Mending Wall

One problem of living in the Sunshine State is the hellacious thunderstorms (go figure). We had a doozy last month--50 to 70 mph winds, crazy sideways rain, bend-over-and-kiss-your-butt-goodbye alarmist weather reports--and the long story short is that a tree between our house and the neighbor’s fell. Yep, creamed her new pool enclosure but good. It didn’t hit the main house, thank goodness, but it was a mess. Boy howdy.

And then the trouble started. We called our insurance company, gave her the information, and waited. In between then and now, there’s been power restoration, cleanup, some terse text messages about who said what about taking that tree down when, and then silence. Frankly, the ice storm that followed the thunderstorm has been worse. This week the fence guy came out, and now a chunk of the picket that used to be near the tree has been replaced with six-foot stockade. Ouch.

Robert Frost had a bit to say about fences and good neighbors. This extract from “Mending Wall” struck me:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself.

Mr. Man and I are going over with a bottle of wine to work on patching things up. Fences are one thing, but walls are something else entirely.

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The Bed List

There’s a clip in the opening credits for Castle where Nathan Fillion catches a glimpse of himself in a store window and exclaims, “I really am ruggedly handsome, aren’t I?” Why, yes, Mr. Fillion, you are. I may have come late to the party--never having watched Firefly and only picking up Castle recently, but I play a mean game of catchup thanks to streaming Netflix. If Nathan Fillion is anything like either Captain Mal Reynolds (a confident risk-taker) or Rick Castle (a clever rogue), then his ruggedly handsome self is welcome wherever, whenever.

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Stop the Insanity

It’s FCAT week in Florida, which means several things:

1. A)vomiting elementary school students
   

2. B)stressed-out high schoolers
   

3. C)overtaxed teachers
   

4. D)all of the above
   

If you answered D, go to the head of the class. You see, when it’s standardized test week in the state of Florida, time slows (if not stops altogether), kids bail, and normally sane teachers kinda lose it a little. There’s just something fundamentally wrong with all learning grinding to a halt so we can genuflect at the altar of Scantrons and #2 pencils.

But frankly, as long as we have folks like the current occupant of that nice brick mansion in Tallahassee, Gov. Skeletor, and other acolytes of the test-’em-hard-and-test-’em-often faith pulling the strings, learning will take a permanent back seat to numbers, spreadsheets, and charts. There’s nothing wrong with testing when it’s used to check progress and plan, but when test scores become the way we pit teachers and schools against each other, the kids lose.

This year, my students have lost three full weeks of instruction because of required testing practice. What could I have done in those three weeks? Taught another play. Analyzed a documentary. Directed seminars and discussions. Conducted two full sets of individual writing conferences. But I didn’t, because my kids were testing--and since they knew these tests didn’t “count,” they weren’t taking them seriously. Any parent with teenagers at home can tell you that if they haven’t bought in, they won’t bring much out, and that’s as true of standardized tests as it is taking out the garbage or cleaning that pit of a bedroom.

Michelle is Rhee-diculous. Bill ought to close the Gates to the giant testing companies who are the only entities truly benefiting from all of these new testing requirements. Last weekend, I spent two days in a group of 300+ master teachers who will conduct week-long trainings at seven different locations this summer. Those 300 teachers will reach roughly 2,ooo participants at each seminar, which makes fourteen thousand teachers who aren’t, as the common “teachers are lazy” meme suggests, sitting around doing nothing all summer. Don’t get me started on all the teachers who give up a week to score AP exams or who attend AP institutes or who plan for next year or do curriculum writing or...let me quit before I blow a gasket.

The point is, why aren’t the powers that be rounding up master teachers of all stripes--from all grade levels and all subjects, including the VITAL arts and humanities courses--and asking them what works to improve things? Oh, and while they’re at it, they can apply all the money they’re currently throwing toward the testing companies to do something substantive about children who live in poverty. I guarantee that’ll do much more for educational success than all the Scantrons in the world.

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Swamp Thing

After a weekend in California (where it was raining and chilly in “Sunny San Diego”), mimi can’t begin to say how happy she is to be back in her Central Florida swamp. The first time I ever flew west, I spent much of the time with my forehead pressed to the window, watching the landscape change from brilliant Southern green to hard-baked desert brown. After decades of Florida summers, punctuated by our typical late-afternoon thunderstorms, the arid California July was a revelation.

But may I just say that arid California weather coupled with two days of hotel meeting rooms and hours trapped in an airplane have wreaked absolute havoc on my sinuses? I now understand how Southern belles maintain their lovely skin--they aren’t having to slather themselves with moisturizer that seems to evaporate into nothingness. See, Southern women get plenty of moisture every time they step outside. We basically live in a giant terrarium!

Emerging from baggage claim at the Orlando International Airport after my trip, I could practically feel my skin sucking up the water. I felt like a walking tree frog--minus the sucker pads and green skin. Let me just say, I’m happy to endure Florida’s August weather (temps in the 90s, humidity in the 90s) if it means I don’t have to dry out and crack.

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Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

mimi isn’t big on April Fool’s Day pranks (although the rubber band around the sink sprayer trick has proven reliable for years now), but foolery is something else entirely. Spending four years as the designated Court Jester at my college’s annual Christmas Madrigal Dinner didn’t happen by accident, you know. Neither was being cast as Puck in a freshman year production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Guess I was just born to wear jingle shoes and a floppy hat--or, in Puck’s case, horns. Enjoy the foolery--and watch out for that sink sprayer!

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