Cleaning Out

The end of the school year always brings a lot of cleaning and paperwork. We have an entire list of things we teachers have to do before going home for the summer.

• We have to return materials to the media center.
• Emergency guides need to go back to an administrator.
• We have to make it easy for everything to be removed from our room, so that usually means packing up all the books on my bookshelves and storing them somewhere.
• The plant engineer needs to check our room for any issues that will hamper the cleaning of our room over the summer.
• We have extensive checks about grades as well as reports we have to print out for the office staff in case there are any questions about grades over the summer.
• We have to return our keys to the a designated administrator.
• We have to return our receipt books to the accountant.
• We have numerous meetings about various things, some of which feel incredibly important and some of which feel not so important.
• Prepare letters to go home with final grades.

The first year I was a teacher at this school, it took three days to get everything ready because, in addition to all this (and a lot of stuff I’ve forgotten/neglected to mention), we had to put copies of the final report cards in permanent records and then organize the permanent records based on which high schools students were attending. These last two steps are now out of our hands, but it still takes a while to get all this done.

Part of the challenge is getting signatures. At the end of the whole process, we are to provide the principal with a checklist that has been initialed by everyone involved to show that we’ve done all the steps above. Sometimes, it’s a bit of a trick tracking down a given administrator.

I went to the school today for the end-of-year checkout, arriving at around ten in the morning, and by twelve, I was done.

This is just another way that this year is exceptional.

I’m not complaining: I didn’t have to move my books at all because the custodial staff, in an effort to get a head start on the summer’s duties, has already cleaned my room, most significantly the floor (cleaned and waxed). Turns out they just worked around the bookshelves. The curmudgeon in me will forever after complain, “Why can’t you just do that every year? It’s not like I ever move my room around — everything goes back to the same place, year after year.” Still, I would have preferred a regular ending to this year, and for that, I would have willingly done the whole check-out procedure — twice, if necessary.

Surveying the Changes

Every time we have a significant rainfall that results in the creek behind our house rising to food or near-flood levels, the Boy and I like to go out and see what has changed. The surging waters bring new flotsam and jetsom after it washes away existing flotsam and jetsom.

It changes the flow of the creek, too. For example, the spot where we usually cross was just wide enough that I could step over it with one stretching step. Now it’s much wider. As I was wearing tennis shoes during our afternoon adventure, I was unwilling to take the chance of getting them wet. The Boy kindly built a stepping pylon out of the bricks we’d brought down last year to help with the crossing in another spot.

During our exploring, the made a grisly discovery: the raccoon we thought was just inexpertly hiding the other day was in the same spot.

“So it died there?” the Boy asked. “Did it attack something there? What could kill a raccoon?!” He related some video he’d watched in which a farmer explained how raccoons killed some of his chickens. “It would have to be something really big to take down a raccoon!” I could see the wheels turning: he was thinking about what type of enormous preditor could be lurking in that wooded area we explore with seemingly careless abandon.

I suggested that perhaps it was just sick and crawled in there to die.

“Or maybe the snake we saw bit it and that’s where it died,” the Boy intelligently suggested.

That sounds reasonable.

Survival Gear

The Boy is into survival skills. He’s been watching a couple of YouTubers who do survival stuff as their main content. The primitive building of two weeks ago, with plans to build a vast underground bunker complete with swimming pool — forgotten. Completely. Not a word about it.

He used some of his money this week to buy a survival kit.

He just had to try out the saw today.

The Comment

A former student shared a video on social media. I watched about 5 minutes of it. Bill Gates and 5G networks are conspiring to spread the virus. I made a comment: “This is just getting ridiculous.”

“Why?” someone asked.

My response was admittedly a bit barbed: “If I have to explain it, there’s no point. You’ve swallowed the conspiracy theory Kool-Aid.”

My former student took me to task:

You wrote something is ridiculous without explaining why, so it’s normal to ask ‘why?’

What did you think was ridiculous? Which one of the statements that this parliamentarian was providing was ridiculous? I know we don’t hear these statements in MSM but I think that it’s better to check all information available before ridiculing anyone. It’s too easy to discredit something just because it sounds ridiculous. There were many things in history that sounded absurd to many and yet with time they proved to be true.

Anyway wherever the truth is, it’s always a good idea to ask questions and there can be nothing and no one that should be unquestionable.

After the comment, I went back to watch the video, only to find it had been flagged by fact-checkers. I simply pointed them to a couple of articles and left it alone.

What I wanted to say:

• “What did you think was ridiculous?” The whole thing. The idea that someone could possibly take this nonsense seriously.
• “Which one of the statements that this parliamentarian was providing was ridiculous?” Every single one of them. Each sentence that came out of the woman’s mouth. They’re all demonstrably false and completely illogical.
• “I know we don’t hear these statements in MSM” — there’s a reason for that: it’s called presenting facts as opposed to obviously false, idiotic statements. It’s like the old joke: there’s a name for alternative medicine that works — medicine.
• “but I think that it’s better to check all information available before ridiculing anyone.” Point taken. Now, go check the facts.
• “It’s too easy to discredit something just because it sounds ridiculous.” At least you’re admitting it sounds ridiculous. That’s a start.
• “There were many things in history that sounded absurd to many and yet with time they proved to be true.” Other than quantum theory, name one.

I should be used to this kind of nonsense now, but I’m not. Nor should I be. It’s normal now but it shouldn’t be.