Tag Archives: reading

Picture Day

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8th grade - 1975
8th grade – 1975

Tomorrow is picture day. School picture day. I get my picture taken every year. I’ll be in line early and looking my best for this year’s school picture. Last year, I wore a pink shirt with a blue tie and the year before, a blue shirt and a pink tie; beyond the last two years I cannot remember which year is which. It will be my school ID photo for the next year; and it will be in the yearbook. So, when my students look back on middle school, there I’ll be along with the rest of my colleagues.

We got an e-mail from the principal reminding us, but I knew picture day tomorrow.

Earlier this week I heard about a story about Dale Irby, a teacher from Dallas, Texas who wore the same outfit for all forty of his school pictures. In the beginning, it was by accident; then, he made a conscious effort to wear the same sweater every year. I looked back at my school photos, at least those I could find – and for the most part, I was like Dale Irby. I stuck to the tried and true blue shirt and sensible tie. There were a few ties that weren’t so sensible or more likely it was ‘what was I thinking?’ or ‘did get dressed in the dark?’ I am not sure. The portraits will have to speak for me.

Nevertheless, I didn’t stop there. I went back further and found pictures from elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. When I finished college the first time and started working, I stopped having an annual photo taken so there is a gap from 1982 to 1999. It was fun going back in time and refreshing my memory of what I looked like then and now. About the only thing that is different from all of the school pictures is that for the past couple of years, my hair is longer than it was in middle school OR high school.

Tomorrow is school picture day and I’ll be ready. Blue shirt, sensible tie, and a great smile. Thirty-nine years ago, I smiled an eighth grade smile and had my photo taken. Today was a great day and tomorrow will be a million and six times better. Making the Days Count, one day a time, one school photo, one lasting memory at a time.

When was the last time you went back in time and took a peak at your school photos?

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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 →

Death of a tree

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emerald-bor
the culprit, emerald ash borer

It happened last week, a week ago today. The crew came and cut down our tree. The Ash tree. She had been in front of our home for as long we’d lived here. She was here before we moved in, before the kids were born, and before we got Ivy. She shaded our front lawn without fail, never complaining. I’d raked her leaves for 22 years, I’d trimmed her branches – before she got too tall, and then, she got sick. I didn’t notice at first but this spring she didn’t  leaf out along with the other trees –the maples, the oaks, the willows, and others. She had always been a late bloomer and the first to shed her leaves in the fall. But, when she did leaf out she looked sickly; a green branch here, a green branch there, interspersed amid many sickly dead grey branches. Then the crews came, first with their paint marking other trees in the neighborhood, they left a faint red dot at the her base. Then they came back with their ropes, saws, grinders, and trucks. They had many trees to cut down – we counted over seventy stumps in the neighborhood. Ours was one of the last to come down, but she came down anyway. The stump is still there as a reminder of where she once stood. This morning, I looked closely and I could see the stump sending out a couple of shoots in a desperate gasp to survive. It’s too late, our tree is gone.

I should have known that she was in danger, but I missed the signs. Continue reading Death of a tree →

Day 4: Friday the Thirteenth

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thirteen

I am enjoying a lovely morning on the deck; the wind gently rustles the leaves above me, the birds chirp and flit about.  It is a bit on the cool side, 56°F, but it will warm up, eventually. I am the eternal optimist, besides I have coffee to keep me warm. The wind chime emits an occasional ‘ding.’

It’s quiet this morning. Ivy is beside me, at my feet, or was until she heard something and stalked off to investigate. B is in Ohio with her mom and dad. W is at off-season sports camp, and O is sleeping. I hope that she’ll sleep for a couple of hours and get the rest she needs. We were supposed to follow this afternoon, but we will not. We’ll need to figure another time to head over and visit. We need to.

It’s Friday the thirteenth, the first and only one of the year. Continue reading Day 4: Friday the Thirteenth →

Roadside beach

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Sometimes you just have to pull over and take time and breathe.

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” Helen Keller (1880-1968); Author, Lecturer, Activist

sunset, Lake Michigan - eastern shore, June 8, 2014

I was up north for the weekend. I drove north Friday night and came home, reluctantly, Sunday evening. Saturday was busy. It was full of chores and full of pulling in air, something I desperately needed. Saturday afternoon, I slow-cooked a pork butt on the grill and made my famous cucumber and red onion salad, at least it’s famous to me. It tastes like summer. I sliced off some pork slathering it with BBQ sauce Continue reading Roadside beach →

Memorial Day weekend – 2014

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It’s that time of the year, again. There are two weeks left before summer vacation. Nine school days. Summer vacation would’ve been sooner, but we had the brutal winter with sub-zero temperatures and excruciating wind chills. Four school days closed twice for two days and days were moved from June to January to make up. There is nothing like summer vacation days in January. My students are working hard and last week it was clear they knew exactly how many days remained; some even knew down to the hour and minute.

the flag flies outside, it's Memorial Day weekend
the flag flies outside, it’s Memorial Day weekend

But, I am not a day counter. I work at making the days count. Continue reading Memorial Day weekend – 2014 →

CH4 and the last weekend in April

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IMG_0678
looking closely you can read it – OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR

I looked at my calendar last week and was stupefied that May was so close. It felt like the wording on the passenger-side side-view mirror: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. I suppose it is a lesson, which I need to heed more often. I have a habit of letting things creep up on me; it is along the same lines as not reading the fine print or asking for directions. I asked myself how it happened, but I already knew the answer. Ferris Beuller said it best, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop look around once in a while you could miss it.” Life does move fast and sometimes the only thing you can do is look around.

I’ve been looking around a lot lately. My seventh grade ELA students finished their Mask and Identity unit and we are now on The Road to Perseverance unit to finish the year. There are four units – one for each quarter. The bad weather days in January messed up the schedule and we finished the third unit in the fourth quarter and started the final unit a few days late, hence my ‘closer than they appear’ observation. It has been a good year. The students have been great and I will miss them, but I won’t miss all of them because I found out after Easter that I’ll be moving with them to eighth grade. After fourteen years in seventh grade, I finally was promoted!

The move to eighth grade is not the only change,

Continue reading CH4 and the last weekend in April →

some things take time…

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The sun is shining and I saw a robin in the backyard as I poured coffee into my mug earlier this morning. It’s chilly now, but it’ll warm up this afternoon. It’s the last bit of Spring Break, today, tomorrow, then school resumes. It is always the best part of the year for me; not because the year is almost over and summer is on the horizon, but because what I’ve taught my students begins to blossom like a field of daffodils bursting with color on a bright spring afternoon.

Spring break this year was what it needed to be – a break. B and I decided to divide and conquer. Continue reading some things take time… →

Priorities

adventure, Family, food, geography, growing up, history, jobs, Life in General, Reading, sports, teaching, Weather, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I missed writing last weekend. Truly. We went away for the weekend – we went north to the cottage. I had a lot to say, or so I thought. Somehow, time got away from me and I didn’t write. In fact, I didn’t even open my laptop. I existed solely on my iPad and phone; and did precious little on them. It was time to restore – a time to rest and relax.

It was our last long weekend of winter and we wanted to head up north for one last snowy weekend. The kids could ski, snowboard, and play in the snow. I know we had a lot of snow here, but it is different up north. B and I could relax and just breathe. We did all that, but the kids didn’t ski or snowboard: they did play in the snow and had fun outside, even Ivy got into the mix playing in the snow. We had a fire Saturday night and I cooked. Just as dinner was ready, we sat down to play cards. Then, some of our lake friends joined us; and we played a very spirited card game. The rules are somewhat confusing, but it is a favorite of our friends and we’ve enjoyed playing it at their cottage. I am not sure what it is called, it probably has several names, but it is a lot of fun. The card game involves a separate deck for each player but there is a place to play on everyone’s hand. Each player plays on their hand but the goal is to get rid of your cards and play them in the middle on the group’s cards. You get points for playing in the middle and the winner is declared when they have cleared their own cards. The game moves quickly and players have to be paying attention. Regardless, it was a lot of fun and when it was over, and we had a winner, we sat down to dinner and the Winter Olympics.

Sunday night's sunset - it was warm enough to sit on the deck in the sunshine, but we had to be wrapped up!
Sunday night’s sunset – it was warm enough to sit on the deck in the sunshine, but we had to be wrapped up!

I have enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics. I have always enjoyed the Olympics. Continue reading Priorities →

The Snow, the Hype, and the Big Game

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xlviiiIt’s Super Bowl Sunday. The sun is shining and it appears that we will have school Monday, for the first time since December. I think we will have to have an orientation about what to do on a Monday.

It snowed yesterday coating the yard (and everything else) with a fresh coat of white powder. It is beautiful. I looked back in time and last year we hardly had any snow, less than 5 inches had fallen for the 2012-13 season. So far, we have 52 inches and the forecast calls for snow Tuesday and again, Saturday. I think it has all fallen here. I was talking to another teacher after school Friday and we both got to laughing about a joke letter that we had seen years ago. My mother in law sent it to me when we bought the house and I had to learn to shovel snow. I don’t remember how much snow fell that winter, but I do remember feeling a love-hate relationship with snow when March rolled around. I have since lost the original, it was grainy from being copied repeatedly, but thanks to the internet most things worthwhile (appropriate and inappropriate) can be found with relative ease. Here it is, Diary of a Snow Shoveler.

My Super Bowl predictions haven’t been so super and I have losing streak running back to 2009 Continue reading The Snow, the Hype, and the Big Game →