Living Legacy

My middle brother just dug up a couple of old obituaries of people he and I each worked with back in the early 1980s as successive work-study students at the UVA Print Shop. One was the packaging and delivery man whom we worked along side of. The other was the shop’s director who approved our work study and made us feel welcome. 

I remember the first day I walked into the shop, Mr. Keeney called me “a breath of fresh air”, based entirely on his fond memory of my elder brother’s two years of employment there. Denton Epps, on the other hand, was standoffish which I interpreted as wary of working closely with a college girl. But once he realized whose younger sister I was he was satisfied that I would be up to the job.

Not only did I follow my brother into a work-study assignment at the print shop, but I also followed him into several history courses that he recommended to me, all very memorable classes: English History 1 & 2, The Reformation, and Early Modern Europe. While he went on to get a Ph.D. In History, I merely minored in it. Nevertheless, we still enjoy reminiscing about the professors we shared and their eccentricities.

I hope to follow my brother into retirement in another year or two, and I bet he will lead me to more interesting places.

Throw Back

Ralph Sampson, my homie, is sitting in the stands of the Virginia-Tennessee NCAA match-up. It’s good to see you, Ralph! Seeing you takes me back. Way back…

I miss the generation of coaches and referees who stressed basketball fundamentals. What I’m seeing in college ball these days is sloppy play: one-handed passes, bounce passes, and cross court passes. Double dribbling and walking are rarely called any more. Big men are dribbling inside the key.  

None of this happened under Lefty Drisell at Maryland, Terry Holland at Virginia, Dean Smith at UNC, Coach V at NC state, and Coach K at Duke. These men were the coaches of the Atlantic Coast Conference back when every ACC team actually bordered the Atlantic Ocean. 

And while I’m sitting here griping, get off my lawn you darn kids, or I’ll spray you with my hose!

March Madness

Mr. C, my co-TA teacher, is setting up his bracket. A half dozen TA students, randomly assembled, are choosing each match-up winner for him as he enters the info into his laptop. There is a men’s bracket and a women’s bracket at TJ this year. 

Meanwhile, for the past two weeks Student K, who is chronically absent from school, has spent every day she’s been here doing test make-ups for the ACCESS sub-tests and then yesterday, the NAEP. Because of all these make-ups and the absences themselves, she is so far behind in every class that coming to school is an overwhelming burden each day.

Speaking of the ACCESS, that albatross of an English proficiency test has finally left the building after taking up residence in our classrooms for all of three weeks. Four sub tests that each require 45 to 60 minutes for over 250 students to complete, while missing all that class time, is beyond madness.

The NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), for which students are randomly selected, is shrouded in enough vagueness that the opportunity for parents to opt out their student is virtually nonexistent. Nevertheless, one of our TA students faced down the tenacious federal testing official, to whom he latched on like a dog to a bone, until she finally relented and put him down as “refused test”.

That’s right… a test of national educational progress in a nation that is currently dismantling its federal Department of Education.

March madness indeed.

Your Voice Matters

Every time I leave an appointment, use a service, buy a product, or turn around, someone wants me to fill out a survey. Data! We need data! How can we improve our service, product, market position, prospectus, etc. without YOUR input?! I am weary of surveys. I dare say we are all weary of surveys. Even my TA students are weary of surveys!

One of the several surveys that students and teachers take at school twice a year is the “Your Voice Matters” survey put out by our school district. Our voice matters! But does it really? My students often wonder, and so do I. Is it our VOICE that matters? Or our survey participation that matters? Participation alone is often the data point they seek. “We need 80% participation,” they say. Why? Does my voice only matter if 80% of my colleagues participate? Wouldn’t non-participation tell them something they need to know?

There is no place on this survey to speak originally. No free answer questions. Only categories to click: Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree. We have to instantaneously form an opinion if we don’t have one already. Or go eenie-meenie-miny-moe. 

So really, does MY voice actually MATTER?

Much Ado About Something

I’ve been home from school for about four hours now - enough time to watch the Oscars that we recorded last night -  but other than a bit of rain, the “severe weather” that we are expecting has not arrived. Not that we need it to arrive.

This past weekend I spent an hour just picking up limbs of all sizes from the backyard. I do love my trees, and I understand that this is the price I pay for my expanding canopy. I filled the whole yard waste bin with those limbs. There is no room left for whatever is going to come down this evening.

They are saying “around 8:30pm”. So we’ll see…

Fan Interferece

We’re halfway between the Winter Olympics and the opening days of Major League Baseball. Spring is oh-so-close, and yet still not quite around the corner. Enter the World Baseball Classic!

Featuring espresso in the dugout, for Team Italia, and a Dominican Republic lineup that is ready and able to kick USA butt, these games have been exciting from start to finish. Many MLB players chose to honor the heritage of one parent or the other by playing for a team other than the USA. This dilutes the talent pool across teams and creates exciting match-ups day after day.

While the players are missing part of their traditional Spring Training in order to compete, this event is a reasonable substitute for them. It’s also like Spring Training for fans. Especially for the one poor guy who reacted wrongly, but understandably, in reaching over the yellow line on top of the outfield fence, and down far enough to catch a ball still in play. 

His initial jubilation at catching what he assumed to be a certain grand slam heading straight for his seat gradually descended into face-in-glove despair when he realized the ruling. The camera roasted him an embarrassing number of times, but thankfully the outcome of this game is not likely to turn on his play.

Grounded

I’ve referred to the phenomenon of Frequent Flyers at school once before, and I am linking that post here.

Once again we find ourselves in the twilight zone between Spring approaching and Spring Break still a couple weeks away. Last week in our 8th grade team meeting we collectively decided that we needed to add several more students to the No Fly List.

This morning a colleague who was reviewing notes from the Leadership Meeting held yesterday remarked at how emblematic our current school-wide “No Fly List” is of the middle school arc in general:

6th grade: 1 student

7th grade: 4 students

8th grade: 28 students

It’s very grounding to me to keep that arc in mind, realizing that those 28 eighth grade students will all have a fresh start next year in their respective high schools.

Remember to breathe. Remind your students to breathe. Especially if they are eighth graders.