Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 158

One of the best years ever

On Friday night, a friend said, “Congratulations. You survived your school year. Did you hold up okay?”

“It was one of the best years of my teaching career,” I replied.

At first he looked surprised. Then he assumed that I was expressing pride in being able to help others during this perilous time. He thought I might be reflecting on the risks taken in order to support my students and their families and feeling good about what I had accomplished on behalf of others.

And yes, it’s true. While most of my friends and clients spent a majority of the pandemic working from home and maintaining social distance from the world, I spent seven hours a day, five days a week, in a room filled with 20 other human beings.

Kids, too. Less than reliable human beings when it came to mask adherence and social distancing.

Many of my friends and clients thought I was crazy. While school districts across the country remained remote, our school district was back in business by October. Credit administration and teachers for making this happen, but also credit the residents of the state in which I live, which has enjoyed some of the lowest infection rates, high mask adherence rates, and highest vaccination rates in the nation.

When everyone pulls on the same rope, good things can happen.

Nevertheless, it’s true. There were certainly risks involved.

More than half of my students entered quarantine at some point during the school year as a result of contact tracing.

I also went into a two week quarantine after Elysha contracted COVID-19 – almost certainly while teaching – and isolated herself in the bedroom for two weeks. During that time, I slept on the couch, kept my family fed, supported my own children – also in quarantine – as they learned from home and worried about their mother, and taught my students by beaming to the Smartboard from my dining room table while a paraprofessional supported me in the classroom.

We also drove to the testing site every day for yet another COVID test, assuming that we’d all eventually test positive.

Miraculously, we never did.

It was a tough couple weeks that included Clara’s birthday, celebrated at a distance and not like any birthday we’ve ever celebrated before.

To Clara’s credit, she said it was great. “One of her best birthdays ever,” she told us. Friends delivered gifts and well wishes. Elysha wore a mask and stood on the other side of the house as Clara made a wish and blew out the candles on cake made and delivered by friends. Gifts were opened. Somehow we found a way to enjoy the day, mostly thanks to Clara’s indomitable spirit.

Still, I was frightened almost every day. Frightened for my safety but even more afraid for my students, their families, my family, and my colleagues.

I know fellow teachers with certain risk factors that made COVID-19 especially dangerous who still came to work every day because they thought it was important to be with children during this time.

I worried about them constantly.

But none of these sacrifices were why it was one of my best years of teaching ever.

It simply was.

Despite the loss of treasured traditions like our four day trip to Camp Jewell, our hike of the Freedom Trail, our annual science fair, and our weekly Town Meeting, it was still one of my best years ever.

Even though social distancing required the removal of the stage, curtains, and sound system that I had built into my classroom, and with it, the loss of our annual Shakespearean production, it was still one of my best years ever.

Why?

Mostly it was my students.

A collection of human beings who bonded like no other under the fear and pressure of a pandemic. A group of children who engaged in conversations about social justice, racism, and bigotry in ways no class ever before. Kids who fought like hell to have fun in a world where smiles were constantly hidden and games of tag were not allowed.

It was a school year spent under the trees in front of our school, reading books together and talking. It was a year filled with walks in the adjacent forest, through sun, rain, and two feet of snow. It was the day we spent watching the inauguration of a new President and our first female, black Vice President of Asian descent. It was school days filled with happy, grateful children struggling for normalcy in a world turned upside down.

It wasn’t always easy.

Planning and teaching lessons to children in class and quarantined students at home simultaneously was not easy. Redesigning lessons to remove elements that did not support social distancing was a pain in the ass. Supporting students who had lost family members was hard.

But those kids made it all better. Every day they made it better. They came to school happy to learn, excited to see what crazy thing I might do next, and prepared to support one another in this time of crisis and fear.

I remember the way our country came together in the wake of 9/11. For a brief but glorious moment in American history, I felt like everyone was pulling on the same rope. Americans united as building burned.

Maybe that’s what made this year especially good. A group of students – facing the hardship and fear of a pandemic – came together like few before and bonded like no other. Maybe the struggle and grind of our daily existence made all the petty problems of past years disappear. Maybe the way the tragic events of the summer opened up conversations about social justice, bigotry, and racism brought us closer together than ever before.

Or perhaps I just got lucky. Maybe I was blessed with a group of extraordinary human beings who did extraordinary things.

I think it might be that.

Whatever the reason, this past school year was one of my best. An unforgettable and delightful year of teaching young people who I find myself already missing on this first real day of summer vacation.

Cat and boy

Early morning. The boy is under the blanket, building worlds in Minecraft.

The cat is hanging out with his buddy.

I continue to be astounded by how affectionate, dependent, and attached two entirely different species – incapable of any meaningful communication – can be with each other.

Somehow we can live in harmony and love with our pets – despite our astounding biological differences – yet around the world, human beings of the same species struggle to treat each other with decency and basic humanity.

We see the differences in skin color or sexuality or religious belief as reasons for hatred, bigotry, and violence despite the fact that we are all of the same species.

Maybe if we simply spoke less and sat beside each other much more, things would be better.

Frustration and anonymity

The beauty of this particular prank, perpetrated upon me by a student in my class, was twofold:

1. I moved the mouse. I moved the mouse again. I moved the mouse again and again and again. I checked the cord. I unplugged and re-plugged the cord. I banged the mouse. I wondered if the problem was the mouse, the software, or the hardware connecting the mouse to the computer. I shook the mouse. Only then did I turn it over and find the paper blocking the laser and the note.

2. No one ever admitted to the prank. Rather than enjoying the satisfaction of declaring victory, the perpetrator understood that me not knowing who did this would be almost as frustrating as the prank itself.

It would also prevent me from enacting revenge.

I already miss those kids so much.

The Late Show is back.

Every morning without fail, I watch Stephen Colbert’s monologue on The Late Show.

For the past 15 months, Colbert’s monologue and show has been performed from his bathtub, a home in North Carolina, and finally a small room in the Ed Sullivan Theater. Rather than calling his show “The Late Show,” Colbert has spent the pandemic welcoming his television audience to “A Late Show.”

On Monday night, for the first time since the pandemic began, Colbert performed in front a live studio audience of vaccinated Americans.

For the first time in more than 15 months, Stephen Colbert welcomed his audience back to “The Late Show.”

The simple change of word – one article for another – brought a tear to my eye.

Since the pandemic began, I have been reassuring people that the day would come when we’d look back on this time and say, “Remember when we all wore masks and tried like hell to stay six feet apart? Wasn’t that crazy?”

Well, not everyone.

A bunch of stupid, selfish, unpatriotic losers desperately trying to compensate for fragile egos with false bravado didn’t wear masks as often, or at all, but remember when all the decent, intelligent, patriotic Americans wore masks and tried like hell to stay six feet apart?

“That was crazy,” we would say. “Right?”

We’re already saying things like that.

There was a time when I was washing and quarantining my groceries in the garage for three days. There were two weeks in the winter I was reading Harry Potter to the kids with a laptop perched between them, Elysha beaming in from the bedroom via Zoom as she recovered from COVID.

Remember those crazy days?

The pandemic is certainly not over. Though I live in a state and a region where more than 70% of residents are vaccinated and the positivity rate is well below 1%, there are still parts of our country where the positivity rate is above 10% and less than a third of the population is vaccinated.

Outside the United States, the situation is even worse.

But normalcy is also slowing returning as we beat back this virus. Things are getting better.

For more than a year, I have waited patiently for Stephen Colbert to switch that one little word and return to hosting The Late Show.

This week it finally happened. One tiny word that, for me, signaled so much. Another positive step toward the end of the fear, illness, and death that has ravaged our country and world for so long.

 

Two worst words ever

Eighteen years ago, I was sitting in a car with Elysha. We had just enjoyed dinner and drinks with friends, and I had driven her back to Wolcott School, where we both taught and where we had left her car before going out for the evening.

Elysha and I weren’t together yet. My crush on Elysha had begun more than a year before, but after a year of assuming that she was far too beautiful and smart to ever fall for someone like me, there was hope. Our friendship seemed to be growing into something more.

Honestly, as I write these words almost two decades later, I still can’t believe it. On July 15 of this year, Elysha and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage, but I still have moments to this day when I look and her and think, “I can’t believe I’m married to this woman.”

That was how I was feeling as we sat in that car, chatting about the previous evening. Then things got quiet, and Elysha said, “You know I like you.”

I couldn’t believe it. My thought was, “No, I didn’t know you liked me. I hoped that someday, when I became twice or three times the man I am today, you might consider liking me. But liking me now? No. Not possible. Also, hooray!”

Instead, I said this:

“I’m flattered.”

Nothing more. Not one solitary word beyond those two epically stupid words.

In my defense, Elysha was ending a relationship with another person at the time, and I wasn’t quite sure if she had officially ended it or not, so I wanted to do the right thing while also doing the right thing.

This, it turns out, is not a defense. But it was what I was thinking.

Elysha paused, presumably waiting for me to say something not so stupid. When I didn’t, she said, “Okay. Good night,” and exited the car.

Then she drove away.

It wasn’t until I was pulling into the parking lot of my apartment complex a few minutes later, thrilled beyond belief that Elysha liked me, when it hit me like a bolt of lightning:

“I’m flattered? You said, ‘I’m flattered?’ Oh my God! What the hell were you thinking?”

I panicked. The woman who I was probably already in love with had been brave enough to make the first move, and my response hadn’t been “I like you, too!” or “Let’s get married!” or “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

It was, “I’m flattered.”

I called Elysha. No answer, of course. This was before text messaging, and at the time (which still exists today) Elysha didn’t always, or ever, check her voicemails.

Still, I decided to leave one. Pacing by the dumpsters in the parking lot, I left a long, pleading message urging her to forget my momentary failure of brain cells and call me back immediately.

She never did.

The next morning, I found a note on my desk from Elysha, asking me to forget what she had said the night before and assuring me that we could still be friends. She apologized for making things awkward.

I snatched the paper off my desk and marched up to her classroom. I found her sitting behind her desk, preparing for the day.

I held the paper aloft, shook it, and said, “No. This cannot be. I was stupid last night. I like you, too. Please forget last night. And for once in your life, could you please check your voicemail.”  Then I crumpled her note into a ball and tossed it into the trashcan.

The rest is history. Less than three months later, we were living together, and by the end of that year, I would propose to her at the top of the steps in Grand Central Station while two dozen friends and family, hidden in the holiday crowd, watched.

I told that story to my students a couple weeks ago. Standing on the spot where I told Elysha for the first time that I liked her – now a grassy, outdoor seating area after her former classroom was bulldozed to the ground – I told the kids about that night, those two stupid words, and my frantic attempt to fix everything.

They laughed. Even they knew how stupid those two words had been.

Yesterday, I stood on a stage under some trees in front of our school for our fifth grade celebration. My kids are moving onto middle school. I spoke about our strange, hard, and glorious year together, then I invited each student to the stage so I could say some amusing and heartfelt words about them before awarding them with a certificate of achievement.

After I was finished speaking about the first student, I turned, reached out, and shook her hand.

She looked at me and said, “I’m flattered.”

As I shook the hands of each student, they smiled and said, “I’m flattered.”

Children these days are far more ingenious, organized, and strategic than my generation ever was.

Also slightly crueler.

You cannot begin to imagine how much I will miss these kids after today.

Swear jar court

While consulting with a client yesterday, Clara heard me swear. From across the house, she shouted that I owed another 25 cents in her and Charlie’s self-imposed swear jar.

A little while later, I received this notice, informing me that my debt has reached $30. If I don’t pay off my debt in the next 48 hours, I would be taken to swear jar court.

Swear jar court?

Why would I ever pay off all those IOU’s in the jar when I can experience my children’s version of court instead.

I can’t wait.

Rating the group songs

After working as a wedding DJ for nearly 25 years, I thought I’d offer some thoughts and opinions on those songs often played at weddings that have a dance associated with them.

Here they are… the good, the bad, and the ugly:

The Macarena: This is the worst of all the group dances. In general, I believe that group dances are best when they afford the dancers some level of independence and creativity. The Macarena is the soulless repetition of a a dozen hand and arm movements, followed by a quick shake of the hips and a turn. Over and over and over again. Nothing changes. The song’s lyrics don’t tell the dancers what to do, but given that you barely move your feet, it isn’t hard for anyone to dance to this song.

But again, you barely move your feet. While dancing. It’s awful.

The Electric Slide: Slightly better than The Macarena in that it affords dancers the opportunity to move. You can quickly identify confident, skilled dancers from their less confident, less skilled brethren as they dance to this song. It still doesn’t afford much by way of creativity, but at least you can show off your ability to move your body with rhythm and purpose. Also, nothing in the lyrics to the song (actually called Electric Boogie) tells you what to do, so dancers of The Electric Slide need to have learned the song somewhere in order to participate, thus demonstrating a level of expertise that can be slightly appreciated.

The Hokey Pokey: It’s silly, stupid, and fantastic. Yes, the song’s lyrics actually dictate the dancer’s movements, but there is enormous flexibility in this regard. “Put your right hand in” can be a simply jab of the arm or something much more elaborate and creative. Naysayers will see the Hokey Pokey as ridiculous and stupid, but I advise you to check your pretentious attitude at the door and have some fun with this excellent dance.

The Chicken Dance: Brace yourself for this knowledge drop: This is the best of the group dances. I know, it’s silly. Designed for children more than adults. Nonsensical and corny. Also incredibly fun. During the chorus (which contains no words), there are no rules. Do whatever you’d like. Fly like a chicken. Do-si-do . Grind up against a willing partner. Drag people from their seats. Break dance. The Chicken Dance declares, “We are here to have fun, damn it, and we sure as hell aren’t taking ourselves too seriously.”

The Cha Cha Slide: The Cha Cha Slide affords more opportunities for creativity than the original Electric Slide, primarily because phrases like “Charlie Brown!” and “Turn it out!” are very much open for interpretation. The lyrics also tell you what to do, so people with little or no knowledge of the song can participate, making it more accessible than The Electric Slide, but damn it’s long.

Party Train (The Locomotion, Hot Hot Hot, Conga): I strongly support a party train of some kind. It allows for enormous creativity, both from the person leading the party train as well as those dancing in the line. It’s also an excellent opportunity to drag those folks from their seats who want to dance but are less confident and need some encouragement. Party trains are best when launched spontaneously. If a DJ needs to organize a party train, it doesn’t feel nearly as good.

Cotton Eye Joe: Cotton Eyed Joe (the Rednex version) is a traditional country song updated in 1994 by a Swedish dance group. Though it sounds like something more modern, the actual dance is still a country line dance. I don’t support any of the country line dances. They afford no creativity and are often done as automatically and dispassionately as the equally awful Macarena. Don’t be fooled by the song. It’s country line dancing in disguise.

Time Warp: The Time Warp is a song and dance from the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, making it a much loved cult hit by a small but enthusiastic group of people, myself included. I’m a card carrying member of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fan club and have attended the live version of this movie many times as well as the Broadway show, so I may be biased here, but this song is quite fun. Parts of the song are instructive, but others allow for  creativity, which strikes me as the perfect balance for a group dance. It also instructs dancers to perform a pelvic thrust at various times, which is always fun and amusing.

YMCA: In most instances, this song invites dancers to reproduce the letters Y-M-C-A with their arms, which is fine. Amusing and easy. But there is a more complex version of this dance that my DJ partner, Bengi and I, would teach and lead at weddings. We would also dress up members of the bridal party as the Village People and have them perform for the wedding. But given that almost no one knows the actual dance, the reproduction of the letters of Y-M-C-A is simple and allows everyone to participate while also dancing to a good song, making it an excellent choice for most weddings.

The Cupid Shuffle: This is an excellent group song, combining instructive elements along with enormous amounts of independence and creativity. In many ways, it’s an upgraded version of The Electric Slide, affording more opportunities to show off skills while also making it accessible for all.

There are other group songs, of course. Some might consider songs like The Twist, Twist and Shout, and Sweet Caroline group dances, but I think of those as songs with specific dance moves that you can opt to do or not and still enjoy.

There are also hip hop group sings like Tootsie Roll and The Wobble that I have never seen done in person, but you can see them performed online, so presumably they are done somewhere. I’ve played those songs many times, but no one has ever done or attempted to do these dances, so formulating any kind of opinion  on them isn’t possible.

Many of the couples for whom I work avoid all of these songs, which is fine. You don’t need group dances. But there is one advantage to playing a few of them.

Even the stupid, soulless, mind-numbing Macarena.

Not everyone at a wedding is a confident dancer. Many people don’t dance because they worry about looking foolish or inexperienced. The spotlight effect, a term used by social psychologists to refer to the tendency we have to overestimate how much other people notice about us, is on full display on the dance floor.

It’s a terrible shame, of course, because dancing requires little more than confidence. No one really cares what you’re doing as long as you are having fun.

For some of those less confident or even unwilling dancers, these group songs afford them an opportunity to join their friends on the dance floor for something a little less intimidating. Rather than having to do something original, they simply need to follow instructions, which is another reason why I like The Chicken Dance and The Hokey Pokey so much.

No one expects you to look cool while dancing to these songs.

Dancing to a group song oftentimes breaks the ice for some of these more hesitant guests, allowing them to dance the night away, especially if the DJ follows one of these group dances with a popular, infectious, sing-along song that will keep these hesitant dancers dancing.

Zombie alert

As I dragged the large box to the recycle bin, I wondered how and why the cats had torn a fist-sized hole in the cover.

What the hell is wrong with these cats?

Then I saw this photo in Elysha’s Facebook feed and things made a lot more sense.

Borders add nothing but waste and time and expense

Long ago, in some forgotten past, there was a person – probably a teacher – who looked at their bulletin board and said, “You know… if I put some borders around this bulletin board, it might look cute.”

So that’s what they did. They added borders to a bulletin board – probably cut from construction paper or wrapping paper – and the rest is history.

Or…

Long ago, in some forgotten past, a product development manager in a company that manufactures school supplies said, “I know! We’ll fool teachers into believing that bulletin boards require thematic borders to be complete!”

So the company began manufacturing and selling bulletin board borders to guileless teachers who blindly thought, “Yes, it’s true! I need a series of little pencils or balloons or images of the solar system framing the edges of this bulletin board, damn it!”

The result, sadly, is a bizarre and ubiquitous belief that bulletin boards require borders.

In school, of course.

In the real world, bulletin boards already have borders. These borders are called the edges of the bulletin board. No one in the real world is disturbed or upset over a bulletin board’s lack of thematic framing. No one is looking for the thing that displays information to be fetching or delightful. It’s the stuff on the bulletin board that’s supposed to matter.

Not the stuff around the stuff.

I recently added a world map to a perpetually empty bulletin board in my classroom. The map actually serves a purpose. We use it to track featured locations on a daily news show. We add push-pins to the various locations around the world and then discuss these locations in detail.

Quick, contextualized lessons on geography and geopolitical history.

More than one colleague has noticed my world map and suggested that I add some borders around the bulletin board to make it complete.

I pointed out each time that the bulletin board is already complete. It features relevant information that we use almost every day.

More than I could say for a lot of bulletin boards.

My colleagues disagree.

But more importantly, my students do not. I asked them if I needed to add borders to their bulletin board. As disagreeable as they like to be, not a single one of them thought that borders were needed. Many laughed at the notion.

So maybe there’s hope for the future.

And don’t even get me started on the inexplicable need to cover bulletin boards with colorful fabric or large sheets of colored paper. My students also agree that the exposed cork surrounding our world map is just fine, too.

Group descriptors

An unkindness of ravens, also sometimes referred to as a conspiracy of ravens
A crash of rhinos
A murder of crows
A pride of lions
A gaggle of geese

All great ways of describing a group of animals.

I recently heard a new one:

A gossip of women.

Sexist, I know, but there’s research to suggest that women who gossip are happier and healthier than their more discreet counterparts, so the descriptor is not entirely unfounded.

I’ve been trying to come up with equally good descriptors for which I can take credit. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

A gamble of poker players

A concern of mothers

A fumble of left-handers

A fistful of bullies

An argument of attorneys

A sadness of Atlanta Falcons fans

A frustration of golfers

Feel free to use any or all of them, but please be sure to adorn me with enormous amounts of credit, too. Shakespeare invented nearly 2,000 words and phrases in his time.

I’d like to invent at least a few.