Dear Mama and Daddy,
I talked with the birthday girl earlier this evening - what a pretty picture of her and Daddy and Jimmy and Nancy out to dinner with candles in their desert bowls. She reported that she thinks she'll only feel older when she sees a change in the mirror, and that she feels a lot wiser than she did on her ninth birthday, citing the fact that she knew the names and capitols of 36 states, as well as their nicknames, year of induction and abbreviation. Maybe before her 11th birthday she'll learn the other 14.
Today was the Christmas program at school - my second grade chess player performed "Jingle Bell Rock" with his class. In one section all the kids had to dance. He was very enthusiastic, jiving well until he tripped off the step. His lip trembled for a second, his enthusiasm dimmed, but he finished the song with a big grin. I told him he was the best one up there, and he was.
The fourth grade was positively angelic, I credit it this to the fact that some of them brought down books to read. Subversive, yet highly effective.
Folks, I'm ready to be home, ready to see something besides endless concrete and boarded up houses. And yet, there's something to be said for knowing that I'm making a difference here.
I particulaly looking forward to New Year's Eve. I've told people several times over the years that I would hate to spend that night a way from you. There's something powerful about our long tradtion of banging tin pie pans to beat in the year, and I wouldn't feel right if I didn't start the year by saying a prayer with my family. It sets the tone. I knew 2007 was going to be tough, and it has been, but there's been a lot of goodness too.
I feel good about 2008 though, Baltimore is more behind me than in front and I'm on to the next adventure.
I'll see you tomorrow, folks. Not the best writing I've ever done here, but it fit my 15 minute deadline. As of now I am G.T.T.
Love,
Elizabeth

A Developing story:

It's the morning here, clear and crisp and full of hope.

"A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." ~ Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

All territories require dreams of some sort, and today starts the finding out of what does happen to a dream deferred. I've got my own suspicions friends, but we'll not delineate them now.

For now it is enough to know that I go with hope, it's all any one can do.

From the mouths of real, live fourth graders:
"Can we through Juan out the window?"

While working on a capitalization worksheet:
Student: I don't know if it should be capitalized or not...
Ms. Alsup: Well, what do you think?
Student: I'm just so torn, it could be.

Student, very excited: Ms. Alsup, I'm having an abolitionist day.
Ms. Alsup: Do you mean abyssmal?
Student: Oh yeah, abyssmal.

"Ms. Alsup, why do you have such high expectations?"

"Ms. Alsup, what is an expectation?"

Student, while reading: "What's goat droppings?"
Ms. Alsup: Show me the context - ah, droppings in the goat shed. Do goats live in the shed?
Student: Yes.
Ms. Alsup: What would goats drop in a shed?
Student: Oh

Student: Can we go to the bathroom?
Ms. Alsup: No
Student: Oh, that cruddy.
Ms. Alsup: Cruddy? What's cruddy is not getting smart.

And my favorite, an explanation of synonyms and antonyms:

" 'synonym' and 'opposite' are antonyms, but 'antonyms' and 'opposites' are synonyms."

What can I say, I work with some smart cookies.

Dear Mama and Daddy,
Supposed to snow tomorrow. Much as I hate the cold, there's still enough Texas kid in me to get excited for it.
The first time I saw snow was in Houston, it was the lightest dusting but still enough to cover the old Weber charcoal grill. I think we had an old black charcoal grill. Did I just make this memory up? It doesn't seem like it.
Then I wanted to play in it, and in a moment that is perhaps more indicative of my life's attitude than previously realized, we booked a plane ticket to Grandma's hill. Sledding, angels and snow cream. Sheer delight. If you want something bad enough, you find a way to make it happen. What an audacious thing for a Texas girl to say- "I want to play in the snow," but I don't think it occured to me that it wasn't a possibility.
One of my last days in Columbia, there was a terrific snow. I had to be on campus early and it was snow quiet. I met up with a friend and we had a tremendous snow fight, darting between the columns, leaving tracks through the snow pelting each other and yelling like banshees.
It's been some time since I've had a moment like that. I read a book one time where the character said he had "heavy boots," to mean he was weary.
Baltimore gives me heavy boots, makes it hard to remember playing in the snow. I've started untying these boots, and I'm getting ready to leave them behind for some sneakers.
I don't know where I'll land. I hope in D.C., I'm growing to love that city like I loved London, and that's saying something. Like to see the chess players in DuPont circle, like the folks riding the subway - teenagers, and college kids and people from the work-a-day world. Like the folks dressed to the nines going to a gala, like the guy in the Chinatown window making noodles. Like the Presbyterian church my friends attend - they even have a book club that reads Flannery O'Connor, clearly a place I could enjoy.
I guess that's what I'd like in the next place I land. I remember Dad, you wrote me a letter in London and said that I got my wanderlust from you, but someday I'd learn that you don't have to go far from home to have an adventure. I'll be honest and say that Baltimore was more of an adventure than I bargained for, and much more than I wanted. It'll take more than a minute to take these Baltimore boots off.
But snow's on the way, and the outlook surely can't be as grim as it seems. I'd better get on and fix dinner.
Love,
Elizabeth

Well friends, it's another week in Baltimore with the Light Brigade (see Crimean War, see Tennyson.) However, the balance of time has tipped and I'm looking toward the light at the end of the tunnel. And that feels awfully damn good.

A couple educational thoughts:
If we want to change schools for the better we've got to ensure that school principals are qualified and effective administrators and managers. Too often the emphasis is on them being superior teachers, but that doesn't transalate to being able to, in effect, run a small business. One of the downfalls of the industry is that there is little room for promotion, seeking an administrative role is one of the few ways to achieve a higher status and pay rate in education. Why on earth, though, would you want master teachers removed from the classroom in order to go to a job they may not have the skills for? It doesn't make sense - a recurring theme in education.

Furthermore, parents have got to realize that as consumers of the public school system they have power at the ballot box, among other places. Parents can be easily cowed by educational blowhards spouting off about all sorts of pedagological mumbo-jumbo. Parents are afraid to trust their common sense. At the end of the day, the parents need to ask "Is my child receiving an adequate education? Can they read intelligently? Can they perform basic math skills? Are they learning to think critically? Does their classroom sound well run?" Parents have the greatest power to hold teachers and school systems accountable, and yet they don't, fearing that their lack of an education degree makes them unqualified to question. Too often, schoolto parent relationships are disastrous and antagonistic, this is of no use to anyone.

And in another blow to teaching children not to fight, a parent walloped and bloodied a staff member at my school last week. The staff member by all accounts taunted the parent, and got in the parent's personal space and the parent wasn't having it. So now two adults whom children regularly see, a staff member and a parent, have shown these children that physical violence is an appropriate way to deal with problems. See above entry about effective principals and empowered parents: as a manager seeking to deliver a service to customers why would you cotton to an employee whose actions were in direct opposition to your mission, as a group of parents seeking a service why would you allow a principal to think that employing such a staff member would be appropriate? As we say at the Radiant, "It don't make no sense, no sense 't'all"