Matching Tracksuits

Month: October 2009

Halloween 2009: Candy, Candles, and Costumes

Saturday 31 October 2009

This time of year comes around and I begin thinking once again of all the different ways I’ve experienced it.

As a youth, I avoided it. Halloween was bad, just another marker of evil in an evil world. Our church explained it along lines like this:

Throughout mankind’s turbulent history, Satan has always managed to find a way to separate man from God (Isa. 59:1-3) by tempting him into various sins and false ideas that may seem right–that may seem innocent and harmless–but are in direct opposition to God! […] Even when the Roman Catholic Church attempted to gloss over strange pagan practices of the Celts and Romans, it introduced its own false, Satanic doctrines, passing them off as Christian. Halloween is riddled with deceit and falsehoods. (Source)

In Poland, I experienced All Saints’ Day: quiet reflection, talking with family and friends, and candle-light cemeteries.

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And now, with a child of my own, I experience trick-or-treating for the first time. I can’t say that it’s something all that thrilling: not being a big candy fan myself, I can see that I verily easily lived without the experience. The thrill is vicarious.

This evening, we took L for an evening of trick-or-treat in a well-heeled neighborhood where the houses are large and packed closely — lots of return on the walking investment, and there were literally hundreds of families there.

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The whole neighborhood was decorated, with some going to the extreme.

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The hosts made everyone feel at home — even the dads who were upset about missing the game.

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But none of us had any interest in the game. We — specifically L and her friend — were there for one thing alone.

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Almost every house had its front porch light on, so the candy was bountious. L’s Jack-o-lantern basket was literally too heavy for her to carry. When we got home, we counted: 60+ pieces. Enough for two months.

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Busted

Thursday 29 October 2009

Reading over student work, I find a sentence that troubles me: it has a maturity that belies its author. I continue reading, and within a few moments, I’m pulling out the laptop and Googling the suspect sentence: it’s lifted directly from Wikipedia. With a sigh, I write “See me” at the top of the paper, underlining it emphatically.

Dealing with plagiarism is one of my absolute least favorite duties as a teacher; it’s especially tough when it’s a student I really like, a student who is sensible and gives every impression of being a conscientious student.

Plagiarism is a sin that is hard to treat evenly. Is unintentional plagiarism as bad as intentional? Is malicious plagiarism (“He’ll never catch on, the old doddering fool.”) worse plagiarism motivated by laziness or procrastination?

As I’m reading, and I begin to grow concerned about the authenticity of a particular essay or poem, I find myself tensing up. A brier patch of issues awaits, and it’s seldom a pleasant experience.

Celuacy for non-Poles, is a grade above an “A”. It signifies mastery of a subject accompanied by superior extra-curricular work.

On one occasion, though, a young lady of supreme character managed not only to avoid losing respect but managed to increase it. She was a student in Poland, and she worked hard to have celuacy (“excellent”) in as many classes as she could. She turned in a journal that was clearly plagiarized. (With English learners, it’s easier to discover copied work, for obvious reasons.) I spoke to her about it, asking her why she’d done it.

“I just didn’t understand that we weren’t supposed to copy.”

A lame excuse, but she had so endeared herself to me (to all teachers) with her hard work and dedication that I put off the inevitable. “Well, I’ll think about how we can handle this; my standard policy, though, has always been to give a failing grade for plagiarism.” She said nothing, but she was clearly upset.

The next day, she approached me. “I’ve been thinking about it,” she began, impressing me with her correct use of the present perfect continuous tense. “I should have known better. I want you to give me a zero.”

I did, but I made sure she had plenty of opportunity to offset that zero and maintain her high average.

She did.

Every time I’ve had to deal with plagiarism since then, I’ve hoped for such a response. So far, no luck.

Maybe tomorrow.

Retrieving Apples

Sunday 25 October 2009

A trip to the orchard is supposed to involve stretching to pick the perfect apple that is just out of reach. It’s supposed to mean a delicate tug and twist to remove an apple without causing others to fall to the ground. It’s supposed to be about branches bending under the weight of apples. Last year it was about all those things. This year, it was a question of picking them off the ground.

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It’s a little disheartening to be scavenging apples rather than picking them, but Pink Ladies — sweet with a tart edge and a crunch that is audible — are not apples one leaves to rot on the ground.

So we picked them,

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hauled them in baskets

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as well as wagons,

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and brushed them off and ate them.

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Every now and then, we stopped for a group picture, which reminded me of the greatest features of digital photography: easy sharing. No more line of cameras at the photographer’s feet. No more “One more! Just one more!”

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No more last minute re-groupings as someone realizes that he wants a group picture, too.

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And that certainly was a possibility, given the number of photographers in the group.

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Madeline at Boo in the Zoo

Tuesday 20 October 2009

In an old zoo in Greenville that was covered with vines
Weaved hundreds of children in one very long line;

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The smartest, cutest, and funniest was Madeline.

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She was not afraid of the candy-sharing workers of the zoo,

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And to the snake behind the glass, she just said “Poo poo!”

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“Poo poo” to the lion, too.

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The animals in the cages had all gone to sleep,

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And it almost made poor little Madeline weep,

But the thought of more treats made her pick up her feet.

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She posed for pictures with pumpkins and hay,

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But in the end, she was glad to call it a day.

In the parking lot, “Watch out for the cars” was almost all she could say.

Amateurs

Sunday 18 October 2009

Four Saturdays of work. A couple of pros would have the backs and arms to get it all done in one day. We took somewhat longer.

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Part of it was inexperience. Having never dug up and recreated a planter, we had no idea how long it would take; we certainly didn’t know how much effort it would require.

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Although the vision was very amorphous, we somehow knew what it would look like, though.

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Now, instead of five boxwoods we have:

  • two Loropetalum chinense,
  • two Gardenia brighamii,
  • three Rhaphiolepis indica,
  • three Rhynchospermum jasminoides,
  • a line of alternating Tradescantia pallida and Senecio cineraria,
  • a small patch of Viola tricolor hortensis.

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Who am I kidding? I can barely remember the plants’ common names, let alone the Latin.

The Bad Hat

Saturday 17 October 2009

That Brooke — she’s a bad influence. At school, she teaches L to disregard all safety, to live on the edge, to do somersaults.

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There were a handful of less-than-perfect landings for each perfect one.

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Jack-o-Lantern

Thursday 15 October 2009

Carving a jack-o-lantern is a paradox: it requires forceful and delicate motions. And it’s often simply messy.

Head = effective illustration of the effects of a wide-angle lens

The lesson I learned this year: don’t cut the top hole too small. It makes scraping the insides a nightmare because there are no do-overs with that first cut.

There are also no re-dos with the delicate work.

Which is why our ghost is holding a blog instead of a three-candle candelabra.

Next year.

Outsourcing

Tuesday 13 October 2009

For the first several months of L’s life, K and I could be fairly sure that everything she knew was something we’d taught her, directly or indirectly. Sometimes she would imitate us with prompting, sometimes without. There were few moments that prompted comments of “Where’d she get that?” and the like.

When she started spending time with other kids and adults at daycare, the gradual shift began. Slowly she picked up as much at daycare as at home; then, daycare overtook us.

Now she comes home with songs we’ve never heard:

Twinkle, twinkle traffic light…
Red means stop
Green means go
Yellow means very, very slow

She comes home with skills we haven’t touched on: tracing numbers and letters is the most recent.

These things come from the teacher, who told K this morning during the first of many parent-teacher conferences, that L is a “good old-fashioned girl” with good manners and a strong sense of right and wrong.

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Other things come from friends. Brooke taught her how to swing by herself.

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She’s growing more and more independent.

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Now, she knows she can get her information from other sources, that she’s not dependent on us mentally any more than she is physically.

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Which, in reality, is still quite comforting: still many years to go. It comes in mercifully slow steps.

The Eternal Project

Sunday 11 October 2009

The Perpetual Motion machine does exist: it is mischievously named “the house”.

When we moved in, the front looked like this:

June 30, 2007

Grass that was fried; shrubs that were ignored.

A general feeling of neglect.

A clogged sewer line a year ago finally prompted us to pull out the dying boxwoods; embarrassment at having the worst-looking lawn in the neighborhood prompted us to emergency measures with our yard.

Now, our yard is well on its way to becoming the envy of all who drive by.

The boxwoods are gone, roots and all.

As is my back.

The replacement bushes are still sitting in a nursery somewhere: that’s Wednesday afternoon’s project. In the meantime, the bed sits empty.

The upshot of all of this: the cat has a new place to nap.

Opportunity Lost

Friday 9 October 2009

Not many people have a chance, a clear-cut chance, to be magnanimous. Obama had one today, and he blew it. By his own admission he doesn’t deserve the Nobel prize, yet he accepted it, leading to countless howls from the right and some raised eyebrows on the left.

He should have declined to accept it. There’s precedent: Lê Ðức Thọ was awarded the Peace Prize (along with Kissinger) in 1973, but he did not accept it, explaining that there was still no peace in his country. He’s the only person to decline it, and it shows a certain honesty that is rare.

Obama should have said, “I am humbled by the honor bestowed upon me. However, I feel I do not deserve it; therefore, I respectfully decline to accept the award.”

What could anyone, on the right or the left, have said about that? Amid the inevitable cries of “political posturing,” a reasonable person could only, however begrudgingly, admit that it was a magnanimous decision.

Shock and Disbelief

Wednesday 7 October 2009

In preparing to read the dramatization of Anne Frank’s diary, I spent some time going over the Holocaust with students. I was taken aback at how little they seemed to know about it. “A bunch of people — I think they were Jews — got killed” seemed to be the general view. They do know something about it now, but their questions revealed both how complicated and unfathomable such an act is.

Most common was, “Why did they hate Jews?” Why indeed? Many answers, none of them short and simple. I offered a few: notions of Jewish conspiracies; Jews as “Christ killers” and the old blood libel; the fact that there are a substantial number of Jews in banking (which is directly traceable to early Christians’ reluctance to engage in usury) as proof of some international Jewish conspiracy. All those explanations in turn (which is why I was silent about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

As I spoke, though, and showed pictures and short clips of survivors, it was almost eerie how closely they paid attention. Any noise brought immediate shushing, and the look of shock on everyone’s face told me that there is at least one thing they’ll remember from their time with me.

Rituals

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Having a child makes it obvious why there are yearly rituals in all cultures. They measure time and serve as a standard for growth and progress.

A year ago, L was small enough to hide behind a pumpkin.

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October 26, 2008

She was considerably bigger this time around, and more independent. Getting her to go here or there and do this or that was much more difficult. She had her own session photos in mind and was not really thrilled to cooperate with photographer or assistant — even when we switched roles.

And her imagination has developed, not to mention linguistic skills.

“Tata! It’s a dragon!” she cried on finding a bright gourd.

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Yet, she still can be surprised when the tables are turned and another gourd counterattacks.

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We battled for a little, with each Dragon Gourd showing a propensity to tickling its victim.

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The tractor was just as fascinating this year as last year, but this year, she could pedal. Then again, in the intervening months, the chain had broken, so L’s efforts didn’t result in much more than a bit of confusion.

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There’s something about a field of pumpkins that inspire people to bring their children for pictures. The contrast? The obviously seasonal motif?

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L came up with her own poses this year. The set involved as many small pumpkins as could possibly be gathered.

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The session was not to be, though. L saw the scarecrow, and with a little gentle suggestion from K, we managed a shot that more accurately shows L’s personality: playful, silly, always looking for a surprise.

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What will next year bring?

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Perhaps a third photographer?

International Festival

Saturday 3 October 2009

Keeping kids in touch with their non-American heritage can be tough. The Girl hears Polish daily, but still rarely speaks it.

Even rarer is the opportunity to dress traditionally.

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This Is a Test

Thursday 1 October 2009

I gave three of my four classes a test a few days ago. It’s worthy of comment because I so rarely give tests. In fact, I despise giving tests. It’s true that they’re a relatively quick way to assess student understanding, but our school district has such a regimen of standardized tests and tests from other teachers that I seem always inclined to find alternative methods of assessment.

Recently, our state mandated yet another standardized test for eighth graders. We now take the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress), ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills), Explore, and PASS (Palmetto Assessment of State Standards) tests. Additionally, students who elect to pay the fee can take the PSAT test. Each of these tests require multiple days to complete, and so we have thirteen testing days built into the 180-day calendar (not including the day it takes for the PSAT).

When teachers complain that their students are drowning in an acronymic sea of standardized testing, this is precisely what they mean. When states complain that their schools are underfunded, these tests represent a significant expenditure.

What are these tests for? What is taxpayers’ money buying?

The PASS test is the assessment used for NCLB (No Child Left Behind) compliance. It’s a new test, replacing the PACT (Palmetto Something-or-other Challenge Test or something like that) at the start of the 2008/9 school year.

Because it’s a new test, there are additional costs as the first year’s results are audited to determine cut-off points for the achievement standards. This in itself is problematic for me, because it underscores the arbitrary nature of any standardized test. Once the results were in, test administrators began analyzing the scores to determine what score should be the thresholds for the Exemplary/Met/Not-Met standards. And what standard did they use to determine those standards? Did they perform basic statistical analysis that showed X% scored within some range, Y% scored within another range, and Z% within yet another and then used those numbers as the thresholds? If so, that would only measure future test takers against the first year’s results. Surely there must be an objective standard, right?

The MAP test is administered twice, at the beginning and end of the school year. It is just what the name implies: a measure of the progress of individual students in the school year. It’s useful for teachers to see how much progress individual students have made; it’s useful for administrators to determine how much progress the teacher has made. Of all the tests, this has the most practical application.

The ITBS is a measure of basic skills. I’m not sure its purpose. We get attractive printouts that we send home. That’s about all I use it for.

The Explore test is the newest addition. It is, as far as I can determine, a pre-ACT test. Useful, I suppose. For all students in eighth grade? I’m not so sure.

We began taking the Explore test today; we’ll finish up during the first half of tomorrow. The one heartening aspect of the test: at least one student wondered aloud about the impact so much testing was having on his education.