SUMMER BEFORE THE WORLD CHANGED

One of my Blog Friends (another blog) asked our group what a throw-back to a 1990 Pre-Technology-Boom Summer might look like. Well, for me it meant raising kids and making sure I didn't forget one at a playground. But, long before that, I fondly remember my elementary school summers.

When I was really young, we lived in a small city on a residential street across from a professionally tended but small botanical (or, botanic, if you're old-school British Kingdom) garden tucked into the woods. The only kids in the neighborhood who were my age (up to preschool) were boys. Even though I had two older sisters and an infant brother, I tended to rough-and-tumble like my age-counterparts. We had a playground at the end of our street, and my sisters walked to their school, a school that I very much looked forward to attending until we moved mere weeks before I was due to start.

Then, we moved to a very small town an entire state away. A village, actually. For months while our house was being built, we lived in the heart of town, close enough to jump when the fire department alarm bellowed out its signals to the volunteer firefighters. Close enough to hear the church bells chime every fifteen minutes and bong out the hours. Close enough to walk to the post office, where we had a mailbox (#612 -- how I remember that, I have no sane idea). Close enough to walk to the one and only village store. Close enough to walk to school and the public library. Close enough to walk to playgrounds and explore cemeteries and stare at the Civil War statue and run around the town hall building.

Once we moved out of the town square, our house was a dream come true. Tons of room for all of us (and an additional brother), and three acres of woods loaded with climbable trees and huge boulders to fearlessly scale. We had two different swing-set areas -- one smaller for the boys in a fenced yard off the house, and one larger for the older kiddos just off the driveway. We built trails through the woods to ride through in the summer and to sled and ski through in the winter. Yes, we insanely downhill-skied through cross-country trails and slopes, and yet never crashed into trees. Eventually, a pool went in, as well. 

It was like living in the middle of the world's best kids' camp.

We often used the phone (connected to the wall) to call friends, but we more often just showed up at each others' homes, knocking on the door at all hours (nothing was too early nor too late) just to get together and play. Radio was AM via an old-fashioned spin-dial system. TV was five channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, and channels 38 (WSBK) and 56 (WLVI), and the only way to watch TV was to fiddle with the rabbit ears or move the monitor that would whomp-whomp-whomp the aerial antenna on the roof. My dad had an old typewriter, a Smith Corona, and that was the extent of our access to technology: phone, TV, transistor radio, and a typewriter with a moderately-inked ribbon and slow metal keys.

We played outside all of the time. It didn't matter if it was a heatwave or sub-zero with negative wind chills. In the summer, we sweated and scratched endless bug bites (I still have scarred legs from it). In the winter, we simply waited until frostbite set in because once we were numb, who cared. (This explains my Reynaud's Syndrome, of course.) If we were inside, we played never-ending board games (Risk, Monopoly, chess, checkers, Life, Stratego, Operation ...) or cards (Rummy, Hearts, Go Fish, Cribbage ...) or dolls or dress-up or hide-n-seek, or we drew, painted, colored, or wrote stories. We played school. We played rodeo on the fence posts (giving one brother the smaller gate that he named Breckody because he couldn't yet say Black Beauty). We played baseball and softball and tennis and badminton and basketball and hopscotch and jump-rope (Double Dutch, Peppers, and Chinese). We played Cat's Cradle and sewed and knitted.

And, yes, we drank from the hose, but only after letting the water run cool. Otherwise it was fire water from the sun. We drank from the hose because being caught in the house was like a death sentence -- someone might assign us a chore or tell us to clean our rooms before we could be released back into The Wild. No one wanted that to happen.

I am now close to retiring. Every time I think about the world being my oyster, think about all of the wonderful things I will be able to do if I stay healthy and manage my money, all I really want to do is go back to the woods, the laughter, the camaraderie, play a game, kick a ball, jump off a swing (without fracturing a hip). Maybe have a little fun, live a little, before I'm watching the world go by from the glass pane of a nursing home. 

You know, drink from a garden hose before it's a feeding tube.

COLOR-CODING SMALL VICTORIES

Continuing last blog's theme, I am both wrapping up this school year and looking ahead to next year. I will have about twenty-five to thirty percent more students next year, which isn't an unusual number. This year's numbers were unusual because it was an exceptionally small class overall. 

Friday I arrive at work at my regular time, which is about an hour before the kiddos arrive. I'm not a glutton for extra work. Leaving earlier makes my commute easier as I generally beat the school buses and, most of the time, do not have to stop every three feet so a random bus can pick up children. (People complain that no one uses bus stops anymore. With the per-student bus fee, I'd demand door-to-door service, too.)

Something at work has been bugging me for a few weeks: the location of my desk. I have moved my room around dozens of times in the last few years, so this isn't that off-brand for me. However, I have been doing the geometry of trying to fit thirty desks back into my room. It helps that I have donated two bookcases in the last year, but still. Thirty desks is a lot considering that we use large desks with wide-based chairs.

So, I do what any normal person does on a Friday before students arrive: I start moving furniture. I drag bookcases around, scoot my heavy teacher desk across the room, and haul text books from the windowsill to the other side of the teaching area. For now, I leave the desks in groups, but the children are still thrown off by my desk and me being completely on the wrong side of the room.

At the end of the teaching day, during my planning period, I shove desks into six rows instead of five. I throw my extra desks into the mix until my room magically transforms from a space equipped for 20 into a space equipped for 28. That's all the desks I have, but I still have room (if I move the remaining bookcases around) to fit three more desks, if necessary.

Now, though, the fun starts. 

With three weeks left, the students will be getting new seats. These are the first newly assigned seats since September. I cannot wait to see the mayhem on Monday morning. After all, just moving my desk on Friday caused major angst. The multiple rows, extra desks, and new seats? These kids will be on fire. (Apologies in advance to my teammates.)

All that is left is to color-code labels for the desks and tape them down before students arrive. Then, the children get to play Scavenger Hunt as they first find their class's color and then figure out where their names and desks are. (Surprise: It has zero to do with the alphabet this time.) The real joy happens when they realize two things: They are not near their friends; The studious ones have been moved away from behavioral issues. 

You see, teachers can be fair and also a tiny bit petty. Sometimes we just ignore behavior because no one supports us, anyway. And sometimes we manage it ourselves with extra desks, new seats, and color-coded index cards that silently plot our small victories, even if those victories last mere weeks until the next crop arrives.

LUCKY 21 AND ITS FRAGMENTS

21  =  This year's Magic Number . . . 20.5 to be exact. 

Although it's a magic number, it has been far from a magic year.  

People who work in education right now will tell you that the system is collapsing. Actually, it has been collapsing for quite some time. Has already collapsed. Crashed and burned. The fallout has been so hazy that the proverbial dust is just now settling. That means that once the cloud clears, everyone will see what those of us on the front lines have been seeing for a long time.

The system is broken.

No, that's not quite right. Let me try that again.

The. System. Is. Broken.

That's better. Fragments. The system is fragmented. 

The bureaucracy, the initiatives, the oversight, the lack of support, the loosened consequences, the constant need for data that no one cares about nor will ever interpret nor even examine, scheduling inconsistencies, contract violations, top-heavy administration, creative budgets, tax demands, low test scores. 

Disrespect. The ingrained, bone-deep, exhaustive disrespect.

And yet, still, we teach. 

Still, we light up when students "get it," when their brains are on fire and their eyes grow wide with wonder. When they're sent on a wild scavenger hunt through a text to find clues and evidence. When they tackle a difficult assignment with rigor.

21.

This year's magic number. Not my magic number. Mine is 388. Maybe 204. If things get much worse, then maybe it truly is 21. The real tragedy is that I'm not the only one counting down. I'm not the only one watching the retirement chart. The real tragedy is that teachers even have to entertain the magic number. We should be slightly sad about the end of the year. The end of our careers.

But, we are tired. Tired of the systemic disintegration. Tired of the pompous and inauthentic oversight. Tired of the exhaustive disrespect. Maybe we'll recharge over the summer. For now, though, it's the Lucky 21. 21 more days of hopeless wishing that the system will magically mend by September. 

I'm not betting on it, but I still believe in magic, 21 or otherwise.

JUST IN TIME FOR SUMMER

As usual, Spring has gone from zero to sixty like it saw a state trooper. (Sue me for the cliche.) The other day I swear it was going to snow, and now it's eighty degrees. It's small wonder that I have spent the last week hacking up both of my lungs.

We are in full-frontal Spring mode. This means bi-weekly visits to the car wash to get the green sheen off. It means battling bugs as I walk past the swampy wetlands in the center of my apartment complex. It also means porch season.

I have a small porch, and, yes, I am the one who still has Christmas lights on the railing. They are timed to go on around 8:00 p.m., and they are staying up and functional until someone tells me otherwise because I enjoy them.

I also have a round table and two folding chairs out there. I've had the set forever, and the only reasons that I still have it are because it's durable and I'm lazy. So, this Spring, the challenge is to complete a mini re-do of the small porch and replace the outdoor table set . . . but only if it coordinates with the Christmas lights that I refuse to take down.

Once the porch is done, feel free to blame me for the nasty, cold, rainy weather. After all, nothing ruins a decent outdoor season like getting the great outdoors exactly the way you want it and then being unable to enjoy it. Either that or I will continue to hack up my lungs and have to stay inside until next winter.

Either way, Spring is here. Finally. Just in time for summer, thank goodness.

A DAY FOR MOMS AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!

Can you guess the Mom/Ma/Mama/Momma/Mother connected to these?  Enjoy! May all you moms, step-moms, sub-moms, quasi-moms, pet moms, grand-moms ... Have a mother of a great day!

1.  Cass Elliot 

2.  Recent Saint

3.  Frank Zappa 

4.  Literary poem writer

5.  Irish-American labor activist

6.  Malcolm Turner/Hattie Mae Pierce  

7.  Full Metal Jacket

8.  Vicki Lawrence

9.  Cello player

10.  Honey Booboo

11.  Dearest with a coat hanger

12.  Pa and "Tea..."

13.  Whistler painted one

14.  Abba song movie

15.  King's granny

IMPATIENT FOR SUMMER

I'm impatient for summer.

There are many reasons, but the main reason is that for the first time in over a decade, I'm cold. (Menopause is not for sissies.) I'm cold, and I'm tired of being cold. I'm tired of having to warm up my car in the morning, I'm tired of turning on the heat in my home, and I'm tired of standing under boiling hot showers to ease the ice that has settled deep into my bones. I'm tired of wearing socks with my shoes. I am tired of shoes, period.

A recent trip to Maine brings me along the coast. 

Oh, I can see summer. It's all along the beaches and it's creeping into the marinas that are slowly waking back to life. It's not here yet, but the air is full of summer. Low tide's stench seeps into the car because the windows are cracked wide (while the car's heat blasts on my feet), and the aroma reminds me that soon, very soon, perhaps not soon enough, I will be sitting in a canvas beach chair, book spread open, watching the waves hit the sand and hiding my snacks from aggressive seagulls.

I hope the summer lingers for as long as it seems to be taking to get here.

It's a short but wonderful season up here. I know that when I retire I can and will drive or fly or teleport myself to any beach I want to at any time so that I can have summer at a moment's notice. Of course, then I will complain about missing the snow and how those first flakes are magical and how amazing it is to be inside while a storm rages outside, trapping us all under piles of whiteness.

For now, though, I am impatient for summer, and I'll count the days until it finally arrives.

PLAYING WITH THE YOUNG ONE

Playing with a three-year-old

Can bring a lot of joys.

It also means strange happenings

When playing with the toys.

Sorting out the characters

Can often be a hassle.

Pretty soon you'll find Tarzan

Skateboarding on a castle.

Barbies playing make-believe,

Zooming round in cars.

Stuffies fly across the room

Orbiting toward Mars.

Styling dolls' heads full of hair

With fake brushes and clippers.

Stuffing little princesses

Inside some football slippers.

It may not always make much sense

But when the time is done,

Being in that magic world

Is fascinating fun.