Done with that

So I finished writing my report cards today. That means I'm officially done for this school year. But like most official kinds of pronouncements, like speed limits, for example, this has only a limited relationship with reality. I can't speak for anyone else, but I still have a lot to do.

Part of this is due to my method of preparation, which isn't what one would call systematic. Class is like improv for me, so detailed preparation only happens when the students or I or both really require it, like, for example, a test, or even introducing a new, difficult topic.

I should note hear that I'm glad to be free of report cards, because now I can write "difficult" and not the euphemistic "challenging."

Layer on to my lack of system a kind of all-in approach to teaching and you get someone who is exhausted and completely disorganized at the end of the year. And it's made worse by the kinds of years the past two have been. Last year I dealt with very difficult family issues for most of the school year and it was miraculous that I even made it through. I reacted to the end of the school year by running away at the first opportunity and not looking back until September when, if you recall, I got almost instantly sick and stayed that way for 3 months.

When I came back I was not 100% and was scrambling to keep on top of things. So let's fast forward until the end of the year and I gaze upon my desk and begin to unravel everything that's piled there. Why did I have 6 pairs of scissors on my desk? I'm not a big RPS guy and I don't think you play RPS with actual scissors, just saying. And I even doubt that people who sell scissors for a living have 6 pair on their desks. I know why I had them; I need them for something and couldn't find my pair or that last 4 that I'd borrowed from the supply drawer. There were lots of things on the desk like that. Multiple copies of worksheets that were there because I couldn't find the last copy I'd made 3 or 4 times.

Since I don't want to start next year the way I finished this one, I have now taken everything on my desk, thrown out as many duplicates as I could, made piles for each of the classes I taught this year, for club materials, for general school type stuff (like our mission statement, which I am proud to say is the Worlds Longest Mission Statement- nearly 2 pages! Now that's making a statement!) Today I threw out pile after pile of copied AP Calculus worksheets. And even more fun, got to reorder pages of lesson plans that had gotten scrambled. I'm a math teacher, so I sure do love putting things in numerical order.

All kidding aside, I would love to start in the fall and not be immediately despairing that I don't know where my Algebra worksheets are and so have to go and make yet another set of photocopies. No worries though- even if that happens I'm sure to find the other ones next summer.

I promise, no crab puns

If one is going to eat in Baltimore, one is advised to have their food involve crab in some way. This is a far superior what to get involved in the goings on than to just buy a shirt with a picture of a crab on it (no, really).

I had done a bit or research before the trip and had found a couple of places that were known to have excellent crabs. I picked one out at random, which was located about 10 minutes from the hotel, and which turned out to be the same place we went when we last visited as a family 6 or 8 years ago.

No matter, because I don't think we'd been out for this kind of food since then. This place is on the upscale side for a crab place, but it's still a brown paper on the table, mallets, and bucket for the shells setup. My companions had other ideas about what to eat, but I was getting your down and dirty hardshell crabs with the crab boil all over them. No king crab legs or any of that stuff.

When I lived in Philly back around 1980, our house (I shared a house with 5 other grad students and we sometimes did stuff as a group) would go to a place in Queen Village called Walt's King of Crabs, which I don't think exists anymore. We'd stand on a line outside for a half hour or so, then order up some crabs and cheap beer and have a good old time. Been to DiNardo's a few times too, but not recently. There's a whole thing to eating boiled crabs. They're messy and hard to eat, but the occasional rewards are wonderful.

While Ronnie and Celia dined on softshell crabs and steak and (crab)cake respectively, the waitress came along with a tray and dumped 6 big hot crabs in front of me. This was great fun for the others. They laughed at me and put on a little puppet show, but eventually I got to eating them.

If you've not done this before, eating crabs is its own thing. You pretty much have to rip the things apart, and smash the parts you can't rip with a wooden mallet. It's kind of barbaric, but strangely satisfying in a way that must be evolutionarily significant. There's some technique to it, but the general idea is to throw away the parts with no meat and then break the shells apart in a way that exposes the good stuff as easily as possible. I have no idea if this is a net gain or loss of calories. It seems to take a significant amount of energy relative to how much food you get, so it's important to have some cole slaw and french fries or onion rings to accompany it (I went for the rings, which were huge and excellent). And the best way to make sure that it's all done properly is to have some beer, cheap or otherwise, to wash it down.

It takes a pretty long time and is incomparably messy, but is very satisfying, and it was a nice way to spend the evening.

After-school special

I'm done with jokes about the term in-service. It's just odd, not funny. What happens on those days can be either or both.

Most of the comedy and oddity come from the meetings, of course. I'm not going on about my distaste for such things any longer either. End of year in-service is always the best because it is followed by vacation. I think all jobs should have a couple of days of preparation for vacation. I need practice on all kinds of things. Like reading a book, or sleeping. Unfortunately, even though school is over, these people insist on talking about school type things, like policy and professional development. The only thing I feel like developing at this time is a tan.

Nonetheless, the day started with some news updates, mostly relating to the upcoming merger with a middle school, which, while it certainly had merit as a school, was founded by a rich guy primarily with the goal damaging, or at least teaching a lesson to, our school. Like most things undertaken because of spite, it didn't work out so great, at least in the realm of being financially successful enough to continue to exist long-term. Understand that I am writing about this from a position that could best be described as total ignorance. This, of course, is my favorite position from which to expound, because I'm untethered by pesky things like facts. In any event, the merger of the school has seemed like a necessity for years and it's nice to have the uncertainty over with.

Merging with a middle school necessarily brings a significant increase in the number of middle school students in our school. This requires more classrooms and related facilities, and the next to talk was the Board volunteer who is overseeing the renovations to our building, which has plenty of room for the growth, but needs a partial tear-out and rebuild to become useful as a school.

I don't want to dump on this person, because I like her a lot and respect and appreciate the energy and time that she gives to the school. But about halfway through her presentation, she started talking about the necessary realignment of the faculty offices. At this point, she violated the Second Prime Directive of presentations, which is to have your facts straight and accessible. In so violating these principles, she made a series of about a dozen statements, each of which contained at least one factual error.

My advice for future presenters on this topic is that you go in knowing (1) where the people who are moving are currently located, and (2) where they are moving to. If you do not have these two sets of data, I would suggest putting off your presentation until you do, or you might experience what happened here. First, people start asking questions. If you then answer these without command of the facts, you will undoubtably give an incorrect answer which will not soothe matters. Despite more than one person's urging to stop the presentation until the information had all been straightened out and for reasons that I do not quite understand, we kept going, with mis and contradictory information flying everywhere. If you tell people they are moving and yet are not sure either where they are moving from or to, they will get upset. And if they get upset at you, you may react in kind.

The end result was that after about 10 minutes of this, we found ourselves being chided and scolded for not being cooperative, when what we mostly wanted was to know what it was we were supposed to be cooperating with. Bad meeting.

I think stuff happened after that, but the momentum was lost. It's a testament to how much everyone appreciates what the board volunteer is doing for the school that everyone was more sympathetic than angry about the whole thing. And it did get straightened out in short order- like most things in life, the problems seemed to have more to do with sorting out Post-it notes than anything else.

Later in the day, we had another meeting, which, while on a topic of utmost concern to people, broke the First Prime Directive of leading meetings, which is to actually lead the meeting.

My advice (and I know that's why you read this, to get advice from me, so read on) is twofold.

1. If you bring up a topic, do not move onto the next topic until that one is concluded, otherwise, you leave things open-ended, which is seldom the desired result and which will then muddle any subsequent discussion. We are a discoursive group, which if it isn't a word certainly should be, and if we having discourse on more than one topic at any give time, it gets untidy.

2. If there is a discussion going on, try to make sure the people are at least discussing the same thing. Aside from the confusion inherent in having 4 people discussing 4 different, though related, things is that digressions happen exponentially (hah! knew I could bring math in here somehow!). IOW, if one person digresses, you're now talking about 2 different things. If those two people digress, you're now talking about 4 different things. And of course, the 4 different things is where we started. By the time we were done with 8 and closing in on 16, I got up and left.

Father's Day in Charm City

A few days ago, my wife asked me if there was anything I would like to do for Father's Day. My feelings about Father's Day are complex. Being an orphan and all, it's painful to think about my days growing up in a dark, damp boarding house with the other foundlings. Oh, wait. That wasn't me. I was just watching Oliver on TV and got caught up in the moment. Come to think of it, that movie is a strange choice for Father's Day.

If we're talking about my actual life, I can list a few reactions to the whole thing:

1. I resent the fact that Mothers get their own day, while Father's Day is relegated to "Dads and Grads" territory. My daughter just graduated  high school last week and we've had more than enough of that, thank you.
2. I think that my dad should call me, rather than the other way around, because as the first born, it was only my presence that made him a father in the first place.
3. It is, like most holidays now, an excuse to shop rather than an actual celebration of something.
4. I damn well better get at least as good as I gave on Mother's Day.

There's more, but it gets increasingly dark and introspective, and this is not the venue.

I like being a dad, and I've tried hard to be good at it. I'm not going to judge the quality of my parenting, however, based on the kinds of presents I get. 

Given all that, I thought about what I would like to do on Father's Day more in terms of what I would like to do on any Sunday in mid-June. And of course, the answer to that is, go to a baseball game, of course. The Phillies are out in Colorado at the moment, so I looked at nearby cities and was given the choice of (a) the Mets versus the Cubs at Citi Field, or (b) the Orioles versus Red Sox at Camden Yards in Baltimore. Hmmmmmmm.

So here we are in Baltimore. I don't know Baltimore very well, and with a nickname like "Charm City," I find it both charming and, like most charming things, not to be completely trusted. Honestly, I have no reason to mistrust Baltimore, aside from it's probably coincidental role in my getting shingles (I was here when I first noticed the rash and itch). I just don't know it.

We're staying at a nice hotel on the Inner Harbor. I think Inner Harbor, along with perhaps Quincy Market in Boston, was the first successful waterfront renewal project in an old downtown area. It's a picturesque little spot, perched on the edge, or perhaps more fittingly on the inside, of a very large and busy harbor. The two anchor attractions are the National Aquarium and Camden Yards. For the mile in between, you are treated to the opportunity to shop at Urban Outfitters, H&M, Jos. A. Bank, and eat at Bubba Gump, Cheesecake Factory, or Hard Rock Cafe, all in a somewhat different-looking place than the last time you shopped or ate there. 

I'm not a big fan of this kind of development, but it's also sprinkled with actual historic ships and silly attractions like street entertainers and paddleboats. We availed ourselves of a paddleboat ride, choosing the big paddleboats that look like dragons. We spent a half hour paddling around the most inner part of the inner harbor, looking at the city from the water and trying not to violate any of the myriad rules for usage and conduct. 

Paddling is surprisingly hard work. At this point, we'd worked up at appetite and headed out for dinner, which I'll cover in a separate post.

It's the end of the world

Or maybe just the end of the world as we know it. Since I last wrote, my daughter has graduated high school and our school year has finished.

So what does that mean? Well, first off, I get to come up with a great variety of creative reasons why I can't give them their grades. Usually, it's just because I haven't actually graded the tests yet, but I never say that, I prefer to make something up.

Worse than that, though, is the need to face everything that I've been needing to take care of for the last month or more. All I've done with even the most important of papers is to put them in a pile on my desk. The only way to get me to deal with any of them is to give me either a literal or figurative elbow to the ribs. Fortunately, the only kinds I've gotten are figurative, so I'm bruise-free, but I think there are a lot of bills sitting in that pile.

And then there's the whole summer thing. We're facing a summer leading up to us being empty-nesters. I don't really get that. Wouldn't an empty nest mean that we weren't there either? It's a mystery.

As for blogging, I know that I've not been particularly regular about posting, but I've been completely exhausted for the past month, and have somehow managed to keep things at least somewhat under control in spite of it. But now I will probably be able to get some sleep and have some time to write. I've had plenty of ideas. It just takes time and energy to write them down, and I've had neither. But it's summer time, and that's past. See you on the other side.

Senior Trip, Day 2

Day two started with a torrential rainstorm. There was a group of students who were signed up to play paintball, but some of them were skittish about playing in the rain. What is that? You're okay to run around in the dirt and get splattered with paint, but not okay to get wet? If that's you're mindset, far from me to disagree, but I can't say that I understand.

I consulted the best tool available for checking present and near-future weather, the Wundermap, from Weather Underground. I could see from the map that we were about to hit a gap between the showers and that's just what happened. The group spent a couple of hours happily shooting at each other, and it rained for all of 30 seconds.

For my own part, I did not play. One of the kids asked me if I didn't believe in guns. I told him, in effect, that I was aware that guns did indeed exist and that I had fired guns (I've done a bit of target and skeet shooting) but I don't enjoy it and I certainly don't enjoy getting shot.

We got back to the hotel at lunch time, and had some discussion about how to spend the afternoon, the result of which was that we would not have any group activity- people would just do whatever they wanted. I think most people went to the pool. Some people ice skated. I can't for the life of me remember what I did. I guess I thought I was going to the movies but then decided not to. Maybe I napped and didn't realize it.

In the evening, we had dinner and then went for a round of mini golf. Nothing to lighten the mood like a spirited round of mini golf. It is a silly way to spend an hour, but always fun anyway. Ocean City has got to be the minigolf capital of the world. You can't go half a mile on the main strip without seeing one, and some of them (like the one we went to) have multiple courses. I chose this place because they have both indoor and outdoor courses. Okay, I've got to stop here. These things bear no more resemblance to a golf course than does my back yard. I can dig a few holes and make some obstacles and hit a golf ball around with a club, but it doesn't make it a course, or a links or whatever. And my yard has actual grass, not green carpet. And the water isn't dyed blue, as mini golf places do to make their water look like, well, blue water.

I played the outdoor course (if you must), which had a pirate theme. It was not the most elaborately pirate-themed mini gold I've ever done, but it was a fun course. And we didn't have to worry about the golf balls getting dirty, because all the holes were full or water from the afternoon's rain. Indoors looked prehistoric. There was also a small arcade where people played skee ball, air hockey and the like.

We came back in time to watch the ultimately dismal NBA basketball playoff game. Once I gave up on that, I ice skated a bit and spent the rest of the time time hanging out and talking with the kids and the other chaperones. That's really the best part of these things. During the school year, there are very few students you get to spend any kind of relaxed time with. Even if you're not working on something, either the student or I or both need to move onto something else soon and we can't just chat. Senior year of high school is a really interesting time, and the end of the year is one of the big transitions in someone's life, so there's plenty to think and talk about.

Hallway talk was both people just sitting on the floor and standing in doorways. Girls are not allowed in boy's rooms, and vice versa, and I noted early on that the previous trip, a couple would hang out on opposite sides for the threshold, either standing or bringing chairs. One of the students quickly dubbed this "thresholding" and it was a popular arrangement throughout our stay.

The kids got a little noisy in the hallway, which brought an seemingly inebriated old woman out of her room. She spent the next couple of hours talking to the security guard in her footsy pajamas. My final act of the evening was a futile and frustrating attempt to help a couple of the kids, who were not allowed out of their rooms after 12:30, to order a pizza. Actually, they could order it just fine. They just couldn't come out to get it. I said I'd bring it to them, but it got later and later and I finally cancelled it.

And that was the day. The lousy weather limited what we could do, but it was still a fun day.

Senior Trip, Day 1

Since nothing had gone smoothly in the runup to the senior trip, it was no surprise to have the bus nowhere in sight at the time we were supposed to load up and leave. Apparently the driver’s sheet read differently from mine.

Then we had to contend with a big race at the Dover Speedway, directly on the route we were taking to the Delmarva Shorebirds game. I followed the bus driver’s advice here and routed around it, but I had no idea just how far around we were talking about. So instead of 2 ½ hours, the trip took nearly 4. Because we got to the park just as the game was beginning, and you can’t take outside food into the ballpark, the kids had to eat as we walked across the parking lot.

Once inside, the game was clearly going to run very long (1 ½ hours for 3 innings is a bit much) and the kids got restless quickly, so we decided to head to the hotel. Plus, I realized that, because I had (gasp!) decided to take time for myself the night before, rather than finalizing the rooming lists, that I had to do that while I was at the game, rather than, say, watching the game. I did eat something called, and I’m kicking myself for not really remembering, a cluckwurst, or something like that. It was a grilled chicken sausage with onions and peppers and it was delicious and it upset my stomach for the rest of the day.

Shockingly, the rooming lists did not work smoothly, as some people had placed themselves in more than one room and some had put themselves in no room at all, so I tried to make all the pieces fit, but ultimately decided that they wouldn’t. Then I discovered that we had one more room available than I’d thought. Problem resolved! So everyone got checked in, and was settling into my room when my phone rang and the desk clerk said, “The bus driver’s here and I don’t have a room for him.” Aha! That’s where it came from. Fortunately, the hotel just got him another room.

From thereon in, things went more smoothly. Dinner was fine, and then we bused down to the boardwalk. It’s senior week here, which I guess means that seniors from lots of Maryland high schools come to roost (sorry, still thinking about that chicken sausage). This yielded some of the most obnoxious and suggestive attire I’ve seen in such a concentrated fashion. I’m not sure which gender was more responsible for the general sleaziness, but it was pretty prevalent. On the other hand, it was nice out, everything was open, and it was fun to walk around.

There was a big line of people waiting to get into something called a foam party. I decided not to wait on it, but I’d love to be enlightened. I’m imagining something like an idea my frat’s social committee came up with, called a suds and dogs party. Suds and dogs was fratspeak for beer and hot dogs, but we were going to fill the basement with soap suds and bring all the campus dogs in and have a dance. Maybe it’s something like that.

Back to the hotel for some hanging out and bed checks. We get to hear from the security guards all about what happens to underage drinkers (they get kicked out and arrested if they refuse to go) and then finally to bed and hoping against hope for not horrible weather tomorrow.