Of Bears and Penguins

News Flash:
For the first time ever, Bears and Penguins comes to you from an airport. Normally I never use airport internet, but then I realized my atm card had fallen out of my pocket somewhere between downtown Baltimore and the airport. Thus I had to find the number of my bank for to cancel the card, order a new one, and determine how I was going to access my hard earned money for this weeks travels. No ATMs for me this week, I must organize myself as I have to walk into the bank and interact with actual people to get the green.

April Fools:
Parked my car. Got my stuff out. Snow started falling from the sky. True story.

Northeast:
While checking in for my flight, I ran into a fellow TFAer who teaches middle school at Northesast, which has been getting a lot of press lately because teachers are being attacked. One teacher, my colleague told me, was beaten with her own cane. My friend said other teachers had been asking when that teacher was going to come back. My friend said, "Never. No one would go back. If you got beat with your own cane you would not go back." I agreed. The violence is part of gang initiations. Laine said that students are always flashing gang signs in the halls. She said she flashes her Language Arts sign (form L with both hands, turn left hand upside down so thumbs form arm of L and crossbar of the A) I just laughed.

If you're not in the middle of it everyday, it might seem scary of dangerous or horrible or any other number of things, and it is all those things, but I guess we learn to be in it and not get torn apart by it. If I thought n depth about all the terrible things, the violence and poverety and everything else, I'd never set foot in my classroom again.

Always Teaching:
Yesterday, the third and foruth grades went bowling (except there were little balls and pins) and because only one of the third grade teachers and no third grade parents went, I got to watch over some of the babies. Anyway, this one little girl LaShawna, had clearly never been bowling, this was true of a lot of the kids, but she would just kind of walk up to the line and heft the ball by flicking her wrist like you would a frisbee, she would turn so that she threw from the hip sideways. So the next time her turn came up, I said, "What's your name?" "LaShawna"
"Okay, LaShawna, let me show you."
So we got her ball, and I put her hand underneath it, not on the side, and we practiced taking two big steps, and then a little one while bending our knees and laying the ball right between the arrows. We practicecd a couple of times before letting it go. When her turn came up, her concentration was visible "Big step, big step, bend and go."
We watched how Mr. Samuels took his steps and released the ball. By the end of the day she got a couple of strikes. And I was right behind her when she came back with her hands up for a high five.

***
Spring break, y'all.
I got my boots on.
I'll be under a Texas sky.
I'll be west.
I'll be home.
As of now, I am G.T.T.

Go well, stay well.