Antonio ( age 4) just told me, and I quote…’I don’t want to be a seasoned professional’.

I don’t either…

A slice of testing mania: picture an overstuffed, overly warm second grade room where I hand out the first in a series of test booklets to wiggly and squirming kids. I approach one desk where a little girl in pony tails and pink ribbons raises her hand. I do not know any of these children.

‘What do you need?’ I ask in exasperation. It’s hot. I’m irritated, and I’m grasping more number 2 pencils than anyone should hold at one time.

‘Why are you so beautiful?’ she asks, smiling innocently. Before I can answer, her twin sitting directly behind her chimes in, ‘Why are you so flawless?’ Treacle and subterfuge.

No dice. They still have to take the test. I was not born yesterday…

In the spring, remembering the shade of Autumn…

A mug of Italian dark express coffee and a slice of lemon raspberry Danish await me.

The snow blower is assembled and parked.

The lawn mower is hidden away in the basement.

The trees are wrapped in burlap and cushioned down for the season.

This Saturday is a-movin…

‘Help me’…the small voice pauses. The child looks at me. ‘I don’t know letters’. Everyone knows that he does not know letters. This is a special class, and yet he too is required to labor through an incomprehensible mess of words and punctuation. I look at his test. ‘It’s okay’ I respond casually. ‘Just draw pictures, okay? You are a good artist’.

He looks down. He picks up his number 2 pencil and with pudgy fingers draws a circle around letter B of the multiple choice question. Then he continues, drawing ears and a face in the circle. He leans back. ‘That’s a cat!’ he states proudly.

‘Yup, I see that. Nice cat. I told you that you were a good artist’.

He continues and I sit back and watch him complete the entire rest of the test in this manner. Every multiple choice question that this little one could not read, decipher nor understand is beautifully decorated in a variety of ways. There is a collection of angry dinosaurs with teeth, another cat emerges and then there are a few shapes I do not recognize. He is very pleased with his efforts.

‘Best test ever’ I think to myself.

I would like to know how many of these 4,000 plus NYSESLAT tests end up with intricate and carefully drawn pictures around the multiple choice letters.

I hope most of them do.

Antonio asks me, ‘Do you know ‘Scenes from an Italian restaurant?’ You know…’ and he begins humming the Billy Joel tune enthusiastically.

I look at him. He is seven years old. This music emerged on the scene when I was in high school. ‘Yes, I do’ I respond with amusement and wonder how he has gotten here with this knowledge of a musical time from a length ago.

I am lying down on the couch. He looks at me and says, ‘Well, don’t be a Brenda. Come on, get up! Don’t be a Brenda…you know? Brenda and Eddie…I can’t afford an Auntie like that…’

I need to consider this…

I turn and say to him, ‘Winston Churchill was such an interesting character…’ I await a response.

He stretches and yawns rather loudly. ‘Interesting enough to wake me up from my nap?’

I think about and then respond. ‘No…’

And that is that…

Testing, data gathering, state requirements, blah blah…the system grinds on.

Are we really going to hold teachers accountable for learning when students miss days and days of school…when 6th grade girls beat each other in the face and head in a hallway…and when a student who has been in multiple schools in a district refuses to enter a classroom and spends the day wandering the hallways?

It has been a bad day…very bad.

Merit pay? Nonsense!

My students have lost their collective minds due to the spring time change and the March doldrums.

One little one informed me that she was going to tell her Mom on me. I responded that I was going to tell my Mom on her.

That ended it…

Memories: when it was all a very bad dream…

On this second day of spring…as Covid is still claiming 1,000 lives daily, as the sun has rounded the bend of the cul de sac and shines so brightly on the south side of the house…I know three things.

It is an excellent thing to be able to talk to my Mother. So many persons have lost their family members.

I will never be called a ‘mega pop star’, for which I am profoundly grateful…an exorbitant waste of time.

It is astonishing to see so many commercials with the disclaimer ‘filmed before Covid’…so we know that as long as this country breathes, we shall apparently remain a litigious society.

But I remain grateful…

Memories of the schizophrenic and isolated moments of Covid, experienced in the depths of winter’s cold…

My seven year old nephew asks me, ‘What if the pandemic goes on until my birthday (next January)? Then people could only buy me presents from the Dollar Store and that WOULD’NT be good!’

He continues, ‘What if there’s no tomorrow?’

He thinks about it at length. ‘Why am I at your house, STILL?’

We both agree that today feels like it’s never ending…