From the way I see it, the Spelling Bee is a good way to discourage 90% of each classroom from being excited about spelling as we send 10% of each classroom off to compete with all the other ten percents. Then, in the school wide spelling bee, you have the unique opportunity to make 9 out of the 10 best spellers in the school go home crying.
Today was our school spelling bee for 2nd and 3rd graders. It left me wondering, “What are Spelling Bees supposed to do? Can someone tell me again?”
I am an amazingly good speller, as was my father before me, as was his mother before him. I am terrible at Spelling Bees, as was my father before me. I don’t know about his mother on that one. In 4th, 5th, and 6th grade, I always did well on the spelling bees, but made ridiculous errors near the end. In 7th grade, I was determined to win—not because I wanted the “gold” bee on a trophy, but because my teacher said she had never had a spelling bee winner in her three years of teaching. And, I was relatively in love with her. This would be my way to be her hero. I told her I would win the spelling bee for her.
In the classroom preliminaries, my first word was “park”.
“Park,” I said. “P-R-A-K. Park.” She corrected me, and I was immediately embarrassed. But, then she threw it out and gave me a new word. She was giving me a break! She liked me! That was my only mistake. After that, I was careful and ended up representing our class against 28 other contestants in 7th grade. Out of a grade level of nearly 1,000 students, I was pretty proud.
My dad came to watch the spelling bee contest, held in our spacious school library. I sailed through my first two words, as did everyone else. My third word was “historical”.
“Historical.” I took a deep breath; this would be easy. “H-I-S,” I breathed quickly. “T-O-R-I-C-A-L.” I sat down smugly. But, I was called back up. The word was judged to be incorrect. I challenged it. They played back the tape. I had started so quickly that the only thing anyone heard—including the tape recorder—was “H-S…T-O-R-I-C-A-L.” The “I” was absent; even I had to admit it.
My romantic prospects went down the drain. I sat next to my teacher for a few moments, and she offered no consolation. Then I asked if I could sit with my dad, and she said that would be OK.
After the Spelling Bee, dad said, “You know, in my seventh grade spelling bee, I went out on the word ‘park’. I spelled it P-R-A-K.”
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Friday, January 05, 2007
The Calm After the Storm
January is in, and the whirlwind of December has receded. In an earlier post, I cited some wisdom found in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, and I am compelled to do so again. Particularly, I am reminded of Mole when he said:
“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”
Mole's view complements Ma Ingall’s stark heterodox in a contrasting sort of way.
“The earthly life is a battle,” Ma said. “If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and the more thankful for your pleasures.”
My wife surprised me in November by mentioning Christmas traditions. She wants us to be proactive in determining our family’s nascent traditions. What will they be? What is important to us? What defines our family and speaks of the true spirit of Christmas? In doing so, we each discussed our traditions growing up. Someone once said that marriage is two histories colliding, but in many cases we are more of two histories merging. Defining our traditions is not going to incur major battles and conflicts.
Anyway, I happened into JC Penny as they were taking down Christmas decorations. One was a giant shiny, red spiral cone that resembled a Christmas tree only in the vaguest sense. I thought it represented today’s Christmas pretty well—vague and ambiguous. It reminded me of a poster I saw for sale recently. It was a large photo of a highly embellished Christmas tree complete with gifts and lights. The idea being if your apartment is too small for a Christmas tree, you could still have one on your living room wall.
What an evolution Christmas trees have seen since they migrated from Germany to England. From evergreens with candles to red metal spirals. Candles are obviously a ridiculous idea on a dead evergreen inside a tinderbox house. Then came electric lights, which still could get pretty hot. Then came artificial trees, which can still burn if given enough persuasion. Now we have artificial trees that have built in lights, which seems like a good idea until one burns out. And we also have artificial trees in every color including pink…plus tree posters and red spiral metal cones.
I bet it won’t be too long before we are buying giant LCD screens to stand in a corner of the parlor. We will program what kind of evergreen we want—say, spruce, which is my favorite, or a red metal spiral for JC Penny (my apologies for kicking a dead horse)—download ornaments and lights and click to decorate. During the rest of the year, we will download ficas trees or yeti to stand in its place. We’re practically already there. We’ve got LCD screens to look like fireplaces and aquariums. They’ll be hanging on every wall with folk art, masterpieces, kids’ pictures, and poems changing every month. So why not Christmas trees? Hey, why not give fake gifts, too? Instead of giving real gifts that mean something, why not just give money? If everybody did it, it would work out OK in the end. If everybody gave everybody $20 in an envelope, then Christmas wouldn’t be such a financial burden and we could all just relax.
One of my students is Jewish, and his mother wanted to come in to talk to the kids about Chanukah. Why not? Well, it wasn’t pretty. Not only did it take up 30 minutes of the winter holiday party, she berated the apparently invidious children for inflicting Christmas on the rest of the culture. “Jews didn’t give gifts for Chanukah,” she said. “It’s the festival of lights. That’s all.” This after she told the amazing story of the Maccabees. “But, all you kids were getting presents for Christmas and little Jewish kids were left out, so we had to change Chanukah into a gift-giving holiday.” Oh, and she continued to obtrude, and it wasn’t subtle. One of the third graders actually went up to her son later in the party and apologized.
So, I guess Christmas is not the only evolving holiday. So Christmas has evolved to a mere resemblance of itself. So what? That’s life and culture, right? I know it’s kind of late to be commenting on Christmas, and it’s pretty much the same ol’ backlash commentary that Charles Schultz made 40-some years ago through Charlie Brown’s Christmas TV Special. I don't find Christmas nettlesome, I promise; I was just noticing, acknowledging. I like red spiral trees, even if I don’t put one in my house.
May we all simply inspect our motives for our actions and traditions on Christmas as on every day.
“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”
Mole's view complements Ma Ingall’s stark heterodox in a contrasting sort of way.
“The earthly life is a battle,” Ma said. “If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and the more thankful for your pleasures.”
My wife surprised me in November by mentioning Christmas traditions. She wants us to be proactive in determining our family’s nascent traditions. What will they be? What is important to us? What defines our family and speaks of the true spirit of Christmas? In doing so, we each discussed our traditions growing up. Someone once said that marriage is two histories colliding, but in many cases we are more of two histories merging. Defining our traditions is not going to incur major battles and conflicts.
Anyway, I happened into JC Penny as they were taking down Christmas decorations. One was a giant shiny, red spiral cone that resembled a Christmas tree only in the vaguest sense. I thought it represented today’s Christmas pretty well—vague and ambiguous. It reminded me of a poster I saw for sale recently. It was a large photo of a highly embellished Christmas tree complete with gifts and lights. The idea being if your apartment is too small for a Christmas tree, you could still have one on your living room wall.
What an evolution Christmas trees have seen since they migrated from Germany to England. From evergreens with candles to red metal spirals. Candles are obviously a ridiculous idea on a dead evergreen inside a tinderbox house. Then came electric lights, which still could get pretty hot. Then came artificial trees, which can still burn if given enough persuasion. Now we have artificial trees that have built in lights, which seems like a good idea until one burns out. And we also have artificial trees in every color including pink…plus tree posters and red spiral metal cones.
I bet it won’t be too long before we are buying giant LCD screens to stand in a corner of the parlor. We will program what kind of evergreen we want—say, spruce, which is my favorite, or a red metal spiral for JC Penny (my apologies for kicking a dead horse)—download ornaments and lights and click to decorate. During the rest of the year, we will download ficas trees or yeti to stand in its place. We’re practically already there. We’ve got LCD screens to look like fireplaces and aquariums. They’ll be hanging on every wall with folk art, masterpieces, kids’ pictures, and poems changing every month. So why not Christmas trees? Hey, why not give fake gifts, too? Instead of giving real gifts that mean something, why not just give money? If everybody did it, it would work out OK in the end. If everybody gave everybody $20 in an envelope, then Christmas wouldn’t be such a financial burden and we could all just relax.
One of my students is Jewish, and his mother wanted to come in to talk to the kids about Chanukah. Why not? Well, it wasn’t pretty. Not only did it take up 30 minutes of the winter holiday party, she berated the apparently invidious children for inflicting Christmas on the rest of the culture. “Jews didn’t give gifts for Chanukah,” she said. “It’s the festival of lights. That’s all.” This after she told the amazing story of the Maccabees. “But, all you kids were getting presents for Christmas and little Jewish kids were left out, so we had to change Chanukah into a gift-giving holiday.” Oh, and she continued to obtrude, and it wasn’t subtle. One of the third graders actually went up to her son later in the party and apologized.
So, I guess Christmas is not the only evolving holiday. So Christmas has evolved to a mere resemblance of itself. So what? That’s life and culture, right? I know it’s kind of late to be commenting on Christmas, and it’s pretty much the same ol’ backlash commentary that Charles Schultz made 40-some years ago through Charlie Brown’s Christmas TV Special. I don't find Christmas nettlesome, I promise; I was just noticing, acknowledging. I like red spiral trees, even if I don’t put one in my house.
May we all simply inspect our motives for our actions and traditions on Christmas as on every day.
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