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Bike Ride
Image from 2004.
Cool Spring Thursday
We’re nearing the end-of-year testing that will measure students against a static, inflexible standard. Growth doesn’t matter as much as a set level of proficiency. It’s always been a frustration to me that the American education system fixates on proficiency instead of growth. If a student improves his reading level by three grades in one year but still is performing below the eighth-grade level, that is somehow counted as a failure when it’s anything but.
One of the hallmarks of the end of the year is the scramble we’re all making to cover last-minute items. For example, I’d neglected the active/passive distinction, so I’m hurriedly going over it with students, along with verb mood.
“Why are we learning this?” one might ask.
“Because it’s on the test,” is the tempting answer.
In the evening, soccer practice. E made the winning shot on a game the kids were playing and his teammates mob him. It’s a good way to end the day.
Washing Off the Pollen
In the Backyard
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
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
80
Happy birthday, Papa!
Reshooting the Church
Spring Thursday
Mob Mentality
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
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.)
Radom, 1996
Journal
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The Unexpected
Our neighbor, Mr. F, has always been something like a grandfather to E. The Boy drops everything to go help him wash his truck or clean their camper. Whenever Mr. F is on his boat, E was there, “helping.” When Mr. F and his wife, Mrs. P, go on long camping trips, Mr. F hires E to keep up with the mail. Every birthday and Christmas, the kids can count on gifts from Mr. F and Mrs. P, and they’ve come to both our kids’ soccer games to cheer them on. They are the best neighbors one could ever hope for.
Mr. F went into the hospital Friday. Last night, Mrs. P came over to our house to ask us to pray for him. “It seems bad,” she said. As K was putting E to bed, she told him that Mr. F was in the hospital and not doing well. He was soon weeping inconsolably. This morning, K took a phone call from Mrs. P in the living room and came back in tears. “Mr. F died this morning.”
I wrote the first paragraph in the present tense because it’s still unreal that he’s gone so suddenly. Just a little over a week ago, he and his wife were on a camping trip with family. Friday I’d spoken to him briefly as I borrowed his truck for the thousandth time at least to go get more mulch. At some point last week, he waved at me as I worked outside with his usual, cheerful, “Hey there, neighbor!”
Cars were parked along the road and in their driveway all day today as people dropped in to offer their condolences. Mr. F was a loved and admirable man, and the world was a better place when he was in it.
Busy Saturday
Today was one of those days that the camera never really comes out because it’s all chaos and business anyway. K had showings in the morning and in the afternoon; E helped around the house in the morning and then spent the afternoon with friends; L helped enormously with the housework; I was the one at home most of the day, doing laundry, cleaning bathrooms, trying to spray for carpenter bees between sprinkles of rain, disassembling an old computer (i.e., removing all hard drives) so we can finally dispose of it.
The only picture from today was of the computer. I thought that was a useless picture.
Instead, here’s one of the view from my kitchen when I first moved to Lipnica Wielka in 1996. That old primary school got remodeled and became a flashy new primary school that was much bigger, and included apartments on the top floor, where I lived when I returned to Poland in the early 2000s. I found this picture going through old pictures, which I then scanned this week.
Return to Dupont
“You guys from out of town?” the cyclist asked coming to a slow stop as he navigated the steep downhill that we were climbing.
“Not really — we’re from Greenville.” I figured being only 50 miles away doesn’t exactly make us tourists.
“Well, most people around here go the opposite way on this loop and go down this hill,” he said, I suppose trying to be helpful, but it came across to me as a little — I don’t know, annoying somehow.
“But what about those of us who enjoy hard climbs?” I wanted to say, but thinking I might be only speaking for myself, I said nothing.
“Yes, it seems like it would be more fun,” K agreed.
Our interlocutor headed off down the hill, and added, as if he’d read my annoyance and wanted to soothe it and simultaneously aggravate it, “Of course, it’s your choice.”
Just before December, we went to Dupont forest for some cycling. It wasn’t exactly what we’d planned. But since then, the Boy has asked us several times when we’re heading back. Today, we finally made it.
And afterward, there was mulch to spread and bikes to wash.
Spring Bed
We’ve been trying to get the flower beds in shape for spring. We’ve decided not to plant any vegetables this year, but we’re not totally neglecting everything.
Today, I worked on the big bed at the base of our driveway. There were a lot of leaves to remove, a lot of weeds to pull — and I didn’t even spread any mulch or take a before picture. I guess this is as close as it gets.
Playing with the Hose
Burning the Fields
