Do NOT sneeze.

Gone are the fifth graders, and with them all my blogging material.  High school is much...quieter, in Miss G.'s room anyway.

When my fifth-graders heard I was going to Miss G.'s room, they became very concerned.  Miss G. has a reputation, even down in fifth grade.  "Don't ever sneeze in her room, and don't yawn, or she'll make you cry!"

I laughed at them.  "Miss G. is a very nice lady," I insisted.

I was sitting in the back of her room on one of my first days, observing.  I sniffed, panicked, and got a tissue.  I sneaked a guilty look at Miss G., then laughed at myself.  But then half an hour later...

...I felt a sneeze impending.  I panicked again and held my breath till it passed.

The next afternoon I was standing at the kitchen sink.  Bear (our big white dog) was dozing in the front yard.  He opened his jaws and yawned and I panicked again:  Bear!  Cover your mouth!  Oh wait -- he's a dog.  And besides Miss G. didn't see it.


[To clarify:  Miss G. really is a kind lady, and she has never yet mentioned sneezing or yawning.]

spelling

Little Brother:  What does "fizzy chick" mean?
Me:  Fizzy -- what??
Little Brother:  p-s-y-c-h-i-c

the edge of the world

The Cow in Apple Time

Lots of windfalls this year:

Seeing apples on the ground always makes me think of this poem:

The Cow in Apple Time (by Robert Frost)

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And to think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup.  Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and her milk goes dry.

first fire in the stove

Perhaps the best thing about autumn -- when we get the wood stove going.

Peter leans over stove-top thermometer:  "It's about 360 degrees."

A minute later:  "This room is about two-thirds the temperature of the stove."

"Huh?"  (HA --  He's wrong this time!)  "But Peter, that would mean this room was 240 degrees."

"No, I mean from absolute zero."

"Hm.  Oh.  Um...[reluctantly] what's absolute zero?"

"About negative 460 degrees.  Absolute zero is when the atoms aren't moving at all."

"Hum."  (I'm silent for about three minutes, doing the mental math.)  Then, grudgingly, "I guess you're right."

Fifth-Graders, Farewell

Yesterday was my last day in fifth grade.  Next week I start high school.  (Quite a jump, Dad says happily: You finally got past fifth grade.)   Nonetheless I will miss my students.  High-schoolers don't say things like this:

#1
Social studies lecture on economics, a PowerPoint slide on credit cards comes up.
Student:  "Are credit cards evil?"

#2
Student at the lunch table, to my face:  "When Miss Eckstrom laughs, her shoulders go up and down.  It's funny."

#3
Student runs up to me:  "Mommy!  -- I mean -- oops!" [claps hand over her mouth]

#4
I'm talking about the English Channel in social studies.  Student:  "Would that be channel 39?"  (I lost it.)

#5
Student:  "Are you wearing those weird leg things that make your skin look darker?
Me:  "You mean nylons?"
Student [bends down and plucks at my ankle]:  "Oh.  My grandma wears those.  At least she used to."
Me [thinking]:  Wow.  I'm behind your grandmother's time.

My students are cooler than your students.

Because mine bring me PIE.

Allison put it on my desk this morning and said, "You get half, and Mrs. D gets half."

This is all that's left.

As soon as the kids left for art we sneaked down to the home ec room and shoveled the halves onto two plates.  Mrs. D said, "I've got forks, just saying."  We trotted back upstairs and each sat down at our desk with a fork.  Mrs. D took the first bite. "It is acceptable to eat half a pie in one sitting, right?"

Five minutes later, Mrs. L stops by from across the hall.  Mrs D says quickly:  "We're not eating whole pies!"

Mrs. L laughs.  "I thought it sounded pretty quiet in here."  She looks closer.  "Wait -- you really do have a whole pie between you!"

Indiana Jones and...rap?

Today was Switcharoo Day for homecoming week.  (Boys dress as girls, girls dress as boys.  In fifth grade this isn't inappropriate yet, just funny.)

This is my best attempt.  Think Indiana Jones.

That's what the kids thought anyway.  They liked the hat but perpetually put it on backwards.

This happened to be the day I fulfilled a promise from several weeks ago.  I had accidentally mentioned one time that it is really fun and helpful to rap to textbooks:  i.e., read your textbook in a rap-like fashion.  (It is amazing how un-bored you become.)

They found this more fascinating than I expected, and I accidentally promised I would rap for them sometime.  This has been making me nervous because rapping really is not my strong point.  Well, today inspiration hit.  I grabbed Tyler's history book and told them about Cabeza de Vaca in a way they'd never heard before.  (No videos for this one, thank goodness.)  "Miz Eckstrom, can you beat box too!?"  "No!"

I wish I could show photos of the boys.  It is distracting to teach tanned farmer boys when they are wearing their sisters' sparkly headbands and pink lipstick.  Their high heels really helped the mincing walk too.  They kept pushing their fake hair back over their shoulders.  "I don't get how girls can stand this stuff!"

The maintenance man was chatting in the doorway when we heard the kids stampeding back from PE.  Mrs. D said gravely, "Sir, you're about to get run over by cross-dressing fifth graders."

The Red Sea

(...in Nebraska, not the Middle East.)  The Memorial Stadium in Lincoln at every Huskers game.

It -- the stadium alone -- becomes the third largest city in Nebraska during the game.  (I think that is impressive?  Aren't we the state with more cows than people?)

(photo credits to Wikipedia for this one)

I witnessed this phenomenon last Saturday.

I had never seen a football game of any sort before (though I had played tackle football in the churchyard back in my glory days).  Some close friends decided this was a woeful deficiency in my education.  Thus they very kindly took it upon themselves to complete my Nebraskan-ness.  (Thank you!)

They said, "The one requirement is that you wear red."  Hmm.  I don't own anything red. I dug a ribbon out of a Christmas box in the basement.  My roommate generously supplied a scarf.  There!

I took a notebook along to the game. They asked why.  I explained, "This is my poetry journal.  I'm going to write about the game when I get bored."  (Everybody does that, right?)

Actually, I didn't write anything the whole game because I was too busy watching.  Or eating Runzas.  (Mrs. D was right -- they really do taste better at the stadium.)  And there really was a machine that spits hotdogs at people.  (I had disbelieved.)

Most of all, it gave me a new source of endless small-talk matter.  You should have seen my students when I told them I was going.  The classroom erupted.  I was barraged with advice.  It's like joining a friendly, boisterous (and very red) un-secret society.

bell bottoms and cockaburs

Personal response question on a test this week:  How is your life different from your parents' and grandparents' childhoods?

Student A:  My mom never watched tv she was always playing with her dollies.  My dad just played outside all the time.  When my parents got a cell phone it was one of those humungous ones.

Student B:  My grandma lived in about the 70s and 80s so they wore bellbottoms.  They also wore peungin [penguin] pants.  Finally, they wore lots of beads in hair.

Student C:  My Gany had no phone or laptop.  She had no dishwasher ether.  last she had no lektreste intell she was in highschool.

Student D:  My dad split his toe open with an axe and got 30 stitches I haven't touched an axe.  Dad had to pick acres and acres of cockaburs by hand and I havent touched cockaburs.


(Who said grading tests is boring?)