Baltimore Diary

Today

Although the truncated school day meant that many people I needed to speak to weren’t available, I still managed to make progress with helping out several schools today.

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Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tracks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence?

Hello, Pot? This is Kettle.

Harry: Yeah, I called her up. She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something. I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.

—Dumb and Dumber (1994)

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Last week, most of the teachers in Baltimore City returned to work. They spent some time putting their classrooms back together (most rooms get taken completely apart during the summer for floor waxing and other maintenance), they began planning for putting together lessons, they took care of a hundred other details. And, in between all of that, there was professional development. The principals put together a few things that they’d like to concentrate on this year, and there were sessions based on those.  If, for instance, you have a youngster in Baltimore City schools this year, look for the word “rigor” to pop up a lot. Also, “attendance”. Schools all over the city took a beating on attendance last year, partly because of the H1N1 flu and partly because of the snow, but Baltimore also seems to have a culture on attendance not being that important. If for no other reasons than it could mean literally thousands of dollars that go directly to your child’s school, it’s very important.

In addition to the professional development sessions that the individual schools put together, there were also city-wide PD sessions that were created by the folks at the Puzzle Palace. I didn’t create one, but a few of my counterparts did, and I helped present it to special education teachers. All thirteen of us in the Networks office teamed up with someone from another office (most of them were from the Nonpublic office) to ensure that the overwhelming majority of special education teachers were given PD on the changes to special education policies and procedures in the wake of the consent decree’s ending, and a new initiative for writing IEP goals and objectives called “One Year Plus”.

I’m not going to bore you with the details of One Year Plus except to suggest that it’s really a common-sense kind of thing, in my head: if you have a boatload of details regarding a student’s current level of academic achievement and functional performance, then you should be able to write appropriate goals and objectives for that student. We all have boatloads of data; we just don’t always document that data. So the key to One Year Plus is documenting the data. This is at the heart of the PD session I presented last week.

I had four groups with which I worked over the two-day period. One of them was incredible: they were interested, they were dedicated, they were smart, and they were genuinely able to grasp the concept and see that there was a concerted effort to present this as a true city-wide initiative. The other three groups were a mixed bag. One woman actually fell asleep twice (TWICE), so there’s an interesting way of expressing your opinion.

Because part of my presentation was supposed to take place on-line (a little hands-on training session in using some software), I worked in a computer lab. The room looked much like the one to the right, but let me note that this is NOT the room I was in. However, it’s important to get a handle on the layout of the room before I can tell this little tale. So picture this room with two tables in the middle, several feet apart. Got it? Good. Now, because the room is lined with computers, naturally the early arrivals grab a terminal and want to check email or some such. And really, who am I to complain about that? As long as you’re engaged during the session, do as you like before it starts.

So one woman came in before a session and sat in a corner of the room. She broke out her own laptop, fired it up and then connected it to the City Schools network using her own cord and an available network jack. When we began working, however, she left the laptop in the corner with the lid open. Well…okay. So long as you’re with us.

The problem was, she didn’t stay with us. At one point, about a half-hour into the session, I asked the participants to read a passage and then discuss it in small groups. Instead of reading the piece, she abandoned it on the table and went to her laptop, and started to surf the web. Now, if you’re sitting in a corner of the room with your back to everyone else, all of whom are sitting by the tables in the center, that’s going to catch my attention sooner rather than later. This holds especially true if the entire group (not counting me and my partner) is composed of only nine people.

I walked up to her and stood behind/to the left of her, essentially reading over her shoulder. I didn’t say anything; I just waited for her to sense my presence. This took at least a full minute. Finally, she turned around and looked up at me. I said to her quietly, “You know…your school isn’t good enough that you can afford to be over here.”

“Huh?” she cleverly replied.

“You need to be over there,” I said to her.

“Oh. Sorry,” she said, and she moved to the table.

A moment later, I think what I’d said had finally sunk in. She called me back over to the table. “What was that about my school not being good enough?”

I said to her, “I’ve been to [School XYZ]; I know what kind of reputation they have.”

“Have you been there in the last three years?”

“Oh yeah. There’s been improvement, but there’s still a ways to go.”

Now, this was all done sotto voce; I wasn’t calling her out in a public fashion. Anyway, I’d already engaged this argument much longer than I’d intended to, so at this point I simply walked away to let them finish what they were working on. But she wasn’t done with it. She kept trying to call me back and I kept ignoring her, assisting the people who were working on what they were supposed to be doing. A minute later she broke out a “smart” phone and began furiously texting to someone. Meh, whatever.

I will say this: when she participated, she did a great job, so more’s the pity that she couldn’t let this go. She gave me the stink eye the rest of the session, even when I kept referring back to good points she’d made, and noting immediately when she’d said something that everyone else could benefit from. Nevertheless, when we got to the end of the session, and I handed out the evaluation forms, she couldn’t wait to get her hands on it.

Comments on these forms are rather rare; I’d say about 20-25% of the participants will write something on the forms unless things go especially well or especially poorly. But needless to say, it was pretty easy to find hers. This is a paraphrasing but it’s pretty close: “He unprofessionally insulted me and the reputation of my school.”

Here’s the thing, though: she’s rather a trusting soul, given that she has to hand the completed form BACK TO ME, with the expectation that I’ll review it (or not) and then turn it in to the folks at the Puzzle Palace without A) destroying it, and/or B) replacing it. I did neither, but I did take the time to point it out to someone and give them the story behind it.

So if my calling her out on failing to pay attention and participate in this exercise was unprofessional of me, then how would she classify her own behavior? And, more importantly…

How does one “professionally” insult a person and the reputation of their school?

Robot Judges

Dr. Dick Solomon: This planet has crossed the line. Assemble the giant robot!
Sally Solomon: Um... we didn't pack it. You wanted the room for your exercise bike.

--Third Rock From the Sun, “Assault With A Deadly Dick” (4/30/96)

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Recently, Wife and I were recruited to become judges at a robotics competition.

The Baltimore City Public School system got a Title I grant to provide some extra learning for some of our students. One of the programs that was developed from the grant was a robotics program, which was held at several middle schools and middle-level classes in K-8 schools throughout the city. At the end of the program, the students brought their creations to the State Fair grounds for a competition. There were two grades of prizes to be won: one for the competitions, and another batch of judges’ prizes, based on construction, innovation, a team’s willingness to support other teams, and so on. A couple of prizes were also given out to teachers whose participation was obvious and outstanding during the competition.

So for six weeks, inner-city kids who had probably never dreamed of doing something like this worked on designing, and building, their own robots for competition. Some students took it upon themselves (or the teacher went the extra mile to teach them) and actually did some programming of the robots. (Because six weeks is a relatively short period of time for something like this, they weren’t expected to program their own robots for this event.) Let me tell you, we were looking at some motivated, focused, enthusiastic kids.

The robots were controlled by remotes each of which had about ten buttons and two joysticks on them, and every switch had some kind of purpose. In the picture here, you can see that the were supposed to pick up the plastic rings and place them over goal posts. They could also get points for hanging off the bars on the ladder in the middle of the playing field. If the robot could reach the green bar, extra points.

As the competition neared the end, students were expected to pair up with another team and their robot for the final showdowns. Consequently the students had to think about their robot’s capabilities and whether they meshed well with their selected partner’s robot. Some robots are good at offense (e.g. scooping up a ring and putting it on the post); others are good at defense (e.g. running interference or removing rings from posts, which is a legal move).

So over the two days, Wife and I (and about ten others) interviewed kids, interviewed teachers, watched the gameplay, then went to a separate building and deliberated for hours over the different prizes. Some of us were interviewed by the Baltimore Sun (I was one of them, but none of the judges’ quotes were used—although my picture did appear in the print edition), a few of us (not me) were interviewed by local TV reporters, and the final robot showdowns, and the awarding of prizes, were all aired on local cable TV (Channel 77, if you have Comcast and live within City Limits). Even Wee One got in on the action, volunteering as one of the people who would re-set one of the playing fields following a match.

It was exhausting, but incredibly fun and I’m hoping that we can do it again next year. My only regret is that none of the robots looked like this:

Because that? Would have been cool.

Where I Bleed For Baltimore City Schools

Hilda Jones: Everybody should donate to the blood bank. What type are you?
Melvin Jones: Oh, the quiet type. I go to bed at nine o'clock, see a movie now and then, read some books, play checkers...
Hilda Jones: No! I mean what kind of blood have you?
Melvin Jones: Red.

--Sailor Beware (1952)

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Today, despite it being my last vacation day for the time being, I went to the Puzzle Palace to donate blood.

I’d made the appointment awhile back, not realizing that it was also going to be a day that I wouldn’t be at work. Ah well, what are you going to do. Fortunately I’d set the appointment as being first thing in the morning, so the rest of the day would be available to me (even if I was working).

Donating blood is a goodness, it’s an act of kindness, it’s a mitzvah. And the Red Cross Blood Services people are glad to have you come by and make the donation. Some quick facts:

• A single pint of blood can save three lives.
• Every two seconds, someone needs a blood transfusion.
• 5,000,000 patients need blood every year. That’s just in the United States.
• Less than 38% of all people are eligible to donate blood. If you’re giving blood, you’re special!
• Making you more special: only 3% of eligible donors actually give blood.
• Despite what they say on that HBO Show, blood can’t be manufactured. It can only come from donors.

OK, lecture over. The bottom line is, they usually go to some effort to make you glad you came. However…

…I’m on a phone list somewhere, so if it’s been awhile since I’ve donated, the blood bank will call and ask me to come in and donate. There are blood donation centers all over the place, so location-wise they’ve always been pretty convenient to me. The bad news is, when I make an appointment over the phone, it’s rarely kept. I’m treated like any other walk-in. So my expected one hour “door-to-door” time is usually two hours, or occasionally even three, which is totally crazy. Therefore, when the call comes, the conversation usually goes like this:

Blood Bank: There’s a critical shortage and we need your help blah de blah…
Me: I’m happy to donate; find me a blood drive please.
BB: Oh—well, uh, there’s a donation center in White Marsh and they’re open—
Me: No no, you don’t understand. When I go to the donation center, they don’t keep the appointment. Find me a drive, please.

Some of them are surprised by this, but they do find a blood drive and I go wherever they send me, which is its own brand of fun.

Baltimore City Schools has a drive every few months, and unless there’s a good reason I can’t, I’m usually there to donate. Oftentimes there’s practically a welcoming committee there, and you’re shepherded through the process and generally pampered, where they bring the beverage to you while you’re still bleeding out into the tubes. And usually someone from Central Office is around to make sure all is well and to give out some random token goodies, like some pens, or Post-it notes, or some such. This would be in addition to whatever the Red Cross happens to be giving away to the donors that day. It’s not a big deal but it’s a touch of nice.

Today, however, was a little different. When I got there, they were still setting up a little bit; that’s okay, it’s early. Then the computer they use to check people in and do the health survey got a little wonky with the person ahead of me, then there was some other weird wait and I wound up being the only guy in the actual donation area while a half-dozen people piled up behind me. And at the end, the person taking my blood ran through the usual perfunctory speech in a perfunctory manner and pointed the way to the table at the end of the room. So I sat there alone, munching the chocolate chip cookies and watching them get other people started on their donations. Beverage? There was none. Nobody offered me one, nobody told me where one could be found (I’m a big boy; I can get my own if you tell me where they are). And nobody from Central was on hand.

Which is fine, given that I am, after all, on vacation and don’t need to talk any more shop than I have to.

A Little Cream in the Coffee

Mike: Maryland is for... lovers. Bumper sticker?
Sue Claussen: Virginia. Virginia is for lovers. Maryland is for crabs.

--Management (2008)

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The other night I attended a Crab Feast that was held over at Martin’s West.

This is notable for a couple of reasons: first, because it was the first time that I’d attended this annual event, since it was the first time that I was a member of the school system’s administrators’ union; and second, because I’d never been to Martin’s West before. This, for some reason, surprised many of my co-workers. Then some of them decided that it was because of my skin color.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been invited to an event that large since I moved down here. I will concede, however, that I did feel a bit like the inside of an Oreo.

I got to the event and, despite getting there only about ten minutes after the scheduled start, the place was hopping. There were lots of principals and several of my counterparts there, and there was a DJ up front playing music. Let me tell you about this DJ: he was terrible. If I’d been in a crappier mood, I’d have gone up to him to get his card specifically so I could tell you “Don’t hire this guy”.

Believe it or not, I say that rather reluctantly. I used to be a mobile DJ and I know what a tough job it is sometimes, especially when you get groups of varying types of people. When I did, say, birthday parties? No problem because everyone’s the same age and has similar tastes in music. But when you get those multigenerational groups, you get complaints when the music is too modern, or when it’s not modern enough, or the older people think it’s too loud and the younger people think it’s not loud enough, and you wind up playing the same few songs at these events and it just makes your brain hurt. So I know it can be a tough gig.

However: when you have a group like this, who are mostly of similar demographics, the job becomes stupidly easy. From that standpoint he did okay, but he had no sense of being able to go smoothly from one song to another (dude, it’s called a “segue”). He also found it necessary to play several songs more than once. I was only there for about two hours or so, and in one case I heard the same song three times. I’m kind of pissed off that my union dues paid for this guy.

For those of you who are white have also never been to Martin’s West before, it’s a pretty typical big Wedding Factory kind of place. Big, gaudy chandeliers, columns all over the place, sweeping staircases, heavy draperies everywhere and relatively dim lighting. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a catering hall with a terrazzo floor before, so there’s that.

The food wasn’t bad: it wasn’t just crabs that they served; there was an assortment of non-crab food out there, and they had a kind of “crab station” where you picked up your crabs three or four at a time, set up whatever condiments you liked for them (e.g. extra Old Bay, drawn-butter-flavored grease, etc), and an array of desserts, plus hot and cold beverages, including beer (which, everyone knows, goes fabulously with crabs).

The most amusing part to me, however, was the little tent cards that were propped up pretty much EVERYWHERE throughout the place:

One of my co-workers saw that and remarked, “That’s so ghetto.” I don’t know if it’s that, but it’s certainly something. For what it’s worth, I left with a cup of hot tea in my hand and nobody challenged me.

Sixty-to-One Ratio

First Soldier: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
King Arthur: Not at all. They could be carried.
First Soldier: What? A swallow carrying a coconut?
King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk!
First Soldier: It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.

--Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

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When I was in college and working at the now-dearly-departed WBAU Radio, I got to be pretty good at producing short pieces for broadcast. I had a slightly different approach to the task from that of my colleagues, however: while most of them would create several discrete pieces and then piece them together into a coherent whole through editing (and remember, this was the days of magnetic tape, razor blades and splicing tape).

I was very good at editing tape, but I didn’t like to do it if I didn’t have to. So my approach was often to work with as little editing as possible, doing everything as though it were live and on-the-air, but with the safety net of knowing that I was not, in fact, broadcasting.

So I’d set up the music on turntables, reel-to-reel deck, instant-start tapes (called “carts”, short for cartridge), and I’d mix the whole piece as I went along, starting and stopping music or sound effects while reading my script into the mike. This wasn’t always easy, especially working with the carts, which were usually designed to fast-forward in order to re-cue themselves. When they did that, they’d often stop with a THWACK that the microphone would pick up. This meant that I had to stop the carts manually as I started something else. And, if I screwed up my recording, I’d have to wait for the carts to re-cue before I could take another pass at recording. Not a huge pain, but a pain nonetheless.

I was also remarkably self-critical when it came to my broadcasting work. Often I’d record over thirty takes and then settle on number seventeen as the one that “sucks the least.” But one rule that seemed to hold true was that, no matter how long the piece was that I was recording (unless it was an entire show for later broadcast), I maintained a 60-to-1 ratio of time expended-to-air audio. So, a thirty-second piece would take me a half-hour to cut. A sixty-second bit would take me an hour. The 60:1 Rule seemed to be immutable, or at least tolerated only small variations.

Flash-Forward to this century:

A couple of weeks ago, Wife wanted to work on a project with some of the students in her school. The theme was War, and she wanted to make a video. I wasn’t sure what kind of video you can make that would involve a bunch of sixth-graders, but I had a few suggestions for her, including something that looked like this:

This, specifically, would be a little ambitious for ten year-olds (especially the French at the end) and obviously you couldn’t use the same gags, but you get the idea. Wife liked the idea of doing some kind of lip sync, however, and started looking around for songs that she could use. Some of the songs she thought about were John Lennon’s “Imagine”, Edwin Starr’s “War”, Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” and the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love”. She showed the students a set of lyrics for each song and they selected “Where is the Love”.

Over a few days’ period, she put together some kind of concept for the video: that it would start with a news broadcast, that there’d be a mock UN Summit, war protestors, kids getting drafted and a few other odds and ends, interspersed with images from historical conflicts. And anything that wasn’t an historical image would feature the kids lip-synching to “Where is the Love”.

She then borrowed a Flip Video camera and shot the students in these varied situations, often letting the same place stand in for assorted locations. For this four-minutes-and-change video, she shot most scenes twice, about forty clips in all. With that, plus the historical footage, there was plenty for us to work with when it came time to edit the video.

The big problem was with several of the kids who, despite knowing that they wouldn’t be heard on the finished project, wouldn’t sing. Not at all. There’s no lip synch if there’s no lip movement at all, you know? And at the point where Wife brought her raw material home for us to work on a couple of evenings ago, there was going to be no opportunity for reshoots or pickup shots, or inserts, or anything else. Whatever we had as far as the kids, was what we had.

So Wife and I sat down and downloaded the clips to my laptop. Then, using the Windows Live Movie Maker, we stitched together a video that, in most places where the students are on camera, they actually look sort of like they’re singing.

We started working at around 9:00 PM. A little after 1:00 AM, we had a finished video. 3:49 for the song, 12 seconds for the intro and outro video. Total elapsed time including breaks: just a shade over four hours.

The 60:1 Ratio lives on.

Home Stretch for the Consent Decree

Lawyer: Principal Skinner, "The Happiest Place on Earth" is a registered Disneyland copyright.
Principal Skinner: Oh now, gentlemen, it's just a small school carnival.
Lawyer: And it's heading for a great big lawsuit. You made a big mistake, Skinner.
Principal Skinner: Well, so did you. You got an ex-Green Beret mad.
[Skinner finger-thrusts the first goon in the Adam's Apple, then kicks the lawyer in the chest; they both go down groaning; as the second goon runs away, Skinner picks up the lawyer's briefcase and flings it; in the distance, it knocks down the goon]
Principal Skinner: Copyright…expired.

--The Simpsons, “Lisa the Beauty Queen” (10/15/92)

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With neither a bang, nor a whimper, it was more like a whisper around the Puzzle Palace today.

First there was the rumbling of rumor, then the email went out to everyone, which also involved a link to a press release. It was over an hour before it appeared on the Sun’s website. (The Inside Ed blog still hasn’t picked it up yet. Nice job, guys. Where the hell is Sara Neufeld when you need her?)

The short version: the Vaughn G Consent Decree is over.

The longer version: it’s almost over. If City Schools can keep its nose clean for another two years, it’ll be over for good.

The Consent Decree, which got started back in 1984, came about because there were allegations that the Baltimore City school system wasn’t providing for Special Education students. Some students weren’t getting their services, some students weren’t getting identified in a timely manner, and so on. So a lawsuit was launched, and a Consent Decree was entered.  Under the Decree, which has been monitored by Judge Marvin Garbis, the Court would monitor Special Education activity until the school system met with a set of “Disengagement Outcomes”.

Only twenty-six years later, everyone agrees that there has been “great improvement and collaboration” among the parties, and an agreement was hammered out that will end the court monitoring as of July 1, 2010. The Special Master’s office will be dismantled, and the City will have to answer only to the Maryland State Department of Education, as all districts in Maryland do. There are still a few issues to be dealt with, such as discipline (suspension of students with disabilities), supplementary aids (always a hazy topic) and make-up of missed services, but from where I stand they’ll be fairly easy to address.

It was kind of weird, but somehow I expected something—I’m still not sure what—to happen at the Puzzle Palace. But everything was quiet. Maybe even a little quieter than I’m used to.  It was business as usual. This, to me, was pretty monumental, and maybe that was the problem. It’s been part of the status quo for so long that nobody really knows what to do with it yet. I mean, look at the picture on the left. That one was taken before the news was announced. Now look at the right: that was taken after the news was announced. Can you see a difference?

I did a little research and, so far as I can tell, it’s a rare school system in the US which has completely exited its Consent Decree. New York City has been under one since 1972. That’s not a typo; it’s been thirty-eight years. Chicago got out of one last year related to segregation; that one went for twenty-nine years. San Francisco had one that started in 1983 and was allowed to simply expire in 2005, so that doesn’t really count as “exiting”. Washington, DC, is just getting underway with one that started in 2007. Los Angeles is going on fifteen years, now. Hey, these things take time. I’ve always thought it was kind of like Moses and the Israelites wandering the desert: we had to wait for the previous generation to die off before things would change enough to make it work. And it was practically like that: most of the people who were working in the system when the Consent Decree began are long retired.

If nothing else, this is going to mean Big Bucks for the system. City Schools had to pay for the Special Master, had to pay for practically everything for both sides—including the attorney fees—whenever a Consent Decree-based lawsuit was filed, had to pay gazillions in Compensatory Services (which will probably still happen, though at a greatly reduced rate of incidence), had to pay for the extra audits and whatever else it’s had to deal with. This is literally millions of dollars that don’t need to be spent anymore.

So, it’s Kudos to the Special Education teachers, to the related service people, to the IEP Chairs, to the people in the Special Education office, to the parents who advocate for their children, to the principals who supported all these efforts, and to just plain everyone for a Job Well Done.

Teachers Pet, But They Don’t Let Students

Dr. Kennedy: And how do see your place in this family?
Dewey: Well, I'm the favorite. You know, the one everybody loves the most. The cute one, the one everybody looks out for and gives presents to. And sometimes they even make the birds sing to me or the clouds spell out my name.

--Malcolm in the Middle, “Clip Show” (4/28/02)

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If you have a license to teach in Maryland, and you’d like to keep that license, the state requires that you take some courses in Reading every now and again. With all the time I spent working on my Administrator I endorsement, the reading courses fell by the wayside. In fact, I completely forgot about them until I submitted my paperwork for the Admin I. It came back with a note, telling me that I couldn’t get the endorsement because I hadn’t completed my Reading requirement. What’s more, my license was about to expire. But, no worries: the State has magnanimously given me a two-year extension to get the reading coursework done.

Cool, says I. I’ll take them this summer and all will be well.

Then the other shoe dropped. While the state was willing to give me two years, the City wasn’t. My boss told me that, according to Human Resources, I needed to have that coursework in-hand by July 1 or else I was going to lose my position. Nothing personal, it’s a city-wide requirement for certain level positions. The really bad news was, I learned all this in early January, so I not only had to get registered for class, I had to register for TWO similar classes for the same semester.

I started calling schools but kept running into obstacles, most of them related to the fact that the first week of January is a pretty crummy time to call a college. CCBC, Morgan, Coppin, BCCC, and a couple of others all added up to nothing that day. Either nobody was answering the phones, or the people I needed to talk to were unavailable. (To be fair, two of them did call me back later on but neither one could help me this semester.)

For whatever reason, I’d been avoiding calling the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, perhaps because I’d just finished there and just wanted to go elsewhere. I like the idea of going to different schools as a means of keeping one’s education from getting too inbred. But after all these No-Go phone calls, I caved in and called CND. Naturally, they answered the phone AND the person I needed to speak to was right there.

Bonus points: the courses were both open and, because I’d last attended in May, I was still considered an “active” student. So, no application fees or any of that rigamarole. However, CND is a relatively pricey school and the courses were going to be about $1200 each. I went in to register, and the registrar’s office, under the impression that I’d get a 50% reimbursement, took $1400 off my hands (including a couple of unavoidable fees) and let me attend the classes. I did get some reimbursement, but I also got a bill for $900 in the mail a couple of days ago. Booger.

Now, over the past couple of years I’ve heard complaints about these courses, about how they’re a waste of time and such. Not surprisingly, these complaints are coming from the same people who paid $75 to take the course on the fast-and-dirty track. I’m actually doing some work here, baby.

I’m not a shy guy in class. I do like to particpate and I’m one of those folks who actually enjoys going to school. But in one of my classes, most of the group is pretty quiet, so it sometimes seems like I’m the only person who’s participating. The teacher asks relatively simple questions and they all look at her like it’s a trick question. So I’ll pop up with the (obvious) answer. Lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve become the teacher’s “go-to” guy for answering some questions. She’ll ask the class as a whole, then call on me specifically. Tonight I got that feeling like I was monopolizing the conversation, and finally started burying my face in my notebook, taking copious notes which did little more than parrot the handouts we’d just been given. (This sort of activity helps me remember things, but still.) No eye contact means maybe I won’t be the guy who drags the rest of the class into the conversation.

At the end of the class, as we started to break up, the woman who sat behind me called me back to her. I leaned in to see what was on her mind. She asked me, “Have you had Dr. X before?”

I said, “No.” Then it hit me what she was getting at, so I added, “I don’t know why she’s calling on me so much, either.” She smiled. “I don’t know!” I repeated.

Just a few more weeks of class, and then…I don’t know. I need to figure out my next steps, educationally.

Head Line

Bart Simpson: That place is weird. A man in the bathroom kept handing me towels, until I paid him to stop.
Homer Simpson: [holding a stack of towels] Should have held out longer, boy!

--The Simpsons, “Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield” (2/4/96)

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This evening, when I got home, Wee One told me that tonight was No Cooking Night.

“No Cooking Night” is a fundraiser for her school. Each month, a different restaurant in the area sponsors a No Cooking Night for the school. The idea is, the family goes out and has a meal at the restaurant, and the restaurant in turn kicks a piece of its take for the evening over to the PTA. It’s a pretty successful program, and it’s allowed the PTA to do some nice things for the school.

Wife was upstairs with a headache, so it was going to be just Wee One and me. And, because Wee One has her tumbling class, we had to leave right away. I didn’t have time to take off my tie, change into sneakers or much else. Back out the door we went.

This also meant that, by the time we got to the restaurant, I had to use the rest room. But since time was tight, I had to wait until after we’d ordered our meals. At that point I finally made the proverbial beeline for the Men’s Room.

At first, I was in there alone, using the only urinal in there. Shortly thereafter, a young boy came in, perhaps in the third grade. “Hi,” he said. Now, as it happens, I spend a lot of time in Wee One’s school, so I thought that maybe he’d seen me go into the bathroom and knew who I was. Plus, I was still wearing my ID tag from work. So I simply replied, “Hi there.”

Then he said to me, “My name’s Bobby*, what’s yours?”

I said, “I’m Mr. Call.”

Bobby went into the bathroom stall and said, “Hi, Mr. Call.”

I asked him, “Do you go to "[Wee One’s school]?”

He said, “No! I’m going to the bathroom!”

Made my night. Thanks, Bobby.

*Not his real name, of course.

Steve Winwood Wasn’t Here

Annie: I was so unpopular in high school, the crossing guards used to lure me into traffic.

--Community, “Introduction to Statistics” (10/29/09)

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Last Tuesday we got the word that school was going to be open for the rest of the week, but because of the snow still on sidewalks and such, the schools would open on two-hour delays each day. So my boss dispatched everyone in the office to go to the schools and offer up whatever support they needed: if they were having problems with heat or snow removal, we were supposed to report it in so they could get a crew out there. If the cafeteria didn’t get food or milk to replace the stuff that might have gone bad during the snow days, we were supposed to make sure that it happened before the youngsters arrived. And if they needed an extra body somewhere in the building, we were to find a way to help out.

The word went out Tuesday afternoon to the principals and, of the six schools to which I was assigned (two per day), only one really took the time to think about what he might need someone to do: he was down a secretary so he was hoping someone could man the phones for awhile. He needed help with traffic control (literally, as in cars) during the beginning and ending of the school day. His school was having trouble with the Internet, so getting someone to run data reports would be helpful. A little assistance in the cafeteria would be nice. And so on. It was good to have a list of things to choose from.

This didn’t mean that the other schools I visited didn’t need me; but my assistance was more of an “on-the-fly” thing. One of the schools I visited in this capacity I’d seen earlier in the day, and there was all kinds of snow along the curb that the kids had to climb over to get to the sidewalk. By the time I returned later on, that snow had thankfully been removed. But the principal indicated that she still needed someone to assist with traffic control.

The school is on a two-lane street and the view from the parking lot’s entrance was partially occluded by a big pile of snow, so that was my destination: waving cars in and out of the parking lot and handling the bottleneck there. In the best of weather this school can get a little crazy at pick-up and drop-off time, so they were probably glad to have someone handling traffic. Most of what I did was run interference for the cars that wanted to do something stupid, but you quickly learn that there’s always someone who’s going to thwart you, and sure enough I found someone.

One gentleman was pulling in toward the curb and, finding his way temporarily blocked, stopped in front of the parking lot entrance. I gave him a wave and said, “Hey, you’re on a driveway.” He looked around him sheepishly and then crawled forward to get out of the way. Shortly after that, a minivan that was parked in front of him turned out hard left, then began to back up. This genius was making a three-point turn, in front of a school, across a double-yellow line, with only a lane and a half available (because they hadn’t cleared all the snow from the far side of the street)! The guy who’d just moved hit his horn. I called out. Too late: she backed into the guy.

She pulled forward to separate the vehicles (no damage, thank goodness), then started to get out of the minivan.

The minivan that was still running and was now parked across both lanes. “Whoa whoa whoa, you can’t leave your car there.”

“Well, I backed into the guy, I gotta go talk to him. The road’s all messed up, you know.”

“It’s messed up everywhere in the neighborhood. That doesn’t mean you can make a U-turn over a double-yellow line in front of a school. Just go around the block, already. Meantime, park over there and then talk to him.”

By now the road was pretty well backed up in both directions, so when she moved out, I had to let a lot of traffic through. This woman was still determined to turn around mid-block, so her newest tactic was to back up toward the parking lot entrance and then cut the wheels so that she essentially backed into the lot, then turned out of the lot. Not too awful an idea, except that there were cars waiting to come out that had to scramble out of the way. Plus, she nearly hit ME with this maneuver. Also, by doing this she essentially swung the nose end of the vehicle back out into the lane and just sat there, once again blocking one lane. Finally I really had no recourse but to stop everybody so that she could make this dumbass move. At least she was gone for the day.

The next day I was assigned to a different school, but it was still one that needed some traffic control at the end of the day. This time around, the problem was that the popular street for pick-up/drop-off was a small side street that ran up the side of the school and terminated at a traffic light. Compounding this situation was the extra snow (lost a lane) and a big truck down near the traffic light that couldn’t park straight and created a bit of a bottleneck down there. Fun!

I was stationed at the end of the block opposite the traffic light, near the front of the school, and I directed cars into the intersection as I saw spaces opening up, and helped kids cross the intersection. Again because of the snow, they had no choice but to cross diagonally through the intersection, so I ran interference for them. Nobody got hit, but there was one woman in a tan minivan who insisted on honking her horn to get people moving. I pointed out to her that the light was red and therefore nobody was going anywhere, but that didn’t matter to her: a car about two hundred feet away pulled into the school’s parking lot, thereby creating a space for everyone to move forward one car’s length, so to her (I swear to god this was her logic), the horn-honking got everyone to move. “See? Everyone moved down, so it must be working.” HONK.

Fun times!