Matching Tracksuits

Month: October 2022

Socratic Seminar

Wednesday 12 October 2022

They’re tough classes at times, filled with a mix of students with mixed motivations and mixed ability levels. And all of this manifests itself in students’ behavior: several students are focused and hardworking while a few are determined to gain attention by any means necessary, with the vast majority simply there, engaged sometimes, bored and checked out others.

But there’s one activity that always gets good results: Socratic Seminars.

If I could have these on a biweekly basis, I think I could have a serious motivator for the students. So why don’t I do it? That’s a very good question, indeed. I shall be working them into plans one way or another on a much more regular basis based on how well students engaged in their first seminar of the year.

And I haven’t even done one with my honors students yet…

Senior Night

Tuesday 11 October 2022

The varsity girls won in straight sets tonight. Again.

It was senior night, though, so there were a few more students there than usual.

Autumn Walk

Monday 10 October 2022

When I took the dog out for a walk tonight, I forgot for the who-knows-how-many-th time about the Halloween house up the street from us. The kitsch-fill yard that amounts to little more than hundreds (no exaggeration) of plastic Halloween characters all lined up shoulder to shoulder. There’s no thought to it, no attempt to create any kind of little scenes throughout the yard — just a bunch of plastic all lined up.

Video shot this weekend

And it scares poor Clover to death every time we walk by there and one of the animated ones starts moving and talking.

Black Balsam Knob

Sunday 9 October 2022

We took a quick drive (well, not quick for the Boy — it was two hours) over to the Blue Ridge Parkway for an afternoon hike today. The Girl stayed home because she had volleyball practice — open gym for the club team she’s signed with this year. And she doesn’t really like hiking. And she’s almost 16 and is starting to have her own life — though it pains me to admit it. How did she get so big so fast?

Be all that as it may, we headed a little further south on the Parkway than we usually go and ended up hiking along ridges with gorgeous views.

K took some pictures with her phone.

K’s pictures

We both took some pictures with the Nikon.

Pictures from the Nikon

And we arrived home exhausted and hungry.

“We really should do this more often,” K said.

New Student

Wednesday 5 October 2022

We have a new student as of today. She doesn’t speak much English at all. The language she does speak — there’s only one person in the whole school who speaks it. Her sister. Who speaks less English than she does. What did four young ladies do when she arrived in my English class? Swarm around her with welcoming smiles and helped her the entire class period.

It was hard not to feel a little hope for humanity glancing over at them as they worked through today’s assignment.

More Pack Nonsense

Tuesday 4 October 2022

You’d think a man would eventually learn. After setting the date for Jesus’s return at least five times that I know of, David Pack has set yet another date just days after his latest failure. Jesus was supposed to come back a little over a week ago, on 26 September. This last Saturday, Pack explained he’d learned a lot of new things in the previous week. God had blinded him before; now he can see.

If you listen to him talk about the prophetic world he’s created for himself and his followers, it’s easy to see how far from reality the man has strayed.

The 1,335 days, the ten-day period, the fifteen-day kingdom — all his followers know exactly what he’s talking about (well, perhaps not exactly as those who have recently left point out that Pack has been changing these doctrines on a whim over the last few years) but no one else knows. It might as well be gibberish. It might as well sound like this:

But like all good cult leaders, he’s not afraid ultimately to tell his followers where their place is:

“Shut up and learn.” That’s their job.

Monday Evening Thoughts

Monday 3 October 2022

A couple of hours after dinner as the Girl went to do homework and relax after volleyball practice, the Boy, K, and I along with a good friend of the Boy’s went to the local YMCA for some swimming. It’s an outdoor pool but we’re in South Carolina: it’s chilly but only at first. After a bit of movement, the water is fine.

We’ve been trying to go to the Y like this regularly, but Monday night is just about the only night lately that we can definitely make it — that we can schedule it well ahead of time. And so we go and swim some laps, then the Boy frolics about in the water as we swim a bit more, then we head home. At this point, some thirty years after I last swam regularly, I can manage for an entire workout what I used to do for a warm-up. It’s discouraging in a way, but when we began doing this a few weeks ago, I couldn’t even do that. So there’s progress.

Tonight, as I was swimming backstroke for a change, I noticed that the moon is almost full. A full moon in early October can only mean one thing for me: it’s almost time for the Feast of Tabernacles, the eight-day festival I grew up celebrating in the sect in which I was raised. It’s been nearly thirty years since I last attended that ridiculously warped version of a Jewish festival I grew up attending annually. Nearly thirty years and the realization that it’s about time (its first day was always a full moon in mid-September to mid-October) still creeps up somewhat unawares. Certainly, I still keep up with a few of the little groups that try to cling to those old cultic ways, but it’s not something I think about regularly.

I do find myself wondering how things might have turned out if Tkach, the leader of the organization after its founder died, had not made the changes in the early nineties that led the sect to abandon all its heretical teachings and embrace plain vanilla Evangelical Christianity. Would my parents have remained in the group? Would I have remained for some period? Would I have become the skeptic I now am? Would I now be getting together lesson plans for a substitute teacher to fill in while I headed off for my religious conference (as it would have likely been seen)? Would I have gone to Poland after college and met K? Would I have enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University in the philosophy of religion (only to drop out after a year)? Questions without answers.

I am, of course, very glad I’m out of such a warped religion, but there is a certain nostalgia that accompanies this. The Feast was the greatest week of the year. It was Christmas and a beach vacation combined. How could one not miss that in some way?

Sunday Selling

Sunday 2 October 2022

It’s that time of year again — popcorn sales. I don’t really like it; the Boy doesn’t enjoy it; K puts up with it to help. But today, we took a two-hour shift with a friend at the booth in front of a local Cabella’s outdoor shop.

We shocked ourselves with what we sold: over $850 in sales and donations.

It was really a learning experience for the Boy: like me, he doesn’t like talking to strangers all that much, so to come out of that a bit and approach shoppers with the proposition of spending more money — I was proud of how well he did.

In the evening, we went to our favorite park for a walk.

And the Girl? She had a sleepover at a friend’s last night, came home in time for a late lunch, then headed to work.