Category Archives: Slice of Life

Conferences with parents are always interesting, and informative, but it is particularly nice when you can reconnect with a family whose sibling you had years earlier. I had that experience yesterday. Before we got down to “business” about their daughter, I asked about their son, who was in my class years ago and is in his first year out of high school. I haven’t seen him in years. I remember him as a short pudgy funny-man, who had great background knowledge but was quick to crack a joke.

Well, his mom said, “You would not recognize him. He’s becoming a Navy SEAL. He’s tall and buff and looks nothing like he used to.”

What?

Apparently, he has had this goal in his head for a few years now to join the elite military force, and he has worked to get himself in tip-top physical and mental shape, and is now in the process of trying out for the SEALs. He’s about to go through some intense training with the Navy and many of those who apply don’t make it into the unit, needless to say.  It truly is an elite force. His mom and I both talked about how proud they must be of him, and also how scary it is, given the missions the SEALs are now being sent on all around the world.

My mind kept racing back to when he was in my sixth grade class, and in particular, I remembered our Fractured Fairy Tale play project. We put on a production for the school that year, and this boy (and another boy) were the shining stars of the show. The future SEAL had the part of the fairy godmother, and he came to school the days of the show decked out in a bright purple tutu, with pink wings on his back, and an oversized wand. He played the part to the hilt on the stage (I still have the DVD somewhere).

I’m having a hard time reconciling my old fairy godmother as a possible Navy SEAL, to be honest. Let’s hope that if he makes it into the program, some magic dust keeps him safe wherever he ends up in the world.

Peace (in memory),
Kevin

 

Yesterday, we had our first of three days of parent-teacher conferences. What is nice about these days (other than connecting with parents, which I do enjoy) is that we have a half-day of school and the afternoon off. The weather here in New England has turned gorgeous lately and so, I was able to take my dog for a walk down to the river near my house before picking up my son from school (also, something I can do on these half days).

I took along my video camera, too, because I wanted to capture an unofficial sculpture project that a neighbor and his grandson have been doing down there, with remnants of glass and brick and odds and ends that were churned up and kicked free by the violent storms we had in late fall here.

Check it out:

Peace (in the pieces of stuff),
Kevin

 

Yesterday, my class began their work on designing t-shirts for our Quidditch team (our name is Permafrost). This is part of a collaboration with our wonderful art teacher, and they began on their shirts with the back. Here, they put their number (which helps the fifth graders on computers keep track of scoring data – our math connection) and their team nickname. I always get a kick out of the nicknames they come up for themselves.

Of course, I have to be hip, too, to make sure they don’t sneak in something inappropriate. 🙂

This word cloud captures most of the nicknames of my students. A few were still pondering this important decision. It’s all about identity, and sense of fun, when it comes to the names on the backs of their shirts. They take it pretty serious.  The funny thing is — no one really notices the nicknames when we are playing the actual game. The players are running so fast, and there is so much action, the spectators can’t even focus on the number, never mind the nickname.  So, it’s all intrinsic and internal for the kids. That’s OK.

(My favorite nickname on the list this year: Gone Viral.)

We’re still working on a symbol to represent our team and I hope we can decide that this morning or tomorrow.

Peace (in the nickname),
Kevin

 

A few years ago, when we were replacing our aging and faulty heating system in our home, we decided to spend a bit more for a heating unit that was more efficient than others but it is also one that could “easily” be connected to solar panels, should we decide to that route. For the past six months, the “solar panel energy collection” idea has been percolating on our minds. We’ve been consulting with one regional organization that provides a “neighbor to neighbor” co-operative element — folks help folks with their projects, and then the cost of installation gets reduced. It’s a great concept.

But we have come to be a little wary of the group. They have blown off meetings, leaving us hanging around waiting for hours. The quotes we received were not for the kind of system we wanted. When we chat on the phone, we are not even confident they have our files in front of them. A friend with some inside knowledge of their work on one particular site questioned the quality of the installation and the claims they had made to the homeowner. We also are not all that confident that the payback over time is what they promise.

So, we tried another route.

Yesterday, we chatted with a plumber we’ve worked with over the years, and he also does solar installations. (He also installed our heating system, so he knows it inside and out). He was surprisingly and refreshingly frank about the situation, telling us that it makes no sense right now to use solar for the home heating system but it might make sense to consider the hot water system, with a lot of caveats about savings and water use and more. He’s going to draw up some estimates for us, but … we seem to be leaning away from solar right now. It’s not often you get a plumber being so honest, and risking losing a job. I respect that in him.

To be blunt: while we want to do our part as a family to cut down on energy consumption, we want to do things primarily to save money.

We don’t have the kind of disposable income (three kids, the oldest moving into high school, college costs around the corner) to invest in things that don’t have a tangible cost savings, no matter how good it would make our “green” side feel. We feel sort of sad about this latest direction of the solar idea, though, since we did have this vision of our house with solar panels and being more self-sufficient. Maybe more tax breaks and incentives down the road will make such a project doable. Maybe not.

For now, our energies are going into more traditional upgrades of the home. The solar panels can wait.

Peace (in the sun),
Kevin

 

 

 

(This video is me, as I was writing this morning’s Slice of Life. I used a stopmotion capture, in time-lapse mode. My eyes move a lot! I guess it must be all that thinking! It would be funny to have the camera trained on my fingers one of these days. You’d see a lot of fixin’ and backspacin’ going on. – Kevin)

We’re into the 10th day of the Slice of Life challenge over at Two Writing Teachers, and the sheer number of teachers who are writing with Ruth and Stacey and others this year is … startling.

I have been participating in the Slice of Life for the past four or five years (It’s a blur), taking small moments from our days and writing about them in a reflective way. The first year, we had about eight to 10 regular writers. Each year, it got a little bigger as the challenge took hold. But this year, it has exploded (thanks in part to the influence and impact that Ruth and Stacey have brought to the table as teachers of writing and their book, Day by Day). On any given day, there are more than 100 posts by Slicers, and some days that number has pushed up beyond 150 posts.

That’s a whole lot of teachers writing, and blogging.

I’ve been trying to carve out time to read some of the posts and add comments, just as I have appreciated that many of my fellow Slicers come here, and read and add a few thoughts to my posts. There is a real sense of a connected writing community, and audience is never more real than this kind of writing challenge.

I do get the sense that the intimacy of a smaller community has gotten lost this year, I think. In other years, I would visit a handful of bloggers whom I knew through their writing, and I had some history with them. Their stories resonated because I knew a bit about the back-stories. We created a sort of history together over the month of March. Sometimes, those stories would unfold in different ways the following year, allowing us to notice patterns in our lives.

This year, it’s different.

There are just so many writers that I am meeting someone new just about every day. I am purposely trying to read slices from bloggers that I don’t quite know. Is that a good shift? In some ways, yes. The more we widen our circles, the more we get exposed to different thinking, different teaching strategies, different writing styles. That’s a good thing.

But I do feel more like a boat on the ocean this year, rather than a raft on a lake, you know? I wonder if Ruth and Stacey feel that way, too. In the past, they have worked hard to ensure that every blogger in Slice of Life received a comment. No dead space. No writing into a voic. Someone out there was reading and reacting. I can’t imagine they can pull that off this year. They would have to take a leave of absence from work and family to do all that reading and writing.

In the end, it is heartening for me to see so many teachers exploring with blogging, though, and a few are using Slice of Life as a writing activity in the classroom. My hope is that as teachers use digital tools for writing, they are reflecting on the possibilities for their students in the classrooms. I know, I am. You, too?

Peace (in the meta-slice),
Kevin

 

I can probably count the times on one hand when, sometime over the last 14 years, my ring finger has been empty. I just almost never remove my wedding ring. I do remember the first week after our wedding when we were wearing our rings for the first time, and it felt like I had a little golden spider on my finger, and I would catch glimpses of it from time to time out of the corner of my eye. Now, it’s just part of me, a  symbol of how far my wonderful wife and I have come over the years on this journey we are on (along with our three sons).

Last night, I was keeping the score book for my middle son’s basketball tournament game (they won!) and then I helped break down the equipment and put it into storage for today’s tournament game. As my boys and I were walking down the hallway to go out to the van, I reached into my pocket for my keys. Something felt odd. The keys were there, but normally, my wedding ring scrapes across the pocket of my pants (something I don’t ever remember noticing before except now it was a clue that something was amiss). My hand went a bit too smoothly into my pocket. I pulled out my left hand, puzzled.

The ring finger was empty. I stopped dead in my tracks. My sons, who were chatting about the game, stared at me.

“What?” one asked.

“My ring. My wedding ring.” I held up my empty hand. “I don’t have it.”

My brain rushed to remember: when did I last see it on my finger? I could have sworn it was there earlier in the day. That means it might still be in the gym. Great. We rushed back to the basketball court and began scouring the floor with our eyes. I was thinking, a gold ring on a wooden floor … like a needle in a haystack. I went into the equipment room, and opened up some of the boxes with wires for the scoring machine.

“There it is!” my son, who has followed me, shouted. And there it was. My ring had come off when I was wrapping up wires, I guess, and fallen into the box. Phew.

At home, as my wife and I were getting ready for bed, I told her about losing the ring. She got this panic look on her face.

“I took mine off, too,” she said, and now began scrambling around her bedside table. She couldn’t find it. I went downstairs to the “shelf” where she takes it off when she does baking or cooking. She doesn’t want to lose it in the pizza dough, you know? Nothing. Then, “I found it!” The ring had fallen off her bedside table and rolled under the bed, I guess.

For a second there, I was wondering about bad omens and such. But the night ended with two ringed fingers, held together by years of marriage. Disaster was averted!

Peace (in the ring),
Kevin

 

Fellow Slice of Lifers from the past know that March and April mean Quidditch at our elementary school. In about three or four weeks, we hold an entire day of Quidditch for the four sixth grade classes, using rules first invented by a student and refined over the years by other students and teachers.

My homeroom class color is blue, and the names that the class comes up with usually is associated with blue and/or cold. Yesterday afternoon, we launched into the collaborative discussion around names. They brainstormed as many cool names for our team as they could, and then we went through an entire election process — sort of like a presidential primary but without the negative ads. And no Super Pacs either. As far I know, no money was pushed under the table.

In about 30 minutes of fun and heated discussions, and after three rounds of voting, the majority arrived at this year’s team name.

Our Name is Permafrost!

A few were wondering just what permafrost is, even though they liked the sound of the name. I guess a little science lesson is in order, eh? The photo here shows the way voting took place, and how we ended up with our consensus. Next step? Coming up with an icon for our class team that represents Permafrost.

And so we’re off into Quidditch season …

Peace (and magic),
Kevin
PS – and this is how we play our version of Quidditch!