Tag Archives: school

Andrew, Maggie, Oliver, Photo

Luminary Loppet 2022

Leave a comment

The 2022 luminary loppet took place on Saturday, February 5. It was a lovely evening of mild weather after a long, cold week. (Temps in the teens rather than hovering around zero plus wind.)

2022 loppet map

We’ve attended the event most winters, though it doesn’t always make it into the blog (see 2011 and 2017). It features a beautiful ski/walk/snowshoe trail that winds around the surface of the Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. The trail is lit entirely by ice luminaries (frozen columns, blocks, or spheres that contain candles). It’s otherworldly, to say the least.

This gives you a blurry sense of what it looks like.
The hanging luminaries were a new feature.
Maggie next to a giant luminary.

Oliver wrote a book about the experience at school. Each page features an illustration and a caption (in the blue bar). I’ve added typed captions additionally in case you aren’t adept at reading Oliver’s calligraphy.

Family
Hot cocoa
luminaries
skis
fire dancer
Andrew, Griffin, Teaching

Teacher-Parent Joy

1 Comment

On Friday, I had to give a series of short presentations about the middle school GSA to students in every advisory in the building. I was with my two wonderful colleagues, Kate and Vito, who have been co-leading the group with me for the past few years. Over the course of 90 minutes, we gave the presentation to a dozen different groups of students. We tried to keep it high energy, so we were running a bit ragged by the end of it. One of the last groups, however, made my day.

As we wrapped up our presentation, a girl called out, “Mr. Roy, are you Griffin’s dad?” I said, “Yes I am. Why do you ask?” She responded, “He is the nicest person I have ever met!” At which point, a bunch of other students chimed in in agreement.

This wasn’t surprising in the sense that I feared that Griffin wasn’t nice—my sense has always been that he is uncommonly kind—but it is rare for seventh graders to put themselves out there to compliment a classmate so publicly. Moreover, it helped quell any lingering anxiety about how he is settling into his new school.

Way to make an entrance, Griffin!

Maggie, Oliver

Rocky Start

Leave a comment

Maggie and Oliver’s school made it three whole days before needing to temporarily shut down due to a COVID scare. They closed on Monday and Tuesday of this week because a vaccinated staff-member tested positive and may have had close contact with a wide array of people. They wanted to make sure the entire staff could get tested and recommended that all students do as well.

As long as we were testing the kids, we decided to just do it as a family, so we all traipsed over to the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in downtown Saint Paul on Sunday to spit in five vials. It went as quickly as it could have, with no line and plenty of tables. We were all pleased to have negative results.

School reopened on Wednesday. We’re hopeful that we’ll have a smoother ride from here on out.

Andrew, Teaching, Video

Courage Retreat

1 Comment

Every fall, my school hires Youth Frontiers to conduct a day-long activity for our eighth graders called the Courage Retreat. I was skeptical about it the first time we ran it in 2010, but they won me over because they were able to win the students over.

This morning, while discussing the retreat with some new faculty members, one of my colleagues discovered a video on the Youth Frontiers site that features our school. These were our eighth graders three years ago, so they are in eleventh grade now. It was a great class.

The video is obviously an advertisement, but it warms my heart nevertheless. I thought some of you might enjoy catching a glimpse of one of the many things we do at SPA. Sharp eyes can even spot me in the background in a few shots.

In case the YouTube link above ever goes defunct, I made a personal copy of the video that should work in perpetuity below. (My guess is that YouTube’s streaming protocols are far more efficient, though, so I would watch the above copy as long as it is working.)

Griffin

Griffin’s Application to SPA

Leave a comment

As the school year kicks off, I’ve been spending more time on my laptop, and I keep running across files that I intended to post over the past year. (It was a very busy year!)

Attached below is a scanned copy of Griffin’s handwritten admission “essay” that he filled out last January when he first applied to St. Paul Academy (where I teach). I love it that he filled it out on his own without any input from Sarah or me. It’s a great snapshot of his thinking in the middle of a his sixth grade year. At this point, he hadn’t been at an in-person school for ten months.

You can view it below or click the download link below to view it in a larger window.

Griffin Admission QuestionsDownload
Andrew, Photo, Teaching

Barricade Day

1 Comment

One of my students is an ardent fan of Les Misérables. For the past few weeks, she has repeatedly asked if we can celebrate Barricade Day by building a barricade in our classroom. I laughed. But she was serious. I had never heard of Barricade Day. She was happy to fill me in. I hemmed and hawed. Finally, at our last class, it became apparent that this particular group would finish their video projects early. (They’re a pretty sharp, dedicated bunch.) I told my student that if she came up with a lesson plan that would teach the class about Barricade Day, I would give her 45 minutes to run the show today.

Sure enough, last night she emailed me a lesson plan with a 350-word mini-lecture about the June Rebellion of 1832, including images to share with the class and a short video. I honored my end of the bargain. at 1:45 sharp, we ended our regular social studies class and went to Paris to learn about the unrest there. At 2:00, filled with revolutionary zeal, we tore apart the classroom and built a barricade. (I did have two recommendations: don’t break anything and don’t get hurt.)

Here are the pictures my student shared followed by a picture of our 8th-grade version.

Griffin, Maggie, Oliver, Photo

A Bit of Hope

1 Comment

As mentioned in prior posts, Oliver was in preschool this year for a few months at the beginning of the year. Now he is back at an outdoor preschool for three mornings a week.

Griffin and Maggie, however, have been in full distance-learning since last March. They’re used to it now, but it has been a major blow. A normal day in their Montessori school would involve 6-7 hours of constant interaction. Working with classmates, moving around the classroom, attending mini-lessons from the teacher, playing at recess, lunch, the school bus, etc.

Now they’ve got Zoom meetings, independent work, and an occasional minecraft game with their friends. I’m not knocking the school; they’re doing a great job. But the social gulf between this year and last is enormous.

It is with joy, therefore, that we dove into a program at their school where individual classes come to campus once-a-week for a few hours of all-outdoor social time. Maggie had her first day yesterday and Griffin went in this morning. (We only have a picture of Griffin at this point.) Hopefully this is the first step on the long road to normalcy.

Griffin with his friends at school together for the first time in 11 months.