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In the Backyard

Tuesday 20 April 2021

I sometimes feel guilty when E asks to spend some time with me, and all I end up doing is sitting and directing him. Today, for example, he wanted to work on a little project he devised some time ago. He’s got it in his head that he can dig a pool in our backyard like he has seen done on YouTube by those Filipinos who carve magnificent structures in the hard clay of their country. He settled on merely making it deep enough to soak one’s feet, and he decided that he wanted to line the sides and bottom with bamboo.

Yesterday in the time I had between coming home from school and heading back to school to photograph the girls’ soccer game, the boys’ soccer game, and the boys’ baseball game, almost all simultaneously, we went out to the woods behind our house cut down one cane of bamboo and brought it back.

Today, he wanted to split it down the middle. His first idea was to partially bury it in order to stabilize it and then use the saws-all to cut it in half. Knowing that wouldn’t work, I suggested that we use clamps to clamp it to something to stabilize it, and he readily agreed to that. Yet everything we tried initially failed. I say everything “we tried,” but the truth of the matter is he did all the work and I simply sat and directed him.

And this is where my dilemma comes in. I was giving him suggestions, photographing him occasionally as he worked. I could’ve just as easily worked with him. Apparently, I saw more value in him having a little practice following instructions and working things out for himself. Or was this just me making excuses for my laziness?

Spring Sports

Monday 19 April 2021

The year is winding down. The kids and I are accustomed to each others' old habits, and I, at least, view them more-or-less surprise-free, known entities. I know what each of them is likely to do on a given assignment; I know how each of them is likely to act in a given engagement; I know how each of them is likely to respond to a given question.

And then I see them playing sports, and every assumption I had about them goes out the window. The small, quiet, thoughtful girl erupts onto the field with an aggression that is unimaginable in her. The somewhat goofy boy plays with such a serious intensity that he's almost unrecognizable.

Papa’s 80th Birthday Party

Sunday 18 April 2021

80

Saturday 17 April 2021

Happy birthday, Papa!

Reshooting the Church

Friday 16 April 2021

Spring Thursday

Thursday 15 April 2021

Mob Mentality

Wednesday 14 April 2021

The kids wrote another TDA today. I’ll be giving them feedback over the next couple of weeks regarding this as we near the final, actual TDA portion of the state-mandated year-end testing.

Since it was a testing schedule, we only had a few minutes in each class. As they’d already been writing for two hours in the morning, students got a chance to relax a bit and watch 20 minutes or so of the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. I let them choose from a few scenes:

Opening (Meeting Dill)
Shooting the Mad Dog
Sneaking a Peek at Boo
The Attempted Lynching
Bob Ewell’s Revenge
Meeting Boo

Most classes chose “The Attempted Lynching” and “Bob Ewell’s Revenge.” Every class was surprised about the number of men there trying to lynch Tom Robinson.

“I thought there were only four or five,” one student said, to which almost everyone else nodded in agreement.

We talked for a while about the effect being in a mob has on human behavior. They all suggested good reasons (not getting caught, getting pulled into the emotion of it all, the sheer force and power of numbers), but no one really thought of the anonymity that a mob provides and the way people tend use that anonymity to cloak their on complicity and to hide their own guilt.

We touched on recent events: “I’m not really doing anything. It’s the mob. I just walked into this open building.”

Consulting our Attorney

Tuesday 13 April 2021

Today, students participated in what is always one of the highlights of the year: Mr. Jim Bannister of the Bannister, Wyatt & Stalvey law firm discusses with students the Tom Robinson trial from the perspective of a trained and experienced criminal defense lawyer who has experience representing individuals facing a wide variety of charges. He leads students through an examination of the case to see where Atticus could have done a better job.

Most students, after the presentation, have a new understanding of Atticus’s performance as a criminal defense lawyer.

A casual reading from a non-trained eye leaves the impression that Atticus did a fine job of representing Tom; after the session with Mr. Bannister, students see that Atticus, while he had a good heart and did the best he could, was more of a family law attorney (after all, Miss Maudie brags that Atticus can make a will that stands up to any legal challenge), he was certainly not a criminal lawyer. (Recall, too, that in the opening pages we read that Atticus’s first two clients were the last two executed in Maycomb, and that this was the cause of his “profound distaste” for criminal law.)