by jphilo | Oct 1, 2009 | Out and About
Who’da thought this math-phobic would do back-to-back posts about statistics? But this one has nothing to do with the Amazon book sale stats. (Though if you really want to know, Different Dream is now #60 in the category where it’s been wrongly placed.)
This post is about a math project Jeff Wells, a high school math teacher in our school district, and I created during my teaching years. We called it Stat Buddies. Each fall, my fourth graders collected data on twenty-odd different things: how many light bulbs in their houses, how tall they were in inches, how many blocks they lived from school, to name a few. Once the data was all in, Jeff and the students in his Probability and Statistics class would come to our school. They used the data to teach fourth graders about median, mode, graphing, estimating, and so forth.
The project was a win-win situation for everybody. My students learned statistics from people who understood them instead of from their teacher who didn’t. Because the seniors had to teach kids about statistics, they had to know their subject matter thoroughly. But the benefits went far beyond math. Both age groups were engaged in learning. Relationships developed between students. Behaviors improved.
A few weeks ago Jeff emailed and invited me to come see what Stat Buddies has become. It’s part of the fourth grade curriculum now, he said. All fourth grades in the district participate in it, he said. You gotta come see it, he said.
So this morning, I visited three Stat Buddies classrooms and was tickled pink to see the project working better today than it did six years ago. But what tickled me most was seeing some former students teaching a new crop of fourth graders about statistics. One of them is in the picture – the guy in the purple hoody. Another ran up and gave me a big hug.
As a result, I’m on a statistical, humble high, the kind that comes when you see how your bumbling attempts to mask your weaknesses (in my case math skills) impact others in positive ways.
Thanks, Jeff, for the invitation. You made my day. And thank you, God, for working through my weakness.
by jphilo | Sep 22, 2009 | Out and About
Fall is not my most favorite season, mostly because I’m the kind of person who’s always looking ahead and planning for the future rather than enjoying the present. So instead of relishing cool nights and pleasant days, the beautiful colors and signs of God’s faithfulness in another bountiful harvest, I view fall as the precursor of winter, my least favorite season.
But a goodly number of people who I love and respect think fall is the best thing since sliced bread. And last week, as I drove through the Iowa countryside on my way to some speaking engagements, I found myself agreeing with them. The corn was firing in the fields. The leaves on the trees displayed the faintest hints of yellow and orange when they waved from the roadsides. The cloudless, brilliant blue sky glimmered from one horizon to the other.
But most eye catching of all were the golden soybeans, halfway through their swift turning from green to brown. Field after field shimmered in the sunlight, a vast pirate’s treasure of glittering doubloons, piled acre upon acre, field upon field. mile upon mile.
Finally, on my way home, I pulled onto a gravel side road and photographed the scene. How could I not recored this annual flash of beauty which would soon tarnish and fade away? For once, I ignored the approach of winter, shoved aside the tasks waiting in my office, and relished the moment.
Then, I climbed into the car slowly and drove onto the highway. Winter grew closer, my tasks multiplied in my head, but nothing could steal the treasure stored in my heart. The dry smell of autumn, the crackle of leaves, the soft breeze and warm sun, the haze in the distance. My golden, fall day.
by jphilo | Sep 15, 2009 | Out and About
Yesterday morning, I packed the car and hopped in, grateful for a road trip away from the rodent war zone. But I should have known that if a church service wasn’t safe from the little critters, nothing was sacred.
My drive from home to northwest Iowa, where I have some radio interviews and speaking engagements for the next few days, was uneventful until my brief stop at an internet coffee shop in Cherokee. Imagine my surprise when I lifted my computer case from the floor of the front passenger seat and saw a gray, hairless, and very still baby mouse on the mat.
How it got there is a mystery to me. It wasn’t there the day before yesterday when Hiram washed and vacuumed the car. It wasn’t there Monday morning when I loaded everything into it. Did it crawl out from under the mat? Or did I set the computer case on the garage floor while I packed and inadvertently pick up my defenseless and now very dead passenger.
All those thoughts raced through my head while I considered how to dispose of the body. The day was warming up, and the situation would get ripe quickly without immediate action. A long funeral service was out, since I had another thirty miles to drive and a radio interview in less than an hour. I didn’t have a matchbox with me so a fancy coffin was out, too.
So, I went into shop’s bathroom and washed my hands thoroughly. Then I ordered lunch and white while taking care of my email, all the while stockpiling napkins for a death shroud. It sounds callous and cold, but that’s life in a war zone. Meal finished, I marched to the car and photographed the body (I wanted proof to show Hiram) before swathing it in the death shroud. Then, I looked around for a cemetery.
I couldn’t find one, so I drove off with my package on the seat beside me, praying for a burial place. Too late, I spied a trash can beside a Methodist Church, (it would have been such a nice touch), and I had resigned myself to a new career as a hearse driver. But a few blocks later, glory of glories, I spied trash bins at the end of every driveway. Hallelujah – it was garbage day! I pulled up beside a particularly attractive one and unloaded my passenger with a sigh of relief.
Hopefully, I’m safe from attack for the rest of the trip, but I as soon as I drive into town tomorrow, the troop surge begins. I’m stopping at the store to lay in a supple of mouse traps. Then I’ll enlist my husband’s support, and by nightfall, we’ll have laid a mine field.
I’m taking no prisoners. This is war.
by jphilo | Jul 24, 2009 | Out and About
Though we’re not at Family Camp any longer, I wanted to share a photo taken during Friday night’s jumping-off-the-top-deck-of-the-cruis-boat-highest-cannon-ball-splash-contest. I took hundreds of action shots, hoping to get a few good ones, and ended up with this one of the Jolly Green Giant crouching on a mountain top.
One of the pillars of Family Camp is a couple hours of hard work for everyone, every morning. Some people do sweaty and generally disgusting work like digging trenches, insulating walls, hanging sheet rock, mudding seams, logging, or hauling rocks from the river. Others do fun but complicated work like fixing three meals a day for 30 – 40 people.
A couple years ago I was asked to be camp historian and photographer. “So,” I asked by way of clarification while stilling the little flutter of joy that comes with being excused from sweaty, disgusting work and kitchen duties, “you want me to take pictures and write commentary about people doing sweaty and disgusting work and the cooks in the kitchen?”
“Yes,” the boss man said. “That’s what we want you to do.”
I waited for him to say, “Fooled ya’. Grab a pick ax, sucker,” but instead he said, “Have fun,” and walked away. I jumped on that order like a tick on a dog’s back and have been wielding my camera and computer ever since. But guilt has plagued me all along, when cool, clean and sweat free, I record the hard work and play of others.
But this year the guilt evaporated when I started running a slide show of each day’s pictures after supper. People smiled and laughed and remembered as the pictures floated by. And I finally understood the boss man’s wisdom in rustling up a camp historian. The construction and preservation of memories, while not sweaty and disgusting, is as necessary as cabins and meals. The record of our time together is shelter and food for our souls.
Thanks, Tom, for knowing what our hearts need and allowing me to provide it. I’ll do it again next year, no sweat.
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by jphilo | Jun 25, 2009 | Out and About
Mom and I have returned from our travels. In our 36 hours away from home the grass grew exponentially, much to Hiram’s chagrin, and the weeds did, too. Mom went to bed early and slept in late, and this morning she mentioned again how much she enjoyed the trip.
The highlight of the excursion was the impromptu coffee my Aunt Donna (second from the right) hosted. Our former neighbors dropped what they were doing when they heard their former neighbor (third from the right) was in town and stopped in for a lovely chat. Not only was Mom their neighbor, she taught most of their children. She’s now completely up to date on the lives of her former students, their children, and in some cases, their children’s children.
I am still in shock over the update, since many of Mom’s former students are my contemporaries. So how can they be grandparents already? I mean, I understand the mechanics involved. But are these people, my age and younger, old enough to be grandparents of children in high school?
A good look at the women who attended yesterday’s coffee reveals the truth. We’re all old enough to be grandparents, and some are old enough to be great-grandparents. But Mom, bless her heart, did not complain about the dearth of great-grandchildren in her family quiver.
And to make things perfectly clear to my own children, I am not complaining about my empty quiver, either. No need to rush on my account. I’m in for the long haul, ready to wait until you are ready for the joys and responsibilities of parenting.
Until that day comes, I’ll keep pretending I’m not old enough to be a grandparent. Denial is a wonderful thing.
by jphilo | Jun 24, 2009 | Out and About
Yesterday, Mom and I drove to Le Mars, my hometown, to visit relatives. So much has changed since I graduated from college in 1978. The old post office is now the Community Theater’s headquarters. The old Carnegie library, where I met Lois Lenski, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Cherry Ames, is now the Fine Arts Center. Westmar College is gone, Wells Blue Bunny is a behemoth, but KLEM is still on the air and the Daily Sentinel is still in business.
Beverly Van Buskirk, the lifestyles editor at the Sentinel, interviewed me about my book. We chuckled through the entire interview because we were high school and college classmates, never dreaming we’d both be writers one day. And in a few minutes, we’re going to my aunt’s house, where she and my uncle have lived for nearly 50 years, for coffee with some old neighbors.
The house will be familiar, but visiting with the neighbors as adult to adult will be a bit strange for me. One woman is the mother of a childhood friend of mine. Another is the mother of two kids I used to babysit. Maybe they’ve moved on, but I’m still stuck in those old relationships, and am not sure how to act.
So many things in my hometown have changed. Maybe today, I’ll be the one who changes. Maybe today, I’ll grow up.
