Driving

I haven't lived in the DC metro area for very long. I think that at this point, I have a good idea of how the roads all work, which came in handy this weekend. I picked up my cousins at Union Station, which was painless. We made it to the hotel, and again, painless. I then volunteered to drive ('cause I'm crazy) to Arlington National Ceremony and then back to my uncle's house for food, a post-funeral "reception." Saturday I drove around again, to visit my great aunt, back to the hotel, and then again to my uncle's house, just our family. I sat around the dining room table with my mom, my aunts Melanie, Lauren, & Lindy, and my great aunt Alice. They all told stories about driving mishaps and how they met their husbands. It was pretty neat to sit around and hear those stories.

It was also really nice to see my family again. I know I'm biased, but I think they're awesome. I'm excited that we'll be gathering again (at least some of us) in NH this summer.

Now that I've done all of this driving, I feel like a real DC-area resident. I navigated not only the beltway, but also the back roads too, plus missing a turn on the directions from Arlington to Ken's. It was a long weekend and it was also short.

More on Education

Some history of school reform, in the form of what exactly went on the 1980's with the report called "A Nation at Risk" and what the author sees as the risk today. I think that he probably has it right -- that the challenge is making sure that all of our students have access to good quality education, even those traditionally underserved by the system. What's amazing about that? I have no idea. I feel like that's what the Breakthrough Collaborative (formerly Summerbridge) has been saying for years. Seriously, this is news?

Also from the NYT, "Informal Style of Electronic Messages is Showing Up in Schoolwork, Study Finds." First: they did a STUDY on this? And second, duh.

Family in Town

Well, my family is in town, and my mom and aunt unexpectedly showed up at school... This doesn't happen to me very often, as most of the time they live far, far away! But all of a sudden, there they were! Everyone's in town for my aunt's memorial service at Arlington tomorrow.

(Ok, so she wasn't really my aunt. But that's the easiest relationship to shorthand in this case, given the closeness of the extended Greek family. Technically, she was my mom's first cousin, my first cousin once-removed. But who wants to explain that? And she did once introduce me to someone as her niece. So, she was my aunt.)

I get to drive into DC tomorrow to pick up my cousins at Union Station, which should be ok, as adventures go. DC's not bad, the grid and all that, and it's midday, so traffic shouldn't be an issue.

The Election

I can't believe that there are still just over six months until the general election. I read somewhere the other day that pundits/pollsters/media talking heads are getting sick of the election.

Um, the rest of us are too. It's nearly enough to make a girl not vote in November as to protest the length of this presidential election cycle. (Only I certainly will vote. I'm genetically incapable of not voting.)

Proud

I'm the adviser to my school's chapter of the National Honor Society. I was a member back in the day and one of the only things I remember doing was selling candy bars to raise money for a scholarship that we gave at the end of the year. I also remember answering letters to Santa that local kids sent -- we got to write back to them, as Santa. It's a struggle sometimes, getting these busy kids to jump in and take on something else, a project for NHS. But my kids did it, for only the second time this year... I don't think it's part of my job to hound them about getting service projects organized. They have enough to do, you know? Plus, if they're seriously unmotivated, my riding them is just going to make our relationship messed up. So, I leave them alone and support them when they decide to get up and make something happen. That being said, this week:

My kids organized an observance of the Day of Silence at our school. They're selling the stickers that they ordered and they're sending the money back to GLSEN as a donation so they can continue their work. How awesome... They got up at assembly today to announce the event, explain the reasoning behind it, and invite everyone to participate. I wonder how many kids will? I know that it also doesn't really matter. Knowing that it was spearheaded by kids makes it worth it no matter how many of them participate.

Putting It Off

I'm finally getting around to writing a condolence note to the mother of a friend of mine. Stacy died in February, about a week before my birthday. Even thinking about writing the note is making me cry. I don't really have a good excuse for not writing before now, other than that I knew it was going to hurt to write. I don't, of course, know yet what I'm going to write IN the note, not specifically. I chose a brightly colored notecard, which seems right somehow. I do have experience getting sympathy notes and I think that the best ones are ones with specific memories, so I'm going to try to come up with a selection of the right ones.

Stacy and I had been friends since about 3rd grade and we lived just down the street from one another. On the bus on the way home from school, she taught me how to blow bubble gum bubbles. We were Junior Girl Scouts together in elementary school, sang together in chorus in high school, and traveled together to Disney World senior year on a chorus trip. Stacy was my perennial defender in elementary and middle school and while I have forgotten most of the mean things that classmates said to me, Stacy still knew every single one, even when we were nearly 30 years old. She was creative and funny and smart and kind and brave and I miss her so much.

Maybe that's enough for now. Maybe the rest can wait until her memorial service this summer. Stories about her sense of humor and the questions that she asked in chorus ("So, if someone's singing a little sharp and someone else is a little bit flat, does that even out?" -- Stacy was a visual artist, so this makes sense from a color point of view, but not so much for pitch, eh?). How she just knew to hug me and didn't have to say anything when I came up on anniversaries of my dad's death. How she taught me to be more musically artistic just because I knew that she could hear colors.

Grading

Well, here I am, faced with a big old stack of 38 essays to grade. (2 more will appear on Monday and Tuesday, respectively.) I like assigning essays, since I know that it makes the kids better writers to actually do it. But that all goes out the window when it's time to, you know, grade them. Grading is so horrific. I hate that I have to rate students, especially knowing that it affects their self-esteem. (I know it used to affect mine. I rarely ever read a comment on a paper that a teacher or professor wrote until senior year of college.) I wish there was some other way to assess their work without grading. Or testing. Granted papers and projects are better methods of assessment than, say, standardized tests, but still. It's a struggle.

I wonder how much my grading has changed since I was an intern? That year, the kids used to call me "C is for Cynthia." Apparently, I was a tough one. (Seriously, though? There's no excuse for not knowing how to correctly punctuate a sentence when you are in high school. That's the part with rules. Constructing an argument is much more difficult than knowing where to put a comma or whether to use two, to, or too.)

As pain in the ass as my Summerbridge weekly evaluations were, at least they were more descriptive of what the kids could do. I feel like the B+ tells parents and students nothing, which I guess is where our comments come in. But it was easier to be detailed in the weekly evaluations because we only had 8-10 students or whatever. I have 75... (which is nothing compared to some public schools)