by jphilo | May 27, 2011 | Recipes
Today’s recipe has no redeeming qualities. It doesn’t contain oatmeal. Whole wheat flour can’t be substituted for white. Brown sugar can’t replace either the granulated or powdered sugar. It has too much oil and too much butter.
Then why feature Super Sugar Cookies on this blog? Because I made a batch for today’s time capsule opening. The recipe is a huge hit with high schoolers. And since this is the last group of seniors who spent the year in the Philo Pig Pen, and thus our last Time Capsule Opening, this could be the last time I make the cookies for a long, long time.
So today is the right day to feature Super Sugar Cookies and to remember June Bricker, my best friend’s mom, who passed along the recipe when I was in high school.
Sweet memories.
Sweet cookies.
Sweet time with the seniors today.
Super Sugar Cookies
1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup oil
1 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond or lemon extract
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon soda
4 1/2 cups flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugars, butter, oil, and eggs until light and fluffy. Add dry ingredients and mix well. Chill. Roll into small balls and place on cookie sheets. Press flat with a glass dipped in sugar. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes.
*This makes a large batch. I often half it.
by jphilo | Apr 28, 2011 | Daily Life
Yesterday’s Time Capsule Opening was a strange mixture of endings and beginnings. The graduating seniors who gathered were Bryant Elementary fourth graders in 2002-2003, my last year of teaching. Until this spring, the students returned to Bryant to open the capsule.
But not this year because Bryant School is no longer open. So we gathered in the new, bright, and sunny lunch room at Franklin School instead. The seniors were so busy thinking about graduation and parties and new beginnings, they barely noticed. Plus, they were having too much fun looking through old pictures, sharing memories, and discovering what they put in the Time Capsule to get all mushy and maudlin.
I, on the other hand, felt like a kid in uncomfortable, new clothes that didn’t quite fit. This place wasn’t the well-worn school where we made fourth grade memories. Seven years older, the little children I taught and loved for nine months barely peeked out from beneath whiskered cheeks and prom sun tans.
Their eyes are on the future.
Their hearts are full of hopes and dreams.
Their lives are full of beginnings, not endings.
For me, this spring filled with endings: the end of time capsules, the end of graduation invitations from former students, the end of Bryant School, which will soon be demolished.
I am ready for this ending, as ready as these brave young people are for the end of this phase of their lives. I just need a moment to cry and savor these sweet and tender endings. Then, I’ll learn one more lesson from these fresh and lovely students.
With them, I’ll look at the future,
examine new hopes and dreams,
concentrate on beginnings rather than endings.
With them, I’ll finally graduate from public school.
by jphilo | May 4, 2009 | Current Events
Last Friday afternoon, I went to a reunion. Fourteen of my favorite people in the whole world came to the elementary school where we did fourth grade together. We gathered, a few weeks shy of their high school graduation, to open the time capsule they put together about this time eight years ago.
The young men were so tall and deep-voiced, it took a few minutes for me to match them with the little boys who hugged me good-bye almost a decade ago. The young women were poised and lovely, the fulfullment of the promises I had glimpsed beyond their ponytails and the chipmunk teeth that overpowered their nine-year-old faces. Not everyone returned for the festivities. Some I couldn’t locate. Some lived too far away to return for the party. Some chose not to come. Their absence was an emptiness in the crowded room.
My former students looked different, but their chatter was the same, as they watched the videos of their fourth grade year. Squeals of laughter and little screams filled the room as they found photographs of our Halloween party, field trips and playground fun. They read the stories they had written, full of their perfect penmanship and childhood wishes. “I don’t remember much of fourth grade,” several confessed. But by the end of the afternoon, they did – the broken clipboard, the multiplication songs, our class fundraiser, science experiments, social studies presentations, and one book they said impressed them: a true story written by children’s author Peg Kehret about her childhood battle with polio.
Eight years ago when these kids entered my classroom, they wormed their way into my heart. They’ve been there ever since. As they came up one by one to open the little token they placed in the time capsule, I marveled at the young adults they’ve become and rejoiced to hear of the dreams they have for the future.
Nothing dimmed the magic of the afternoon. For an hour, the soon-to-graduate seniors were fourth graders again, and I was their teacher. And I prayed that the memories of childhood and the sweetness of our days together will be one small, link in the chain of events that holds them up and carries them into the future. In that future, I hope they will experience one of the greatest privileges I have ever known: to watch a youngster discover the potential he’s been given and then use it to give to others.
by jphilo | May 5, 2008 | Reflections on the Past
Friday was a wonderful day, though on the surface it looked a bit dicey. The weather was cold, windy and gray as I hauled bags and boxes full of party supplies, along with an eight-year-old time capsule to my car. Shortly after noon I pulled up to the service entrance of Bryant School, where I taught for many years. A thunderstorm was in full progress and the rain came down in sheets. Opening doors and hauling in supplies was a bit tricky with an umbrella in hand, but I managed.
A few minutes later, I was in one of the school’s empty classrooms, getting ready for a party. Everything was in place when the guests of honor, my former fourth grade students who are graduating this year and their parents, arrived. The seniors entered, self-conscious, trying to be cool. But as they looked a the memorabilia laid out on the tables – their elementary yearbook, the class scrapbook, photographs, and notes they’d written and old projects they asked me to save – the cool vanished. When they realized the video playing on the TV was of them in fourth, they began to laugh.
That’s when the day turned wonderful. The sense of camaraderie and innocence they’d shared when they were nine and ten descended upon them again. The oneness that had developed during nine months of learning together settled upon them like a blessing. The room filled with delight. When the program began, and each student came forward to reclaim their time capsule treasure and tell us their plans for the future, the blessing continued.
I have high hopes for these former students. I hope they all use the remarkable talents they’ve been given for good. I hope they have happy and meaningful lives. And I hope the memory of our year together and the time spent celebrating on a cold, rainy afternoon takes root inside them and continues to bless them.
I hope one day, they will recognize the blessing and pass it on.
