Summer Skirts

After talking about making skirts, I finally plunged in this weekend.
I traced an A-line skirt I like, added an elastic waist, hemmed it and...
the perfect summer skirt!
I was able to do the third one in an episode of This American Life--
a very rewarding project.

Testing

We don't ask kids in wheelchairs to get up and walk.
We don't ask kids who are blind to read the board.
Or kids who are deaf to listen.

However, kids with learning disabilities or reading disabilities
should be working at grade level
otherwise we're leaving them behind.

I was tutoring a student on Thursday night who is dyslexic.
She came with her homework--
a test passage on her grade level which was ions too hard.
She's super bright,
but sometimes she sees words on the page
differently than other kids do.

Working on a test passage that is too hard doesn't help her.
Taking the test doesn't help her.
In fact, it's probably taking away time where she could be doing things that might actually help move her forward.

It was agonizing.
Reading the passage,
looking for answers,
sometimes the answers were unclear
(and I am far beyond third grade).

It's bad practice to make kids,
especially kids who are struggling,
do work that is too hard for them.

It doesn't accomplish anything.
In fact, it may hurt.

When she doesn't pass
we will shake our heads and sigh.

Start working to get her ready
for fourth grade instead of
helping her to see.

Kites on the Corner

I walked home from school yesterday to find
a small band of guys on the corner
right next to the sketchy shop
that opened not so long ago.

Oh no I thought, disheartened
The drug dealers have come down to our little corner?

I paused at my door, the suspicious neighbor
to see if I could figure out what was going on
or recognize any faces.

My mistake.

There was just a kite.
Everyone working to get it in the air.

Like a February miracle
dancing against the sky.

A Skirt

Going back to graduate school hasn't worked well with my creative life.

Unfortunately, writing papers and readings have sapped some of my inspiration.

My creative projects have been sitting. Waiting.

But over Christmas, I picked out some new yarn and started a scarf.

This weekend, I made an impromptu visit to Ikea and ended up making a skirt.
In under 4 hours.
That seems a reasonable project to take the edge off academia.


















(Perhaps this skirt would have been better as a tablecloth?)



Maybe I need to get back to the blog too?

Snowballs on the Avenue

I promised them snowballs.

It was bribery, really, from last Friday
when deep in July, I wanted them to act like October
because new teachers were observing.
They rose to the moment (put on quite a show)
which had us, today, after lunch, strolling over to the frozen cup guy.

The plan was to go to Mr. Benny's, behind the school.
But he's sick and not open for the summer.
Our second option around the corner, was closed.

So they wailed, "Let's go down the avenue. Pleeeeaasssse."

The avenue is a few blocks away and the Baltimore blue lights flash their reminder that you need to be extra careful.
C'mon. They have better snowballs there.
And against my better judgment, I said, yes.

And so it was, that waiting to get snowballs, a girl walked by and ran into Teya.
It was rude,
it was intentional,
it was completely unacceptable
and Teya would not, in a million years let it go.
The back and forth began.
The girl in the black and white striped shirt cussed and Teya made a threat.
They volley back and forth.
The rest of the girls rose to Teya's defense.

You don't need to be a chess master to see how the next moves are going to play out.
Teya had already had a tough day.
Her hair was only half done and the boys had already teased her.
Now the girls on the street.

It's like the match to a short fuse,
the spark on a California desert.
The waving gun on the 4th of July.

We build a school-world where good choices and I-statements are valued
and we want them to transfer that to the neighborhood.
Today, I thought, it was an impossible task.

I talked Teya down (barely)
knowing this would be repeated
on other afternoons
without the conflict-resolution preaching teacher
standing nearby.

The Baltimore Sun tallies up the homicides so far this year at 106.

Maybe it's too big a leap in logic
connecting my girls to that swelling number.
Around here, even the little things explode--
and turn violent.

I'm sorry, Ms. Emily Teya said as we walked back to school. She made me so mad. That was wrong.

I know one hundred stories about Teya
giving her reasons to be angry at the world.
The other girl probably does too.

Teya is lovable.
Her heart is good.

But this afternoon on the avenue
I didn't need to be a chess master
or psychic
to look down the thin path
of her future.

On Fieldtrips

Dear Museum Operators of the World,

I understand that museums are quiet places which require the use of inside voices. I understand shhhh, don't touch and how to hiss I told you to go to the bathroom before we left when one asks to go and seven more follow, most likely because they want to see the bathroom not use it.

Nevertheless--kids are not quiet and they touch things and, in my experience, nearly always ask to go to the bathroom.

So the classic museum trip tends to be stressful. It's a lot of herding and shushing
and counting heads to make sure no one wanders off. We teachers try to set the ground rules ahead of time, explain the purpose, arm our scholars with notebooks and pencils to record information and cross our fingers that no one starts fussing or has a meltdown.

But Museum People, life is hard in the classroom, let alone at a museum. It takes quite a few tricks to keep things bumping along semi-smoothly on a regular day. And so, if you are offering programming to students, if you claim to welcome schools, some things to consider...

1. Don't screw up the scheduling. Calling a week before a trip to say, oops, you double-booked is not what anyone needs to sort out during their planning time.

2. Don't leave us sitting around waiting. For over 10 minutes. Without any information. And then please don't let a security guard walk in and tell us to quiet down when everyone is sitting. There needs to be a reason for silence.

3. Don't skip the overview video which everyone says is the best part of the museum.

4. Don't ask everyone to line up at the door and then say, Oh, you can put your coats in these bins. This creates chaos. See #2 for a good time to put coats in bins.

5. Don't start talking until everyone is in the near vicinity. Sometimes it takes a moment to situate a group of kids. Ideally, a docent should not be losing her voice so the kids can actually hear what she's saying.

6. Don't leave your tour group stranded on the third floor without a map and say I've really enjoyed your questions! Enjoy the rest of the museum.

7. Don't claim a tour will address content that it doesn't.

8. Don't say you have tours for school groups when you only have one hands-on activity in the museum.

9. Remember, we paid for this. And the bus. And we had a reason for coming.

Maybe you don't want us at all. I understand. Really, I do. But then let's be upfront about that from the beginning. Why pretend to want groups of school kids dragging through your museum. They're loud, they touch things...they really just want to check out the bathrooms. And quite frankly, it's the bus ride they crave. But then--don't invite us.

Most sincerely...

Many thanks to the Reginald F. Lewis of African American History in Maryland for inspiring this post.





















(From a field trip last spring at the Botanical Gardens in Washington, DC. The best part: playing its on the mall lawn.)

Rites of Spring

One day
this week was warm
with the promise of spring and
by the next morning
there had been three brawls
and three shootings
in our urban village.

This is the thaw after winter
the precursor to summer heat.

Eleven year old girls
told stories of who raced after fights
and peeked their eyes out windows,
who followed the helicopters
waltz in the sky.

The Marches of my own childhood
were spent spotting robins,
spying the first crocus in our neighbor's yard,
watching for the first hint of green
frost the tree tips.

These are the privileges we don't count
when we add up the sum of our lives
the taking for granted of the first warm afternoon and
the shift in the air that starts a new season.

There are no robins.
There's not one crocus.
The trees are bare and spindly.

Spring is here.