Major cleaning and sorting in the basement uncovered my stash of former ID cards from high school and college, as well as my California driver’s licenses. The universal awfulness of the photos begs the question of why I didn’t shred them. Despite the cringe factor, it is kinda fun to see nearly 30 years in ID portraits.
And fast forward to the approximate present:
Two age-related conversations with Griffin today:
“I want to go to Kindergarten soon.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because soon I will be a teenager.”
Later, while climbing some rocks:
“Daddy, why did you almost fall?”
“Because I’m old and clumsy.”
“Well, you are not clumsy, but you are very old.”
We started the summer off with a bang this year and it all still feels a bit like a dream.
In a bizarre turn of events, we were invited to TWO weddings in Europe this summer that happened to be one week apart and relatively close to each other physically. The first was in the south of France, not far from Toulouse. The other was in Umbria in central Italy. As part of our policy of doing things that seem impossible (like the road trip to Minnesota with a one-year-old last summer), Sarah and I committed to going and have been working hard all year to make it happen. On June 11 (the day after my duties at school ended) we boarded a plane for Rome!
Our trip divided neatly into three sections:
So as not to overwhelm everybody we’ve divided our photos into three sets to fit with these divisions. This blog entry highlights the first part of the trip, including a few of our favorite photos. Click on any of the photos to see the complete photo album with many more fabulous pictures.
Aside from the pictures, some favorite memories included:
We’re in the dregs of winter these days—below freezing most nights, relatively warm most days with rain more frequent than snow. Additional snow, which we expect, has lost its ability to intimidate (unless you live in a flood zone). Our formerly unassailable snowpack is melting daily, revealing bedraggled lawns, silty sidewalks and forgotten snowman accessories. It’s messy, wet, and muddy. The remaining snow (of which there is still a good bit) is crusty and dingy gray.
As much as I am looking forward to the beauty and warmth of spring and summer, I will truly miss winter. It feels like sacrilege to say this around here (where everybody is completely sick of it), but I loved the snowy coldness of it all. My pre-dawn walk to work in the bitter cold has been one of my most treasured times of day. For one thing, it is stunningly beautiful outside. It is dark, but the snow reflects so much light that it never feels gloomy. After a fresh snowfall, everything is white, even the middle of the street. All the urban grime is replaced with glittering silver. As I trudge through the sidewalk canyons, flanked by thigh- or shoulder-high snowbanks, my inner geek goes wild: I’m listening for Mr. Tumnus in Narnia or avoiding storm troopers on Hoth. (Little do my students know that “Mr. Roy” regularly takes out imperial AT-ATs with his lightsaber before school.) If I’m lucky enough to catch the moon still up, I get the visual treat of moonlight through ice-limned branches—the light refracts in such a way to make the straight branches look like they bend to encircle the moon.
On these walks I am often surprised by how life-affirming this dead time of year is. No matter how dark and cold it is, there are always rabbit prints in the snow ahead of mine, and often the rabbits themselves. What do they eat? I have no idea. Then, as the eastern stars fade away, the birds start emerging. That just boggles my mind—how is it possible that the tiny, delicate things don’t freeze solid overnight? But they’re out, chirping happily and heading to their favorite birdfeeders. Cool.
Then there’s the cars-as-ballerinas effect. To understand this you need to understand that I don’t like cars. I think they are great tools, and I can appreciate (I suppose) a particularly well-designed automobile, but for the most part I hate them. They are dirty, noisy, and usually in my way. This is true whether I’m in a car or on foot, but as a pedestrian they are especially annoying because they are so much more dangerous and so much less respectful.
Winter helps with this on a number of levels. First of all, drivers are all freaked out. The roads are terrible. It’s tough getting out of your driveway, not to mention managing to stop at a light or start again afterwards. Everybody is sliding every which way and their confidence is shot. (Forgive me for getting a bit of amusement out of this.) Add to that the fact that the snow and my layers of scarves and hats also dampens sound. Put together the combination of slow driving, relative silence, lights reflecting off the snow, and the oddly graceful slip-sliding of tires and you have a transformation of the banal reality of winter traffic into an ethereal ballet. I kid you not: I have been stopped in my tracks by the silent beauty of oncoming headlights through the snow. (That is until I have to cross a street, when beautiful or not, they revert back into me-hunting demons.)
Finally, on some days it is just about sheer survival. On the very coldest mornings, when windchills have dropped into the negative 20s or worse, I’m not thinking about lightsabers or birds or ballet, I’m just focused on making sure my eyes don’t freeze shut and watching where I put my feet so I can get to school as quickly as possible. Arrival, under these circumstances, feels like a victory. And that’s not a bad way to start a school day.
After a week of sub-zero temperatures, we enjoyed a weekend of balmy weather — highs in the 30s on Saturday, and in the high 40s today! Real spring is still a long way off, but today was our first hint of what’s to come. It was a perfect afternoon for snowballs and puddle stomping.
I returned yesterday from an awesome week at Camp Widjiwagan on the shore of Burntside Lake, way up north on the edge of the Boundary Waters. Â I was one of the teacher/chaperons for 35 seventh graders. Â Highlights included:
In summary, it was an incredible week! Â I’ve told my principal that she can count on me to volunteer for this every year. Â (They actually have a hard time getting teachers to go.)
One sad thing: I didn’t bring a camera! Â I don’t know what I was thinking, because it was utterly gorgeous up there. Â I took a few photos on my iPhone on Friday morning before getting on the bus (and found another one on Google images) just to give you a sense of the place.
In my history class today I asked students to write a mini-speech arguing to the Second Continental Congress that the “unalienable rights” included in the Declaration of Independence should be extended to women and slaves. I offered extra-credit for reading the speech aloud or for writing it “in character” (so that it reads something like an 18th century speech). Most of the arguments were fairly basic, and few tried to write in-character, and fewer still had any rhetorical flair. But this girl had both (imagine it delivered in a ringing voice to the assembled delegates):
We call ourselves Men, but only Animals would strip rights from another human being, be it a woman, or a slave, or a child, or the elderly. Am I right to suggest that by Excluding the majority of the population from the Rights we have created for ourselves, we have lost all humanity? I call upon myself and the members of this Congregation to restore this humanity, and to distribute fairness to all People!
I love it that she took on the role of a male delegate, wrote with passion, and capitalized words for emphasis (like they did in the Declaration). I can imagine Patrick Henry reading these very words!
My fantasy school year was awesome… I would be teaching the same reading classes that I’ve been teaching for the past four years. After school I would grade some work and then head home, nice and early, to spend the late afternoon with Griffin and Sarah. I would smile sympathetically at teachers who catch up on work over the weekends, knowing that my weekends are reserved for family time.
Monday looked good. I had fewer students than ever before. My first day’s lesson was tighter and more successful than ever before.
Tuesday looked even better. My student-teacher was great. My students were well-behaved and excited (!) to be in the class. My newly repainted bookcases were gleaming. It was going to be a Very Good Year. (I was especially lucky because I’d heard that the eighth grade was much larger than projected and some teachers were struggling with 40+ students in their rooms!)
Skip to Friday… I sleep in because I know it will be the last time I will be able to for a very long time. (And the amount of preparation that I should have done was so impossibly huge that I decided sleep would be more useful.) Three of my reading classes have been dissolved. I spend much of the morning explaining to confused students that they won’t have me as their teacher anymore. Then I teach two sections of reading, with some students pulled in from the dissolved sections. Then a very short lunch. I’m too nervous to eat so I erase my board and write in big colorful letters, “Welcome to Mr. Roy’s English/History Class!”
A few minutes later, I am smiling and shaking hands with thirty-two diffident students, most of whom I have never met before. They take their seats and I introduce my new eighth grade English/History core class. (I’ve never taught English. I’ve never taught history. I’ve never taught a double-period core.) Two hours later, still alive, I dismiss the class, wishing everybody a good weekend. I wonder how many textbooks I should lug home for the weekend.
This is all just to explain why I have dropped off the face of the earth. With 24-hour notice during the first week of school I was handed two additional courses (English and U.S. History). On a certain level, I am very excited… I’ve always wanted to teach U.S. History, and I’ve always wanted to try teaching a double-period class (the rhythm of your day is so different when you teach fewer, longer classes). But it is a phenomenal amount of additional work.
I’ve got what’s called “four preps” now: reading 7, reading 8, English 8, and history 8. (For those of you who don’t teach, a “prep” is a single subject that a teacher needs to prepare for. So if someone teaches three geometry classes and two algebra classes, they have “two preps” because they need to prepare material for geometry and algebra.) Lesson planning, even when I have a textbook to work with, is a slow process for me. It’s especially challenging when I need to learn the material myself, since this is my first time teaching it. (Sadly, I know many first-year teachers who have been handed similar schedules… which may help explain why teacher retention is so poor.)
I try to hold myself to 10–11 hours at school on weekdays plus one half day on the weekend. Right now, that’s not really enough time to stay on top of it all, but I have to draw the line somewhere. As my student teacher revs up and I develop some routines for the new class, I expect things will get a bit easier. In the meantime, it’s just about all I can do to be a decent teacher and a good father.