of the Monkey." 

My brother was a dragon, "eccentric and your life complex. You have a very passionate nature and abundant health. Marry a Monkey or Rat late in life. Avoid the Dog."

My sister was a horse, "Popular and attractive to the opposite sex. You are often ostentatious and impatient. You need people. Marry a Tiger or a Dog early, but never a Rat."

My mom was a rabbit, "Luckiest of all signs, you are also talented and articulate. Affectionate, but shy, you seek peace throughout your life. Marry a Sheep or Boar. Your opposite is the Cock."

And my dad was a boar, "Noble and chivalrous. Your friends will be lifelong, yet you are prone to marital strife. Avoid other Boars. Marry a Rabbit or a Sheep." 

Even though we grew bored of reading the same information over and over, we liked it that the placemats confirmed our parents' compatibility; it seemed to verify their accuracy. 

Years later, after my parents split up, my brother and sister and I were on a road trip with my dad from Virginia Beach to Raleigh, NC. We had gotten an early start, and stopped for breakfast in a tiny diner somewhere on Rte 58. It was January of 1987, and my dad's birthday had recently passed. We got to talking about the next year being a leap year and how all of our birthdays would be 2 days later in the week instead of just one. 

"Not mine," my dad said with  his trademark, know-it-all, smirk.

"What do you mean?" I asked, and then I gasped, because I got it. His birthday was before February 28, and so it wouldn't skip a day until the year after leap year. My mind? Blown.

We started to tease my dad about it. "That's got to be unlucky!" one of us said, and the silly mantra "Unlucky, born before leap day," intoned like a mock chant, entered into our idiosyncratic family lore. 

My dad didn't live to see another birthday; he died that March. And it was many years after that, when I was considering the Chinese Zodiac, probably staring at a red, white, and black placemat waiting for my meal, that I realized that he wasn't a boar at all. My dad was born before leap day and the Lunar New Year. He was actually a dog, "Loyal and honest you work well with others. Generous yet stubborn and often selfish. Look to the Horse or Tiger. Watch out for Dragons."

Maybe.

The Crooked Eye of the Beholder

One of the ads that came up a few times over the last couple days of class discussion on memorable commercials was this one:

Most students remembered it because it is so bizarre, featuring peculiar chinchilla-like rodents superimposed with seriously amblyopic human eyes and toothy human mouths screeching an offbeat jingle about $2.99 toasted subs. First appearing in 2004, they have become something of meme, and so they are popular with kids who were not even born then.

So when another student mentioned it today, I asked if he considered it memorable because it was so weird.

"Weird?" he responded. "I don't think they're weird. I find them rather stately."

"Stately?" I said. "Really?"

"Yes," he assured me. "Look-- one is wearing a bowler, and the other is obviously an admiral. And--" he paused for dramatic effect, "he is playing a guitar!"

"You make a good point," I agreed, "and they are definitely memorable."

On the Upswing

After months of argument, our English classes have finally reached persuasion. 

The Media Literacy unit we do is always a big hit. Students work in teams of 4 to write and produce a 30-60 second commercial for an imaginary product. It draws on communication skills that have been mostly untapped so far this year and is a welcome pivot. 

We begin by building background knowledge of persuasive techniques, and even though today was mostly note-taking, there was an opening discussion of memorable ads, a fun online quiz game pre-assessment, and of course, lots of commercials to see how the pros use the techniques to sell their products and services. 

"Wow!" I overheard a student say this morning. "English is really improving!"

I'm glad he thinks so.

I've Been Trying to Tell You

The last of those dang essays are still trickling in, a week and a half late. Today I spent the beginning of lunch working with a couple of recalcitrant writers. Our task was to compose a single body paragraph for their arguments, one that they could then use as a model for the rest of their essay. I dictated a topic sentence and suggested some transition phrases to help them organize the evidence and reasoning they already had. Within 10 minutes both students were on their way to a passable draft. 

"I just had no idea essay writing was so easy!" one of them exclaimed as he headed to lunch. 

Off the Junk Heap

I asked my students to compare their writing from the beginning of the unit to the end and then to explain whether they felt their argument skills had improved or not. Most writers felt that they had learned a bit about claims, evidence, and reasoning, and were happy to document their improvement. A few kids did not see any growth, though. One of them volunteered, "My essay at the beginning was trash, and this one is too!"

"I'm sorry to hear that you are unhappy with your writing," I said, "but I don't agree that it's garbage."

"I said 'trash'," she corrected me.

"What's the difference in your mind between trash and garbage?" I asked.

"Trash is trash and garbage is garbage," she replied dismissively.

"Wow! You really are bad at arguing," I teased her.

That got a little smile. 

"Now let's work on that writing!"