A few moments of quiet

Wednesday through Saturday have been on-the-go days, so now while I sit alone in my online community help desk, I have a little quiet time to catch up here.

Wednesday and Thursday were days of meetings when teachers and sometimes support staff (office, kitchen, custodial, paraprofessional and special education aides) sit and watch or listen to administrators who have attended some kind of new training over the summer proclaim the excellence of it all and explain that this is the new focus of the agenda for the year. This year it seems to be data: we have lots of data but we don't use it to our advantage, so that's what we'll need to do this year. I guess there are some folks who are excited about that. To me it means another task added to what we already do but without more time to do it. Time and payment are two issues in short supply, so when either of them is being manipulated by someone else, it makes me a little nervous.

The positive side of that is that our building admins did take the data fed back to them via a survey and they say they intend to make some notable changes that should allow teachers to feel that they're back in control of their classes and the academic wings of the building. Last year we had a few nasty students who were disruptive, uncivil, uncooperative, and even threatening who, for reasons teachers weren't allowed to know, were kept in school, ruining the atmosphere and taking inordinate amounts of time and attention that should have been spent on the students who wanted to participate and learn. (One of them was made to stay in a class next door to my study hall, and each day I thanked my lucky stars that he wasn't assigned to me. I could hear the kid as he regularly swore loudly, destroyed items in the classroom, defaced property, refused to do his work or take tests, belittled other students, and threatened the teacher before walking noisily out of the classroom to wander who knows where.) The discipline system is supposed to be tighter this year, and some of the angry, disruptive ones will be taking at least some of their classes in isolation via a Distance Learning program, supervised by one of the special needs staff. It's a good start. We'll see how long the plan lasts.

Both days my student teacher absorbed it all, and at the end of a viewing of a film by Dan Habib about inclusion of special education students into mainstream classes, she asked, "Did they show that to us because the school doesn't do that? Will that be a new thing for us?" I just shook my head and told her that we've been using inclusion for at least the 20 years we've been in the current building, so I wasn't sure why we were shown the film other than the fact that the people showing us probably went to a workshop over the summer and were given the film to share with coworkers. It's good to be reminded of the impact of our open-arms policies on kids who can thrive as a result of them, but to show us an hour-long film in a warm dark room after lunch on a day with gorgeous weather is poor planning. Most of us could have used the time to better advantage, setting up classrooms and collaborating on new courses that we're teaching.

Friday we worked in our classrooms, and since I'll be teaching in two different locations this year, I spent some time in the other classroom making it a kind of home away from home. I've had a study hall in there, and a very small class of mine met there three years ago, so it's not unknown to me, but I'll need to move quite a few resources to the room, ones that supplement the textbook and give us a wider view of British Lit. Of course my set-up time was interrupted now and then by the needs of others ("Does your laptop get the wireless signal from the library so you can take attendance in the cafeteria each morning?" "I gave you the teacher workbook for this series, right? Do you mind if I take it over the weekend?" "Do you have enough grade 12 vocab workbooks? I don't.") and by a meeting to figure out which interactive computer course would be more equivalent to ones we teach, so by the end of the day I was glad to get out of there. The highlight of my day was yet to come.

After taking a shower, changing my clothes and catching my breath, I headed an hour south to meet some friends for dinner. Known as ARB, Short-and-Sassy, Ah-Clem, and Lil, the four of us have been internet chat pals for years, and while ARB was in the general vicinity (he and his wife live in AZ), we decided to get together. I'd met ARB and Mrs. ARB for brunch in Tucson a few years ago, and Ah Clem and I have hung out together in Boston (theater stuff) and up here (craft fair stuff), sometimes with his wife and son, numerous times. ARB brought his sister and brother in law, and Short-and-Sassy brought her husband, and the nine of us had a wonderful time catching up and talking about everything from birthday parties and politics to the Red Sox and the Olympics. Half of us are or have been teachers so of course we talked shop, but not for long. The Italian restaurant that "Sassy" chose served us delicious food, and we never felt rushed by the waitstaff, so the three hours flew by. As in the past, I found that Sassy was, offline, exactly what I knew online, something that more often than not happens. Once in a while online friends are somehow different - taller, having unusual gestures or ways of walking, lighter or heavier, laughing in unexpected ways - and that can be interesting, but mostly we're just what we present ourselves to be, and that makes gatherings like this one very comfortable right from the start.

Saturday was the Old Home Day craft fair that was so complicated to enter. Before it began I headed to the nearest Staples store since it was their Teacher Appreciation day, and I gathered up a basketful of goodies, some free and some for pennies apiece. Their gift this year was a 512MB flash drive in its own case, as many clips and oversize tacks as you could fit into a 4x6" plastic bag, and packages of pencils free to teachers. Then I dashed to the craft fair where I set up beside someone I know from many local fairs, a quilter and knitter who kept a stream of conversation going for the entire day. The day was warm and sunny, but I managed to find shade and a breeze that kept me going. As Old Home days tend to be, the event was more social than lucrative with lots of current and former friends making the rounds after the parade and the display of old cars. Some pretty good music (that is, stuff I knew and could sing and boogie to) played at a level of many decibels, and a local organization ran the lunch wagon conveniently close to my tent. I managed to sell a few things, some that I made on the spot, and I didn't fry in the sun, so it was a good day. My spouse came early to set up my tent and tables while I went to Staples, and then he had his fund raising relay with his cross-country team at the high school. He came to help me break down and pack up, but so many friends saw him and had to say hello that his help was with the final items, the tent and tables being tucked away in his Explorer. That's okay: he grilled some really good barbecued chicken and snipped a pound of string beans for dinner. My job was to gather the cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from the garden which required two trips. This is one of those bumper crop years for cherry tomatoes. I'm not sick of them yet!

Time to close down here and head out to my shop where I'll sit on the porch, the smell of freshly mowed grass in the air around me, and a little breeze keeping me cool. Customers? Probably not, but that's fine. I'll enjoy my quiet anyway.