matching tracksuits

Scrabble Homework

Wednesday 05 September 2018

The Boy had no homework tonight, so we played Scrabble, which was sort of assigned as homework when you don't have homework. "Play a word game," the instructions said, and what better word game than the word game?

We played the basic version of Scrabble Junior, which has words laid out for young players -- good for working on spelling and reading. We looked through the instructions but couldn't find anything on how to play that version. The back of the board is a more traditional, blank graph for players to make their own words, and the instructions dealt exclusively with that, so we made up our own rules.

A pre-game shot when E realized, with K's help, that he had "CVS."

We could, in short, build words letter by letter, and one only got a point when one finished a word. E got the first point, finishing "ball" like a champ.

But at one point, I finished a word knowing that the Boy could have finished it in the following turn. K had had the opportunity to do it earlier, but he'd have fallen behind, so she elected not to take the point from him. I was the only one with no points, and I decided to offer him a learning opportunity.

He was not happy.

Storming off to the living room, he declared, "I'm not playing!" At first, we tried to get him back through his competitive spirit: "Okay, you'll just lose your turns."

"I don't care!"

We needed more drastic measures, so I simply and firmly instructed him to return. "This is not good sportsmanship. There is no need to get upset because someone else gets a point. No one else at the table was upset when you got points. Indeed, we were all happy for you. Now, calm down, sit down, and play with a mature young man."

A few minutes later, he drew a G, which meant he could finish "dog" and "grapes" for two points. (We were playing one point per word, not one point per letter of completed words.)

In the end, he came in last place, but we were all separated by single points, and by then, he didn't care. Hungry, he didn't even stick around to count points.

Mission accomplished.

Lake, Part 2

Tuesday 04 September 2018

Lake, Part 1

Monday 03 September 2018

Eulogy for the Ages

Saturday 01 September 2018

No matter what one thinks of him, Obama’s eulogy for John McCain was absolutely masterful. It is undoubtedly one of the best speeches I’ve heard in a long time.

What struck me most was this line: “We never doubted we were on the same team.” Such a difference from so many politicians and pundits who constantly demonize the other side.

Another standout passage:

So much of our politics, our public life, our public discourse can seem small and mean, and petty. Trafficking and bombast, and insult, and phony controversies, and manufactured outrage.

It’s a politics that pretends to be brave, and tough, but in fact is born of fear.

John called on us to be bigger than that — he called on us to better than that.

It’s a speech for the ages, sure to be included in anthologies of eulogies in the future.

Uniform

Friday 31 August 2018

Meetings and Homework

Tuesday 28 August 2018

As a teacher, I've been in a number of meetings. I'm fortunate to say that I can't make a claim like, "Not a day goes by that I'm not in some meeting or another," but I suppose that's possible.

We have grade-level meetings every Friday. We sit around and talk about what's going well with the logistics of our grade -- moving from class to class, getting materials out of lockers, going to the bathroom, going to lunch, heading back from lunch, getting to related arts classes. All these things and a million more. We talk about students who are showing bad behavior in multiple classes and make a plan for dealing with the kid, hopefully with more positive outcomes for the kid than he is currently experiencing.

Every Tuesday we have professional development. We learn about new websites, new methodologies, new laws, new tools, new books, new paradigms. We go over how to accommodate children with mental and behavioral challenges in ways that are productive and in accordance with the documentation (IEPs/504s) in place for them.

Lately, we've been learning about the new way the district requires us to write our lesson plans. It's tempting to think that since the lesson plan is a tool primarily for the teacher that the district would allow a great deal of flexibility in this endeavor, but that would be a faulty assumption. Verbiage, formatting, pacing, sequencing -- all of this is decided for us. And when the district decides that it wants to make a change to this or that element of our lesson plans, we, as far as I know, have little to no input into the changes and are simply told, "This is how you do it now." Perhaps some select few teachers get to attend those meetings where such matters are decided, but I've never met anyone who's had a sense of having any input into these issues.

On altering Wednesdays after school, we have faculty and department meetings. These usually just turn into information-dissemination sessions, and I'm sure many participants find themselves thinking, "If you could just give me this in writing, I can read it on my own time." Sometimes department meetings provide professional development as well.

While sometimes there's a distinct feeling in the room that everyone would like to be doing something else (planning lessons? assessing student work? recording grades?), many of these meetings are indeed helpful. A large organization has to have meetings.

Today, however, I attended a first in my meeting-strewn career: we had a meeting about upcoming meetings. A meta-meeting.