Teaching in December

Teaching in December is hard. Really, really, really, really hard.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas teachers are trying to wrap up units while navigating absences due to illness and trips with students who are so excited for the upcoming break they can hardly sit still. And in the Archdiocese of Seattle, it's also the end of the first trimester, so it's report card time. AND for teachers of eighth grade students applying to high schools, it's high school application time. Several hard deadlines and squirrely kids. Here is a sampling of memes that I have scrolled past on my various social media feeds since the start of December:

I am happy to say my report cards were ready on time with a minimum of fuss, and I completed my part in the high school application process today, stuffing envelopes and enlisting the help of the school secretary to scan and send application packets to the school that required digital versions. 

But on top of the typical December crazy, my fall on the ice last week tweaked my knee out in a delayed reaction. I fell on Friday, and a tiny bruise was visible on Saturday. The bruise got bigger, more colorful, and more swollen each day through last week. It didn't hurt at first, but it was strange to watch it increase in size without feeling it. On Tuesday, it exploded in pain. But the doctor's office couldn't schedule me until Thursday.

Diagnosis? Strain with possible small tears in a ligament. Prescription: Two weeks of keeping my weight off of it as much as possible and 800mg of ibuprofen three times of day (with food). I was told to brace it if I could tolerate a brace over the bruise and crutches would be useful if they helped me move around without putting weight on my knee. My friend and co-worker had an extra brace for serious injuries, and it's helping much better than any I could pick up at a drugstore. For one thing, I can tolerate it even with the colorful, swollen bruise. However, my favorite is one that holds three ice packs that I have been wrapping around my knee at the end of each day. It is very soothing.

But even within the chaos that has been the last week, there is a lot of work to complete before the break. My eighth graders are finishing up our unit on Washington state with a boardroom presentation designed to entice a fictitious global corporation to open their next manufacturing and distribution center in our area AND a Time Magazine project where they choose a famous Washingtonian to research, draw, and write an article about. Here is an exchange I had with a student at the start of the Time Magazine project:

Me: Pick a famous Washingtonian to research for your project. Remember that in your essay you will highlight their positive contribution to the local community, our state, the country, and hopefully the world.

Student A: Can I do VInnie Hacker?

Student B: He's not from here!

Me: He *is* from here. I taught him fifth grade in *this* school.

Student reactions run a funny range of shocked expressions, gasping, and "I told you so."

Student A: So, can I research him?

Me: Yes. But be sure you can meet the expectation of highlighting his positive contributions to the local community, our state, the country, and hopefully the world.

Student A: (excitedly) Okay!

Time passes as students work on the assignment.

Student A: (quietly) Um, can I do Dove Cameron instead?

In another class, I used animal cards to randomly pair students for a class period. This exchange ensued:

Me: (noticing best friends working together after the random pairing) Wait, you two got randomly placed together?

Student A: Yes.

Student B: (the partner of student A who claimed to be an atheist until a couple of weeks ago) Truly there is a God!

Meanwhile my oldest child flew to Wisconsin to pick up a car to drive to Massachusetts. It's a long story but suffice it to say that she would not be dissuaded from her perfect plan that sounded bat-crap crazy to everyone I explained it to. Then my husband flew to Las Vegas for a work conference. My house has generally been quiet since we stopped fostering, but it is weird to be home with just my 18-year-old and our myriad of pets.

Tomorrow most of the middle school is headed to sing at a senior living center and cap off their trimester of choir with ice skating. I was slated to attend, but with my knee injury, I've been benched. It will give me time to catch up on grading and write some reflection questions with my administrator for the staff book study to send with people on their winter break. They're going to love that... But our study of Grading for Equity has taken a back burner to other priorities this year. The break is a good time to re-kick start our look at how and what we grade our students on.

Wednesday is the Christmas Pageant. Preschool through grade 5 and the band are performing. I will be the point person in the building during the performance in the gym for the band kids and student government kids who will be runners for the performers. It's entirely possible Thursday is supposed to be a normal day. Or perhaps I've forgotten something. That's also entirely possible. Friday is a half day that begins with a prayer service and ends with a school wide caroling "competition" and indoor snowball fight.

It's really a fun week. But it is made easier knowing a two-week break starts at the end of it.

Snow!

Most of the teachers I know have a love/hate relationship with snow. We are just as excited as the kids to get a day off of school, but then we have to readjust our plans to account for the missed day(s). And don't even get me started on late starts. No one wants a late start - either a full day of school or a full day off, please. Except when it's icy and dangerous on the roads at 7:00am and bare and wet at 9:00am it doesn't exactly make sense to take the full day off. But making that prediction gets messy. At least the final decisions are above my pay grade.

It started to snow on Tuesday morning just as school was starting. It wasn't sticking to anything and did not for the duration of the school day, but I still had an eighth grader picked up during first period due to the snow. It snowed one me on my way home, but wasn't sticking to the roads or sidewalk, just the foliage. But as the temperature dropped, we got a few inches of snow. It sort of melted and compacted again before daybreak in my yard so I couldn't get an accurate measurement.

Wednesday was a snow day. 

Thursday, we had a late start. Even so, one of my coworkers fell on the ice in the parking lot on her way into the building.

On Friday, the district where my school resides called a late start, but my school did not. It snowed on me for most of my drive in. When I hit the county line, it stopped but by the time I got to my school's parking lot it had started to snow again. At least two more staff members (including me) fell in the parking lot trying to get into the building. It started to snow about 7:45am and literally looked like a snow globe when I looked out the classroom windows for a time between 8:00-8:15. As kids were arriving at my school, the surrounding district called a snow day. Most of the day was clear, but we did have indoor recesses for the second day in a row.

Friday night it began to snow again, fairly late. Before midnight it started sticking. This is when my husband and I were on our way home from a holiday party. My husband tried three routes into our neighborhood, sliding back down the first two hills. I kept telling him to park in the Safeway parking lot and we'd walk the two or three miles home from there. But he tried the third route, that took us past the aforementioned Safeway. This route was his last choice because it has the steepest hill, but it also has a downhill before the uphill to gain momentum. We know from previous experience it works well, as long as you don't stop at the stop sign at the bottom of the hill. We made it home and woke up to a winter wonderland on Saturday morning.

I just learned how to drive a stick shift in the past few months, and after our 20-year old's car died, our fun sporty stick shift car has become my primary mode of transportation. So far, I've been able to get to and from where I've needed and wanted to be. On Sunday a few of my coworkers and I had reservations for high tea at a shop owned by one of our school families. I scoped out a parking space in the lot as I was in the turn lane to enter. It looked like there were many spaces at the top of the hill, so I put the car in gear and gave myself the momentum on the flat part of the road to get myself up the hill. It would have worked too, but a car pulled out in front of me and I had to stop on my way up the hill. I could not move forward, so I put it in reverse and backed down the hill into another section of the parking lot. There were spaces over there too, but none that I could get into easily given I was driving backwards. I was on flat ground again and the car that had made me stop had exited the lot, so I decided to try for up the hill again. With no reason to stop on my way up, I made it! And I did not stall the car. I felt like an accomplished stick shift in the snow driver!

On a totally separate note, I had a fun/funny "teachable moment" interaction with a student this week. We were working on a worksheet from our social emotional curriculum created by Committee for Children. He was asking questions bordering on the argumentative about the questions the worksheet was asking. I looked at him and said, "It sounds like you'd rather argue about the questions than reflect a little more deeply to answer them." He was silent for a beat. "Yeah, that's probably true," he said before turning his focus back to the worksheet.