Matching Tracksuits

Month: April 2014

Almost May

Wednesday 30 April 2014

It’s almost May, and we’re all breathing a sigh of relief. Students are ready to finish eighth grade, to finish middle school, to leave their academic home of three years and move on to high school. Teachers are ready for a new batch, new faces, new challenges, new gifts. Each day, we all head to school with a little lighter step: some students have already begun counting days (as have some teachers), and as the number dwindles, the pace quickens, as does the pulse and the talking and goofing. Soon, the energy waiting to escape the walls of the school will be almost impossible to contain, especially after next week, when the final round of state testing winds down and everyone finds themselves asking the same question: “Why are we still here if the be-all, end-all tests are complete?” Sure, a few district-mandated tests await students, but the SCPASS, the test that is the benchmark for school effectiveness, administration effectiveness, teacher effectiveness — the test, in other words — will soon be behind us.

My reaction over the years has changed. In the past, I was just trying to survive at this point in the year. Perhaps that was because of a lack of clear and clear-headed goals for students; maybe that was a result of my inexperience and ineffectiveness; possibly that was because I had some exceptionally challenging students. Or perhaps it was all that and more. At any rate, I find myself eager, after a short break, to begin again. A sufficient “short break” in this case would be about three weeks or so, but I’m fortunate that we get about four times that. More time with the kids; more time with coffee; more time for K to sleep in a bit — it’s a blessing for everyone, though K would unhesitatingly add “Especially for you.” And so it is.

Routines

Monday 28 April 2014

There are only so many daily routines one can work into a twenty-four hour period, and the addition of a new routine — or the re-initiation, rather, of an old routine — leaves less time, logically, for other routines. So when I tried finally to start working an exercise routine into my day, I found that, after school, jazz dance shuttle service, dinner, time with the kids, goodnight routines, and a short workout that I was left with ten minutes until my bedtime. So something’s got to go.

Polish Picnic 2014

Sunday 27 April 2014

Mass at Victory Square, 1977
Mass at Victory Square, 1977

A Polish pope was a big deal. As the first non-Italian pope in almost five centuries, Karol Wojtła made almost every Pole stand a little straighter when the college of cardinals selected him as pope in 1978 — almost every Pole except the Communist leadership, that is. They likely suspected they were in trouble, but they certainly had no idea the degree to which Karol Wojtła was going to change everything. The regime got an idea when he finally visited Poland in 1979 as John Paul II (or Jan Paweł II in Polish). Celebrating Mass at Piłsudski Square (then known as Victory Square), he uttered his most famous line: “Nie lÄ™kajcie siÄ™.” “Be not afraid.” They responded by chanting ,“We want God.” For over fifteen minutes. John Paul, knowing the power washing over the crowd, let them go, looking back at the representatives of the Communist regime. Not a word was spoken, but everyone in the delegation knew what John Paul II was saying: “Do you hear this? You’re done.”

Today, Poles in the area gathered for monthly Polish-language Mass, then celebrated the canonization of John Paul II in fine Polish fashion: food, singing, soccer, and conversation.

John Paul II was smiling, no doubt.

Lawn

Saturday 26 April 2014

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I’ve always had a strained relationship with lawns. They’ve always seemed like something that’s better in theory than reality, because until recently, I’ve never really experienced a decent lawn. Growing up, we had a spotty front yard that invited weeds to fill in the blanks in the spring or simple bare earth. I’m not sure which was worse. Still, it made for a frustrating mowing experience: it’s hard to hold a straight line when the only thing sticking up are a few blades of grass and some dandelion stems. As such, I disliked mowing — the front yard at least. The backyard was decent. No, I just hated mowing: it was too hard to worry about straight lines (I am a bit OCD about that) and keep the power cord out of the way. Indeed: the first lawn mower that I used was our Sears electric mower, a fantastic idea that resulted in extension cords striped with black where I’d run over them. It’s not lie a gas mower running out of fuel, those sputtering, gasping final rotations of the blade that let you know you’d better hurry up if you’re to get to the end of the row before the thing dies. Running over the cord with an electric mower leads to instant silence, and since there was no way I could fix it myself at age twelve or so, it meant the end of mowing until dad returned.

That was a shame, for as I grew older, I came to appreciate the meditative quality of mowing and to enjoy the challenging of maintaining an always-straight line. By the time I was in high school, mowing the lawn was a positive joy, at least in the backyard, where the grass was dense and only thinned as it neared the back property line. Forcing the grass to submit to my will, I’d keep my eye on the front outer wheel, making sure it ran just to the side of the wild, unkempt grass. My best friend (also a fan of mowing) and I came to call such grass “conquerable.” He’d drop me off after school, sticking around for some basketball, then comment as he left: “That’s some really conquerable grass,” he say, almost enviously. I’d do the same when the situation was reversed. We couldn’t hack our way through Amazonian undergrowth, but we could reduce the height of grass by half in a split second.

Now, mowing my own grass in my own yard, grass that I’ve struggled with dethachers and aerators, grass that I’ve spent hours weeding, grass from which I’ve probably thousands of Sweetgum saplings from overly-neglected spiky seed balls, it’s positively Zen-like. The belt for my push-mower’s assistive drive has now broken for the second time, and the struggle only increases the reward. I mow a different pattern almost every time: left to right, front to back, diagonally this way, diagonally that. And no matter how tired I am when I make the final push, no matter how soaked my shirt and cap are, I’m always a little sad to be done.

Bilingual Homophones

Wednesday 23 April 2014

The Boy has been learning to talk for the last few months, and like all kids his age, he has begun extrapolating to amusing results. When indicating that he wanted a bit of chocolate once, K told him he could have pół, which is “half” in Polish, pronounced “poo.” You can probably already see where I’m going with this: when the Boy sees chocolate, asks for pół, and then excited realizes that he’s going indeed to get it, he starts repeating it obsessively, often in pairs. Which makes it difficult to know when he wants chocolate and when he wants to go to the potty chair…

RIT Spring 2014

Tuesday 22 April 2014

Every fall and spring, we pull out the tape measure and start to measure. We humans like to measure. We like to graph and explore and quantify, even things that don’t seem initially quantifiable, like how much a student has learned, how much a teacher has taught a given child. How can you measure something that is so nebulous as the teacher/student dynamic? With some students, we merely show a direction and the student strikes off on her own, fascinated with the new knowledge, seeking more on her own. Did we teach all of that? Certainly not. Is inspiration the same as teaching? Other students are apathetic for a variety of reasons, and a significant portion of our time is spent breaking through that apathy, trying to inspire, to motivate.

Still, effective or not, we trundle into the computer lab twice a year to take the Measures of Academic Progress, a test designed to serve as a fall benchmark and then spring progress report.

This year, I took notes as the students took the test.

10:03

After the first three students, we have a spring average 17 points above fall score. That’s approximately a three-fold improvement over my best yearly growth, but I fear it’s not to last. Indeed, I know it won’t last: these are the highly motivated, almost-always-do-their-homework kids who were already testing well above average at the start of the year. Still, their growth alone is encouraging.

10:52

The first results from my on-level classes are coming in. This is where we’ll make it or break it, because their motivation is not nearly as high as other students’, those in the honors classes. I tell these students, “You call those other classes the ‘smart classes,’ but the only difference between them and you is that they have the motivation to do the work.” But the results belie that, a pleasant surprise. The overall average growth has dropped, but it’s still a mind-blowing 10.09 point average. The on-level class has a 9.34 point increase average.

If I could have the results of my dreams, I would not have aimed this high.

11:40

Usually, at this point in the day, I’m thinking, “Just let the day end. Just put me out of my misery.” A student would raise her hand, indicating the completed test, and I would take a deep breath, steel myself, before heading over to record the score. “Please, please, I need some more growth. The last two kids’ scores went down. I have to have some positive scores!” It’s not that the students were doing poorly; they were simply not producing the results I’d dreamed of. Well, no, that’s not accurate: some classes actually as a whole did miserably throughout the years, and I can’t help but blame myself in those situations.

This year, it’s entirely different. I still hold my breath as a student approaches, but at this point, with 95.56% of students showing growth (as opposed to the usual 70-ish%), I’m just waiting for that score decrease that I know, just know, must be coming at some point. This dream cannot go on until the end of the day.

2:24

I pass out the students’ score sheets from their fall testing period, hopeful that these kids can pull it out. Our percentage of students showing growth took a serious hit last period, dropping from over 95% to 87.5%. The class in question is still very far above average with its scores, but very far below average with its growth. “When they’re that high already,” my principal reminded me early in the year, “it’s very difficult to get them up even higher.”

Yet despite the surprise, the day ended with almost 90% of students showing growth, and in one class, one hundred percent showed growth.

It was a year that made me think, “Well, where exactly is that merit pay?”

Easter 2014

Sunday 20 April 2014

Hiding the eggs
Searching
“There are some in the backyard…”
“You have so many eggs?!”
With a little help from my Mama
Liftoff
“The prize egg is in the front!”
“Jajko!”
Strike two!
My eggs
With a little help from my Mama, redux
Look at the eggs
Papa gives a hint
T finds the prize egg
Looking for leftovers
Counting eggs
Parents
Papa’s cake
Happy birthday, Papa!

Holy Saturday 2014

Saturday 19 April 2014

Jesus is in the grave. Crucified yesterday, he lies wrapped in ribbons of burial cloth, awaiting tomorrow’s resurrection. Such is the teaching of the Church, which we recite every Sunday:

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

And so he is buried.

The Polish tradition — and the tradition of other cultures, I’m sure — is to create a tomb for Jesus’s body in the church. One of the figures is taken from the cross and laid in the tomb, and parishioners — usually firemen — stand watch until Sunday morning.

One of the vicars in our parish is Polish — this year, he decided, with the pastor’s blessing, to bring the tradition of Jesus’s tomb to the parish of St. Mary Magdalene. And so the Paschal Triduum feels a little more like we’re in Poland every year.

Past years involved the pastor, who had never performed the traditional Holy Saturday basket blessing, coming for a quick prayer of the baskets of perhaps fifteen Polish families. Our pastor, however, has fallen in love with the tradition, has it announced several times before Holy Saturday, and has put it on the altar servers’ schedule so that we have a full procession.

The number attending has grown as well. After an opening prayer in Polish, Father W asked, “How many of you don’t speak Polish?” At least a third of the assembled raised their hands. Seeing so many, Father W, like last year, turned it into a primarily-Polish-but-quite-bilingual-blessing-nonetheless.

There are some things still missing, though. No crucifix lay at the front of the grave, with parishioners standing in a line, dropping to their knees at the fourth or fifth pew and continuing the rest of the way on their knees, all bending to kiss various parts of the crucifix. Blocks of wood have not replaced bells during the Lenten Mass. The day was not preceded with a Good Friday of manic baking and cleaning, just baking and cleaning. More reminders that the Polish community here is a distinct minority, a group that has largely assimilated into mainstream culture but still managed to keep the most important of traditions. In other words, it didn’t feel Polish; it felt American-Polish.

And then there are the things that would never occur in Poland: the fascination with the custom (after all, custom often becomes merely customary), the eagerness for photos of the regionally dressed (after all, if you see it almost every day in one form or another — especially when you live near a tourist region — it’s nothing special, merely every day)

But when it’s something you see once a year? Well, who can blame us all?

 

Morning Rituals

Thursday 17 April 2014

The day should begin like this. Every single day. Of course, it’s April, which, according to the cliche, brings showers, indicating gray skies. Still, such an April is rare here in our part of the South.

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Breakfast each day should be leisurely enough to include play.

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If it’s raisin bread on the menu, there should be plenty of time to load a truck with raisin bread and unload it.

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Again, and again, and again.

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Of course, the same goes for Cheerios, should that appear on the menu.

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And there should be enough time after breakfast to play with trucks in the warm morning sun wearing your favorite shirt.

Forgiveness

Wednesday 16 April 2014

The Big Picture at boston.com recently commemorated the twentieth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide in which the Hutu killed over a million Tutsi and Hutu sympathizers. A couple of images were particularly striking, but it was the stories (or perhaps story?) behind them that really moved me.

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A study in contrasts: a man’s left hand and a woman’s handless arm. The caption provided details:

Emmanuel Ndayisaba, left, and Alice Mukarurinda, recount their experiences of the Rwandan genocide at Alice’s house in Nyamata, Rwanda Wednesday, March 26, 2014. She lost her baby daughter and her right hand to a manic killing spree. He wielded the machete that took both. Yet today, despite coming from opposite sides of an unspeakable shared past, Alice Mukarurinda and Emmanuel Ndayisaba are friends. She is the treasurer and he the vice president of a group that builds simple brick houses for genocide survivors. They live near each other and shop at the same market. Their story of ethnic violence, extreme guilt and, to some degree, reconciliation is the story of Rwanda today. The Rwandan government is still accused by human rights groups of holding an iron grip on power, stifling dissent and killing political opponents. But even critics give President Paul Kagame credit for leading the country toward a peace that seemed all but impossible two decades ago. (Photo by Ben Curtis)

How could they become friends after something so unspeakable? I was at a loss until I saw the next picture.

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Its caption:

Mukarurinda Alise, 43, lost all her family members during mass killings in the 1994 genocide, but says she is now living with the man who hacked her wrist off. Alise forgave the man who she says went to the same school as her, after he came back and begged for forgiveness after serving time in jail for his crimes during a three-month killing spree in 1994 They are now married and living in Nyamata. (Photo by Noor Khamis)

It’s one thing to reconcile with someone who did this; it’s quite another to marry him. Then I looked closely at the names:

  • Alice Mukarurinda
  • Mukarurinda Alise

It’s the same person, and according to most accounts, she and her attacker are only friends. The thought that she could marry the man — inconceivable.

The forgiveness itself is difficult to understand. I try to imagine how the dynamics in such a friendship must work, and I can’t. I can’t even understand how Mukarurinda could consider forgiving the man who hacked off her hand and killed her child.

What is the nature of forgiveness then? What does it mean to forgive? At a party in southern Poland more than ten years, I had a long conversation with someone about this, and we came to the conclusion that it means not to forget, for that’s impossible, but merely not to hold it against the person, not to assume that the person will do it again — indeed, to trust that the individual won’t do it or anything similar again. Yet Ndayisaba himself admits that he feels such an atrocity could happen again. Would he be on the right side this time? Would he defend Mukarurinda this time instead of attacking her? That, I suppose, is exactly what Mukarurinda is counting on when she says she forgives Ndayisaba .

Story Time!

Tuesday 15 April 2014

The Girl had an idea: record herself reading a story. Unfortunately, her little Leap Frog system wasn’t the highest quality, and she had no way to support the camera while she filmed.

Tata, of course, saved the day.

Spring Break 2014, Day 1

Monday 14 April 2014

The day started in L’s room. The Boy loves being with his big sister, and she’s matured to the point that we know she’s not going to do anything crazy — too crazy — with the Boy, so I left them upstairs to their own devices while I finished some grading, but the laughter and sounds of an impending mess drew me up the stairs.

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Of course the kitten had her own entertainment. The Girl talked the family into a cat tower: that term doesn’t do it any justice at all. What we have, in fact, is a sort of feline Burj Khalifa. But she likes it, and the Girl likes that fact, and today, they were both thoroughly entertained,

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though for different reasons.

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We ended the morning, the Boy down for his nap, with the Girl recording a story. For whom? For you, of course.

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But I never took the time today to transfer it from camera, so perhaps tomorrow?

Palm Sunday 2014

Sunday 13 April 2014

Mulch, Sun, and a Couch

Saturday 12 April 2014

A bright blue sky this morning, with the small, new leaves providing contrast, made it a morning full of bleary-eyed promise. That makes it sound like I really didn’t know what we would be doing during the day, that it was just promising. I knew exactly what I would be doing; K knew precisely what she’d be doing. I had a pile of mulch, a never-ending gift, that I was determined to spread through the entire universe (so it seemed I’d have to do to get rid of ten yards of mulch — ten yards! What was I thinking?)

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We got an early start: with the Boy waking at seven in the morning, we were eating breakfast by half-past, and I was out taking care of a couple of small projects before tackling the mulch.

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Still, with the morning sun giving the kitchen a golden glow, it was hard not to get excited about the morning. Right — whom am I kidding? We could have all used more sleep, all but the Boy.

Still, that blue sky, that warmth. I am lucky: all of my work in K’s and my division of labor is outside work. K stays inside, cleaning, cooking, helping L with her Polish lessons. So I really couldn’t complain this morning: blue sky, good coffee, work outside. Besides, my exhaustion was all my fault, staying up too late yet again on Friday night.

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In the afternoon, Nana and Papa came over to help out. Papa sat with the Boy on the couch for who knows now long, playing cars, sometimes struggling to decipher the words that K, L, and I so easily understand.

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We’ll make a video of it at some point, then find ourselves surprised in a couple of years when, watching old videos, we can’t understand him ourselves.

Habit and Momentum

Friday 11 April 2014

I learned riding a road bike in the mountains of southern Poland that there’s a simple trick to making it to the top of a hill: don’t stop pedaling. That of course sounds a bit axiomatic, painfully obvious even, but the simple truth of momentum is that, as long as you keep pedaling, as long as you keep that cog rotating, you have a little momentum from the last rotation to help with the next. True, it starts to become almost a token momentum, and that’s when the temptation to stop is most overwhelming. The legs burn and ache; the heart feels like it’s about to explode; the vessels in the temple pulsate with almost frantic rapidity. But as long as you don’t stop, you’ve got something to build on. Once you stop, it’s almost all over, especially if it’s a steep climb and a hundred kilometers stretch out behind you.

So too with daily writing. One day off becomes two, and threatens to become three — and you can only write about the threat. I had two entries in mind; I was just too lazy to get the pictures off the camera. Maybe later — back-posting counts if you say it does.