Night School 2010
This year's night school started at 2:30 AM. All students except one were on hand for the opening of the school day, as were all teachers except one. When I arrived at about 2:40, one student said, "You're early."
"I'm both early and late. How can that be?" I replied. I usually don't arrive till about an hour after school begins.
Everyone was standing around in the kitchen sipping hot drinks and nibbling on some wonderful bite-sized muffins Jean Ann (the principal's wife) made, and chattering animatedly. After about 15 minutes of this, school began in earnest, with several hours of nearly everyone being in the learning center except during breaks. Dialing the cell phone of the missing student did not produce an answer--until more than an hour after school started. She arrived, explaining that she had set two alarms and didn't know what happened. Either they didn't ring or she turned them off without waking up.
Two freshmen had decided to work on their frog dissection lab during the school day. However, the sight of those spread-eagled frogs in the lab dish was almost too much for Susanna at 2:45 AM. "Oh, I don't think I can do this this early in the morning," she said.
"You explain that to Mr. Schrock," was her lab partner Brandon's unsympathetic response. They forged ahead, but it must not have gone fast. They were still working on it when I left at the end of the school day.
The night was the warmest of the season so far, I believe. The doors and windows stood open from the start of school on. At break times I heard students milling around in the dark outside, and right outside my window, I heard the first toad croaks of the season. Others heard it too. Seth assumed a thoughtful air and asked rhetorically, "What does this mean for gardeners?" (I'm pleased to know that he was listening during those phenology lessons in food production class.)
I think Emily was listening too. "Let's find it and kill it so we don't have to plant anything in our gardens," she said. Wrong take-away lesson, Emily. Talk about killing the messenger. . . .
*************
Marvin showed up early to recite Romans 12:1-16 to me. "Let me get a paper to mark errors," I said before he started.
"You probably won't need it," he said, grinning. He was right. Reciting early in the day gave him an elevated privilege for the remainder of the day--uh, night.
************
I heard a Killdeer call in the fields around the school, around 3:00 AM. What was he/she thinking or doing? I mean. . . . It was nearly full moon and everything, but seriously, why wasn't that bird asleep at that time of the night? Around 4:30 I heard a Robin singing.
************
When I entered the parking lot at school, a bunny fled out of the path of my headlights. I suspect this was a rude interruption to his usual privacy on nighttime forays.
************
The roads were largely forsaken on my way to school. Even on US 50/K61 I saw only three sets of headlights. At least two of them were semis.
************
The homeschoolers who come in for individual classes dutifully arrived at the unorthodox class times. Mr. Schrock had kindly scheduled those classes near the end of the school day, but they couldn't all be at the end because there were at least three of them.
***********
For Bible/devotions, we had a sunrise service that included some singing and a time of talking to Jesus. People who wished could stand and say out loud, conversationally, what they wanted to say directly to Jesus. For me it was a good time of reflection on the suffering and death of Jesus. I wasn't sure I could get it said, but when I thought of the incident in the garden involving Malchus' ear, I wanted to say, "Thank you Jesus for showing us how to minister to others even when we are in anguish of spirit, and when physical suffering awaits." That's such an untypical human response to suffering, and I was awed by seeing it in Jesus.
This morning in our Good Friday service, Henry Schrock shared similar thoughts.
**********
We wondered what the paper carrier thought when he or she arrived with the place all lit up.
**********
The German class made potato pancakes during their class period. It was an experiment they wanted to do as part of their research on what they wanted to serve at their German class fundraiser breakfast. While they were all in the kitchen, Marvin, Heidi, and Louise got the bright idea to tie together the door knobs for the kitchen and typing room doors, which are adjacent to each other. It was April 1, after all, and very little of this day's potential had yet been explored. I heard the kitchen door unlatch before long, and Mr. Shrock's one hand deftly reached through the narrow opening and untied the rope on the doorknob.
"We're making food in there, and we're going to decide who gets to eat it," he said pointedly to Marvin, Heidi, and Louise after he emerged from the kitchen. He didn't look a bit stern, however.
*************
Around 5:00 some of last year's seniors, Sheila R. and Sheila G., Ida, and Frieda showed up with hot lollipops--cream cheese enclosed in biscuit dough, and baked with a coating of brown sugar and butter or cream. They were gooey and good. Sheila R. asked me if I remembered that they served these for typing class parties. They used to call them lolliPLOPS.
*********
When one of the breaks ended at about 6:30, I headed home to round up some tools I had forgotten to get ready the night before. It wasn't the first time I guiltily recalled telling my students before dismissal the day before. "Get everything ready for food production class right away after you get home from school. Put it in your vehicle so you don't forget to bring it--unless it's smelly. In that case, put it beside your vehicle in a spot where you'll have to bump into it before you leave. I guarantee you won't want to be scurrying around collecting compost materials at 2:00 in the morning."
After collecting a digging fork from the shed, a shovel and watering can by the greenhouse, I was ready to head out again. Then Hiromi called from the bedroom, "When are you having class?" When I told him it would be around 8:00, he said, "I'll come over about then and show them how I'm making my tomato cages. Put one of the cages into the van."
"Sounds good," I said. We had talked earlier about doing this some time, but I wouldn't have dared expect him to do it during night school.
During class we took a quiz first, which a lot of the students apparently forgot to study for. But Stephen, who studied the longest, only missed one, for the highest score in the class. I had fun writing the first-ever "multiple-guess" quiz for that class. I added some teeth to several on-going assignments due on the Tuesday after spring break--get something planted in your garden, get a fruit tree/bush/plant into the ground, and have your food animal on the premises. Completion of each of those tasks is worth 50 points apiece. Then we went outdoors to begin to build our compost pile.
Each student carried their 5-gallon bucket or garbage bag over to the appointed spot north of the shop where I had set up a compost bin. Their contributions were to contain a combination of high-carbon and high-nitrogen materials in roughly the right proportions--a ratio of 25-30:1. I had handed out a chart that listed the content of various compostable materials.
One by one, they dumped their buckets or bags, and told the rest of us about what they contained. Some of them were obvious. It was quite a collection. Animal bedding, manure, leaves from last fall, young weeds, and kitchen scraps. At the very end, Arlyn's contribution went on the pile. A whole bunch of very red little "potatoes" which he had scavenged from their own compost pile at home, rolled onto the pile and right out through the holes of the mesh sides of the bin. They were actually large radishes still left from the late fall garden. So I spent the last part of the demonstration trying to corral those radishes with my shovel and get them back on the pile. Stephen had forgotten his weeds, but I saw later that he had brought them, and spread them over the top of the pile. It looked a lot better with the garbage tucked away under the uprooted cheat grass he had brought. We'll need to do this several more times to fill the bin.
Hiromi was patiently waiting during this time, but he swung into action, demonstrating his tools and techniques. He had bought concrete reinforcement mesh in panels that were 42" by 84". With a one-foot overlap, he formed them into circles roughly 2 ft. in diameter. Instead of simply wiring them together, he used fasteners and a crimping tool that is often used to make rabbit cages from rolls of wire mesh. When he was finished, he had a nice cage sized for determinate tomatoes, having done no cutting, and leaving no sharp edges. He also showed the 4 ft. wide plastic he bought to wrap the cages in early in the season to provide extra warmth for the tomatoes. He's making 2 ft. x 2 ft. plywood covers for the cages to cover them on cold nights or when hail threatens. The breakfast bell rang before everyone had a chance to try the crimping tool, but it was a good introduction.
*****************
Ah, breakfast. With all our snacking and drinks, we were much better fed than we usually are early in the morning, but Jean Ann had a wonderful spread for us--a large and luscious-looking fruit platter, several kinds of breakfast casseroles, and coffee cake. Juice and hot tea were options as well.
After breakfast, the "Friday" cleaning commenced.
I graded my share of the pace tests for the week, gathered up my things, and headed home--except that Eunice had told me just before she left that Gene's house had arrived, and her mom said to tell me.
So I stopped by to see the house on my way home. The site had attracted a great cloud of witnesses. The lady was there who owned the house originally and who had stopped by our market booth last summer to tell us they'd like to see a Mennonite family buy their house. It had to be moved because of the danger of sink holes developing in the area. Finally, just before the deadline for getting the site in town cleared, that house rode out from town to its prepared basement, dug in what used to be Gene's dad's (Joe's) alfalfa field. All these months later, God had brought everything together, so that these people who had lovingly built their dream house could see it go to a young family who would cherish the house and create a lifetime of good memories in it.
**********
I came home to go with Hiromi to Partridge to sign the petition for the school board. He had given up on me and gone by himself, so I went by myself too and did the signing. Then I came home and thought I would take a nap. But I really wasn't tired enough to sleep. I ate some leftovers around 2:00. Finally, at about 4:00 Hiromi told me to go take a nap, "so you won't be grouchy." I wonder why he said that--right after he had been grilling me about whether I wanted to save or throw away some stuff he had discovered in the shop at the Trail West place--stuff I could not picture, and certainly could not make a rational decision on what its fate should be, and I'm not going to make a decision on that right now.
***********
Night school early in the morning was a fun experience, especially because it was the kickoff to spring break. I'm glad it worked out. . . and glad that it happens only once a year.
"I'm both early and late. How can that be?" I replied. I usually don't arrive till about an hour after school begins.
Everyone was standing around in the kitchen sipping hot drinks and nibbling on some wonderful bite-sized muffins Jean Ann (the principal's wife) made, and chattering animatedly. After about 15 minutes of this, school began in earnest, with several hours of nearly everyone being in the learning center except during breaks. Dialing the cell phone of the missing student did not produce an answer--until more than an hour after school started. She arrived, explaining that she had set two alarms and didn't know what happened. Either they didn't ring or she turned them off without waking up.
Two freshmen had decided to work on their frog dissection lab during the school day. However, the sight of those spread-eagled frogs in the lab dish was almost too much for Susanna at 2:45 AM. "Oh, I don't think I can do this this early in the morning," she said.
"You explain that to Mr. Schrock," was her lab partner Brandon's unsympathetic response. They forged ahead, but it must not have gone fast. They were still working on it when I left at the end of the school day.
The night was the warmest of the season so far, I believe. The doors and windows stood open from the start of school on. At break times I heard students milling around in the dark outside, and right outside my window, I heard the first toad croaks of the season. Others heard it too. Seth assumed a thoughtful air and asked rhetorically, "What does this mean for gardeners?" (I'm pleased to know that he was listening during those phenology lessons in food production class.)
I think Emily was listening too. "Let's find it and kill it so we don't have to plant anything in our gardens," she said. Wrong take-away lesson, Emily. Talk about killing the messenger. . . .
*************
Marvin showed up early to recite Romans 12:1-16 to me. "Let me get a paper to mark errors," I said before he started.
"You probably won't need it," he said, grinning. He was right. Reciting early in the day gave him an elevated privilege for the remainder of the day--uh, night.
************
I heard a Killdeer call in the fields around the school, around 3:00 AM. What was he/she thinking or doing? I mean. . . . It was nearly full moon and everything, but seriously, why wasn't that bird asleep at that time of the night? Around 4:30 I heard a Robin singing.
************
When I entered the parking lot at school, a bunny fled out of the path of my headlights. I suspect this was a rude interruption to his usual privacy on nighttime forays.
************
The roads were largely forsaken on my way to school. Even on US 50/K61 I saw only three sets of headlights. At least two of them were semis.
************
The homeschoolers who come in for individual classes dutifully arrived at the unorthodox class times. Mr. Schrock had kindly scheduled those classes near the end of the school day, but they couldn't all be at the end because there were at least three of them.
***********
For Bible/devotions, we had a sunrise service that included some singing and a time of talking to Jesus. People who wished could stand and say out loud, conversationally, what they wanted to say directly to Jesus. For me it was a good time of reflection on the suffering and death of Jesus. I wasn't sure I could get it said, but when I thought of the incident in the garden involving Malchus' ear, I wanted to say, "Thank you Jesus for showing us how to minister to others even when we are in anguish of spirit, and when physical suffering awaits." That's such an untypical human response to suffering, and I was awed by seeing it in Jesus.
This morning in our Good Friday service, Henry Schrock shared similar thoughts.
**********
We wondered what the paper carrier thought when he or she arrived with the place all lit up.
**********
The German class made potato pancakes during their class period. It was an experiment they wanted to do as part of their research on what they wanted to serve at their German class fundraiser breakfast. While they were all in the kitchen, Marvin, Heidi, and Louise got the bright idea to tie together the door knobs for the kitchen and typing room doors, which are adjacent to each other. It was April 1, after all, and very little of this day's potential had yet been explored. I heard the kitchen door unlatch before long, and Mr. Shrock's one hand deftly reached through the narrow opening and untied the rope on the doorknob.
"We're making food in there, and we're going to decide who gets to eat it," he said pointedly to Marvin, Heidi, and Louise after he emerged from the kitchen. He didn't look a bit stern, however.
*************
Around 5:00 some of last year's seniors, Sheila R. and Sheila G., Ida, and Frieda showed up with hot lollipops--cream cheese enclosed in biscuit dough, and baked with a coating of brown sugar and butter or cream. They were gooey and good. Sheila R. asked me if I remembered that they served these for typing class parties. They used to call them lolliPLOPS.
*********
When one of the breaks ended at about 6:30, I headed home to round up some tools I had forgotten to get ready the night before. It wasn't the first time I guiltily recalled telling my students before dismissal the day before. "Get everything ready for food production class right away after you get home from school. Put it in your vehicle so you don't forget to bring it--unless it's smelly. In that case, put it beside your vehicle in a spot where you'll have to bump into it before you leave. I guarantee you won't want to be scurrying around collecting compost materials at 2:00 in the morning."
After collecting a digging fork from the shed, a shovel and watering can by the greenhouse, I was ready to head out again. Then Hiromi called from the bedroom, "When are you having class?" When I told him it would be around 8:00, he said, "I'll come over about then and show them how I'm making my tomato cages. Put one of the cages into the van."
"Sounds good," I said. We had talked earlier about doing this some time, but I wouldn't have dared expect him to do it during night school.
During class we took a quiz first, which a lot of the students apparently forgot to study for. But Stephen, who studied the longest, only missed one, for the highest score in the class. I had fun writing the first-ever "multiple-guess" quiz for that class. I added some teeth to several on-going assignments due on the Tuesday after spring break--get something planted in your garden, get a fruit tree/bush/plant into the ground, and have your food animal on the premises. Completion of each of those tasks is worth 50 points apiece. Then we went outdoors to begin to build our compost pile.
Each student carried their 5-gallon bucket or garbage bag over to the appointed spot north of the shop where I had set up a compost bin. Their contributions were to contain a combination of high-carbon and high-nitrogen materials in roughly the right proportions--a ratio of 25-30:1. I had handed out a chart that listed the content of various compostable materials.
One by one, they dumped their buckets or bags, and told the rest of us about what they contained. Some of them were obvious. It was quite a collection. Animal bedding, manure, leaves from last fall, young weeds, and kitchen scraps. At the very end, Arlyn's contribution went on the pile. A whole bunch of very red little "potatoes" which he had scavenged from their own compost pile at home, rolled onto the pile and right out through the holes of the mesh sides of the bin. They were actually large radishes still left from the late fall garden. So I spent the last part of the demonstration trying to corral those radishes with my shovel and get them back on the pile. Stephen had forgotten his weeds, but I saw later that he had brought them, and spread them over the top of the pile. It looked a lot better with the garbage tucked away under the uprooted cheat grass he had brought. We'll need to do this several more times to fill the bin.
Hiromi was patiently waiting during this time, but he swung into action, demonstrating his tools and techniques. He had bought concrete reinforcement mesh in panels that were 42" by 84". With a one-foot overlap, he formed them into circles roughly 2 ft. in diameter. Instead of simply wiring them together, he used fasteners and a crimping tool that is often used to make rabbit cages from rolls of wire mesh. When he was finished, he had a nice cage sized for determinate tomatoes, having done no cutting, and leaving no sharp edges. He also showed the 4 ft. wide plastic he bought to wrap the cages in early in the season to provide extra warmth for the tomatoes. He's making 2 ft. x 2 ft. plywood covers for the cages to cover them on cold nights or when hail threatens. The breakfast bell rang before everyone had a chance to try the crimping tool, but it was a good introduction.
*****************
Ah, breakfast. With all our snacking and drinks, we were much better fed than we usually are early in the morning, but Jean Ann had a wonderful spread for us--a large and luscious-looking fruit platter, several kinds of breakfast casseroles, and coffee cake. Juice and hot tea were options as well.
After breakfast, the "Friday" cleaning commenced.
I graded my share of the pace tests for the week, gathered up my things, and headed home--except that Eunice had told me just before she left that Gene's house had arrived, and her mom said to tell me.
So I stopped by to see the house on my way home. The site had attracted a great cloud of witnesses. The lady was there who owned the house originally and who had stopped by our market booth last summer to tell us they'd like to see a Mennonite family buy their house. It had to be moved because of the danger of sink holes developing in the area. Finally, just before the deadline for getting the site in town cleared, that house rode out from town to its prepared basement, dug in what used to be Gene's dad's (Joe's) alfalfa field. All these months later, God had brought everything together, so that these people who had lovingly built their dream house could see it go to a young family who would cherish the house and create a lifetime of good memories in it.
**********
I came home to go with Hiromi to Partridge to sign the petition for the school board. He had given up on me and gone by himself, so I went by myself too and did the signing. Then I came home and thought I would take a nap. But I really wasn't tired enough to sleep. I ate some leftovers around 2:00. Finally, at about 4:00 Hiromi told me to go take a nap, "so you won't be grouchy." I wonder why he said that--right after he had been grilling me about whether I wanted to save or throw away some stuff he had discovered in the shop at the Trail West place--stuff I could not picture, and certainly could not make a rational decision on what its fate should be, and I'm not going to make a decision on that right now.
***********
Night school early in the morning was a fun experience, especially because it was the kickoff to spring break. I'm glad it worked out. . . and glad that it happens only once a year.
posted by Mrs. I at
5:13 PM
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