(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

We in the midst of our first year transition away from traditional Report Cards into standards-based Progress Reports, which has shifted us away from letter grades and into standards. I am fine with that direction, although I have some concerns about the implementation in our district. It has not really gone all that smooth but I don’t want to get too deep into it here.

My sixth grade team and I do all of our Progress Reports online (Powerteacher) and the rest of our school is on the way. It is rather time-consuming to enter each standard assessment on each line. I’ve worked a few hours on my four classes, for sure. Then, yesterday, a day before the reports are to go home (today!), a colleague noticed a quirk in what is being printed and shot me an email about it. Sure enough, two sections of my ELA reports seem to vanish when the system prints out a report.

OK, so that’s not good. I was emailing the tech folks last night to figure it out and I am hopeful that this will be fixed before the end of today, when we are sending home the reports. That’s just a few hours away. Gulp. I see an email saying they are working on it, so I am pretty hopeful but still, I hate waiting until the last minute to do anything.

Just one more headache in the mix, but luckily, there is some sweetness on tap for today with my students that I will have to write about tomorrow, after the slice happens. I just need to remember to have my camera with me during the day today.

Peace (in progress),
Kevin

(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

The very first rock concert that I ever attended was the prog-rock band, Yes, and I joined a group of friends and my older brothers and his friends. It was at the Hartford Civic Center and I still remember the feeling of the bass notes pounding through my heart. (Ironically, Yes just came around again, hitting my town a few weeks ago but I didn’t go.)

I mention this because last night, I took my older boys (10, 12) to their very first rock concert. The band, Train, was in town at a theater and I thought Train would be a good intro into the concert experience. I was right. The boys were thrilled, and the band put an a great show, complete with lights, loud guitars and power pop singing. The three of us danced in the aisles together, along with the crowd, to songs like Soul Sister, Drops of Jupiter, Virginia and more. (Their website allows you to take a listen for free to a bunch of songs.)

The band even covered a few songs, so I would bend down from time to time, and say, “That’s Led Zepelin,” or “That’s a song from Van Halen” and “Doobie Brothers did that one, first,” as if I were giving some tour of music that shaped my world as a kid.

A few highlights from the show:

• Their version of Led Zep‘s “Ramble On” was incredible and singer Pat Monahan was like a replica of Robert Plant. This guy can sing and hit the notes.
• At one point, Monahan said that he liked small concert halls because of the acoustics. He then asked if he could sing us a song “without this microphone getting in the way of you and me,” and we all cheered. He put down the mic, stood up tall and then serenaded us with no amplification on a powerful song whose name I now forget. I thought that was pretty cool.
• The band brought a whole lot of fans on stage to dance, and help sing songs, and I thought, these guys are having too much fun. Later, I told my boys that I thought Monahan had a real stage presence and put on quite a show. Not quite like Bruce Springsteen, perhaps, but Monahan knew his audience well.
• The opening act was Butch Walker and the Black Widows. They were very energetic, too, and I kind of liked them. I always pay attention to opening bands because sometimes, they are the stars of the future.

It was late when we finally left, and with the clock change, I imagine today is going to be a bit of a drag. But it was worth it. Oh, one other funny slice of the event. My sons filled up some baggies with cheese popcorn (they are always hungry), but worried as we walked to the theater that they would be in trouble if they got caught smuggling in food.

“What will they do to us if they catch us?” my 10 year old wanted to know.

What I thought was, kid, you don’t know the kinds of things I have smuggled into concerts in my day. What I said was, “Aww, don’t worry about it. It’s just popcorn.”

No one even checked.

Peace (in the show),
Kevin

(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

Yesterday, I brought my middle son to the Little League baseball evaluations, which often resemble a football combine where coaches walk around with clipboards, jotting down notes as the prospective ballplayers do their best to his the ball, pitch the ball and catch the ball after a winter of not even knowing where their gloves are (yeah, we had a bit of a scramble to find a glove).

My older son is all set. When you get to the “A” level, you stay on the same team, so there is no need to impress anyone. My middle son is right on the cusp — old enough to make the leap to “A” but young enough to stay in “B” for another year. He wants to go up to “A” and I think he is ready (mostly), and if he does go up to the “A” league, he will be on his older brother’s team.

It would be the first and maybe last time the two of them will be on a sports team together, given their age difference. They are always in two different levels, it seems, because they are just far enough apart in age.

My son did fantastic at the evaluations, if you don’t mind me saying.

His pitching was fast and on target, and his form was pretty amazing. He bashed some balls high and far. He caught grounders that came rocketing towards him. A few coaches asked if he was moving up. They were jotting notes down on their list about him. I nodded, but reminded them that he would be “taken” by his brother’s team (there is no way we are going to have two kids on two different teams). A few sighed at that reality.

Of course, it all depends on the draft, where coaches sit around and pick kids for teams. Those kids on the age bubble, like my son, will go last, and only if there are spaces on teams. But if my son is to move up (and it seems likely, as I mentioned), then we know where is going.

Meanwhile, as I was hovering like the dad that I am, I was stopped by the head coach of my older son’s “A” team.

“There you are,” he said. This coach is a serious coach, the coach of the high school varsity baseball team, and his daughter is on my older son’s team. He knows baseball, inside and out, and he has high expectations for the players on the team.

So, I thought: “Uh oh.”

He looked at me. “I need an assistant coach. Could you do it?”

Now, on one hand, that’s a cool thing to be asked, right? But honestly, I don’t know baseball all that well. Not the ins and outs of it. I’ve been an assistant down in lower levels, where my job has been to cheer kids on (that, I can do) and tell them to run the bases, hard, when someone hits the ball. This, however, is a whole other level. Last year, this same coach handed me the scorebook early in the year and asked me to keep track of the game, and I fumbled it to the point where he took it back and did it himself, while also coaching.

I told him I had think about it and consult with my wife.

“I want to be upfront,” I told him. “I don’t really know baseball. You’re asking me to help, and I appreciate it, but I want to be clear about it. My baseball knowledge is very limited.” (I wanted to add, my baseball background is playing Little League, pick-up ball in my neighborhood as a kid and drinking beer at Fenway Park, but I didn’t.)

“That’s OK,” he answered, “I just need a warm body.”

Did he mean that? Or what? So, I think I may do it, if only because I can spend time with both of my sons on the baseball field in spring and maybe, I can bring some fun into the mix. And did I mention I can cheer up a storm? Yeah, I’m good at that.

Peace (in the decision),
Kevin

(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

I know there is already a fully-formed theory called String Theory that has to do with theoretical physics and particles of the Universe. But I also have a String Theory and it has do with adolescents (although, I confess, I am not sure if is a boy-thing, or gender-free).

When I was around 12 years old, I remember reading on my bed one night and wanting to turn off the light. The switch on the wall was not more than a five or six feet away, but I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was comfortable. The light seemed far away. I tried to conjure up some magic powers to turn the lights off. That didn’t work. Then, I started thinking: if I could rig up some sort of system that would allow me to lounge on my bed but still turn off the lights, that would be pretty cool.

So, the next day, I found some string and began an elaborate Rube Goldberg-style system of strings that hung from the doorjams, snaked across the walls and dangled down near my hand. It wasn’t perfect. If I pulled too hard, the whole contraption would tumble down into my lap. But it was good enough. Later, I began to work on a similar idea for opening and closing the door (this was more difficult. Opening was easy enough but shutting required some sort of reverse pulley, a concept I could not wrap my brain around.)

I spent more time and energy on the construction of the invention than I would have if I had just got my butt up and turned off the light each night, but as educators, we know that is beside the point, right?

Which brings us to the modern day household. Last week, I walked up to the older boys’ rooms and there was string everywhere. Plus, scissors and some tape, as well.

“What are you doing?”

” Inventing.”

“Inventing what?” (note: the 12 year old is hard to get info out of, these days. and the 10 year old was following his brother’s lead in his own room).

“A way to turn the lights off.”

“Why don’t you just reach over and turn them off,” I said, looking at the short distance between his bed and the light switch. Literally, he could stretch and never leave the bed and still get his light. This kid is lazy, I thought, before the memory of my own efforts suddenly came flooding back.

“At night, when Duke (our dog) is sleeping, I don’t want to wake him up. If I shift too much, he starts moving. Then, he becomes Mr. Annoying.”

All for a dog …

I looked over his design, noticed that my concepts for Bed-to-Light were stronger (the competitive streak comes out), nodded to him to continue on and walked away. He may not play music, but this kid sure got my inventive gene. Too bad that genetic element rarely got me beyond String Theory.

Peace (in the string),
Kevin

(This is part of the Slice of Life project at Two Writing Teachers)

The other week, my school held a Benefit Concert with staff and student musicians. I organized much of it and the payoff was the music itself, being able to jam with a bunch of students and friends, and watching current and former students shine on the stage.

But there was a bigger purpose, too, which was to collect donated books for schools in New Orleans still struggling to recover from Hurricane Katrina (which was an idea from one of my students which sparked the idea of a concert in the first place) and to collect coins for our school’s ongoing efforts to support the Pennies for Peace organization.

I finally got the tallies of the donations.

First, we collected about $350 in coins that night from the audience for Pennies for Peace. That’s more than I thought we had, but those coins sure do add up when they are counted (not by hand, thankfully, but by bank machine).

Second, we have about 12 large boxes filled with donated books and a few bags continue to show up at my classroom door from time to time. A student and his mother have been in charge of figuring out what to do next, as they are part of a church organization that regularly ships donations down to New Orleans. But my student surprised me the other day by saying that he and his mom were going to personally deliver the books to the elementary school chosen to receive the books.

“How will you do that?” I wondered.

“We’re going to drive,” he said proudly. “And I am going to take my camera, and flip video, and take pictures of the school.”

I thought to myself, that’s a long trip from Massachusetts to New Orleans, but later, his mom said they were looking forward to an April vacation adventure, and I could only think: that will be a cool learning experience for this student who sparked the idea for a concert, played drums on the stage (and whose self-esteem is now rocketing as a result) and now gets to deliver our school’s donations right to the school itself.

“I can’t wait to see the pictures and hear about it,” I said, and he beamed.

Now, I am thinking: this has all the makings of a cool digital story project for him. Hmmmm.

Peace (in the pennies),
Kevin