Today Is a True Spring Break

I sit on my deck over looking the sea of grass. It is the perfect, never been cut height of spring. A splendid emerald green color. Patches of vibrant purple violets pop up among this verdant green.
A brown speckled rabbit sits still as a statue, changing his posture from time to time.
Overhead robins chirp and flit from tree to tree. A squirrel shakes it's bushy tail in distraction as it squawks an alarm sound to fellow creatures.
I look up from time to time at this spring scene, then turn back to my reading. A wonderful first day of Spring Break.

What Helps a Teacher

Teachers need colleagues they can spend time with discussing the current state of teaching in their classroom and building. People to compare thoughts. Folks to bounce ideas off of and gain new knowledge and perspectives of the profession.

I have one such teacher in my building. I admire her teaching very much and value our friendship. Tonight we scurried out the building as soon as the last bus pulled away from the curb. We headed to a favorite restaurant and along with savoring some Italian cuisine, we delighted in an evening of adult conversation with no interruptions (something teachers do not experience much of during a week day).

I appreciate these evenings together as we contemplate, reflect, and examine our teaching practices, our students and their difficult backgrounds, and the unrealistic expectations placed on teachers today.

We come away feeling we have heard each others worries and concerns. We problem solve, affirm, offer our thinking to each other and encourage. I do hope every teacher has one such collaborator as this.

Smiling for the Spring Pictures

The photographer's assistant placed the class in two lines and had them face the white draped background and large camera. They watched their classmates go up one at a time and for the annual spring pictures.

Excitement was running high. Fourth graders become very self-conscious about their looks, especially when it is captured for all to see in a photo. The line moved forward slowly. I was doing the usual teacher walk among them all, the one we do to head off possible problems. But it was a fun time. Away from the (also annual) state assessment stress, away from work, just time together.

I was doing the last minute check of hair and straightening shirt collars. I never want a repeat of the year a group of girls passed around a tube of bright red lipstick at the last minute and their picture packets came back with their lips literally glowing.

"Is that the way your hair should look?" I asked Trevor.
"Uh, yeah," he replied. He had just spent ten minutes in the boys' bathroom working on it but it had an odd slant to it.
"You think that is the way your mom wants it to be?" I pried again.
"She doesn't really care about my hair," he explained. "She just cares about my smile."

Ahhh, I thought to myself. How sweet.
"She just doesn't want me to smile like last year." And with that statement he curled one side of his lip up significantly exposing all the teeth on that half of his face. He looked like such a cartoon character I was bursting with laughter inside. I couldn't imagine how he made that face.
"I was just trying to look like Hans Solo." "I thought I did it really good, but she didn't."

Hmmm, that explains it all.

We View the Soweto Gospel Choir

voices rise and fall in rhythmic unison
African gospels in languages foreign to our ears
djembe drums beat in accord
spirited dancing sometimes provoking mirth
vibrantly colored clothing swaying
traditional hymns we join in verse and clap away

My little bright spot

One of the brightest slices of my life today was the surprise drop in visit of my son and daughter-in-law and my so special grand daughter. Let me set it up.

I was almost to enter our school's down stairs door with our after school Nature Club. It had been over an hour of discovery in our Outdoor Classroom, which is delightful, but also work shepherding second through fourth graders through filling bird feeders, weeding and journal writing. Earlier in the day our classroom had two disturbing discipline incidents that had lingered with me.

But as we were about to go inside I heard someone shout my name and I looked over to see my adorable daughter-in-law waving from their car. She and my son had been in town and were driving down the street, then pulled in when they saw me. We conversed about the day.

I opened their car's back door and then came the most cheerful moment of the day. My darling grand daughter. I cooed her name and she turned to give me her usual three second quizzical look as she tries to figure out what new face has entered her world. The right side of her lip begins it's slight turn upward as she considers smiling. I continue talking to her, asking about her day. A smile bursts across her face. Eyes twinkling. A gurgle of a laugh emerges.

The trials of the day wash away and I linger in this joyousness. Soon it's time to go. Her eyes follow me as I move away and out of the car. She's a bright spot in my day, in my life.

Familiar Routines

We say our goodbys inside the house, but we have this routine of my mom then walking out onto the front porch and waiting for me to back the car out the driveway. I wave as I put the car in forward and maybe give the horn a honk. My mom, and this evening my sister, wave back.

For some reason tonight this routine took me back in time and saying goodbys. As a child, our family would travel several hours northwest to visit my mother's parents. Being a city kid spending time among animals, fields and woods was a treat. Spending time with my grandparents was precious. So saying goodby was particularly hard.

There was a routine of waving amid shouting our goodbys as Dad pulled the loaded station wagon out the driveway. Next we would turn and sit on our knees, in those days before seat belts, and wave and wave some more. Grandma and Grandpa would wave as they stood on the large concrete back porch of the white frame house until they could see our car top the hill, which had to be a half-mile down the road.As the car ascended that hill we swore we could still see Grandma and Grandpa. Slowly the home disappeared out of sight.

But somehow that lengthy familiar routine of saying goodby made it all easier.

Memories Everywhere

I'm at my mom's for several days where the house has been filled with family members. It's a comfortable place where we gather for meals, spend time together, stay the night.It is also a house filled with items which are connected to memories.

My mind is continually traveling through these memories. In the kitchen I'll look to the top of the cabinets where a red tin holds cookie cutters and I remember being a child baking beside my mother as she described using these same tins with her mother.

Every room evokes memories. My mother's sewing machine sits inside the blond wood cabinet. Packed away and seldom used today, I recall all the clothing she sewed through the years. My young children giggled in delight when she would present a specially crafted outfit.

These objects retain the memory of those no longer with us. Black and white photographs of earlier generations sit atop the antique ice box used on the family farm. I picture them using this bygone appliance.

I so appreciate the people who gather here to share and spend time together. I also seem to appreciate these objects and items that cause my mind to recall. These split-second movies of rememberance I play over and over.