Category Archives: teaching

Weekly Photo Challenge – Dialogue

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I’ll admit it, I enjoy high school football. I grew up watching high school football in Texas on Friday Nights. Friday Night Lights is a true story in just about every community across America. I never missed a home game and when I was a high school senior, I attended all ten games – home and away. B grew up much the same – except on a smaller scale and was in the marching band throughout high school. It was the same high school where her dad and her older brother played football, too. And a couple of decades later, our nephew.

Then I went to college – Texas A&M – never missed a home game and was part of the 12th Man. Never sat down as an Aggie, unless the opposing band was marching.

I played football, but I wasn’t very good. I didn’t have much talent, and didn’t work hard enough at it. I played a couple of years, but quit playing. It’s the story of my early life and it’s one of my life’s regrets – not finishing, not playing through. That’s why I admire W, my son. He’s not any more talented than me, but he’s far more persistent. He’s tenacious and he works his rear end off. It’s not just sports but scouting and school, too and just about all he does. He pushes himself to better at just about everything he does. I admire him, because I would have given up when I was his age, in fact I did.

Then adulthood set in, we went off to college, got jobs, got married, had kids, and began spending Friday nights watching the local high school – the Wheaton Warrenville South High School Tigers. At first, we took W in a stroller and then, when he could walk; we’d stand along the fence in the end zone and watch. Then O came along, same story. Time passed, W grew, and O grew, too. W played youth football for a few years and took a couple of years off in middle school to focus on scouting and run cross-country. Something I never did, I admire him. Then it was time for high school and joined the football team, and wrestled and played lacrosse – three seasons – three sports. We stayed along the fence watching until last year when we moved to the grandstand.  As a sophomore, his team played at 5:00 PM Friday afternoon then the varsity would play at 7:30 – under the lights. We’d stay and watch. This year, he’s on the varsity and he’s on the team. We’ll watch we’ll be in the stands. Most juniors do not play, seniors play and juniors watch, honing their skills waiting for their senior year and their chance to play Friday night. Juniors get their chance to play the next morning. Then on Monday after school, they’ll be back practicing, working hard, focusing on getting better, stronger, and faster – waiting for the next year.

August 1977 – me
August 2014 – W

But, there is more to life than football, more to life than sports. Continue reading Weekly Photo Challenge – Dialogue →

Let’s Go!

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It’s not about what you’ve done
It’s about what you doing
It’s all about where you going
No matter where you’ve been
Let’s go!

The first day has come and gone. I now have four days as an eighth grade science teacher under my belt. The first four days of school were amazing and I have 116 energetic eighth graders who are excited about learning, or at least they seem so. I’ve a lot of work ahead of me and I need to work on remembering ALL of their names, because after four days, I can get about only 60% of their names correct on sight – in the hallways, at lunch, or just sitting in class.

I also have a three-day weekend to sort through the coming days and weeks. I’ve got a lot to learn and a lot to do.

I am past my first day jitters. It rained that first day and the next – we got close to 6” of rain in two days. Last weekend was wet and muggy and then the August warmth rolled in just in time for the first day of school.

I love the first day of school. It’s a chance to learn, grow, and make the difference in a new set of adolescents. That’s WHY I became a teacher. Because, it’s not how much you know that matters to kids, it’s how much you care. That is why I do it, that’s why when I drive to school; I drive to school, and not to work. Yeah, there are days when it feels like work, but most of the time it feels like learning and learning NEVER ENDS.

the first day, first morning, new principal address the student body - 'make difference in our school... make it better... make it happen'
the first day, first morning, new principal address the student body – ‘make a difference in our school… make it better… make it happen’

The week before last when O was getting ready for school, she and I took some time together and distracted ourselves. We had all sorts of diversions – movies, airplane watching, and just plain ignoring the fact that school was about to begin. Continue reading Let’s Go! →

first day jitters

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dog_homework

BOOM, CRACK, boom, BOOM, crackle, zap; that was a couple of hours ago. Ivy came running into our room And jumped into our bed – startled and out of sorts. A line of thunderstorms was moving through and it upset her. It woke us up, too.

She curled up at the bottom of the bed – B never lets her sleep there – and snuggled up to my leg closely in a tight ball. I was able to get back to sleep, sort of, but my alarm woke me less than hour later. I am not sure if B was too sleepy to care about Ivy, or understood. We’re all kind of jittery today.

I am up now and Ivy is, too. The storms moved through and she’s snuggled up in a chair beside my desk downstairs sleeping fitfully. I can’t go back to sleep. It’s the first day of the new school year. It’s the kids first day, too. I’ll get kids next Tuesday and I’ll be jittery, again.

W is going to be a junior and O is off to middle school. How did that happen? It seems everyone is getting older and I am just getting wiser. B and Ivy get their house back today and have it all the way until early June. She’ll miss us and then get back to her routine; we will, too. Ivy will miss us, too. I love coming home and having Ivy meet me at the door or in the yard. It’s the best.

Last night I packed lunches, made breakfast sandwiches so we would have something to eat for breakfast this week, I’d spent the day on last minute details – there is always something which lies unfinished at the end of each summer. I have a longer list of unfinished projects this year, but it is understandable. Those jobs will get done, eventually.

Today is our first day back to school. I’ve got a new lunch box and it’s ready for my lunch. O’s got her backpack packed and W’s is, too. It’s gonna be a great day and tomorrow could be a million and six times better, but this could possibly the best day ever, so I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time, one first day over and over every year.

Do you have first day back to school memories? Do share, thank you.

my lunch box - new this year....

my lunch box – new this year….

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhoutte

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an A340 glides out of the sun for a landing at O'Hare - Sunday August 17th
an A340 glides out of the sun for a landing at O’Hare field – Sunday August 17th

Lately, it seems I have been very good at coming up with diversions. Errands, movies, games, practices; and on the surface, they appear legitimate, but really, they are distracting. O and I have been distracting ourselves quite well, lately. Honestly, I think we are both nervous about the coming year. She is headed off to 6th grade in three days and I am headed to 8th grade science. Saturday, I took her to O’Hare to watch airplanes land and takeoff after getting her new eyeglasses, and we did it again yesterday after the softball game. Granted, O’Hare was close, but there were so many more important things we could have been doing, but we were distracting ourselves from what’s important.

1999 was my first year of teaching. I was in 6th grade and I lasted a year at the grade level before my promotion to 7th grade. Continue reading Weekly Photo Challenge – Silhoutte →

August morn

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cinFriday morning, August 1st, twenty more days and I’ll be back at school or work. I promised myself that when I began to call it work, I would get out. I still call it school, though there are days when it seems like work. There are years when I learn more from the kids than I ever thought possible and then there are years, like the year ahead, when there is a lot to learn (and re-learn) about what I am teaching and I re-invent myself.

Nevertheless, it is the first day of August and I am still Up North. I had plans to be home the last couple of days but my procrastination de-railed me. Sometimes my procrastination is a positive, because this time I get to spend more time at the cottage along the lake AND I get to spend come more time with my mother-in-law, aka grandma. She arrived last night and it is good to see her. I don’t know how many more trips she has in her, but I am determined to make her days here count.

When she arrived she noticed the yard, the flowers, the beds, and the deck had been painted and all the hard work B and I have put in. Actually, she noticed the results of all of our hard work. She also noticed the dent in the hassock and wondered what happened. We knew what had happened, but didn’t tell her. Ivy did it. I know, I know, blame the dog trick #1, blame the dog….but really, it is blame us, because we are the ones who allowed Ivy to jump up and sleep on the hassock. B and I looked at each other and winked, we feigned we didn’t know. O almost spilled the beans, but we winked and she got it. Continue reading August morn →

Monday morning coffee

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coffee_cup_jpg

I desperately needed my coffee this morning. I am glad I remembered to setup the coffeemaker before I went to bed last night, and even then, it was a challenge to get moving.

I spent the first hour of the morning with my feet up on the hassock sipping a cup of coffee, looking out the front window at the lake, reading the news, sifting through e-mails, and in general allowing the time to slip through my fingers and then, I got busy replying to posted comments and reading blog posts.

Over two hours have passed since I crawled out of bed this morning and I begin to write. My mind is all a jumble of thoughts going every which way. B is awake, I can hear the printer upstairs spitting out a sheet, or two. At first, I thought it was J – B’s sister, or O getting up and coming downstairs. But, the sound changed and I realized it was B printing from her iPad in our room. She woke and came out thirty minutes or so ago and asked me why I had set my alarm for 6 AM, after all, we are on vacation and I relied that I wanted to be up early, before everyone else. Satisfied she had an answer, she went back into the bedroom closing the door behind her. I suppose my alarm woke her up and she hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

Coffee has never tasted so good, as it did this morning. Continue reading Monday morning coffee →

License plates and sunshine

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our route – I think I could do it with my eyes closed….

We are all back up north – B, W, O, Ivy, and me. If I could, I’d stay up here forever, but there is something called money, and a job, that keeps me from doing just that. And, perhaps being up north might lose it’s luster if it weren’t an occasional treat like ice cream or chocolate. This is the place that grandpa built – it’s the place for family and more memories than I can write about for now. B’s sister will be joining us later this evening for a short visit and grandma will be coming up next week. It’ll be a good time.

We came up Sunday afternoon. We had planned to come up Sunday morning, but we just needed to take our time. I’d been at Beauty and Charm all week and W came home from football Saturday afternoon and wouldn’t move – he was so tired. He needed to pack for his scouting trip next week to the boundary waters trip in northern Minnesota, but he just lied there on his bed, so we let him sleep. He slept from 6PM until 8AM Sunday morning, he must’ve been tired, because when we got here Sunday night, he slept another ten hours into Monday morning. We drove both of the cars because W has to go back Friday for his trip and one of us has to drive him.

O, Ivy, and I left first in my car and B and W followed hers with W driving. Driving 359 miles can be a drain. O was watching a movie on the iPad beside me and I was driving, paying attention to traffic, and listening to a Market Place podcast when I had a brilliant idea, why not count the number of different state license plates we saw along our way? I nudged O and explained my idea. I asked her how many she thought we might see and she replied 24. She was in. We had rules for our game – only cars and pickup trucks, no buses, and commercial vehicles like tractor-trailer rigs or delivery trucks. And, only US states, no Canada plates. She quickly called out our first license plate – Illinois. We quickly had ten or so – Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota and we had fourteen when B called to check in and I told her about our game. She took it as a challenge and it was game on. Driving along the interstates made it easier: I-80, I-90, I-94, and I-196 are heavily trafficked but once we were north of Grand Rapids, we didn’t see another new license plate.

We finished with 24 and B and W beat us Continue reading License plates and sunshine →

Weekly Photo Challenge – Containers

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the Standard Model
the Standard Model

I blinked this week, and I missed it. On Tuesday, my summer reached its halfway point. I’ve been busy and distracted and I’ve been working to make the days count – helping my wife, running errands, gardening, driving my kids to activities, or driving to and from Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. I’ve had some time to rest, relax, and rejuvenate, but I wish I had a container to bottle up summer and hold it for a time when I really could use it, but I don’t.

I’ve been busy this past week at Beauty and Charm and I’ve been busy all day. It’s made my brain hurt and that’s been a good thing – it’s made me think about what I’ll be teaching next year and ways I can teach it so that kids get it, understand it, and enjoy it because next year is going to be a challenge for me. I am switching content areas and grade levels. Since I began teaching fifteen years ago, I’ve taught Language Arts or Geography as my concentration and all but one of those years has been spent teaching seventh grade. It’s tricky to explain, but at the middle school level social studies is typically a shared subject. Teachers are organized into teams of three or four teachers; each teacher teaches one subject – math, science, reading, and English and each teacher teaches one class period of social studies. It’s not a perfect system but it works because at the middle level, education is more focused on developing the student’s skills in reading, writing, math, thinking, and organization. So much is developing between sixth and eighth grade socially, emotionally, and physically that academic or intellectual development is miniscule in comparison. Next year I’ll be teaching science to eighth graders. I am excited, but at the same time, it’ll be my first time to teach science. Ever. So, I know it’ll be fun, but it’s also going to be a challenge.

bubblechamber
this 15 foot tall bubble chamber contained 8,000 gallons of liquid helium – it was designed to help Fermilab physicists see the bubble trails of sub-atomic particles

That is how I ended up at Beauty and Charm. Continue reading Weekly Photo Challenge – Containers →

Weekly Photo Challenge – Relic

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reidcropLast April, for Spring Break, we came to visit my mother-in-law and father-in-law. In fact, that’s where I found myself yesterday morning, in Ohio. We arrived Saturday night in time to watch the Reds score five runs in the fifth inning with my mother-in-law, then watch the Pirates tie it in the ninth, and win it in the eleventh inning with home runs by the same batter. The reds lost, but, I digress. I usually do, apologies.

It was an odd spring break, while most of our contemporaries were enjoying time away with their kids, B and I were dealing with end of life issues with her older sister and her father, my father-in-law. We still are. B’s sister passed away in April, and her dad passed away in June. We are reeling. While B has been driving back and forth to Ohio, I’ve had the kids. It’s easier for us because of our flexibility during the summer. I am relatively free.

I couldn’t have been more fortunate to have found the family I did – my in-laws are like second parents, like friends. Several years ago, I began joking with my mother-in-law that she was my favorite mother-in-law and she retorted that I was her favorite son-in-law. Every now and then I’ll start a conversation with, “you know, you are my favorite mother-in-law….” And she will respond in kind. We’ll howl and sip our coffee and talk about the day or what is happening, or just talk baseball. She’s a big Reds fan and part of the reason I pull for the Reds. As for the ‘favorite’ business – it is a no contest, as she and I are the only ones of each kind. I suppose it would be a tight contest if my brother-in-laws were still around. I lost one to divorce in ‘92 and I lost another when he passed away unexpectedly in ‘03 at the age of 52. Both were great men and treated me like a younger brother. I certainly could’ve used their support this spring and summer.

For Spring Break, we divided and conquered – B went to Ohio and I went to Michigan with the kids and the dog. We, the kids and I, went to Michigan to ski and relax while she went home to her parents to help her sister and her dad, as well as her mom. It’s a complicated story.

Regardless, her mom is still in her home and doing well. Her dad was dealing with dementia and steady decline in his physical capacities – he’d lost a lot of weight and was struggling to walk and get around, as well as dealing with balance issues. His decline began a few years ago in 2011 or 2012 and he began requiring daily assisted living care in the summer of 2012. It was difficult for all of us because until then, he’d lived a fairly vigorous life – gardening, working, playing, fishing, and just plain, living. My kids have many wonderful memories of grandpa up at the cottage or at Christmases or other visits. Continue reading Weekly Photo Challenge – Relic →

The driver’s license

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illinois plateYesterday W earned his driver’s license. Congratulations, W. He has been looking forward to the day when he could drive the car by himself. He had a countdown to the day he could take the test and earn his license.
We have been doing a lot of driving lately – long distance to Ohio and Michigan and he’s gotten a lot of practice on the road. He drove the entire way home from Michigan on Monday all 360 plus miles with two stops – one for gas and coffee and the other for dinner at Chipotle a couple of miles from home.

2004_0717Image0010
ten years ago at the cottage, W delivering firewood for the night’s campfire… I miss that totem pole, it was cool

I picked up the mail at the post office Tuesday morning and there was a letter in the mail for W – from the Secretary of State’s office. Continue reading The driver’s license →