matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

Endings

Friday 25 May 2018

They dread and fear it all year. It’s always lurking under every question, every assignment, every activity. It’s the biggest and most significant English test they’ve ever taken: the End of Course Exam, or EOC. A state-mandated, state-created test that counts as 20% of English I Honors students’ final grade. A truly high-stakes test. It’s a stressful test for them.

And for me: a previous principal reassigned a teacher’s English I Honors classes to another teacher because her classes’ scores weren’t to his satisfaction. That’s the rumor, at any rate. While I’ve never worried that my students’ results would be dismal enough to merit such draconian measures, I always worry. The test is, in my eyes, a measure in part of my success as a teacher. Sure, it’s more the students, but I have to present the information. I have to guide the kids through the mandated standards.

Today, we got back the scores. With a mean of 89.04 (one point shy of an A), it meant that a lot of kids left with smiles. It’s not often that I deliver such good news.

Photographing for Scouts

Thursday 24 May 2018

Friends’ troop had their graduation. I had the fun of photographing the event tonight.

Playing in the Creek

Thursday 24 May 2018

Playing in the Creek

Wednesday 23 May 2018

The Boy

Tuesday 22 May 2018

Visitor after a Ride

Monday 21 May 2018

The Boy, for Tata/E time, chose again to go for a bike ride, and we began the ride in a similar fashion: the big downhill in the neighborhood across a couple of streets, the downhill that I keep encouraging him to turn into an uphill.

“I can’t ride up this hill!” he explained with exasperation. “It’s huge!”

But we rode up other hills, which are often as steep as The Hill but not as long. On one, the gave out quickly. With some encouragement, he got back on his bike and continued the climb.

“Remember: lean into the climb,” I advise as we churn our way up.

“Remember: forget about how far it is to the top. Pick a point in front of you and make it to that point. Then pick another point. And another.”

We made it to the top, and the Boy exclaimed rather stoically, “That wasn’t bad at all.”

When we got back home, we discovered some visitors have returned.

Moving Up

Sunday 20 May 2018

Morning: playing in the carport/covered porch. Bubbles and leftover candles.

Late morning: a ride with the Boy.

Afternoon: the final pack meeting. The Boy got his Lion badge and moved up to a Tiger.

Sports and Ice Cream

Saturday 19 May 2018

The Girl had her first volleyball game today. It was as one might expect when the majority of the girls playing haven't had much experience on the court. Most volleys were one of three types:

  1. A serve that doesn't make it over the net or lands outside.
  2. A serve that plops in front of a player who, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.
  3. A serve that is returned and then plops in front of a player on the serving team, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.

Not a lot of action. But a lot of excitement: the girls were all thrilled when they managed to make a serve (which actually happened quite frequently); they were shouting encouragement and joy when they managed to return a serve; they encouraged each other when someone messed up.

It was a beautiful thing to watch.

While the Girl was playing, the Boy was having soccer practice on the other half of the court due to the unpredictability of the weather this week. He finished his hour-long practice drench in sweat and as eager as ever to play more soccer.

It was a beautiful thing to see.

The afternoon brought the Boy's birthday party. We had an old-school, kids playing in the yard party. There were water balloons, brownies, sprinker antics, chips, volleyball over the sprinker, soda, soccer in the sprinker's mist, ice cream cake, trampoline flights, pizza, and endless laughs.

It was a beautiful day to experience.

Chess in Spytkowice

Friday 18 May 2018

M is K's sister's-in-law father, and he's a keen chess player. I first played in him Krakow, at their apartment, in 2003 or so. We played one game, which lasted probably an hour and a half and went to roughly 40 moves, I'd guess. I knew I'd won with about 15 moves to go: he'd underestimated the queen-side attack I'd slowly been building.

Years later, when we went to Syptkowice to visit with them at their summer house, we'd always play. Since I'd won that first game, my ego was soothed, and I took more chances. In this particular game, those chances didn't work out for me.

Enemies

Thursday 17 May 2018

Sometimes, the Boy can be his own worst enemy. It's true of all kids his age -- and older. He'll get upset about something, fuss about it, then escalate it when the resolution doesn't appear to be going his way. The trick is to get him to see that habit and stop it.

Today he was upset about something. About what, it doesn't really matter, but it involved L, who was helping me clean the bathrooms in preparation for the Boy's birthday party Saturday. We have too much to do in too little time, so some of Friday's cleaning shifted to today. The incident spilled over to a whine-fest with his mother, then with me. I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on.

"We're all getting things ready for you. For your party. Every single thing we're doing, we're doing it for you. I think if someone was doing this much for me, I wouldn't be upset because they weren't paying enough attention to me at that moment. I'd be thankful. I'd say, 'What can I do to help?'"

He calmed himself down with the little breathing exercise I taught him -- basically, slow, measured breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth -- and then went to ask K if there was anything he could do to help. She set him to washing dishes, a chore he adores.

"Thank you for showing me how fun it is to work together today," he told me in the midst of his toothbrush session. "If I'd kept fussing, I would have missed out on a lot of fun."

Later that night, as we read Tashi in bed, Tashi had an opportunity to escape from bad guys who'd kidnapped him. He ran by the river, where he saw the wife of the Chief Bad Guy drowning. I stopped.

"Do you think Tashi should stop and help her?"

"No!" the Boy said incredulously.

"Why not?"

"Because she's his enemy. If he helps her, she might just grab him and take him back to the other bad guys," he explained earnestly.

"Or," I said, thinking carefully how I could explain it, "she could be so impressed and touched that he helped her that she stops being his enemy."

"Yeah, but in Smurfs: the Lost Village, when [some character whose name I don't remember] fell of the boat and the Smurfs helped him out of the water, he said, 'Yeah, but I'm still bad!' and captured them. And it was their boat. They made it themselves!" His patience in explaining that was enchanting.

"Yes, that happens sometimes," I replied, "but sometimes, something different happens. Sometimes they stop being enemies." I knew this was going to happen in the book, and it rings true in my own life.

Just today, I had an encounter with a student that made me feel I was in Groundhog Day. During morning duty, I'm charged with keeping all the kids sitting in the hall quietly and the hall calm and to do this, we teachers enforce a basic rule: "You can whisper, but you can't talk." Suzie -- not her real name, of course -- always talks. She speaks in a fairly low voice, but she's engaging her vocal cords, which means she's talking. Plus, I can occasionally hear her thirty or forty feet away.

"Suzie, whisper please," I said calmly. Respectfully. As I've done every day I'm on duty for the entire school year. Her response is to quiet her voice at first but to continue talking, not whispering. Her response to being redirected again is to suggest that because other people are also talking, that I'm unfairly targeting her. Today I explained the simple fact: "That's because you've taught me to expect it from you. The other people are not consistently disobeying me. The other students do it once and a while; you do it every single day." Again -- quietly, calmly, respectfully.

Today, I talked to her about it again. It turns out, she doesn't know what whispering is. "I am whispering," she insisted. I explained again that if she puts her hand on her throat when she talks and she feels vibrations, she's not whispering.

"Go ahead, try," I said, smiling.

"No!" she cried, breaking into a smile herself. "It's embarrassing!'

I pointed out to her that I wasn't picking on her, that I in fact like her a lot and see a lot of potential in her. "As long as you can keep these little things under control." (She also has a tendency to grow increasingly disrespectful when redirected multiple times.)

Here's a girl that could have easily become my enemy. I could have simply snapped at her, signed her discipline card, or by this time, probably, simply have written an administrative referral. But instead of seeing an enemy, a rebellious little brat (like many adults would), I try to see something a little different: someone who just hasn't had anyone take the time to show a genuine interest in her regarding the little things. It's easier just to brush if off with sarcasm or a referral.

The funny thing is, in spite of the fact that she still grows disrespectful with me, I'm fairly certain she doesn't see me as an enemy either. Sure, it's not the same as saving the life of the wife of the bandit who threatened to pull all your nose hairs out like Tashi did, but it's moving in that direction.