Christmas Tree
December Friday
Today was our annual trip to the district's vocational school to give our soon-to-be-high-schoolers an overview of what's available to them there: everything from cosmetology to firefighting, from diesel engine repair to culinary arts, from mechatronics to nail tech. It's quite an impressive variety.
Once I got back home, I saw that the inevitable has begun: our poor widowed neighbor has moved out of her house and family and friends have already started on the house -- they took down the back deck that looked to be made of nothing but rotten boards.
"Wonder what kind of neighbors we'll get," will become a common topic of discussion, I'm sure -- not that we have any say in the matter.
For dinner, Babcia made placki ziemniaczane with mushroom sauce -- utter heaven.
And after dinner, a walk with the dog while the rest of the family went to church, a walk that included a street I haven't been on in ages. I'd forgotten about the holiday scene they create.
First Band Concert
Warszawa Centralna
Looking at some old pictures, I found a shot of Warszawa Centralna train station from about 2002. It was an exterior night shot, and there was little indication of what the station looked like inside. What it looks like now is vaguely similar, but there have been so many renovations and little additions that it doesn't look like the Warsawa Centralna I remember from the mid-90s.
So I turned to Google: "warszawa centralna lata 90." Instantly, there popped up a picture that looked almost just like it did in the mid-90s. According to the credits, it's from 1991, but the only real difference I see is in the ticket windows: the numbers were blue as I recall.
But that mass of people in front of the ticket window, those lines that were not lines, that bundle of confusion -- that is identical. How many times did I stand there stressing about getting a ticket on time, stressing about getting a ticket with reserved seating (I rode back to Krakow many times on a "standing" ticket, which meant I had to try my best luck at finding an empty seat), stressing about whether I was actually in the line or not, and once, stressing about the amount of money I had (did I have enough to get me back to my humble village?) -- just stressing.
Getting the Christmas Tree and Random Memories
We're still settling into a new routine with Babcia. K has gotten her old phone charged and running, but the closest Babcia has come to an iPhone is the old tablet we bought her years ago.
Nana struggled with smartphones as well. Papa made the switch fairly easily, and then when we brought him an iPhone to replace his Android phone, he made the shift without much complication. Nana just experienced frustration: a few tries, and she was done.
"I can't even answer Papa's phone!" she once declared. She just handed it to him. She wasn't having it.
I sometimes wondered if it wasn't a sort of willful helplessness: she'd never had any problem learning new things in the past. When Papa brought home a new computer in the early eighties, she learned how to use it. Each time he upgraded after that, she learned how to use it. New software, new user interfaces (i.e., the mouse). But for whatever reason, she just never had the motivation to learn how to use a smartphone.
Washington Return
D. C. Sightseeing
Washington Arrival
Eighth-Grade Meeting
Imagine
An imaginary email:
Thank you for attending the Q2 Student Progress Monitoring meeting with Bob Smith from the district office. As we prepare to engage in the Q3 Student Progress Monitoring process, please discuss and have one person from your collaborative team respond to this email no later than 4pm on Thursday. Please Cc: Bob Smith when you respond.
- Question 1: What is the title of your current unit of study and what date do you anticipate finishing this unit?
- Question 2: What is the title of your next unit of study and what date do you anticipate beginning this unit?
Let me know if you have any questions/concerns.
An imaginary response:
Thank you for your email thanking me for my attendance at the mandatory meeting. I appreciate the chance to sit with my colleagues and hear from someone at the district office how to do my job. Since I'm completely unfamiliar with monitoring student progress having taught only 24 years now, I appreciated the refresher of the basic ideas with which only the rawest of new teachers are unfamiliar. However, given the amount of time it took to fill out the forms your method required, I think I will have to politely decline further participation. I trust the district office will understand that my experience should suffice.