teaching
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Looking for Normal
Maybe this week will be normal. No earthquakes. No hurricanes. No power outages. Just people waking up normally and going normally to where they normally should go. No dramatic surges in cell phone usage. No frantic texting. No schedule rearranging. I’m not getting my hopes up for calm. Just normal. Somewhere in the recesses of Continue reading
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Gouttières and Dutch boys’ suits
This is transition week. Next Monday teachers report back to work. This is the week I’m torn by what to do. Do I sit and relax? Do I frantically finish summer projects? Do I “set my face toward Jerusalem” and dig into school work? All of the above? None of the above? (None of the Continue reading
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Sage Blossoms
Sage blossom–it sounds like a paint color that my daughter Kristin would pick, except that she picks variations on sage green. Sage blossoms are purple. I didn’t even know that sage got flowers until two years ago. (Just shows how “expert” a gardener I am.) At that point my plants had decided they were mature enough Continue reading
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Fête du muguet
I’ve been around long enough not to be surprised, but I’m still delighted at how things bloom every year like clockwork. It is now May and the lilies of the valley are opening their little bell-shaped flowers right on schedule. In France, May 1st is the Fête du Muguet, when one gives bouquets of lily of the valley Continue reading
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Where is the Easter Bunny when you need him?
This is the latest Easter I can recall. And I’m not actually recalling it because it isn’t here yet! And it’s killing me. And it’s killing all of us at school who are dragging our bodies through the day. By the last class of the day, my students are just blobs in a chair. I Continue reading
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Motivation…complete lack of motivation
Another snow day. And the big deal doesn’t hit until tonight. Oh, I don’t mind. I still live for snow days, even though I have given all my exams except for period seven. If we had gone in today, I could call it a wrap on first semester. Alas, that is still hanging over my Continue reading
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Snow day!
Baltimore County two hour delay. Schools in the Hereford Zone are closed. Sorry, Julie, that you are teaching at the other end of the county, but as you know, the roads are tricky out here–hilly and windy with guardrails lacking in critical drop off areas, like the sharp bend on Miller Lane! Ok, so it’s Continue reading
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Hibernating
It is in the bleak mid-winter that I most feel a discord between the rhythm of the seasons and our bondage to the clock. Why can’t we hibernate in winter like the bears and the bees? We don’t need the entire winter, just January. Isn’t that why we load up on food at Christmas, so Continue reading
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Schedule shock
A calm thought: Sunset in St. Malo Chika is a 6’8″ 16 year old from Nigeria who just arrived at our school–three weeks into the year– to play basketball. His first language is Igbo. His second language is English. He is in my French I class. Culture shock doesn’t begin to describe his first week here. Continue reading
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Turtles
In a last gasp of summer, we enjoyed a weekend with Harper and the rest of the gang for crabs on Saturday. John found a baby box turtle while mowing the back 40, and it almost went home with Harper as another new pet. He was a cute little guy (we guess it was a guy), probably Continue reading
Slightly Off the Grid 