Pierogi Party
Ride
You know you’ve discovered a completely negected trail when you become a Strava Local Legend after only one ride on that trail:
Home Game
It was a tough loss: the girls were up 15-7 in the first set only to lose 22-25. It’s tough to lose after having such a lead, and it’s tough to go back out for a second set. But they did. And the struggles continued, and the frustrated girls took another one on the chin: 21-25.
Then came the third set. They jumped out to a quick lead just like the first set, but this time, instead of losing it, they increased it, taking the third set 25-14. “See? That’s what we’re capable of,” they seemed to be saying.
Then came the fourth set, which the lost 16-25. It’s these ups and downs, these moments of brilliance followed by moments of — what? — that are so frustrating for this year’s team. They know what they’re capable of: they’re just not managing to maintain it consistently.
Yet through it all, there’s our L, always the upbeat cheerleader of the team, always celebrating even the smallest victory, always cheering up the team when they’re down, always believing in her team.
Guest
I know today’s meeting with a counselor was very important for students so they would have an idea what to expect in the soon-coming high school registration process. I know they need to know this stuff. But do they have to learn it in my class? A class that is tested by the state? A high-stakes class?
Real Estate
While we were in Charleston this weekend, we saw a lot of houses that would come with seven- or eight-figure price tags were they to go on the market. It’s fairly common in the Battery area. In fact, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find something under $800,000.
And then we noticed this condemned building. Likely well over a hundred years old, it has certainly had better days.
The siding has completely deteriorated on one side of the structure.
to the point that the wall insulation and in-wall plumbing is visible.
Continuing around the back, I saw the back steps are completely wrecked,
and the entire back corner of the building is completely open to the elements, missing part of the roof and part of the wall.
Had the house been moderately maintained, it would be worth at least a six-figure sum even if it needed extensive renovation. Had it been meticulously maintained, it would likely fetch close to or even a little over a million dollars. But to do that requires resources, requires money — as the truism goes, one must have money to make money. One falls on had times but is still determined to keep a property in the family (only imagining a previous owner’s situation) until is no longer a possibility.
Whatever the story, all that’s left to do is demolish the building.
Labor Day Weekend 2024 Day 2
Labor Day Weekend 2024 Day 1
Labor Day weekend for many years meant one thing for our family: a weekend with dear friends at their lake house outside of Charlotte. This is the first time in probably six years that we haven’t gone.
Instead, we decided to spend the weekend in Charleston. It’s a favorite destination. There’s the beach at Isle of Palms.
It has lovely streets and historic buildings.
There’s Hyman’s Seafood, which has the most amazing deviled crab on the planet.
August Saturday
I’ve written often enough, I suppose, about how my Saturday rhythm has changed over the last forty years or so. Saturday once meant church, seclusion, no work, no socializing with non-church folks, no sports, no school-related activities. Nothing that could pollute our minds or get our focus away from our sect’s teachings.
Saturday afternoon at 2:30 we met at the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) union hall. We usually arrived at least an hour earlier, and stayed at least an hour past the 4:30 end time. Every Saturday afternoon, a two-hour meeting during which men of dubious theological education pontificated about the conspiracy theories that comprised the bulk of the organization’s theology. The only saving grace was the playing (and later, as a teenager, socializing) that took place before and after the meeting.
These days, my Saturdays are so much more fluid. Sometimes, there’s a clear outline to the day, with chores in the yard occupying much of my time. Once school starts, I send a fair amount of the morning grading students’ work. Today, for example, I went through 43 kids’ single-paragraph analysis of “The Cask of Amontillado.” They wrote things like this:
The narrator’s story can be trusted because Montressor is confessing his actions to the priest on his deathbed. For example, Montressor talks to the preist because he knows the “nature of [his] soul.” and would not believe that he “gave utterance to a threat”. This proves that the priest knows Montressor very well, probably because the same priest would come to his house often. The priest also would not suppose Montressor killed someone. He would most likely want to admit his wrong doings before he died. Another example is, In “half of a century” no one has disturbed the catacombs or found Fourtunado’s body. It shows that no one has found out what happened to Fortunato 50 years later. This also explains the reasoning why Montressor would tell his priest, because he would be very old by this time; old enough to be on his deathbed. To sum it up, because Montressor is confessing to the priest that he killed Fortunado, this narrative can be reliable.
I worked through the papers in between trimming shrubs, cleaning my bike chain, and cleaning out the basement.
The shrubs — didn’t L just trim those? Her chores on Saturday usually include getting crickets for her frog, shopping (she usually gets the week’s groceries on Fridays, but there’s always something more we need), and cleaning her room.
The bike chain — didn’t I just clean it? Bike maintenance is something I’ve never really enjoyed. It’s so tedious cleaning a chain, replacing cables, adjusting brakes, replacing tires. But the worst of it all is definitely chain cleaning. No matter how carefully I clean it, there’s always a bit of grime left behind. But nothing makes a bike look better than a spotless chain.
Today, I used a new degreaser, and I was fairly pleased with the results. Ultimately, what I’d like is an ultrasonic cleaner that I could just drop the chain into for a few minutes and then let dry. But in the meantime, I’ll use a degreasing solution and toothbrush.
Cleaning out the basement — there’s been a crate of old books that K will eventually take to Goodwill, and among the books are several of my college lit anthologies. I’ve kept them for so long because — well, I really don’t know why. I haven’t cracked one open in so long. I had them at school for a long time, but I’ve run out of shelf space and brought them hope.
That is a story in and of itself. Last year, the state of South Carolina provided each English teacher with $3,500 worth of independent reading books so we could have a classroom library of contemporary, high-interest books. But this year, things changed:
Effective August 1st, 2024, SC Regulation 43-170 requires teachers to produce a complete list of the Instructional Materials (including classroom library books) that are used in or available to a student in any given class, course, or program that is offered, supported, or sponsored by a school, or that are otherwise made available by any District employee to a student on school premises. That list shall be provided upon reasonable request by any parent/guardian of a student in the District.
Greenville County Schools Press Release
In short, we’re not to have any books that even hint at sex. It’s another last-gasp effort of the far right to maintain its stranglehold on young people’s minds, I say to myself. For me, it’s simply a headache, which is why I’ve closed my library: I haven’t made the list yet, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to. In the meantime, I posted a sign explaining the situation, and I look forward to Meet the Teacher night when all parents can see the signs because I’m going to make my presentation standing right beside one.
So I guess in a way, my Saturdays have come full circle.
Ride
Four Fridays in a row now I’ve managed to get a post-school bike ride in. This time, a good friend from work joined me, and we made an evening of it. It seemed like it might be a bit too hot to ride, but once we got on the trail, it was relatively pleasant. Ending the week with a 19.7km mountain bike ride — perfection.
Library Day
Every year it’s the same: I’m going to do a better job encouraging and facilitating independent reading. And every year’s initial visit to the library starts out with that intention. And then reality sets in, deadlines for covering content loom, and the independent reading time slowly gets strangled.
Conversation
Soup
Polish cuisine, in my experience, is centered around soups. I’m not a culinary expert or anything of the kind, so this is undoubtedly my personal preference coming to the fore: what has always caught my eye (and my tastebuds) in Polish cooking has been the soups.
Barszcz z uszkami is a treat beyond treats: we only have it once a year because the uszki are so time-consuming. It’s one of E’s favorites.
Żurek is such an odd-ball dish for Americans: soup made from a base of fermented rye flour? How weird. And how utterly delicious. It’s one of L’s favorites.
Ogorkowa? Pickle soup? “Get out!” was my first reaction. Who the hell makes soup out of pickles?! It’s absolutely perfect.
K likes most Polish soups, but she probably agrees with L and E that a simple rosół is the best. Babcia always makes it for us as our first dish in Poland, and a gentle, easy broth like that is the perfect thing after traveling.
And then there are the other: koperkowa, chłodnik, kapuśniak — the classics. But there are a couple of soups that stand above them all for me: flaczki (not because I love it so much — I do, but it’s not a favorite — but because I only get it in Poland: K absolutely is not a fan) and my hands-down favorite, kwaśnica. Not so much a Polish soup as a regional highlander soup.
We usually stick to soups in the winter and give them a break in the summer: having the stove on that long really warms up the house, and we want lighter meals in the summer. Except for rosół and koperkowa (none of us is really a chłodnik fan), the soups disappear.
Until the Girl asks K to fix that one soup — you know, with the potatoes and bacon bits.
And so we had for dinner a soup I have always thought of as a winter soup.
“We should do kwaśnica,” I will say some time in October or November.
“No, it’s not cold enough yet,” comes the reply.
But all our Girl has to do is ask for kwaśnica, and it can be 90 degrees outside, and K will not hesitate.
Volleyball
The volleyball season hasn’t officially started yet: we still haven’t had any regional games, but we’ve been in a few tournaments. Tonight was our first home game. Our girls had a tough time of it the first two sets, losing by quite a margin due to silly errors. They pulled it together for the third set, but ended up losing it 23-25.
What impressed me about the Girl — other than a couple of monster hits she had — was how little she’s changed regarding volleyball. She’s always been the most enthusiastic cheerleader on her team. No matter how the game is going, she’s always up, always positive, always cheering and encouraging her teammates.
Everyone notices it; many have commented on it. More than her playing ability, I so admire that positivity.
Warsaw Changes
Over the summer, posts from our 2017 trip to Warsaw appeared, as they do every year, in the timeline feature to the right. I read about looking for baked goods that first morning, and I remembered how very communist-era Świętokrzyska Street looked then, and I wondered if pictures of it were on Google Maps.
I felt like I was walking down the street in a scene from Miś. Those shop windows looked exactly like they did in the early eighties.
Two years later, it was all gone.
Two more years after that, an entirely new and modern building had taken its place.
More of the old Warsaw fades away.
Continuing down Świętokrzyska Street, one reaches ONZ Rondo. In the distance, building after building appears year after year.
Finally, there’s Prosta Street (“Straight Street”). Looking off in the distance, one could see only the ubiquitous Easter European apartment blocks.
Just a few years later, a typical Western city has sprung up in the distance.
The Warsaw I knew in the mid-90s is all but gone. Then I remember: that was thirty years ago. Of course it’s all disappearing.
Photo Session
Saturday
A Great Class
Obligations
What’s on my mind lately? The amount of stuff I have to do:
- One grade per week per student
- One Common Formative Assessment per class per three weeks
- One Common Summative Assessment per class per grading period
- Contacting all homeroom parents by phone within the next three weeks
- One collaborative team meeting per week
- One grade-level English teacher meeting per week
- One grade-level meeting per week
- Assorted meetings with district personal about various topics
- Assorted 504 and IEP meetings
- Lesson plans in a very detailed required format that include
- Differentiation for ML (multi-lingual) students for each lesson
- Differentiation for special education students for each lesson
- Differentiation for early finishers
- Plans for collaborative teaching with co-teacher in inclusion classes
- Plans for integration of ML strategies
- Data chats with students every Monday
- Faculty or department meeting every other week
- Positive notes to three students each week
- Create a list of every book in my classroom library
- Make publically available every resource I use
And that really doesn’t cover everything — that’s just what I could list off the top of my head.
Is it any wonder so many teachers are burning out?
Fall 2024 Soccer Season Starts
What Should Be the Last Straw
It was near the end of the school day, and the eighth-grade assistant principal pulled me out of my classroom to tell me something. “You’re going to get an email in a little bit that I don’t want you to read until you get home, relax, have some dinner, and then have a drink.”
I knew what was in that email from what she said. It’s something that has been bouncing around for a year or more and now has finally come to full fruition: South Carolina Regulation 43-170.
The email from our principle included a link to the official district explanation:
Effective August 1st, 2024, SC Regulation 43-170 requires teachers to produce a complete list of the Instructional Materials (including classroom library books) that are used in or available to a student in any given class, course, or program that is offered, supported, or sponsored by a school, or that are otherwise made available by any District employee to a student on school premises. That list shall be provided upon reasonable request by any parent/guardian of a student in the District.
What does this mean in practical terms? The principal spelled it out in no uncertain terms:
- All books in your classroom library have to be named in a list
- Link to Lesson Plans
- Worksheets
- Books
- PowerPoints/Slides
- Articles
- Workbooks
- Video Clips
- Excerpts
In short, all the materials we might give to a student in a given year.
Why?
Because there’s a concerted effort among teachers to turn as many students gay as possible and promote critical race theory every chance we get. We have so few other demands on us that, out of a sense of woke duty, we purposely spend time trying to turn kids gay and putting down whites. All mathematics word problems are set in San Francisco or must include some anti-white framing. History teachers eschew all periods of history except the Stonewall riots and contemporary history with a bent toward institutional racism. Science classes neglect all disciplines except genetics, and they only discuss the gay gene. Finally, we English teachers simply have students watch episodes of Will and Grace and write summaries of them.
In case anyone can’t tell (and those who proposed and promoted this law probably can’t tell), this is satire. I feel it necessary to state that upfront. None of this actually happens. That goes without saying, but just in case someone stumbles on this and uses it as proof that teachers are encouraging students to identify as gay, anti-white cats, I must say emphatically once again, this is not happening. When dealing with a blunt viewpoint, one must use blunt instruments.
If either of our kids expressed any interest in going into education, I would try my hardest to discourage them. I’ve come to wonder whether or not there is a conscious effort to destroy public education by placing such onerous demands on teachers that the majority of them quit so that the state can farm out education to private firms just like so many states have done with correctional institutions.