Three days preparing for students to start school. Three days.
Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? It isn’t. I’m just glad I went in last week to get started because I’m still not done. On Monday, all one thousand or so of us teachers congregated in the auditorium at the high school and listened to the superintendent talk for two hours. Well, I assume someone listened to him. I didn’t. I tried to listen but he couldn’t figure out how to talk into the microphone he clipped on. He walked around, gesticulated a lot, and from his tone, I think he was excited. But I couldn’t make out much of what he said. Everyone who spoke into the microphone at the podium were crystal clear. Unfortunately, that portion of the program was only about 20 minutes.
After catching a ride with my principal back to my school ( I hitched a ride there with my friend and neighbor Amber) I ate my lunch and had a whole 30 minutes to continue to unpack and situate my room, before–aw, you guessed. A staff meeting.Two and a half hours of presentation and information overload. After 90 minutes, it was all just bouncing off. Fortunately they gave us all a digital copy of the presentation with links to the important documents. The hard wooden furniture in B128 used to be in the library. I recognized it right away. It did quite a number on my back after two and a half hours. The library, on the other hand, has some nice, comfortable chairs. Probably not enough to seat the entire staff, though. At the end of the meeting, I got to see one of my old students who is now an assistant principal. That doesnt’ seem quite possible, but there you go.
By the end of the meeting, I had about an hour to work in my classroom. I was beat.
On the second day, we began with–aw, come on, you’re too good at this game–a meeting. A training, really, in how to use our new textbooks. The school system hasn’t adopted a math text in, let me count here, 16 years. But now we are using RevealMath, which includes both consumables and digital content. They are allegedly aligned with Indiana standards, but my very first search proved that wrong. Prime factorization is kind of my thing. My entire Solution Squad book starts out with prime numbers, then moves on to prime factorization, then solving proportions with simplifying ratios, which is done with prime factorization. It’s incredibly useful. Well, in Indiana, it’s a 7th grade standard, but it was nowhere to be found in the textbook that we are being given. It’s part of the 6th grade course. And we were told that we were only allowed access to the coursework that we actually teach, so the 6th grade book is not available to me, as I teach 7th and 8th grade. Now, you might think that something like that would upset me, but it does not. That just means I get to use my Solution Squad materials! It’s actually cause for celebration. What did make me a little angry, though, is that the filter I applied for my search was by Indiana standard, and lo and behold, it’s the old standards, not the 2023 ones. For a big company like McGraw-Hill, that’s just lame. At least I got some time in my rom after lunch.
The third day began with–no, you really don’t have to guess–a meeting. We had a math department meeting to talk about scope and sequence, distribution of the new books (which hadn’t even arrived yet), and who was teaching what courses. It was necessary to have, but holy moley, so many meetings. I would love to say that I spent the rest of the day preparing, but the books came in around lunchtime, and after I devoured my steak burriito and Mexican Coke from Ricky’s Taqueria (the best little hole in the wall in all of Elkhart), I hauled 200 books in two loads on my cart up from the library. I got all four bulletin boards done, but there’s a pile of totes in my room that have nowhere to go.
I probably should mention that there is not one cubic inch of storage available in my classroom. The teacher who had my room last year passed away from cancer, toward the end of the year, and all of her stuff is still in the cabinets. They’re still trying to figure out what to do with all of it. In the meantime, I’ll just stack my totes in a corner.
I would normally have been done with everything by now, but with all the heavy physical stuff, my back was warning me to slow down and take breaks. Getting older sometimes isn’t that much fun.
The kids are coming today, and I can’t wait to meet them!
I’m returning after a 10-year absence to Pierre Moran Middle School in Elkhart Indiana. I’ll be teaching 7th grade and possibly an eighth grade class and I’m really looking forward to being back with 12, 13, and 14-year olds that’s really where I belong. I’ll be honest I really haven’t felt like much of a teacher in the 10 years since I was pulled from Pierre Moran mid-year to join the staff at Northside Middle School completely against my will. I had spent 18 1/2 years at Pierre Moran and I had already had the children of some of my children. I was part of the community. I was a leader. I had been on virtually every committee that the school had and chaired most of them at one time or another. The hows and whys of it don’t matter anymore; the important thing is that I’m back.
You wouldn’t think that at age 60 that I had anything to prove. But I do–to myself. When I left Pierre Moran 10 years ago I was at the top of my game. I was the best teacher I had ever been. Everything was rolling in the right direction and it’s never been the same since. I want to see if I can get back to that level of expertise and skill and I want to do more. I want to be the example that other people follow. With that in mind I came up with a crazy idea to create a fictional school within a school a superhero school if you will and the students in my classes will be superheroes in training. Using ChatGPT to provide graphics and Canva to provide the ability to present, I’m going to introduce my students a new way of immersing in a fictional world while learning math at the same time. I’m not sure it’s ever been done before but I’m going to do it. Here’s my first presentation.
Today, I saw yet another reference to the original Nightwing costume as “Disco Nightwing.”
Goodness. Here it is, drawn by George Perez, in all its original 1984 glory:
Now, for anyone even vaguely familiar with this character, one has to remember that Dick Grayson, formerly Robin the Boy Wonder, grew up and became Nightwing in Tales of the Teen Titans #44.
He is paying homage to his circus roots. That collar does not fold over like John Travolta’s. It sticks up like a circus performer’s costume, and not coincidentally, the other circus performer-turned superhero from DC Comics is Deadman.
As you can see, Deadman has a raised collar, and yet no one suggests that he’s “Disco.” This is just one of those things that drives me nuts.
I’m in a semi-darkened theater in Battle Creek, Michigan on Christmas Eve, 1978. I’m with my brother, my sister, my mother, my stepfather, and his three kids. We’ve ridden in the bed of a pickup truck with a cap on it, huddled together in blankets to get us all to the movies. We have popcorn and drinks, and in my hands I have a movie program, the first I’ve ever seen. I’ve been reading about the new actor Warner Brothers has found to play Superman, and I’ve seen him in previews for the past two weeks. He looks like the real deal in the program. As I peruse the actors’ biographies, I’m up to Glen Ford, when the lights go down. I get goosebumps. After the bit with the kid reading a copy of Action Comics I hear the low rolling bass. Dum de da dum dum. Da da da da dum de da dum dum…then a burst of blue light fires the credits right at my eyes!
Two hours later, I walk out of the theater in a daze, past the ten-foot wide crystalline Superman The Movie logo sign. I have just seen the greatest movie in all of my fourteen years. Over the next several months, I see the movie four times. I see it with my dad, and with one of my best friends, Ken. We travel to Traverse City on a night when he has keyboard lessons, and after we see the movie, we spend the whole trip home in his mom’s Lincoln Continental, with our hands outstretched in front of us, imagining the flight along the road in pursuit of an XK 101 nuclear missile.
I had been on the road to weeding out my comic book collection by trading them in two for one at the local flea market, but all of that’s over with. I am buying everything I see with Superman in it. I find a new Superman series called DC Comics Presents, with art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, featuring Superman and the Flash in its first two issues. I’m reading Starlog Magazine at a basketball game with Superman on the cover. This obsession lasts through spring and into summer. I have Superman The Movie bubblegum cards. I have the Superman soundtrack by John Williams on vinyl. While I listen to it, I sort out the cards in story-sequential order and match the music to the scene. I painstakingly record the soundtrack on my cassette recorder so that I can play it while I’m riding my bike on my paper route. I carry the cassette recorder in my paper bag, hands outstretched in front of me as I ride. It’s an endless summer before high school begins and I have to put away childish things…
There have been many live-action iterations of the Man of Steel since 1978, and whenever the newest one emerges, someone asks me what I think of the new Superman. My answer is always the same:
“It’s not for me.”
Now, I don’t mean to come down on anyone else’s opinion, or disparage anyone’s favorite Superman, but I mean what I say literally. It’s not made for me. Superman The Movie ignited my imagination and came to me at a time when I needed it. Was it perfect? Oh, no. I didn’t like the icy version of Krypton or Marlon Brando as Jor-El. But I was well-read enough to have seen multiple versions of Superman’s origin, even then, and I knew that changes came over time. The character had been around for 40 years at that point, and if in this version, Ma Kent survives to see him become Superman without him ever becoming Superboy first, so be it. My dad was less forgiving. He ranted and raved about the effects not being good enough and that Christopher Reeve was too scrawny. But I knew where his complaints were coming from. It wasn’t for him. His Superman came in the form of George Reeves in “Adventures of Superman,” the TV series that began in 1951, when my father was eight years old. I realized then that nothing is ever going to be more perfect than the cultural icons of your youth, and by the time Christopher Reeve was playing Superman for the last time in 1987’s Superman IV The Quest for Peace, I was graduating from college, and I knew my adult years would alter my perception of what was clearly a character intended for a more youthful audience.
There have been dozens of versions of Superman in animation, television and movies since then, and none of them will ever match up for me. But that’s okay. I’m 60 years old now, and though Superman The Movie is 46 years old, I still enjoy my annual viewing. Every variation, every version seems to find its fans, and boy, they don’t hesitate to let you know that your choice is the wrong one if it differs with theirs. The good news is that I have my version, and no one can take it from me.
My wife and I were both sick for the entirety of winter recess. We were sick on day one with whatever respiratory nonsense is going around and we continued to cough all the way through the end. Finally, yesterday, we decided to get out of the house and treat ourselves. We got a room at the Hotel Elkhart, the newly renovated nine-story building in downtown Elkhart, and I asked for a room on the highest available floor, a king-size suite, complete with a separate room with a couch and chair. We went out to dinner at 523 Tap & Grill, one of our normal favorite places to eat. They’ve recently made some changes to the menu that I didn’t care for, and the ribeye steak that they used to offer with a coffee rub, now has a Za’atar rub. I don’t care for Middle Eastern food, so I asked if it could be done another way. To my utter surprise, I was able to get a steak seasoned simply with Lawry’s Seasoned Salt and pepper. It was delicious. Magi had a clam chowder that was one of the best I’d ever tasted. After dinner, we stopped across the street at Vanilla Bean Creamery for some take out ice cream to bring back to the room. We sat in the spacious living room area, sharing a pint of dark chocolate, and just reminisced about our first Christmas together, 25 years ago.
I wrote a novel back in November, and I’ve been editing it with a friend’s help, rewriting much of it. I’ve never written a romance before, and the main character in this novel is similar to how I was at age 32, before I met Magi. One of the things it has brought to my attention is just how much Magi has changed my life. The character in the book has no love for theater, has a very unsophisticated palate, and would never have even considered spending seven dollars for a pint of ice cream. I’ve traveled, well, the world, or at least some of it, in my life with her. Thirty-two-year-old me had flown exactly once, to Arizona, to visit family. I spent that Christmas with her in New Orleans, and since marrying Magi, I’ve been to San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Utah, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming, Hawai’i, Atlanta, New York, Key West, and even China.
We talked about our daughter, and how she has changed our lives, and how we’ve watched her grow so much. We really just spent hours counting our blessings. We also talked about retirement, and what things could look like for us now that she’s a month away from being eligible to collect Social Security. So many possibilities are up in the air right now, we need to talk to a financial advisor to really put it into concrete terms.
Perhaps the most incredible part of the staycation came this morning at Relish Café & Confections, the breakfast and lunch restaurant in the Hotel Elkhart. Our breakfasts, including dark mochas for each of us, were just truly out of this world.
New Yorker Sunrise: Chive and potato waffles topped with smoked salmon, arugula, avacado, pickled red onion, capers, pico, and chimichurriChicken, Smoke, and Waffles: Chive and potato waffles topped with southern fried rosemary chicken, smoked sausage, and chipotle syrup
While we were sitting there, Magi spotted Elkhart’s mayor, Rod Roberson. We smiled at him and he came over to the table. I had worked with Mayor Roberson’s wife, Regina, for years at Pierre Moran Middle School, and I knew him from before that while I was a basketball coach. He thanked us both for our many years of service to the city of Elkhart, and I have to tell you, when the mayor thanks you, it feels pretty darned good. Then our server asked me if I had been a math teacher, and sure enough, she was one of my former students, which guarantees a 100% tip on the bill. I love seeing my kids out in the world.
Every once in a while, we just have to get out of the house. We have to get away from the dog, the cats, and the distractions of everyday life. We don’t have to get away from Sera, because she’s hardly ever home! Looks like we’re ready to start the second semester with a fresh outlook.
This machine, The Great Hot Air Popper, is one of the finest ever devised by humankind. Note, I write is, not was. How do I make such a claim? Because even though I got it in 1978, it still works!
When my dad bought this KMart blue light special, it was an outrageous $9.99. Little did we know, however, that it would see me through decades. My dad was out of work for about six months in the winter of 1978-79, and we didn’t have a lot of extra money. So, in the evenings, we ate popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn. Even then, half a cup of popping corn cost practically nothing, and all you had to do was melt a little butter in the butter tray, add some salt, and you had a reasonably healthy snack for literally pennies. Now, in those days, I liked to experiment and think outside the box with my food. So, when my dad had me put Lawry’s seasoned salt on my popcorn, I thought, why not? It is simply the best, takes less salt to make big flavor, and it’s still my preferred way to eat it.
That Christmas, we had a small tree, and no decorations to put on it. We had a needle, thread, and popcorn, though. We strung popcorn on that tiny tree, and I fed my dog Ladybug about 100 pieces of popcorn as well.
When I went away to college, the Great Hot Air Popper came with me. My dorm room was a popular place in the evening, because cooking appliances were not allowed in the dorm, yet somehow, my roommate knew how to block smells from leaving the doorway, and popcorn was to be enjoyed by many a poor college student who only had to bring an empty bowl.
