MindSpinner

I went into school today to finish a yearbook page that required more expertise with Photoshop and Illustrator than my yearbook students currently have. (They are just being introduced to Photoshop and to digital photography. We’ve recently received funding from a mini-grant for a digital camera to be ordered next week, one that will be capable of handling most of our needs, with my camera, the wonderful gift, to supplement.) The seniors wanted the last page of the senior color section of the book to have their pictures set in puzzle pieces. I am a novice with Illustrator, but I did find a page online that showed me how to shape a basic piece of a puzzle from a simple square, and after six hours’ work, including a batch of time spent scanning prints, I had the page I hope matches the one my students envisioned.

The project, begun yesterday, was interrupted by the Fall Festival, an event at which the seniors traditionally run the jail as a fundraiser. The jail consists of four heavy panels of unpainted, pressed wood, with a door and high, barred windows fashioned by an adult who wasn’t thinking of the fact that little kids will have to jump up and down to see out. These four panels reside in a locked room at the back of a locked shop behind the school, and it was the business of half an hour just to find a way in when the key to the inner room was not to be had. The panels then had to be hauled to the center of the gym floor and nailed securely together so that its “prisoners” could not harm themselves by rattling it down. (Next year, there will be a power screwdriver and screws.) Festival goers put each other in this hastily assembled jail by paying two tickets, and prisoners may either serve their five-minute sentences or pay two additional tickets to be set free. This proves to be a genuinely popular attraction, for reasons I don’t adequately grasp, and the seniors have a box full of tickets (to be cashed out) for their trouble and mine. Disassembling the jail was at least twice as much fun as putting it together, and hauling it back to the shop was the highlight of the evening ;->.

At school on a Sunday afternoon, the place is generally quiet, but sometimes I can hear the copier running downstairs, and today, when I came out, the middle school science teacher was mowing the narrow lawn that stretches along the facade of this old building, in front of its unusually well-thought-out beds (where school landscaping is concerned) of flowers, liriope, and shrubs.

“I didn’t know teachers got to mow the grass,” I called.

Mr. M. stopped the mower. “When I wanted to do this,” he gestured at the landscaping, “[the principal] said that, if we did it, I’d have to take care of it. The kids made it, really. It was a community service project.”

He made a garden with the kids, and now he takes care of it, and there he was, mowing the grass in front of the school on a Sunday afternoon.

The best things that happen at school happen not because of testing, accountability, standards and whatnot but instead because someone cares to tend to kids and to making school a good place to be and to learn, on and on.

There are implications that come with that realization. For starters, I’d better get going checking yearbook pages.