“Tim was so learned, that he could name a horse in nine languages; so ignorant, he bought a cow to ride on.”

Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1750

I encountered while re-reading…
Rick Wormeli, Fair Isn’t Always Equal Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom (Portland, ME; Westerville, Ohio: Stenhouse?; National Middle School Assoc., 2006).

I woke up this morning thinking about grit and resilience and all that stuff that some kids and adults are supposed to have that enables them to overcome things no one should ever have to overcome. A word wall doesn’t make anyone less hungry and a clearly stated objective on the board doesn’t fix the heartache of dealing with an addicted parent.

But what makes a parent resilient? How do I measure my own resilience with my children? How am I fostering or forging resilience within my own children or with my students?

I’m sure some researcher is completely on top of this subject but here are some of the things I’d build into the scale:

Threats: Do I often make threats about what’s going to happen if things don’t change?

(This is something I unsuccessfully try and avoid as a parent and a teacher. When I frustrated I do this, and, worse, I don’t always follow through. There would have to be a second question about follow up)

Consistency: Do I take on specific tasks and return to them on a regular basis?

(A question to see if there are lots of ongoing issues or careful reflection about one or two that might be solvable).

Re-set: Can I have a dispute and then, as much as humanly possible, be reasoned and kind the following day?

(A question to see whether conflict lingers or whether grudges are held. Again, this is a humanity issue — it’s hard as a parent and a teacher when a kid has been particularly obnoxious, to immediately reset)

I want to think more about what such a scale can look like, a scale that measures whether you are modeling or demonstrating “grit” to your kids. Again, I’m sure someone else has already done this. And again, no amount of grit ensures that someone can survive the vast inequalities so many children contend with.

Reading The Goldfinch. It’s that good.

Two perfect sentences:

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”
(p.93)

“He asked me all kinds of interesting questions, like what I’d read in literature and how middle school was different from elementary school; what was my hardest subject (Spanish) and what was my favorite historical period (I wasn’t sure, anything but Eugene Debs and the History of Labor, which we’d spent way too much time on) and what did I want to be when I grew up (no clue)–normal stuff but still it was refreshing to converse with a grown-up who seemed interested in me apart from my misfortune, not prying for information or running down a checklist of Things to Say to Troubled Kids.”
(p. 136)

Donna Tartt, Goldfinch: A Novel. (Little Brown & Company, 2013).

Two pronged thank you here:

1. To the old friend who introduced me to Bikram. Yeah, I went to try and impress you, but damn, even in the midst of the scorching summer of 1997, this was something I knew I’d come back to. Thank you.

2. To my friend who talked about a “Yoga Practice” in such a provocative way. I don’t have a running practice. I’m not mindful about it. I try and run 3-4 times a week, especially now that I’m not bike commuting, but there’s not much intention behind it. One foot in front of the other, sometimes thinking about the playlist, sometimes thinking about nothing at all.

However, when I go to Bikram, and I know I’m saying this with all the enthusiasm of a new convert, I have to be all there; my breathing has to be right or I will be the puking guy in the corner. I like the idea of having a practice, of working towards someday being able to not fall over, to be able to sit on my feet, to be able to be fully mindful through ninety minutes of exertion in 105 degrees.

Working in a space where nearly everyone voices nearly every thought they have as loudly as possible, a Yoga studio becomes a haven, where everyone quietly struggles with a common purpose, where each action is intentional. I like it. Thanks friend.

If I were teaching Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel, The Namesake, I’d use these two passages to ask about their perceptions of immigrant life:

“For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that previous life had vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.” (pp.49-50)

In describing the preparation for Gogol’s birthday:

“As usual, his mother cooks for days beforehand, cramming the refrigerator with stacks of foil-covered trays. She makes sure to prepare his favorite things: lamb curry with lots of potatoes, lucchis, thick channa dal with swollen brown raisins, pineapple chutney, sandeshes molded out of saffron-tinted ricotta cheese. All this is less stressful to her than the task of feeding a handful of American children, half of whom always claim they are allergic to milk, all of whom refuse to eat the crusts of their bread.”

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake (Perfection Learning, 2004).

My brother and my sister-in-law are very generous. They’re awesome.

One thing I admire about my sister in law and something I want to thank her for is her unrelenting desire to create memories for her child, and, by extension, my children. Always thinking and planning, she has made holiday after holiday memorable for my kids.

These memories matter. We’re West Philly folks — possessions aren’t exactly central to our lives — but CC has always pushed for our kids to be together, for them to do and experience things, for them to create memories they’ll always have.

Thanks for another great holiday!

When I was in third grade or so and growing increasingly frustrated at my inability to play sports at the level that I wanted, my parents, seeing my growing misery, tried to find alternative activities. One was a drama class run by IE (Mrs. E.) a local actor, community player, and mom who had a bunch of older boys and a pair of Irish Setters named Shelley and Keats. (The names meant nothing to me at the time but my parents thought this was very amusing.)

Once a week I’d go to Mrs. E’s class and participate in all manner of “acting” and “improvisation” classes. I remember lots of games, lots of situations, lots of trying to talk to girls, lots of acting up. I remember Mrs. E. pulling me aside because I was too squirmy or restless to participate and having what I now recognize as the dreaded earnest conversation. (Sorry).

I got a lot from these classes. I saw some ways to be that weren’t related to sports; I got a love of performance; an ability or at least a comfort level with talking in public; some sense of dramatic timing. As I got older, I realized that there was a kind of intellectual heft that comes along with acting and writing and that Mrs. E was a kind of model for this sort of work and this kind of life.

Thank you Mrs. E.

Somewhere in the late 1970s we were vacationing with dear friends of my parents, the Gs, and Mr. G introduced me to Strat-o-matic baseball. I remember two things about that vacation: opting to hit and run in the ninth (basic version) and rolling a two, which meant a double, a winning run, and a feeling that someday I’d manage in the major leagues. I also remember an afternoon of listening to the Red Sox in the cottage and watching Mr. G light up when Dwight Evans hit a home run. Mr. G had a theory that Dwight Evans killed the ball in day games, a theory I should confirm on baseball reference someday.

Anyway, I learned the game and then tormented my parents to buy me more sets. I think I played with anyone who would play with me — friends, cousins, my brother — and when I couldn’t find anyone, I’d play on my own. I learned names that are still with me — Wee Willie Keeler, Cap Anson, Nap Lajoie — and whatever mathematical quickness I possess comes from endless hours of this game.

Now I have a son and we play an endless stream of games (see pic below). It’s led him into the same sort of reading and borderline obsession I used to have; I catch him reading old copies of Baseball Prospectus yearbooks (I used to read these books) and saying things to his sister like “you don’t know who Rich Gedman is and that he hit 18 homeruns in 1985.” Yes… he said that.

I owe you much more, Mr. G. Someday I’ll write about the letter you sent me after we went to the Bucky Dent game as well as what a handshake meant on a spring day in 1988, but for today, thank you for Strat-o-matic baseball, for talking baseball with me, and for being a role model for the kind of thoughtful intensity I try and bring to the rest of my life.

Photo: Series from the past few months:

—
Coda — I love that Buddy Ryan’s kids played Strat-o-matic too.