Restarting

I spent my time in tech today teaching people how to flush up the various pieces of a platform.  One person stand here, one person stand there, hold the wood in place like this, push down so that the under side aligns.  I haven't done that in more than a year.  We built lots of platforms last year, but I was not the one to do it.  My seniors constructed most of it, with the assistance of the new people.  Those new people can now build platforms themselves.  It was nice when I was not the only source of knowledge in the shop. 

I'm attempting a huge build this year, the largest I've ever done.  We have two shows going up at once: our one act for District Competition and the fall show.  The fall show has ten platforms, the one act has four.  Everything rolls.  I am confident that I have the ability to do it, but it will take a long time without the student leadership I had last year.  My seniors knew how to do almost everything.  One of them designed, focused and programed the lights by herself.  Another built the complicated bookcases for our one act.  I gave them drawings and said go.  I helped solve the problems that arose.  They bounced ideas off of me.  And I hardly ever picked up a drill or saw.

I have great kids this year.  Some of them are born leaders and will be amazing techs in six months, but I wish they were amazing now.

Conquering Mount Tetris

I changed schools this year, and in so doing, left the shop that I spent the last 5 years cleaning, organizing,  and updating.  Year one, basic tools.  Year two, a fresh coat of paint.  Year three, order.  Year four, new storage spaces.  Year five, more organization.  This year, I stepped into a shop and theatre that is much younger, much smaller, and also in a sad, sad state.  Four years of a technical theatre program run by students and a few parent volunteers left the shop with vice grips that won't grip, a table saw covered in paint, and a teetering mountain of platforms and flats.  It loomed over the stage left wing, daring anyone to climb its craggy sides, taunting me with it's poorly constructed stairs and over-built platforms.  Its creators dubbed it Mount Tetris.

In the months since I took this job, I had successfully pushed the mound of lumber and screws out of my mind.  Until last week, I could work around it, but with the fall show looming on the horizon, I knew that Mount Tetris had to come down.

It took 25 students 3 days to go from top to bottom.  We saved what we could reuse and threw away the rest.  The pile has now dwindled to a few flats and a seemingly endless pile of 2x8s.

With the demise of Mount Tetris comes a new era: The Flat Storage Space.

Fleeing from Hypocrisy

Mashing the "on" button on the projector, I glance up and see a raised hand.  A look and a nod gives the student permission to speak.

"Miss, how come we have to write every day?"

"Well, it's Creative Writing.  It kind of says it in the name of the course.  And it's good for you.  It helps get the juices flowing, gets your mind in the right place."

That is why I make them write every day, to get their minds in the right place.  But I feel like quite the hypocrite requiring them to write regularly even though I haven't set pen to paper--or finger to keyboard as the case may be--in months.  So, after more than a year of ignoring this blog, I've come back, if only to feel like less of a fraud when I tell my kids to write because it's good for them. Time will tell if I have the discipline to stay with it.

Have I Mentioned I Have A Ukulele?

One of my kids came back from Christmas vacation toting a cheap ukulele he got for under $30 at Sam Ash.  It came with a book and CD.  The package deal should tell you something about the quality of this ukulele.  So he was learning a few songs, slogging through the process of training his fingers to switch from chord to chord, getting frustrated because it wouldn't stay in tune.  So I tuned it for him.  And then I played it too.  And then I wanted one.  Well, actually, I'd wanted one for a while.  In my travels through the eclectic corners of YouTube, I'd stumbled on a few ukulele gems that made me want to do what they do.  This video was probably the one that I found most amusing and first piqued my interest in the little instrument:

A week later, I had one.  Ordered off of eBay from some guy in Hawaii (where else), it arrived in a fun shaped box.  I could play it immediately, since I learned to play guitar during my freshman year of college.  From the first strum I was hooked.  It's a happy instrument.  It's too light and cute for anything too serious.  You can't play death metal on a ukulele.  Jake Shimabukuro, a ukulele master, made especially famous by this YouTube video, is oft heard saying, "if everyone played the ukulele, the world would be a better place.”  And I think he's right.  You just can't be sad playing the ukulele.  It's not that kind of instrument. 

This summer, along with the other projects I'm working on, I'm working on my ukulele skills.  I'm even practicing *gasp* SCALES.  I'm still slogging through Toxic (see above), and I'm also determined to learn this:

I have a lot of work fun ahead of me.

Summertime and the Living is Easy

I spend the majority of my year looking forward to the eight weeks from June to August when I don't have to see teenagers. Not that I don't like my teenagers, I'd just rather not see them every day.  Well, most of them.  Regardless, I start the school year ready for the school year to be over, but when summer comes I find myself bored and wishing there was something to do.  I sleep a lot (because that's something I don't do much of for the rest of the year), I read (see previous parenthetical statement), I watch a lot of movies, spend too much time on YouTube.  Nothing beneficial, except maybe the sleep. 

So this summer, I'm trying to be a little more productive.  I'm working on a sewing project, because I find it a little sad that I can build a huge set out of wood without much difficulty, but have never made a garment of any kind.  I went in to work to day to do get some stuff done.  Nothing important, and nothing that would be done in the course of the year because of it's lack of urgency, but something that I hope will make life a little easier next year. 

But I'm worried that despite my good intentions, I will keep staying up way too late (it's only 2 AM, this is not late!) and spending way too much time lying in bed doing, well, nothing.  So I figured, maybe I should blog about it.  Because nothing sucks more than getting to August and realizing I haven't really done anything with my summer other than play video games and sleep. 

Here's to a productive summer.

Every so often, as I pick up my pen and paper journal, I ask myself, "why don't you blog anymore?"

This is why.

Not that I would be as foolish as this particular teacher; I know better than to insult students in a public forum. But as a result of the caution that will keep me gainfully employed, most topics of discussion are removed from the table. I can't talk about my students, thus, I have nothing to talk about. It makes me sad. On some level, writing to someone other than my future self in an overpriced notebook that I bought a Barnes & Noble is very gratifying. So, I don't blog anymore.

Sadness.

In Defense of Refs

In case you've been living in a hole for the last two weeks, it's World Cup time. In the US, it seems like the most watched sporting event in the world has finally come to our shores, or maybe it's just that my family has cable now so I can actually watch it. Along with the fervor of the Cup has come controversy surrounding the refs, and the US National Team was right in the thick of it (that is, up until yesterday, when we were once again bested by Ghana). It seems like every time there is a major competition for international soccer bragging rights, there is controversy over a referee's call. Just today, England was shorted a goal when the ref failed to see that the ball crossed the goal line. And don't even get me started on Koman Coulibaly. Right now, there is much debate over whether to use technology to assist the referee in making the correct call. FIFA seems firmly against it, but the cry for change grows louder with each missed call, each wrongly disallowed goal (or two). My opinion on that debate can wait for another time.

Today, I would like to speak as a former youth soccer ref and lover of the game:

Lay off the refs.

Yeah, I said it.

It's easy for us in our comfortable lounge chairs to deem something a terrible call. Ask anyone in my family, I did my fair share--more than my fair share--of complaining about the calls last Friday (and Saturday...and Sunday...and...). But coming from someone who has made a terrible call, had perfectly correct calls criticized, been called names and cursed at, I can say with full conviction that being the person with the whistle is not easy. And that was with 14 year olds. Imagine trying to make accurate calls at the speed of play at the World Cup, where the difference between a clean challenge and a hard dangerous tackle is inches. In addition we expect the ref to read the mind of the player rolling on the pitch while dealing with the sheer noise of 40,000+ screaming, vuvuzela playing fans who think they know the game better and can see events more clearly from their nose bleed seats. While we're at it, let's not forget that the ref is running just as much as the players, at least 3 miles and probably more, while expected to make perfect decisions every single time. It is not an easy job.

Compare the job of the three referees on the field in soccer (four, if you count the fourth official, but he doesn't really do much) to that of the seven on the field in American football (plus the guy in the replay booth in the college game). Granted, the sport is a bit different, and there is much more contact. But I would wager that it is just as difficult to sort out the scrum in the goal box on a corner kick or set play as it is to untangle the line of scrimmage. And refs in American football have the advantage of the replay and the flag system. They have the opportunity to take back their mistakes. It's not so with soccer. Once the whistle is blown, it's blown and it can't be taken back.

So, I say it again. Lay off the refs. They are human and make mistakes. Does FIFA need to change the way they handle the missed calls and unsavory situations? Yes. But leave the refs alone, at least during the match. They can't be blamed for FIFA's refusal to step into the 21st Century and embrace technology. Oh, and a little ref accountability wouldn't hurt.