Last Couple of Days
the girl
Saturday
Lake, Part 2
Lake, Part 1
Uniform
First Friday
Somehow, we all survived the first week of school.
After School
First Day 2018
A lot of new things this year: first, we have homeroom classes for the first time since I’ve been teaching at this school, which is about eleven years now. The new schedule takes some of the time after lunch (or rather, all the time after lunch) and moves it to the beginning of the day. It’s odd: I have several students in my homeroom that I don’t teach at all for the rest of the day. Then I have two students in my homeroom class as well as one of my English I classes and my journalism class.
Another big change: I have not two but three English I Honors classes this year. That means about 80 well-adjusted, well-behaved, hard-working students, and that’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing for the obvious reasons: there will be few if any behavior issues, and they’re all fairly motivated. The curse is connected to this: they’ll almost all do their work, which means an increased workload. I control how many assignments I give, so I control my ultimate workload. Still, what I’ve done in the past works, and I’m inclined to do the same thing even if it means more work.
The kids had a good first day as well. E’s worries about school turned out to be for naught: he loves his teachers already, and this evening he declared that his school is surely the best school in the world. L’s worries about the uniform disappeared as soon as she saw everyone else in a uniform — she suddenly didn’t feel like she looked so stupid.
The Show Begins Tomorrow
The first day of a new school year is like the moment the curtain rises on a play that is often improvisational and responsive to the audience’s reaction. Each year, I reinvent myself as a teacher a little bit, especially during those first days when I’m setting a tone for the year. Always looking for that sweet spot between commander-in-chief and coach, I waver between the “don’t smile before Christmas” type of teacher and the warm-and-welcoming-almost-a-friend type of teacher. Neither is sufficient in and of itself, and I really like the coach mentality more than the authoritarian mentality, but kids will be kids, and sometimes, I have some really emotionally damaged students who add a whole new dimension and need that forceful approach — if only for a second, like a splash of cold water to get their attention — so I waver between the two in the beginning.
And yet it always depends on the class: some groups come in and I see immediately that Joey in the back is going to be a living terror if I don’t make sure I set the right tone (which might not be the authoritarian despite the initial impression that he needs a “strong hand”); other groups come in and I see, though not immediately, that there aren’t any students set on hijacking the class, and I breathe a bit easier. Still, that hint of “I can become the strictest, meanest teacher in the world if I need to” must be there, around the edges, because you never know what’s going to happen in October when the honeymoon is over.
So the night before, I sit thinking about who exactly I’ll become tomorrow. I know who I’ll end up being: I have enough experience that I can get to the coach stage fairly quickly once I’ve established that I know how to drop the hammer, but those first few days — I never really know.
The magic begins tomorrow, too. I’ll see wave after wave of totally foreign faces and look at attendance sheets that are just a bunch of names, and by the end of the first quarter, I’ll be able to predict how each student is going to react to a given assignment. By the end of the semester, I’ll even know what words a given student might use.
Getting Ready
We’ve been getting ready — getting the Boy’s room ready for the reality that he’s a little boy and deserves a little boy’s room (as opposed to a hand-me-down toddler’s room, which he had), getting the Girl’s desk (and room, but mainly the desk) ready for the new school year and all the work that comes with being in middle school.
The room took 200% longer than we thought it would: instead of three days, it took ten. Through it all, the Girl helped like a real adult — very little fussing, very little complaining.
“L, come on — it’s time to work,” I would say, and she would simply reply, “Okay.”
Her desk looks as new as E’s room. She’d created a real mess of it — fingernail polish from playing, magic marker from art endeavors, and mysterious stains from who knows what. With the help of a paint scraper and a lot of muscle, she got it looking almost new.
“I had a couple of accidents,” she began explaining, and I thought she’d perhaps cut herself with the paint scraper, but in fact, she had simply removed a bit of the finish from the desk.
As should be the case, not all the work was work — some of it was quite fun.
Return to Bristol
We spent the morning and early afternoon in Bristol today. It’s the first time we’ve been there with both kids. One of the highlights of the day for me was to take them to my old elementary school. I showed them the spaceship that I and my friends used to fight so many battles, and L took the helm while the Boy tried his hand at attacking.
Afterward, a little walk downtown. The Girl was fascinated with the idea of State Street — one foot in Virginia, the other in Tennessee. I was just happy to find Uncle Sam’s Loan Office (i.e., pawn shop) was still open. I must have gone in there 100 times as a kid to look at their guitars, hoping beyond hope that they’d have some mispriced gem that I could snatch up.
Lake Jocassee, Day 4
The Room Grows Up
The final project for this summer is the Boy’s room: it’s time we make it his own instead of just a hand-me-down room from big sister. Truth be told, it’s been that way for entirely too long, but we just keep bumping it down the priority list. But he’s not a toddler anymore, and the room just had too much toddler in it, among other things.
Today was the prep day: we got everything into the center of the room with the exception of the bookshelf as K would have to go through the Polish books herself to determine what to keep and what to pass on.
Today’s theme, then, was letting go.
We cut the stuffed animal count to seven or eight. We took three bags of toys to Goodwill and prepared a bag of books to take tomorrow. It was a time of sentimentality fighting practicality.
“But Daddy, I love that!” was a common refrain.
“But you never play with it,” was the common answer.
“That’s true.”
He and the room grew up a bit today.
Lake Jocassee, Day 2
The Boy and I began the second day with a walk while the girls took the kayak out for a spin. We followed various paths and made a couple of discoveries. First, there was a playground nearby. We never used it again. Second, there was an amazingly small beach just down the shore from the tent camping sites that promised a much lovelier swimming experience than the large public beach.
After lunch, we all headed to the beach, hoping to get the dog further into the water. K had the brilliant idea of simply holding Clover and walking her out to a deeper part of the lake. She stood there with the dog, constantly reassuring her that everything was okay, and then let her swim back to the shore. That seemed to be all it took because she was generally fine with the water after that. Generally.
In the afternoon, the Boy and I headed out in the canoe, where we made a second discovery: a large rock protruding from the shore was just on the other side of the campground.
In the evening we checked out the two discoveries with the girls. Everyone declared that we must never go back to the public beach again, and the Boy declared that the large rock would be a perfect spot for fishing. The large crowd of teenagers determined it was the perfect spot for tomfoolery, but that’s what teens do.
Lake Jocassee, Day 1
There’s a part of me that really doesn’t like camping. I don’t know if it’s the looming inconveniences (what if I can’t sleep? what if we get a huge rainstorm that floods everything?) or the drudgery of setting up camp and then breaking it back down — I just don’t like it in a way. If I truly felt that way, I guess I’d still go camping with my family because they all enjoy it so much, but the truth of the matter is, I don’t feel that way. Well, at times I’m a little frustrated with the whole process of breaking down a campsite, especially after it’s rained. It’s even worse if things are still wet and we have to pack them nonetheless.
But even that is only a mild convenience, and it doesn’t even figure into the joy of the start of a camping trip when the equipment is all set up and clean.
This weekend, we camped at Lake Jocassee for the first time. We’ve been there a time or two — probably only once, now that I think about it — just on day trips, but this was a four-day, three-night camping trip to end the summer. It was supposed to be to begin the summer: our reservation was originally for Memorial Day, but the weather didn’t cooperate. This timing was much better, though: a last hurrah before the start of the school year.
This trip introduced a novel element, though, an element that both K and I were worried about: we brought the dog. She’s not a calm dog; when she gets excited, she’s still not an obedient dog; when she’s around new people and places, she gets very hyper — together, these three facts made us wonder whether we might end up regretting it.
“The dog will be on-leash the whole time,” we told the kids. “Make sure the dog does not get off leash ever,” we repeated. I had visions Clover running around the campground, jumping on people, knocking down unsuspecting children, lawsuits piling up if she got off-leash.
In short, I was a pessimist about the whole thing. “If push comes to shove, we’re only an hour and change away from home. I’ll just take her home if she’s crazy,” I told K. We agreed that it was a sound plan.
We’d planned on renting a tandem kayak for the weekend, and we thought we’d always be split up: one person with one child, the other with the other child (who would be cranky about not being on the kayak) and the dog, which in truth I feared would be more burdensome than then cranky child. It turned out that no one was cranky about being left behind and the dog was — well, more on that later.
And so we arrived on Saturday morning, set up the tent, and went swimming in the cool water of Lake Jocassee. We took the dog with us, and she was predictably terrified of water. It’s what’s made bathing her such a chore that we rarely do it. Things were different this time. L spent last week at K9 Cadet camp with Clover, and one of the things she learned was that you can’t give into a dog’s initial fear of water.
“Just correct her and tell her to come to you,” L explained. And it worked: the dog came out to the belly-deep water where we were standing and awaited further instruction.
“Sometimes that dog’s obedience shocks me,” I thought.
Deciding that was enough for an initial exposure, I stayed with the dog for most of the remaining swim time, alternating between sitting with her and having her walk along the shore in shallow water.
We went back to the tent, fixed dinner, and went to bed early, finishing up the evening with a bit of in-tent gaming.
The kids played Super Farmer with K. The game is odd: a Polish game (at least we got it in Poland and K remembered playing it most of her life) that involves building a farm by rolling dice and getting farm animals. You trade up: x bunnies can trade for y sheep and so on. Until you roll a fox or a wolf, which wipes you out partially or entirely.
The Boy was getting frustrated with losing all his hard-earned gains to wild predators, so they all agreed to play without the dangerous animals.
If only we could play life like that. Of course, we could — it’s not that difficult. All we have to do is agree to play by the same rules and we’d have no foxes or wolves to worry about. K and I talked about that that first evening, looking out at Lake Jocasssee, a man-made lake that is the same age as I. “We can make lakes and send people to the moon, but we can’t get along.”
And while there are some down sides to camping, one of the great up-sides is this: it attracts like-minded people. You don’t find many wolves in campgrounds; you don’t find many overly-materialistic people setting up tents; you don’t find superficial outlooks among the campers. So perhaps that’s some progress.
Getting Ready
We’ll be going on an end-of-summer camping trip this weekend, though it will be a little different from any other trip. Well, a lot different: the dog is coming along, too.
Rainy Thursday
The Boy got his new backpack in the mail today. He’s particularly excited that he has a phone compartment; he’s a little disappointed that the old phone of mine, which he uses as a little gaming station, does not fit.
L continued working on the massive amount of math she’s required to work on over the summer in preparation for taking math 6/7/8, three years of math packed into one. This will allow her to take algebra in seventh grade and geometry in eighth grade.
We had grilled shrimp for dinner, which made everyone happy.
Approaching
School is coming. The Girl is starting middle school. A middle school that has a fairly strict dress code. The school where I teach has a dress code as well, and I often hear kids complaining about how that stifles their sense of individuality. I always tell them, “It’s not the end of the world. Most likely, you’ll always have a dress code. Just learn to live with it.”
Now that my own daughter is chaffing under the thought of having all her outfits chosen for her, complaining about her impending loss of freedom, have I changed my response? Not really.
It’s not the end of the world.
But she made up for it with her school supplies.
Final Game
The Girl had her last volleyball game this evening. She’s come a long way since she began some weeks ago. She couldn’t even pass a volleyball; in games, she was somewhat intimidated by the ball. Her serve was non-existent. She was, in short, a complete beginner.
By the end of the season, she’s got a decent underhand serve and is working on an overhand serve. She’s starting to chase down balls rather than shy away from them. And she’s still in love with the game, so next week, it’s volleyball camp.
First Ride
Every time E and I go on a bike ride, he’s always asking the same question: “When can we go on a family bike ride?”
Today, we got our chance. We took the girls on the same ride we completed yesterday, with E in the lead again.
“Okay, girls, here’s a really tricky part coming up,” he would announce from time to time.
We did 10.31 km in just over an hour, with an average speed of approximately 8.7 kph.
There were times when L showed a resilience that impressed me. We did a fair amount of trail riding, including a couple of relatively steep climbs. The Boy had to get off and push; once, K did so, too; the Girl soldiered on with me.