Sweet 13

With every office visit usually comes the comment by Mayo personnel, "So Hannah, you're twelve and in what grade?"

With every question regarding age and grade, Hannah responds with, "Soon to be 13!"

Yes you are honey. You are soon to be 13 and this picture captures it all. Happy Birthday this Friday!

OYAM

Sometimes working in reverse is not a bad thing. I had forgot to mention to others that we were heading back to Mayo for scans. So I'm a little behind with the information. The point is we're here and we got to stop at Kutter Harley (my personal favorite store) and see Kerry (our favorite Harley Lady)!




"Did you post?" Kim sat across from me this morning as we reclined in the first of many waiting rooms, sipping down our morning caffeine.

"Huh?" I was fairly certain what she meant, but in order to deflect the question, buy some time to down a few more sips of 'Ahhhhh, that's good', and to hopefully have something / anything else suddenly happen that would distract her from the original question, I reckoned the 'huh' retort would be sufficient.

"You heard me," there it was. The no non-sense 'you heard me' response. As if she had been down this road with me before and knew that I was dodging, ducking, and generally in avoidance of any responsibilities. "You didn't post,... did you?" She knew the answer, but in the grand scheme of things, just needed to hear me admit to it.

"I will," taking another drink in order to pump myself up for more quick, diverse thinking in case she had more matter of fact questions for me,... like, 'Did you remember to charge your cell phone so that it works and I can get a hold of you if I need to?' Any one who knows me well, knows that I'm against cell phones when it comes to them ringing anywhere and everywhere. Half the time I have mine, it's more for show because it's either off or has a dead battery that I forget to charge.

Okay, enough about my cell phone habits,... we're back at Mayo for a series of scans and tests. Hannah's been jumping from one waiting room to the next with us in tow. SO far we've managed a couple heart tests, an MRI, and currently wait for the CT. It's not the tests that are the most nerve racking of all (unless you were to ask Hannah about needles - she may have a different view). It's that first doctor's visit... the one in which you hear the results of the tests. You would think it's something you just get use to, but unfortunately it's kind of like taking the driver's license test - you feel fairly confident going into the test, but there's also a touch of apprehension that there may be something on the test that you weren't ready for and may not be able to answer correctly. That's pretty much it in a nutshell,.. just magnified by a lot.

"I posted," writing accomplished, I was happy to report back to Kim that I found some quiet time to jot a few lines. Thanks for reading. I will live to write another day!

What's Your Response?

With first quarter in the books, it's time once again to review some of the favorite missing homework stories as told to me by students.

"Where's your homework?"

Response #1:

Student: "Well,... you see it's like this. My mom said you were teaching it wrong and by the time she taught me the right way, it was time for me to go to bed."


Response #2:

Student: "Our wood floors were being done last night and my homework was inside the house and I couldn't go in to get it."

Mr. Kelly: "How did your homework get in to the house in the first place?"

Student: "I put it there. How do you think?"

Response #3:

Student: "I planned to do it last night when I got home, but then the plans changed."


Mr. Kelly: "Oh, I see. Did your parents take you somewhere or you had some family thing that popped up?"

Student: "No."

Mr. Kelly: "So, no emergency,... no unforeseen trip out,... you were just at home,.. all night?"

Student: "Well,... yeah. Can I turn it in tomorrow and can you not count it late?"

Response #4:

Student: "I just had it and now it's GONE!"

Mr. Kelly: "Where did you just have it?"

Student: "I'm pretty sure it was right here! (pointing at the desk top)"

Mr. Kelly: "Well, let's check around to make sure that it didn't fly off somewhere." I made my way back to the hanging file folders to check the outgoing mail for students.

Student: "Oh no,... I know it was here! And now it's gone, just like that!!"

Mr Kelly: "Would this be your paper that you're looking for? And would this be the papers you never took home last night? (holding up a full file folder)"


Response #5:

Student: "You never gave me the assignment."

Mr. Kelly: "Yes I did. I passed it out to everyone in class."

Student: "I must have been gone."

Mr. Kelly: "Then I would have laid it on your desk."

Student: "It must have fell off then."

Mr. Kelly: "So what did you do when you returned from your trip, from where ever you went, and we spent 40 minutes working on the assignment in class yesterday?"

Student: "I don't know. You never gave me the assignment."

Student 2 walks in: "We worked on it together yesterday. Mine's right here (holds up the paperwork)."

Student: "Oh that assignment! I know I did it, but I can't find it."

Response #6:

Student: "I left it in my backpack."

Mr. Kelly: "Where's your backpack?"

Student: "In my locker."

Simmer Down Now

"I'll wait,..........." I had asked my students to quiet down and was using some Love and Logic patience on them. As I sat looking out on an unaffected class, I began my flash back in time to a place where my classmates and I once ruled the room. We loved,.. no make that adored, teachers who allowed us to run things our way. Who wouldn't? We started class when we were ready, we ended it when we had enough (usually they were minutes apart). We even had the homework things down,..."We can't do homework tonight, there's a football game." And now,.. I had become my teachers. It's true what they say about things in education coming full circle. Like bell-bottom pants, I was living in the past.

The noise began to elevate and bodies started moving from their once stationary position seated behind a desk. I snapped my mind from my happy place back to the classroom. While it's true I was using Love and Logic rather than screaming from the top of my lungs EVERYBODY BE QUIET!,... I had the final part of my sentence to finish, the one that I had begun five minutes earlier,.. the ending to a sentence that would prove who was still in charge of the room,.. the ending to a sentence that would be considered the knock out punch in a prize fight,... "I'll wait for everyone to be quiet. What I don't cover in class today will be homework." BOOM, there it was! I laid out the end of a sentence with the calm of a storm before the worst is unleashed. Only I wasn't unleashing, I was calmified. I didn't need to repeat myself,... you really need just one kid to hear the word homework and you immediately have the numbers on your side.

Room established to order.