2 Amazing week.
3 So much happening all around us.
4 Breaking News: As I wrote this yesterday afternoon, Yosemite was in severe danger.
5 I watched KPIX in the afternoon and saw that the wildfires are going to be pretty severe.
6 Hard thing to watch.
7 I hope everything gets under control sometime soon.
8 If you are a Yosemite person, my thoughts are with you.
9 Been there.
10 Cooler weather might help.
11 I sure hope so. I sure hope so.
12 Moving on, Part One: This week is a complete blur.
13 I somehow managed to spend Monday night in a hospital and the remainder of the week surrealistically teaching from a chair.
14 That entire ordeal made it so that I love and appreciate teaching more than ever.
15 In order for my leg to get better I had to stay seated with my the heavy thing elevated all week <and maybe all semester.>
16 I didn't care, and I don't care.
17 I was filled with love for the job, and with an appreciation for every second I was able to be out there doing it despite being anchored to a chair.
18 It could have been SO much worse. And I knew and appreciated that, beyond words, beyond thought.
19 Still, on Wednesday I found one of my more lively classes getting hopelessly bored.
20 To a real teacher, boredom is right up there with rulers, dunce caps, and hickory sticks as the highest form of abuse and punishment for students. Something needed to be done, and done swiftly!
21 I switched it up yesterday with a day of icebreakers and extreme team building.
22 I kept my leg up for as long as I could, but I knew instinctively that I had to get out there and make it happen. I have the ability to move on my feet, just can't do it for long periods of time. I decided to command it.
23 My leg felt great, but what felt better was working with one of the great ice-breaking stand-bys, a little exercise many of us have done over the years. It is called Two Truths and a Lie.
24 I began with setting the students into their new groups. I had each group provide a volunteer to take out a piece of paper, tear it into as many parts as there were students in the group, and await further instruction.
25 Each order I gave to the groups was a timed order. I next gave them fifteen seconds to choose a Scribe. I have a red second hand on a classic school clock, and it is often the heartbeat of a busy activity. "Choose a Scribe!" I commanded. "You have fifteen seconds. Go!"
26 I never really told them what the Scribe was to do, but on a schedule that tight, I heard a lot of "Not its" coupled with a barrage of index fingers intrinsically reaching up and touching noses. This is the universal "Not it" sign. I laughed.
27 Earlier in the morning, in one of those great moments of artsy serendipity, I couldn't find my scissors to cut half-sheets of paper for each Scribe to use.
28 I wound up tearing the sheets in half. When I finally found myself distributing them to the various Scribes, I thought it wonderful that with all the technology at our fingertips, a simple pair of scissors went missing, so the groups and their names were to be etched on rudimentary white sheets of paper, roughly ripped in half, and then were to be penned by the losers of a game of "Not its." Those particular students became winners in my twinkling eyes.
29 It was absolutely how it was supposed to be.
30 I gave the groups two minutes to write down the names of each person in the group and to be sure they were all spelled correctly. Things got noisy pretty quickly, and to this Old Brown Shoe, a noisy class is an energized class. The second hand moved forward at a steady pace.
31 Controlled mayhem. Is there anything better? I then said, "You have now formed a group. You have exactly one minute to name your group. Go!" The red second hand again ran past the twelve, moving steadily with a mind of its own toward some sort of vast destiny.
32 The energy level elevated as names like The Wild Turtles, Excaliber, The Pink Fire Hydrants, and perhaps my fave, Ahghem! <a cough sound> were announced to the many more. Laughter followed by amazement attended the announcement of each name.
33 I then said, "On the piece of your donated scratch paper I want you to write two truths and a lie about yourself. You have two minutes." This one was tricky, as in more than one class I began with the second hand crossing the six, just to keep things moving. I worried heavily that this move might interrupt the cosmic chi #sodeep #sounique #youreclearlyanidiotdotcom
34 This quieted everybody down as each student had to think about that prompt. You should try it! Early on it worked pretty well, but it worked best when I told a class, "Would you like me to give you Two Truths and a Lie so that you could see how to do it?"
36 That class loved the idea. Here were my Two Truths and a Lie:
1) I am a distant relative of Justin Timberlake.
2) I was Senior Class President when I was in high school.
3) A major league baseball All-Star introduced me to a major league baseball Hall-of-Famer.
37 I asked the class if each statement was a truth or a if it was a lie, and then asked which they thought was the lie. Here is that moment in an artsy fartsy series of photographs:
39 The groups got it immediately so I turned it over to the them. I gave a good four or five minutes for this, and the classes loved it! The clock quieted down leaving the music to take over the ruckus I had created. During the last class of the day, different students called me over to guess their lies. GREAT fun, as I got to sail through the class, throw out some quips, demonstrate amazement, spin around, and then question them still further on their Truths. My leg moved around, spun, and danced through the proceedings!
40 In the end we met as one large group and I went from group to group to see if anyone wanted to share their Two Truths and a Lie. Nearly every group had at least one hand shoot up, and we all enjoyed the remainder of the day.
41 When they all left I stood amazed. My leg had worked miraculously. No pain, and it was a rock star! I stood in the glow of a great lesson and I smiled.
42 Sometimes, MANY times there are these moments.
43 So I made it through. I also had a couple of fun coincidences in the process.
44 First, when I got home yesterday I saw that this tree guy I hired to take out a tree in my front had cut it down to a stump. I almost went and sat on it. It reminded me as it only could, of Shel Siverstein's The Giving Tree.
45 Last night as I wrote this, So You Think You Can Dance blared at me from the teevee. At one point, I think it was Nigel who mentioned a dance that reminded him of...The Giving Tree.
46 This followed another wonderful coincidence. Anybody who remotely knows me knows that this summer was in 3/4 time to me. I had watched a LOT of TCM movies, many of which contained music that was in 3/4. And when I think of 3/4 time I imagine The Blue Danube, which appeared an unimaginable amount of time during my summer. I would love to have considered the odds of it playing as often as it had.
47 At one point I heard it eight times in eight different films within a two-week span. Each time I would hear it I would smile. I wrote various people during the summer and told them this. Throughout the summer that song followed me everywhere, almost like a lost fairy lighting my way through an enchanted forest. Here's more:
48 Right before So You Think You Can Dance, I had watched a classic movie about teaching,The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Maggie Smith as the quintessential Miss Brodie. It remains one of the greats in the teaching genre.
49 Midway through that movie,The Blue Danube played. In the film it was in a close-up of a 78 speed record spinning on a wind-up phonograph. Classic. I youthened, and thought again of how I had danced through my last class of the day.
50 All of this magically connected the end of an incredible day and an amazing week.
51 I'll be doing a bit more tomorrow with my English 2A classes. Can't wait.
52 So I guess that's it for...OHHHHHH!
53 I was supposed to tell you which of my own Two Truths and a Lie was a lie. <see item 36, above>
54 The answer: Number 1 was the lie. Believe it or not, a few students thought it was the Truth!
55 I was indeed Senior Class President of my high school years and years ago.
56 I also had five-time MLB All-Star introduce me to a MLB Hall-of-Famer. Years ago I was a vendor at Giants' games, and I happened to know five-time MLB All-Star Keith Hernandez. It was his rookie year with the Cardinals. It was around ten-thirty in the morning on a crisp summer day. I saw Keith walking through the seats, which was and is highly unusual for a baseball player. His cleats clicked on the hard Candlestick cement. He got all excited when he saw me. "Bud! How you doing man?" I looked up.
57 "I'm catching for the Mets Keith," came my answer. "How about you?"
58 I'm always such a sweetheart.
59 He went on to tell me about how exciting it was to be in the majors, and how his family and friends were equally excited and all, and how amazing it all was. I smiled. It was a nice moment.
60 Later on, he was on the field and ran over to the dugout, where I was sitting. He ran over and said, "Hey Bud, Bud, there's someone I want you to meet!" He yelled off, "Hey Louie!"
61 I expected some guy with a cigar and a crooked hat to come out of the dugout, but I looked up to see Lou Brock jogging over to us.
62 "Louie, I want you to meet my friend Bud. Bud, Louie!"
63 Brock put out his hand and I shook it.
64 The sun shone down. Great life moment.
65 So those were my Two Truths and a Lie. No, I was not and am not a distant relative to Justin Timberlake.That was a lie.
66 And that, ladeez and gentlemen, puts a fun ending to an amazing week.
67 Have a GREAT weekend.
68 Stay safe. We'll see you again.
69 Peace.
~H~
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