Divers and Sundry Items of a Thursday

Grandparents Day

The girls' elementary school invited "grandparents (or grandparent substitutes)" to visit their grandkids' classrooms today. Grandpa Gustafson came to Abigail's classroom, and Great-Aunt Kathy (Susan's mom's sister) came to Suzanna's. When Grandpa arrived, the class were drawing pictures; Abigail's drawing featured our family sitting on our veranda. Grandpa sat with her and looked through her journal as she took a spelling test. He then helped her with her writing during a small-group activity that followed: each of four students in her group took turns writing a couple sentences about what they observed in another group member's drawing and then passed it on, finally sharing with the group the results of the writing.

Meanwhile, Kathy entered Suzanna's classroom, sat with her at her desk, and looked through her journal and memory book. After that, Kathy helped Suzanna study her spelling words. Then they organized Suzanna's desk. After that, Kathy joined Grandpa Gustafson and the other grandparents in the gym for coffee and cookies while the school children continued with their classroom activities for the day. It's awfully nice to be in a town with family available to participate in activities such as this; thank you, Grandpa and Kathy!


Abigail's Glasses

Before any grandparental units arrived for the day, Abigail had some unwelcome excitement on the playground when another child swung his lunch box and accidentally knocked her glasses off her face. She and the playground supervisor scanned the area for the spectacles but couldn't find them. The school made an announcement about the missing glasses, but still they didn't turn up. While I was out of my office for an event elsewhere on campus, Susan left a series of voice mail messages for me about the missing glasses and her search for them at home, thinking perhaps Abigail hadn't even left the house wearing them this morning (but she had) and asking me to check my vehicle for them in case Abigail had dropped them in there (but she hadn't).

When I got the messages, I walked over to the school (it's adjacent to our campus) and got Abigail to show me where on the playground the glasses went missing. It was the cement slab on which the children gather in lines to await the playground supervisor's permission to file into the building following recess. It made no sense not to find the glasses lying there, and it made less sense to search the snow-covered lawns surrounding the slab because the child would have had to hit Abigail's glasses with a baseball bat to send them flying that far. I asked Abigail to consider whether the glasses might have landed in the backpack or coat hood of someone else near her in line. At my urging, Abigail asked her teacher to ask her classmates to do a quick check of their backpacks before going home for the day, and lo and behold, one little girl found them in her bag.

I'm not sure why that hadn't occurred to the building full of educators (minimum of four years of college per person), but that solution saved us about $400 for a replacement pair of eyeglasses.


Book of Poetry

A university colleague of mine spent the last week of March at the 38th Annual Writers Conference at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Before she left, I asked her to say "hi" to Li-Young Lee, a poet who was a featured presenter/speaker at this year's conference. A hundred years ago while teaching poetry to high school freshmen, I first read his poem "The Gift" and was inspired to read more of his poems and found, along with my students, more that I enjoyed.

Well, said colleague returned while I was away in Orlando and left a little gift on my desk: "The City in Which I Love You," a book of poems by Lee. On the title page, in Lee's handwriting, is this: "Kevin, City to city, heart to heart, peace," followed by his signature. I have to think of a really good way to thank her for doing this for me!