A New Project

I've been knitting away on the Calash scarf for a while now. While it's going fine, I like to have a few projects going at one time so I can switch things out at the tedious moments. 

So, when I saw this tweet the other day:

It’s out! $5 of each Autonomy pattern will be split between Planned Parenthood and National Network of Abortion Funds. There’s a list of green yarn on the Ravelry pattern page, and if you’re a dyer lmk if you want in! 💚 1/2 #knittingtwitter https://t.co/WPkXalCEQR

— Rosemary (Romi) Hill 🌻😷💉🇺🇦 (@RomiDesigns) July 7, 2022

I was instantly curious.

(I had read that green was the color for abortion rights. I was curious about the pattern.)

I found the pattern page here. And the design looks doable.

I went through my stash in search of green yarn. I don't have exactly the right shade, but I have quite a bit of green. I narrowed it down to these choices: 

When I took the picture, I was thinking I'd use the yarn on the top. The yarn on the left bottom is the yarn I used for niece's tank top. But the more I look at it, the more I like the one on the bottom right. 

I mean, I could swatch all three and see which one works up the best. 

It's time to start a bunch of projects. This way, when I get busy again, I'll have things to work on. The starting is what takes the most mental energy. (The finishing takes a bit, too, but not nearly as much as the starting.) 

Of course, I'm just ignoring what I'll do with the bandana after I finish it. It's not like it has a home. But I'll worry about that later.

The Grade Reports

For summer school, we weren't assigning grades. We teachers got to write little paragraphs about each student that then went home on a little progress report. The only number score was the words they read in a minute, both on the first day of school and towards the last. 

(Don't ask me how long that took. You don't want to hear me whine about it.) 

We were to send the progress reports home with the students on the last day. 

As I was in a borrowed classroom, I had no supplies. My aide went and found me a stapler. I went through and folded each progress report, wrote on the outside "to the parents of", and I stapled them shut. 

Near the end of first period, I passed them out to the students. 

And, of course, the inevitable happened. 

Every single student opened their progress reports. Every. Single. One.

Sigh.

Why did I bother to staple the things? 

What did the numbers mean? One student was trying to make a 74 into a percentage. But another student's 126 then didn't fit that narrative. 

"Remember sitting with me and reading those paragraphs for a minute? The score is how many words you read in that minute." 

They had done their post assessment the previous day, so it wasn't like they didn't remember. 

It wasn't like there wasn't anything in the reports that they shouldn't see. However, I could not explain their math grades. (I didn't know what assessment they had done for that.) 

Summer school is now over. Now I really get to take a summer vacation. 

(Maybe. The alternative education center starts up next week and the continuation high school starts the week after that.) 

Surprise A

On the penultimate day of summer school, I gave the students a figure-out-your-grade assignment. I wanted them to spend some time looking at how not doing the work (or doing the work) impacted their final point total.

Well, actually, I needed them to work on something while I was calling them up and individually having them do their post assessment reading. (Yes, I gave them busy work.) 

After everyone had done their reading, I went through the assignment to see what everyone had come up with. 

There was a note from Delilah. "I don't know if my grade is an A I don't think I added right?" 

I glanced at her totals. The A looked reasonable. She had turned in most of her work. 

After calculating their grade, I had questions for them to answer. First I asked if the grade surprised them and if they were happy with it. Delilah: "I'm happy about it but I don’t think I calculated right?". 

Then I asked what they could do to improve their grade. Delilah: "Calculate correctly, I think i'm just saying this because I never had an A in english!"

She did, indeed, have an A in English. (I double checked with a calculator while writing this post. Yup, it's an A.) 

Alas, we weren't assigning grades for the summer school. They got written progress reports. Having them calculate what their grade would have been was more so they'd get an object lesson in what doing or not doing their work nets them grade-wise. 

But they did get bragging rights. Delilah could totally tell her parents that she got an A in English in the summer. Just because it wasn't recorded anywhere doesn't mean it doesn't count. (It's not like middle school grades remain on their transcripts anyway.) 

Illustrating the Lesson

I pretty much put the entire summer school class on Google Slides. It's way easier than writing things on a whiteboard. I could project examples and do work with them. It made many things easier. 

I have been learning all sorts of interesting tricks to Google Slides. One of them was how to put gifs into the slides so there's movement on each slide. As soon as I figured out that trick (or rather as soon as I looked up how to do it), I put up some gifs every day. 

Gifs like: 

The last one was the gif I used with the question, "What would you like to be famous for?" 

And it was up on the screen when Mr. V, the summer school principal, walked in. 

Is South Park middle school appropriate? Probably not. 

I mean, I wasn't showing South Park. If he read the rest of the slide, he'd have seen how it went with what we were doing.

Mr. V did question the gif. He questioned if the students knew South Park. One of them said they had heard of it. 

But then Mr. V went on to make the announcement to the class that he had come to do. And he left. 

I guess I should be more careful of what gifs I use. 

I mean, the gif itself wasn't inappropriate. I wouldn't put up an inappropriate gif. 

Why didn't Mr. V walk in when I had up the gif of the flag? Or the ice cream cake? Or the car driving along a road? I had plenty of innocuous gifs.

The Bullies

Speculative fiction has a long history of taking the issues of the day and reframing them in a new context with the hope that people will look at them in a new way. Our "unprecedented" times are bringing all sorts of old ways and old thinking back to the forefront. On Tuesdays, I present "what if?" questions. Previously, the intent was as an idea generator. It still is. But now, I ask that you really think about all the repercussions that these ideas will have. If only these were just thought exercises. 

What if no one stands up to the bullies who think they own everything, letting them do what they want, pooping all over the place and making our home a mess?

While the question is general on purpose, it was prompted by the Canadian geese who take up residence in my condo complex during the spring and early summer. But apply "bully" to whomever you like.

The Mess

The current state of my "knitting box":

This is the spot where I store all my works in progress. If I take out the Calash scarf:

...it's still an awful mess.

This is one of the reasons why I'm not doing much yarn-wise lately. I think my first order of business is to clean out the box. 

I still have balls of yarn from projects that have been completed. Anything I may be starting is buried under yarn I'm not using. And I'm not sure what's in there anymore. 

Perhaps once I unbury myself, I'll be more in the mood to actually figure out projects and do something. But unburying is a project. This will be my goal for the coming week.

The Holiday

Juneteenth is a brand new holiday. (It only became a holiday last year.) It's so new that it took the summer school administration completely by surprise. 

June 19th was a Sunday. A lot of places took the holiday on the following Monday. We did not.

The summer school principal came to see me at the beginning of Monday. He said he had gotten five calls already about whether the day was a holiday or not. It hadn't occurred to him to send out an email saying that we would have school. 

He wasn't sure how many students would show up. 

I actually wasn't missing very many. And because summer school is so short, it wasn't like I could really skip the lessons for the day. 

I assume they'll be better prepared for Juneteenth next year. They'd better be. It will actually fall on a Monday.