“I think sleeping was my problem in school. If school had started at four in the afternoon, I’d be a college graduate today.” – George Foreman When summer holiday begins each June, many students welcome the opportunity to sleep in each day instead of only on weekends. As the summer progresses, they stay up later…
Thank You For The Splendid Times
“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” – Sam Keen As another school year comes to a close, the weeks have been full of special events, celebrations, and farewells. The farewells are difficult: we have to say goodbye to friends who have made our individual lives and the school community better. It is nice to…
Congratulations, Class of 2022!
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” -Arthur Ashe The final weeks of the school year are chock-full of special events. There are performances, class parties, the PTO International Fair, and more. It is a time of celebrations and the acknowledgement of transitions. Students, staff, and families who have been…
Friday The 13th Brings Good Fortune
Today’s Weekly Howl is about the opposite of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th: today feels like it is full of good fortune….
The Magic of Words
According to the internet (so it must be true), there are 273,000 English words in the Oxford English Dictionary; there are 470,000 English words in Webster’s Dictionary. The Oxford dictionary is from the United Kingdom and Webster’s Dictionary is from the United States. The United States is larger than the United Kingdom, so it makes sense that the Webster’s Dictionary would have more words. (Somehow that makes sense, right?). Each year, about a 1000 words are added to the Webster’s Dictionary: in my life over 50,000 new English words have been born. There are other dictionaries as well. One of my favorite words recently added to Dictionary.com is “sharent” which means “to frequently use social media to share photos or other details and information about one’s child”. In English, all it takes to become an official new word is making it into print many times. A friend recently used the word “psychologied”, which means to have psychology used on you. It is not actually a word, but it should be a word. I’m hoping that by putting it in print here it will be added to a dictionary next year. If Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words, it is fair that my friend can invent 1. …
‘Just Keep Swimming’
I am a sucker for animated films. Ratatouille, Encanto (“We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no…”), Moana, Frozen (yep, Frozen), and almost all of the rest: and of course Finding Nemo. I say “almost all of the rest”, because I never liked the Mickey Mouse films or cartoons. I guess that’s because I have an aversion to rodents. I’ve never liked rodents, and rats freak me out (it took me a while to appreciate Ratatouille). Even squirrels give me the creeps. I think of squirrels as fuzzy tailed tree rats. My daughter, though, has a zillion photos of a squirrel named Alberto who lives in a tree at our house. Beavers are cool, because they are unique and industrious. Capybara are also ok: they are noble somehow. Lemmings are fascinatingly weird, but I wouldn’t want to run into a slice of them. …
Nintendo Parenting
I love playing video games with my family. I’ll freely admit I grew up a gamer, playing Nintendo games with my father and sister gathered around our Zenith, 15-inch tube TV in 1990. (In fact, my dad, who is 72, still regularly plays video games on his PS4.) But times have changed, and with the introduction of the internet and the proliferation of screens, we are in a very different world than 30 years ago. I worry about my son’s exposure to online gaming and how it will affect his development, and I know I’m not alone in this regard. And yet I still want him to enjoy gaming as I have. What then should we be concerned about, and how do we address it? To start with, not all games are created equal, and it’s critical to understand this. Playing AngryBirds on your iPhone is not the same as playing Ages of Empires on a PC, and playing Bedrock Minecraft is not the same as playing Fortnite Battle Royale….
Should Snowball Parties Be Allowed at School?
On Wednesday, February 2, 2022, I had an important meeting with two middle school students. They approached me in the Atrium during lunch. One of them had pasta stains on her sweatshirt; the other had not finished her sandwich. They asked me if they were allowed to have a snowball fight. My answer was no; for two days, I have thought of little else. As a former elementary school teacher and principal, I am hardwired to say “no” to snowball fights. Now I am questioning myself. After almost 30 years working in schools, have I been mistaken this entire time? I need your ear and your advice. After disappointing the two middle school students, I went outside and did some impromptu supervision. Many times I had to remind students that snowball fights were not permitted. Almost every student at some time was throwing snow. They laughed and screamed (the snow down the back of the shirt kind of scream) and had a lot of fun. It got me wondering whether snowball fights should be allowed, so I did some research Wednesday evening. I was planning to support the “no snowball fight rule” with some statistics….
Learning Will Continue!
The holiday break ended and as we return to our learning environment, we face the challenge of a new wave of anti-epidemic measures, quarantine, and distance learning. Like schools around the world, we have been facing these challenges since the beginning of this pandemic. Students, teachers, parents, and administrators have quickly learned that flexibility and being at ease with uncertainty are key to our mental health and success these past (almost) two years. We also learned that schools and learning are more important than ever. Thankfully, learning continues to flourish at AAS despite the uncertainty of the world around us. We have been fortunate to not have to face the extensive challenges that schools around the world have faced during this time….
Wishing You a Gratitude Filled New Year!
In last week’s Weekly Howl, MS Counselor, Mr. Johnson, wrote about gratitude; earlier this week I was in an elementary classroom as they were discussing gratitude. Gratitude is a noun that means being thankful. I think gratitude should also be a verb and an adjective (perhaps even an adverb), so I will use it however I want in this, the final Weekly Howl of 2021. I know that some English teachers and grammarians may not approve of me making up and/or misusing a word, but I don’t care; I am gratitudy for those people who just let this slide. 2020 was the year of our discontent (nod to Shakespeare and Steinbeck), or so we thought. I recall a year ago kicking 2020 out the door with relief and satisfaction: 2021 had to be better. Well. It is easy to focus on the challenges of any year, and 2020 and 2021 have had more than their fair share. However, there is so much more to be gratitudy for than to lament. …
Talking Through Uncomfortable Emotions
Today is a national day of mourning in Bulgaria for the two tragedies that have happened this week. On behalf of AAS, I send my condolences to the victims (and their families) of the nursing home fire in Royak and the bus fire on the Struma Highway. After the Sandyhook school shooting in December 2012, a young student asked me why we were having a day of mourning for something that happened thousands of kilometers away. It was not an insensitive question: it was a question about what a day of mourning is or why it is important. In that moment, I struggled to answer. To me, it was expected that there would be a day of mourning for something so horrible and troubling, but I was not able to explain to a young student how a day of mourning helped. If I could go back in time and answer the question now, I would say that a day of mourning is important for many reasons….
Celebrating Life Every Day
Little kids are the best at saying simple truths. Earlier this week, AAS kindergarten student, Helena, was kind enough to point out the simple truth in the quote above. I have worked in schools for a long time (hence the being very old quotation), and I have enjoyed countless funny comments from kids. Parents, you may not know this, but your kids often say funny things about you at school. For example, most of the teachers in the ES have a pretty good sense of which dads snore. Helena’s comment got me thinking. I don’t feel old. However, I am obviously very old, and I have a birthday coming up, so I’m just getting older. I don’t mind birthdays and getting older: it is a lot better than the alternative. …
