Tuesday Slice: Cartoons, current events, and curriculum

 

Oliphant....Oliphant...why did I know that name?

Oliphant appeared in the "Passage" portion of the "CBS Sunday Morning" show, where they memorialize important and famous people who died the previous week.  

Was it eighth grade, or ninth?  I was fortunate to be in a DoDDS school in Germany those years, with amazing teachers and daily access to "The Stars & Stripes" newspaper.  One of those teachers had us combing the paper each evening for political cartoons by Pat Oliphant and op-ed columns by William F. Buckley, Jr and William Safire.  If any of those pieces were present, we were expected to read and respond to them in our notebooks and be prepared to discuss them the next day.  We were also required to cut out news articles from at least three different continents a week and glue them into our notebooks.

Since the news was constantly changing, and Oliphant, Buckley and Safire were not daily contributors, these lessons could not be planned.  The discussions were not "gotcha" exercises; curiosity about the topics and well-thought-out questioning was encouraged. As a seasoned educator, I can look back and admire those assignments as relevant and timely critical thinking lessons.  I feel like I knew a lot more about world events back then, and at a greater depth.

Did we still cover the curriculum?  I'm sure we did.  I'm also sure that it wasn't as jam-packed as today's scope and sequence, and it certainly wasn't scripted.  Those highly trained teachers were trusted to do what they were trained to do, with their own creative tweaks--like tuning adolescents into the pulse of the world by reading the newspaper each night.  I am grateful for the education I received under their care.

William F. Buckley, Jr, courtesy of PBS

Cartoon by Oliphant, June 1973

William Safire, courtesy of Simon & Schuster

Tuesday Slice: Selling, not buying

 

The back-to-school retail ads and emails have begun.  I will admit, I perused the Mead Store on the 'zon, looking at their collection of notebooks and journals. There are a few notebooks and stationery items sitting in my cart...

...but this is the year I need to sell, not buy.  There are four tubs and at least as many piles of teaching materials and decor sitting in my living room, waiting to leave the premises.  Some, like the sequencing cards I bought at the teacher store last summer, have never been opened, since I was taken off of specials rotation last school year and didn't need to have as many activities to offer in the library.  I have bulletin board supplies, alphabet bean bags, bins and baskets and books that I am ready to sell at rock-bottom prices to teachers needing to outfit their classrooms.  The only decision I have left is whether to hold an old-fashioned garage sale in the coming weeks, or take a stab at Facebook Marketplace.

I'm not sure exactly what the future holds for employment opportunities, so I haven't severed all ties with educational email feeds and social media follows.  But I can say that the prospect of shrugging off the mantle of the past thirty-three years is something I am definitely looking forward to.  

Tuesday Slice: Lunching with the ladies

 

The meet-ups always seem to last for three hours.

Two hours in, the food has been eaten, leftovers boxed up.  Servers have refilled our water and tea, delivered and collected the check with a decent tip.  Still we chatter on, talking about work, books, health, kids;  money and retirement plans; the state of education, of government, of employment opportunities.  The phones only come out to look something up, share a picture, add to a TBR pile.  As the last hour winds down, we talk about how great it has been to sit like this, uninterrupted by work and family responsibilities.  We make vague, hopeful plans to do this again soon.

*************

One month after officially retiring, these meals have been bright spots in the murky middle between the last job and the next steps.  I value my friendships with these women.  The one-on-one time outside of work settings reaffirms that we have connections that transcend shared careers and decades-old experience.  Maybe now that I am taking back my time and energy, I can focus on expending both in continuing these soul-filling conversations.

Photo by Kaboompics, negativespace.co

Tuesday Slice: Red and blue in the backyard

The cardinal waited for a moment

     on the trapeze swing

     before making a play

     flying onto the feeder

     next to the dove, who brushed

     him away, to find a bug elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a bluejay waited for a moment

     in the bare tree above

     before making a play

     flying onto the slide's end

     next to a squirrel, who ignored

     him, letting him nab a peanut. 

Tuesday Slice: The nose wiggle

Those of us of a certain age remember the nose wiggle.  If you were like me, you practiced it in the mirror.

I woke up today at 230a, a list of tasks running through my brain, seemingly unending.  Laundry, major decluttering, putting together a garage sale for all of my now-unnecessary teaching materials and classroom decor, scheduling medical appointments, meeting up with friends, catching up on journaling and filling in my planner and writing thank-you notes and meal-planning....you get the idea.

I really wanted to nose-wiggle it done.  One twitch, and the mountain of clothes disappears.  Another, and my job applications are submitted.  Third twitch, and the menus would be filled in through August.

Alas, the nose twitching didn't produce any such effects.  I spent an hour and a half in bed, completing all of the New York Times games and starting my Amazon Prime Day cart, before my brain finally shut off enough to squeeze in a couple more hours of sleep.  The only magic happening will be the arrival of a few tubes of toothpaste and collagen for my coffee, appearing on my doorstep in a few days.

 

Tuesday Slice: Summer slug

 

Technically, I have been on summer break since May 29th.

Technically, I have also been retired from thirty-three years in public education since May 29th.

But here I am on June 16th, feeling like my summer break is just beginning.  The last three weeks of school went by in a blur of the usual end-of-year events rotating with retirement planning, parties, packing up my personal belongings, and leaving the library ready for the next caretaker, to include an eight-page document of transition information.

I treated myself to a retirement party on May 30th at The Oasis, a renowned restaurant here in Austin that overlooks Lake Travis.  It was a joyous celebration with over forty attendees from just about every stage of my educational career.  I was glowing for hours afterwards!  

No rest for the wicked, as they say, or apparently for retirees...the next day was spent doing laundry and preparing for a road trip from Dallas to Maryland, to move our daughter to where her husband has found permanent employment.  The van rental, apartment packing, and following road trip to and from lasted until this past Thursday, when we pulled into our driveway at six pm. 

Everyone who has been on a long trip knows the work that has to be done afterwards--laundry, restocking the fridge, laundry, watering the wilting plants, and more laundry.  I also have to face the mess that has evolved from bringing home my teaching stuff for the last time, as well as what we inherited from our daughter's move.

I had a certain amount of get-up-and-go for the first four days back.  The plants have mostly recovered, we have clean clothes to wear, and I cleaned a head of lettuce for salads.  Our library card needed renewing, and I checked out a just-for-me fantasy.  I put in an application for a job and spent a few hours looking for other opportunities.  The birdfeeder has been filled the last two days.  I made a brain-dump list of over forty things that need to be done, and highlighted them by importance.  I even took my son to see "Ponyo" at a theater, the start of the Ghibli Fest run of movies.

Today, though, I was barely able to pull on clothes.  I've done nothing but putter around the house.  I took an hour-long nap at eleven am.  I spent hours scrolling on my phone.  Haven't looked at the brain-dump tasks even once.  I keep giving myself a mental list of three things at a time to do, then do just one and slump down in a chair to play another game of solitaire on my phone.  Summer slug mode has finally set in...and I, for one, will fully embrace it this week.  I think I deserve at least that much.

Spiritual Journey Thursday: Every new beginning

 

Isaiah 43:18-19: "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?" 

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." — Seneca

May is a month of transition, especially for educators.  The school year is wrapping up; for the oldest students, there is the moving on to the next level.  Retirement announcements from across the district arrive daily in our inboxes.  Teachers who are staying are told about their assignments for the coming year.

I'm in the retirement group this year.

Someone asked if I was going to have a photo retrospective at my upcoming retirement party.  I thought about it for a moment, but decided the effort wasn't worth the emotional return.  I am not the same person I was 39 years ago when I started teaching.  I am happy to celebrate a three-decade long career, and I am grateful for the experience I've gained along the way.  I'm excited to see where this hard-earned knowledge will lead to next.  There's more work to be done--I am ready to do a new thing!

There are those in my circles who are facing much more difficult transitions--losing spouses, losing children.  Grief isn't prescriptive or linear.  The heart will dwell on the past as long as it sees fit.  At some point, though, there are beginnings, however bittersweet. First birthdays, holidays, gatherings in this new reality.  One foot in the shadow of loss, one foot in the sunshine that springs up, unbidden. You learn to honor the past without dwelling in it.

Today, I'm going to choose to be happy and grateful for the new things on my horizon.

What is ending for you, and what new beginnings does it bring?

What do you wish would end, and what do you wish would come next in your journey?