Notes from a busy week

-- During a retrograde, beware of that apparently perfectly functioning chalkboard compass that came with your geometry curriculum: just as you are about to use it for the very first time, its chalk will become jammed back to the level of its plastic holder, rendering it unusable and requiring major surgery to restore it to its proper level. Relieved to have it repaired, you will attempt to continue, and then the suction cup that anchors the compass to the board will pull away from the body of the compass, exposing bare screws, and causing you to scramble for tiny sharp parts that have dropped to the floor. You will be reduced to asking your students to imagine that you were making accurate marks.

-- My students, though, were gracious and wonderful, and possibly grateful for the delay of serious academic instruction.

-- Nonetheless, one of the first things I did Monday evening was order a new chalkboard compass.

-- Also a whole bunch of literary essays/ historical works about Geology: John McPhee's Annals of the Former World, Bedrock, The Language of the Earth, and Hard Road West: History & Geology Along the Gold Rush Trail. A couple of others, too, that have yet to arrive. Because when you're teaching science, you can never have too many interesting supplemental material lingering about.

-- Something I learned: just because a drawing sketched out on a sheet of paper seems to demonstrate the principles you want to illustrate doesn't mean that the drawing will work on the scale of the blackboard that's in your room. A couple of times I found myself drawing lines on cinderblock because that's how my drawing was scaled. Make a frame drawn to scale; use that as your template.

-- From the "There's always one" department: I'm demonstrating their first construction, how to copy a line segment, and one of the students -- the one student who raced ahead after our introductory class on Monday and did all the problems for all the assigned sections before I even handed out next week's homework assignment after our first real classroom discussion on Wednesday -- pipes up, "Hey, I think I figured out how to bisect a line segment!" And he was right. This is the one I'm gonna have to watch out for...

-- You can never have enough colored chalk.

-- Teaching two days a week is way different than teaching one day a week.

-- I have missed everyone -- kids and parents -- more than I realized. It feels like a small miracle to be part of a community that is so welcoming, so affectionate, so supportive. It is an amazing place, and I feel fortunate to be part of it.

-- The intense communication storm of the first week seems to be subsiding into something just more normally busy. For me, this is good.

-- I am exhausted.
-- Exhilarated.
-- Exhilarated and exhausted.

And now I'm off to read. Something fun. Something not for school. And this weekend, we might finally get to see Julie & Julia -- hooray!

And you? What weekend adventures are ahead of you?

Weekend Update

In the way of all good soap operas, the old dramas in our lives -- remember our broken cooktop, the failed transmission? -- seem to be resolving even as new crises clamor for immediate attention.

For the record, M. installed a new cooktop, and our vehicle was repaired at considerably less expense than we had initially feared. Were we thrilled & delighted. Yes, I am happy to report, we were. But only momentarily, you see...

Because school started this week. Or at least the classes we're doing at home with m. This is the week we use to get a head start on things before her far more interesting teachers at the co-op begin co-opting her attention; also the week we use to work out the glitches.

Unlike past years, the math & science materials we picked seem to work well, both for m. and for me & M., who will teaching her. We are all breathing huge sighs of relief over this.

The biggest glitch came, as glitches always do, from an unexpected quarter: her online German curriculum, which last year we counted as a huge success. It was a great program with interesting if sometimes unintentionally amusing materials nicely pitched for even sophisticated high school students, and it included a half hour weekly conversation with a German professor at a state university. We'd signed up for this year's program back in April, before last year's program was even finished.

Unfortunately, the program this year seems to be a victim of its own success: enrollments are up by nearly 500% (yes, 500%), and the structural organization to support the increase does not seem to be in place: materials are late, we're getting important information about the program from grad students instead of the program directors, etc. Given that m's third-year German program depends on conversation and longer writing projects that require evaluation by knowledgeable people, this lack of organization made me uneasy. People I knew who'd gone through the third-year program last year confirmed my uneasiness: the coordination was tricky last year; from what I described of this year's program, everyone feared the worst.

And so it is that this first week of classes, I find myself frantically scrounging together a German curriculum, not what I had planned to be doing during a week that was already short (due to the Labor Day holiday), constrained (by the lack of a car), and overscheduled (with copying, collating, stapling, and otherwise organizing materials for the math classes I'll be teaching at the co-op, starting Monday). As of this morning, though, we've found some good opportunities for conversation practice, and I think I might have found a reasonable basic text. Things seem to be falling into place, which makes me think that maybe we made the right decision.

The addition of this class to my teaching load this year, though, has prompted a kind of identity crisis. What do I -- with a background in history & religion -- think I'm trying to do, teaching two math classes, one science class, and a German class. Just what part of me raised my hand and volunteered for this little project that's already taken most of the summer for me to prepare? What is this prim little voice that keeps insisting even in the face of my raging desire to flop on the sofa with a pulpy mystery thriller and a bag of cheese curls, "well, it's interesting, isn't it? and isn't it a good thing to do?"

And there you have it: it is interesting, every bit of it, although I could do without the copying & collating & figuring out how to organize everything, which I've learned is 9/10ths the battle; and it is a good thing to do. But, damn, it's hard. I miss feeling competent, I miss doing things I think I can do well: long cafe dates, for one; writing an occasional post, for another. I feel frazzled and jangled, caught in a crossfire of loud chaotic noises: unnerved and scared.

If I'm honest, that's how I always feel whenever I'm making anything at all, whether writing a post, a planning a class, or even cooking a meal: I'm confused by the mess and often find it hard to believe that that anything worthwhile could come of the effort. It is not a langorous or seductive process at all, nothing half as much fun as dinner at the wine bar, nothing so relaxing or rejuvenating as a day at the spa. It is hard work, with uncertain outcomes. Sometimes, though, it surprises you. But only afterwards: that shock -- I did that? Really? It can keep a person going.

During times like this last week, I'm glad to be as old as I am, with plenty of experience to turn to that says to keep on going, there's something worthwhile here. Give me a week or two; maybe I'll find my groove. Or at least maybe I'll have driven out of my rut.

In the meantime, I'm still figuring out how to get the dog to the vet. I think he's overdue for his rabies vaccine.

Hope you are all looking forward to a peaceful & restorative weekend!

Old Favorites

Found these (scanned & dusty) pictures from long, long ago while looking for something else the other day, prompting sighs and fond recollections. Couldn't resist sharing them. Is there anybody besides me who sometimes misses film?