The Boy decided he wanted to have a snack. "I want a burrito," he declared.
He still had to take his medicine, though.
Procedures
Month: January 2020
Adventuring and Exploring
The Boy was keen on spending some time with me today.
"I missed you from the moment you left," he explained, "and I missed you the whole time you were gone."
"We were only gone a couple of days," I clarified. "In fact, it was only one full day that you didn't see me because we left on Friday and came back Sunday, so you saw us those two days."
"I know. But I missed you."
So when it warmed up a bit in the afternoon, we decided to go adventuring. We headed to one of our favorite spots, crossing the creek twice on bridges we'd built ourselves long ago, crossing it a third time in an entirely new location.
One of the things I like most about these adventures is the conversations we have along the way. I can't remember what we talked about today, and that's sort of the point: they're just carefree conversations about nothing in particular.
We have been coming to this area for years, in fact:
Exploring
Friday Exploring
Exploring with the Boys
Dalton Day 2
Today was a story told in two scores:
Our first match was against a team from our own club. They were the premier team -- the best, in theory, of our club's players.
We lost the first set 18-25. We'd been up by about five but lost the momentum and the set. We started out the same in the second set, and we managed to hold them off to the end.
The girls were completely ecstatic. Such joy. Third set -- the momentum was, theoretically, theirs. And then they decided not to play but instead to go out on the street, pick ten random girls, throw some jerseys on them, and ask them to play. That's what it seemed like, anyway, for the other team won trounced them in final set 15-2.
That's okay -- we were still in it. We headed over to play a second match of the day against another team who'd also lost their first match. It should have been a match. It was, instead, more of the same:
They lost the first two sets by ridiculous amounts. Eye-popping differences in the score. It was if they'd reverted to their very first time batting the ball around.
The coach's view: "We've got to get you girls to where you can play two days!"
Dalton Day 1
A somewhat frustrating day for the girls: they lost their first match in straight sets to a team from Chattanooga wearing red. The reds hit well, made few mistakes, and powered through our girls in back-to-back sets. They won the first set 25-14 and then came back from something like 13-7 to win the second set 25-23.
The girls played two other teams, beating them both. Our second game was against the DiamondT Spikerz. We beat them fairly convincingly in straight sets, 25-19 and 25-22.
The final team our girls beat was the Volley One team. They won one set against the Chattanooga Reds, who'd beaten us the first match. Our girls demolished them -- and they'd won one set against the team that demolished us.
After playing three games, the girls scored the final game. It was against the Diamond Ts and the Chattanooga Reds. The DiamondTs, whom we'd beaten in straight sets, crushed the Reds 25-19 in the first set and demolished them 25-14 in the second.
The team that we beat in straight sets beat the only team that beat us in straight sets in straight sets.
"We were so annoyed," L said of it.
In the end, the Reds did the same thing against the DiamondTs that we'd done against the Reds: they beat themselves.
Watching these girls play shows me again and again how important that mental game is, how it's often more important than the physical game.
Hyper-partisanship
I saw this the other day, and I can't really stop thinking about it.
This could, of course, go both ways: a supporter or opponent of Trump could post this, but the old acquaintance who posted this is, I think, a fairly staunch Trump supporter.
I usually refrain from saying much of anything on social media these days except to share pictures of the family with other family members, but I couldn't let this one alone for some reason. Or rather, I chose not to.
"So now we're reveling in hyper-partisanship and its destructive effects on relationships?" I asked. A bit provocative? Unduly sarcastic? I tried to be neither.
The response: "You’re more than welcome to unfriend me if you can’t handle my opinions 😊."
I thought about that response for a while. Was she perhaps hoping I would do so? I don't know. But it made me realize that that's what the whole enterprise is about: politicize your feed to the point that people who have different political views just no longer think it's worth their time to wade into your stuff. In this case, she would probably see it as "getting rid of the snowflakes;" a liberal might define it as "getting rid of the wingnuts."
"Oh, there's no problem handling them," I replied. "Just leaves me shaking my head that politics defines (and then breaks) so much today."
Kwasnica
It was supposed to be for my birthday; instead, we went out for fish.
I'd take this any day over just about any dish.
18 Years Ago Today
Living in South Carolina, the possibility of such snow is not even minimal: it's non-existent.
I do miss it.
A Photo from 10 Years Ago
And then
the little stinker comes into class today and says, “Can I get my work so I can take it to the library? I don’t want to get in trouble again.” Not quite, “I don’t want to disturb class again,” but an apologetic self-awareness that is uplifting and frustrating.
“You what’s so irritating about working with you?” I told Y. “I like you. That’s the problem. If you were a complete jerk all the time, it would be easier because it would be harder to like you as a person.” He smiled.
In the afternoon, he came back and apologized for yesterday.
Maybe the other shoe isn’t completely off — it’s dangling on a toe. Or maybe he’s just trying to put it back on.
The Other Shoe
When we get a new kid in the school, we always get a packet of information about them: sometimes it’s a thin bracket; sometimes it’s a fat pocket. But there’s always a packet.
Many of the documents included in the packet deal with the student’s behavior. Sometimes the reports in the packet don’t match the student’s behavior at the beginning. For example, a student may have information in their pocket detailing a long history of behavior issues: insubordination, disrespect, fighting, skipping class, and everything in between. Occasionally, the packet even includes information about how many administrative referrals I didn’t and the details about those administrative referrals. In general, the fatter the packet, the more there is to worry about.
The students you really have to worry about are the ones that live up to that reputation immediately. The package says there are behavior issues, and the student shows his behavior issues from the first meeting. These are the kids are going to be a challenge because they don’t even care to try to make a good first impression: Are you unaware of the fact that they are making a person brushing.
In reality, though, the really frustrating students are those who have the thick packet and show excellent behavior at the beginning of their stay in the new school. It’s a honeymoon period: they’re feeling their way around the new school and everyone else figures out what they’re all about. This honeymoon period can last anywhere from a couple of months.
Sometimes the portrayal in the packet is incongruous with the student in the classroom. It seems a miracle has occurred. Previous teachers’ comments in referrals mention insubordination, disrespect, skipping class, fighting with other students, verbal altercations with teacher, and all the student initially shows in the classroom is compliance. The temptation is to think that something has happened, that student has seen the light somehow, some way. That the student has realized the dangerous track he was on and has made a good-faith effort to change. I wish that were the case.
It never is.
The honeymoon period will come to an end. The other shoe will drop. If the kid has been described as insubordinate, insubordination will rise to the surface sooner or later. There are few miracle transformations an education.
We’re dealing with the soon in like that right now. The really frustrating thing about it is that such students have shown themselves capable of successful behavior. It suggests the behavior, to some degree or another, is a choice. If it is a choice, it’s hard not to feel some degree of negativity towards such students. One wants to say to them, “You shown you can clearly do better; you’ve shown positive traits in the class instead of disruption that steals educational time away from other students. Why? It’s hard not to take it personally that you choose the negative with us over the positive.”
It is of course much more complicated than this. But working with such kids is so tiring: it’s one step forward, three minutes of rolling backward because why step when rolling gets more laughs?
Note: This was dictated on the way home from school to a new speech-to-text app I’m trying out. I think I’ve edited out any nonsense resulting from unavoidable technical glitches, but I’m too tired to give it another read to check…