MindSpinner

It was picture day, and I am in charge of picture day. I am also in charge of prom and graduation and, no doubt, the weather for the senior picnic. I had done everything right to make the day go smoothly. I had approved the picture schedule with all of the middle school and high school teachers. I had talked to the company with the photography contract, and not just once, to make sure I had what the woman who schedules the pictures thought would be a workable schedule. I based it on her requirement that the middle school pictures and the high school pictures be treated as two different jobs going on concurrently in the same gym lobby. I had scheduled around the juniors who are gone in the morning, the seniors who are gone in the afternoon, and the fifth graders who go to lunch at 10:30 in the morning. I had even found a time for softball pictures even though juniors attending vocational school get back to the building five minutes after two school-to-work seniors on the team generally leave for the afternoon. I emailed this schedule to everyone ahead of time. I had hard copies of the schedule this morning for every teacher, printed on colored paper, because I knew from fall pictures that half the teachers don’t check their mailboxes or their email, so the only way to make sure they get the schedule is to hand it to them on the day they’ll need it. I had arranged, yes, even argued for the necessary announcements to be made over the intercom to get certain scattered groups to the photographers at the right time. I considered this schedule something of a feat on the order of solving a difficult puzzle. I had assigned two yearbook staff members as assistants to each photographer. I thought I’d passed the planning test - until I found it hadn’t started.

Two photographers arrived. Unfortunately, only one of them could take group pictures. That’s right. There’s something fundamentally mysterious about this, but there seems to be a distinction between being qualified to take a picture of one kid sitting in front of a camera and being qualified to take a picture of multiple kids seated in a group. I, having utterly no clue about such things, have obviously been clicking away all year with no qualifications at all, even taking the club pictures on fall picture day because the photographer couldn’t get to them and we had to have them for the yearbook.

Given the resolute specialization of the one photographer, the schedule for middle school now conflicted at several points with the schedule for high school, for both group and individual pictures. I should have scheduled all the individual shots for photographer 1 and all the group shots for photographer 2 and somehow divined this though it contradicted what I was told by phone. The photographers and I reworked the schedule, and I traipsed back to tell the teachers whose classes would be affected.

That was all before there turned out to be a short in the cable that enabled the “group” camera to trigger the flash and before the 9th graders had sat for a half an hour waiting, consequently missing their breakfast. There was not an extra cable in the photographers’ vehicle. There was no one to bring an extra cable from the office an hour away. There were no suitable cables to be bought in a camera store or borrowed or hi-jacked. “We have to order this from out of state,” I was told. The recommendation from the home office, “Stretch the cable out and bite it” either did not work or the photographers respected themselves too much to try it. The upshot was that, while individual portraits and casual pictures of small groups of friends could be taken, sports group shots or class group shots could not. This means the photographers have to come back. Again. This spring.

But I am a teacher, and teachers are used to stuff like this. Really. All the time. Consequently, I did not grab the cable and bite it myself. Nor did I bite the photographer. I wrote a nice little note to the teachers about the changes, scheduled spring picture day, take 2, and went on to the rest of the school day, which involved half again as many twists and turns, but I have no inclination to write about them.

Fourth block tackled a writing assignment, an analysis of a poem. Some had written a proficient answer in 25 minutes; others required much support to get the hang of what they were doing. Most succeeded, but I’ll have to follow up with two or three. Worthwhile class. Progress made.

Fifth block stayed so busy and engaged with differentiated assignments they did not notice it was snowing out. You don’t see that often.

The afternoon meant a trip with my son to meet with the court designated worker assigned to his truancy case. My son took responsibility for having missed days he shouldn’t have (each representing a struggle between us) and signed an agreement to attend school every day and not to be late. On the way home, he turned to me in the car, out of the blue, and said, “Mom, I love you.”

And that last part is really the only thing I need to remember about this day.

For teenagers, everything is about sex. Everything. My ninth grade boys particularly love a short, easy book about volcanoes in my classroom library - they share it around and snicker. It’s those vivid description of volcanic eruptions they find titillating.

Their interest isn’t limited to “pornographic” science texts written for students reading below grade level. They are concerned about medical issues, too. “Isn’t Moby Dick a venereal disease?” one earnestly inquires.

I could tell from the outset I was being had. “Ms. E will do it. Get Ms. E,” Mr. G called out with inordinate glee, as Mrs. P. joined him at the classroom door next to mine. They were planning for the afternoon pep rally prior to Homecoming.

“You can dribble a basketball, can’t you?” They asked, seized with giggles.

“Well, yes. I guess so.”

“Good, we’ll put you in the relay race on the teachers’ team.”

When I am the first person chosen for a team in an athletic contest, there is something seriously wrong. It’s not as if we lack youthful, athletic faculty members on our staff. I haven’t run a basketball full speed down a court in a few years now. Obviously these people were not interested in winning. They were interested in rooking somebody into something and thereby saving themselves.

All this was clear, but what the heck? The whole point of this exercise would obviously be entertainment, not victory - thus the composition of the relay team. I considered hiding among the middle school students during the pep rally, but I was too busy finding the yearbook staffer who would be taking pictures and making sure he had the digital camera. So I was easy to spot and comandeer.

The relay was explained. Each of us would put his or her forehead on the end of a standing baseball bat and in that position circle the bat 5 times as fast as we could, then dribble to midcourt, pick up a rope and jump rope all the way back. As you will remember, there had previously been no mention of the bat or the circling or the jump rope.

I thought I went around the bat pretty fast. I thought I went around more times than people kept count of, but then I was getting very dizzy. I was handed the ball and began to dribble, running as fast as I could go. Problem was the ball was listing to the left, and I was listing to the right. I did not trip. I did not fall. I ran into the floor (or else it rose up to meet me, I’m not sure which). I’m told I slid most of the way to midcourt, but I was still too dizzy to apprehend the sliding. I did apprehend the uproarious laughter - mine and everybody else’s. The relief came at midcourt when I discovered I still know how to jump rope, not at any great speed, mind you, but at least without tripping on the rope.

Fortunately the yearbook staffer did not manage to capture the moment. As for Mr. G, I still have that picture of him he begged me not to put into the yearbook, and I do believe I can find a spot for it yet ;->.

Our good Republican governor is at it again. He heralds as one of his goals raising teacher salaries such that they will be on par with those paid by surrounding states. In a letter to teachers across the Commonwealth today, he notes that he proposes taking the first step this year by raising teacher salaries 2%. This is not a typo.

~ My fuel costs are up sharply from last year.
~ My heating bills are up by 64% this winter, even though the weather has been unnaturally warm.
~ Food costs more. My kid’s psychiatrist costs more. Everything costs more.

So the governor figures surrounding states will propose raises of less than 2% just so our state can catch up?

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.