Chores
Evening Walk
After a few administrative matters were taken care of -- moving the car, taking the trash out to the street -- we headed out this evening for a brief walk. As we headed up the street, K playfully commented on how dirty L was.
"Well, if I had to choose between a child who is filthy," I said, "and a child who is obsessed about being clean, I'd have to go with the filthy child. At least it's a sign that she's outgrown her princess phase."
The Boy, of course, has still not outgrown his machine obsession.
Defining Up
Dear Terrence,
It really wasn’t that much I was asking you to do: put your head up. Simple. You began the class as you almost always do: head up but not really attentive. Within a few minutes, though, you folded those arms and dropped your head into the angle of your elbow.
“Terrence, put your head up, please.” Notice: I was polite. I was respectful. You can’t learn anything with your head down, so I needed you to raise your head and your attention. And you did. For a few seconds. Down it went again.
“Terrence, put your head up.” Notice: I was a little less polite. It’s hard to be polite with someone who’s being so disrespectful, and that’s really what it amounted to. When you don’t do what a teacher instructs you to do, it’s disrespect. Whether or not you agree with that is, sadly, irrelevant, because most of the world would accept that as a fair description of what you were doing. Your head went up, but this time, so did your arm, with your head now balanced on the side of your hand as you rested your elbow on your desk. So in a sense, you were obeying: your head was more “up” than it had been a few moments ago, but you knew perfectly well what I meant.
“Terrence, put your head up.” Notice: I was still polite. I tried to keep the edge out of my voice, because I was getting quite irritated with the whole situation and the disrespect you were showing in front of the whole classroom. The child in me wanted to respond in a similar fashion, with disrespect, with sarcasm. But thankfully I reminded myself that I am the adult, and while you could choose to act like an adult, you generally choose to act as you did.
It was at this point that you really crossed the line. But standing up and walking out of the classroom, you disrupted the class, you showed incredible disrespect, and you left me with no choice but to refer the matter to the administration. And you know that will mean an immediate three-day suspension. With your dreams of playing football — I eavesdrop in the hall, as do other teachers — that doesn’t seem like something you’d want. A discipline record and poor grades guarantee your disqualification from school sports. So it seemed very short-sighted of you.
See, here’s what you don’t understand: if I didn’t care about you, I’d just let you leave that head down. It’s much easier to let you sleep. So I ask you to put your head up knowing that I’m only making my life more difficult. I do it every day because I refuse to give up. You might force my hand as you did today, and if that’s the case, then I’ll do as instructed by my superiors and write you up every single time you do it. It doesn’t seem like a very productive way to spend my time, but I follow instructions. All I’m asking is that you do the same.
Still a little frustrated,
Your Teacher
Day Trip to Charleston
The Yorktown at Patriot's Point
USS Clamagore
Isle of Palms
Technical Difficulties
I was hoping to get caught up on grading over the weekend: a long weekend is good for that because I don’t have to do it all at once. I can tinker at it around the edges, so to speak. However, I am currently unable to access the Google Drive account issued by the school district because the district routes all log-ins through their servers, which apparently are experiencing some difficulties. The login page has been replaced by this page, which has no “Submit” button!
So I cannot access my school Drive account, which means I cannot access my Google Classroom account. They’re both Google products, but because of technical problems at the district’s servers, I am unable to access them.
Technology is great until it doesn’t work.
Too Many Toys
Every night whoever has Boy Duty (as opposed to Girl Duty) reads to the Boy, and my selection tonight was Too Many Toys by David Shannon of No, David! fame (one of the best children’s books of all time). The story was a little predictable: “Spencer had too many toys,” it begins, and the astute child or the typical adult will guess where this is going.
Tonight, we reached the page that showed all of Spencer’s toys spilling down the stairs. “Spencer liked to make his toys into a parade that stretched from one corner of the house to the other and back again!” E pointed to the huge line of toys and said, “He poured them all out.”
“Yes,” I laughed. “I know someone else who likes to pour his toys out.”
E looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then concluded, “Babcia doesn’t.”
Indeed. Every time we visit Babcia, she complains, only partially in jest I’m convinced, that she’ll be glad when we’re all gone and she can get back to normal. “No more toys here, there, and everywhere!”
No, Babcia would not be a fan of Spencer’s train of toys.
After a thoughtful second, E continued: “I do too.” Up went his eyebrows as they always do when he’s about to raise an index finger to emphasize a point. “But I clean up.” Another small pause. “Sometimes.”
“I’m Going to Poland”
Ever since we returned last month from our visit to Poland, the Boy has been obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with going to Poland. He constantly asks when we’re going back, and when we finally explained that we won’t be going back for a long time, he simply declared, “We’ll I’ll go alone.”
“And how will you get to the airport?”
“Mama will take me.”
Every Saturday morning, when talking to Babcia via Skype, he proclaims, “Idę do ciebie!”
Since then, he’s been packing. He’ll pack up toys into a box and declare, “This is for Poland.” He’ll put things in a pile and explain that “this is for Poland.” The other night we couldn’t find his toothbrush because he’d packed it in with his toys “for Poland.”
When we ask him what he’s going to do in Poland, he explains that he’s going to play.
“You can play here. Anything else?”
“I’m going to Poland to visit my friend Babcia.”
Jumping Redux
Play Too Much
Dear Terrence,
I watch you walking down the hall, getting upset by the least little thing, and I worry. Someone bumps into you, and you’re upset. Someone says something to you that you don’t want to hear, and you’re upset. Someone doesn’t do this or that, and you’re upset. And then today, you’re about to get into a fight because — because why exactly? I could never get more out of you than, “He play too much.”
Of course, you’re not the first to say that. I hear it a lot. “You play too much.” “They play too much.” “Mr. Jones play too much.” I hear it a lot, but I’m not sure what it means. I’m fairly certain you don’t mean that literally: I don’t think it’s the amount of time this or that person spends playing video games that upsets you. We’re not playing any sport in the hallway, so you’re not referring to that. What you must mean is that the person in question plays mind games too much. That’s the only thing I can figure. But an odd thing about mind games: they take two to play. So if he plays too much, if she plays too much, it only means that you’re playing along too much.
So he bumps you and perhaps it’s on purpose: it’s only “playing” if you play along. So someone says something you don’t like: it’s only “playing” if you play along.
Why not try ignoring the people who play too much? If they have no one to play with, they’ll go look for a new playmate. Simple.
Playfully,
Your Teacher
Out With the Old
If there is one thing I hate more than going to shop for a new cell phone, I don’t know what it is. I hate shopping for just about anything (with a few unhealthy exceptions), but cell phone purchases are at the very bottom of my list. You go into an electronics store and everyone is so excited about the new XYZ and the incredible DEF and the improved KLW — and it just leaves me baffled. It’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less, but I suppose in the age of iPhones and Galaxies, it’s more than that to most people.
K and I don’t upgrade our phones often. Indeed, we don’t upgrade them ever. Until recently, I was happy to hobble along with my half-broken piece of junk. Then, coming home on the bike, I got caught in a downpour and the phone got soaked in my bike bag, putting it out of its misery.
In a way, I was thrilled. No more phone, period. I don’t have to remember to pick it up in the morning; I don’t have to remember charge it; I don’t have to think about it — heaven. But there are times when even a phone curmudgeon like me has to admit that a phone can be fairly useful. Emergencies, for example. So despite my hesitations and protestations, we upgraded.
The upshot of that was I could finally do what I always wanted to do to my phone. L enjoyed getting in on it, too.
Yet the Boy was a little upset about it. “Why are you breaking your phone?” he asked, genuinely concerned. I explained that it was already broken and that L and I were just being silly, and so soon he was stomping away too, chirping, “I love breaking phones!” It was at that point that K and I thought a little addendum might be in order…