random reflections

Summer Pleasures

Although summer school takes up half my day there is still time for the pleasures of summer:

• Top on my list is lunch with my friends. During the school year I have about 25 minutes to gulp down my lunch, check e-mail, and go to the bathroom. This summer I have caught up with many of my friends over leisurely lunches. It’s such a treat.
• Sitting on our patio. We have new, and very comfortable, patio furniture, lovely flowers, and a country-like setting in the city. Although it’s been too hot to eat on the patio most days, we have breakfast on the patio and sometimes it cools down enough to sit and read after dinner. One beautiful Sunday I spent two hours reading the papers and a book. Luxury!
• Time to read blogs, the message board at 2Peas, and check out all the layouts in the gallery at 2Peas without feeling guilty about the time it’s taking. Having time to do what you feel like is a real pleasure of summer.
• Traveling. As soon as summer school ends, we’ll be on a road trip. I love driving with my husband (unless he is tailgating!). We’re off to see Sarah in Atlanta and when we leave there we’re going to explore the lakes along the Georgia/Tennessee border and visit Cincinnati and Columbus--two cities from my past. I’m anxious to see how they’ve changed.
• Reading. I’ve actually read two magazines cover-to-cover the day they arrived this week. I’m almost through Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat and I’ve learned a lot. Once again it’s time I just don’t seem to have during the school year.
• Scrapbooking and organizing. Sarah says I have a organizational disease which is probably true. I love to organize and it does help me keep track of all my stuff. Once I got my study all redone, I’ve kept up pretty well with my summer goals for finishing layouts. Now I have to figure out how to be consistently productive when the school year starts.

The pleasures of summer. . . I suppose they are even more appreciated here because our winters can seem so long and dreary. This summer we’ve had almost continuous sunshine -- just another pleasure.

Good Friends, Good Times

We spent Saturday with good friends at their cottage on Canandaigua Lake. It’s one of New York’s beautiful Finger Lakes. What a relaxing and enjoyable time we had! Wonderful food, a boat ride, good conversation. When I was growing up we moved several times. The longest I lived in any place was nine years. Now I’ve lived in this house for 20 years and I have friends I’ve known for 32 years. Seems amazing to me, but it’s a good thing.

Corn Hill Arts Festival

Rochester hosts several arts festivals each year. One of my favorites is the one in Corn Hill, a wonderful neighborhood of restored homes across the Genesee River from our house. This year Tracy and I decided to walk. It was a picture-perfect day-hot but breezy, low humidity, and lots of glorious sunshine. Walking had several advantages: we had our exercise out of the way first thing, we had to limit any purchases to things we were willing to carry home, and it extended the pleasure of the day.  We ended up buying a bonsai for Matt and the very last poster from the 2004 Corn Hill Arts Festival which I wished I had bought last year. Here are a few photos, including one of the Rochester skyline from the Ford Street Bridge.

       

Summer School

Two days of summer school have come and gone. I am always glad once things are underway. Summer school is a real change for me, as I am the administrator rather than the teacher. I’m in charge of making sure everyone has what they want and/or need, that parents understand the attendance policy, that buses come and go on time, and children get where they need to go. I enjoy the challenges of the administrative role for the summer, but I would never want to trade it for the teaching job I do during the regular school year. It’s interesting, however, how a title gives you the aura of power. Children respond so differently to me during the summer when I’m the “principal” than during the year when I’m just another teacher. Even the kids who know me first as a teacher during the year, give me a different level of respect during the summer.

Among the many pleasures are the great people I get to work with from other buildings and all the people I’ve come to know in different departments in the rather large school district where I work. I count as friends bus drivers, purchasing experts, administrators, office staff--people I would barely know if not for this summer job. I also like the opportunity to work, but not to plan for instruction and not to have to grade papers and write reports on children’s progress. It’s good to have a change of pace.

Sometimes it is amusing. Yesterday (Tuesday) my secretary called all the parents of the students who didn’t show up. We have a very strict attendance policy where parents agree to have their children present for the five week, half day program. If you go on vacation for a week, the child loses his/her spot to someone on the waiting list. So my secretary talked to a father who said his daughter was in Vietnam this week with her mother visiting relatives. When Deb explained to him that his daughter’s place would be given to someone else next week if she didn’t come this week, he said he’d call and see if he could have her here by Thursday! I’m not expecting her.

Scrapbook Goals

I decided to set a goal for scrapbooking this summer:  five one-page layouts a week. I also decided to try 8 1/2 by 11 layouts for random photographs that aren’t part of a themed scrapbook. I came too late to scrapbooking to deal with chronological scrapbooks, so I’ve finished scrapbooks on our southwest trip, our annual vacations on Kiawah, a favorites album, a mini-album on an afternoon at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens during a Dale Chihuly exhibition, and a couple of paperbag albums.  So here are a few of my first layouts for the summer. I’m having a bit of trouble taking photos of the layouts. Maybe the scanner would be better but it’s not hooked up to my iBook. The Faces layout is a blatant scraplift from Cathy Zielske’s wonderful book Clean and Simple Scrapbooking. My eyes are drawn to her layouts in every idea book or magazine where she is featured. Clean and simple is a goal, but I’m finding it doesn’t necessarily mean easier or faster, although scraplifting does help. I’ve finished nine layouts this week!

 

 

My daugher, the preacher

Sarah was here for four days. She came home to preach her first church sermon at the invitation of the First Presbyterian Church in Honeoye Falls, NY. She worked there for two years as Director of Christian Education before heading off to seminary. It is a wonderful and warm congregation, a great place for a first sermon. As always she was poised and articulate and asked hard questions. She asks no more of her audience than she asks of herself. I am constantly amazed by the depth of thought and questioning she and her friends pose. (Check her side bar for a list of great blogs.) What a pleasure to hear her preach-and how proud we all are!

Four Days Off

My classroom is cleaned out, all the good-byes said to a wonderful group of fifth graders. And today we set up for summer school. I am the coordinator for one of two sites for elementary summer school. It’s a wonderful program in its sixth year now that provides academic support to a group of students who struggle in reading, writing, and math. This year there was almost no break between the end of the “real” year and the beginning of summer school. But now I have four days off and I hope I can forget about all of it for the long weekend.