3 rules for Bailey

    Only 3 hard-and-fast rules. 

    Housebroken.

    Good with cats.

    No puppies.

    Those are practical guidelines for a dog search, right?

    

    So after Stacey and I  talked it over and set those guidelines-sober and reasonable-we dropped by the local adoption shelter. 

      We had been without a dog in the house for a few years. It had taken a loooong time to feel ready. Because we had seen both Molly and Scout over the Rainbow Bridge within the past couple of years. They were with us for around 15 years. 15 years is enough time for a dog to slide into a rightful place as the center of the family. 

    Saying goodbye to such dogs after so much history leaves a huge empty gnawing hole that must be dealt with before opening your door to welcome another.

    But it was time. And Andrew had primed the pump, to be honest. He brought his newest dog, a small active personality-filled spaniel, to the house a couple of times. We just felt ready. So we did some research. Small, active, clever and affectionate were the order of the day.

    But those three musts we were sticking to-housebroken, good with cats, not a puppy.

    Shelters are chaotic places, full of barking dogs and whining puppies and mewing cats. No animal-or adopting family-is at the best in such an anxious setting. Sound and smell and emotion all in a whirlwind.

    When we walked by the small dog room, HE went CRAZY. Barking, whining, wiggling all over in his crate. Obviously, shouting "look at me" for all he was worth. His name was Brady, after the quarterback. 

                                                

    So we asked the staff about him, took our place in the courtyard outside to meet with him. He was full of boundless energy, jumping in our laps and licking our faces and chasing down a tossed ball over and over. Within a minute or two, he won us over and we knew he was going home with us.

    Scanning his folder? Well, he was almost a year old-so still a puppy. 

    He was untested with cats. Might like em. Might hate em. No information.

    He had been adopted and returned twice by other families. Among the problems the families reported were that he chewed everything up, and he refused housetraining.

    Hmmmm. 

    Seems to be zero-for-three. Right? Right. 

    Well, I still don't know if we just rationalized violating our principles away, or if we read closely enough in his documents to think that the other two families just had not worked very hard. But we took him home. Changed his name to the more palatable Bailey-because even Stacey, who does not follow football in the least, could not tolerate a dog named after Tom Brady.

    This was the Saturday before Thanksgiving. With a week of vacation from school, we had planned the timing so that I would have a whole week with Bailey to accustom him to the house. So we went into full-on training mode. We spent that first week leashed together with a 6-foot lead, one end on his harness and one end on a carabiner around my belt loop. Every 90 minutes-thank you, Alexa timer-I took him outside in case he had to use the bathroom. If he did, I loaded him full of treats. He only threw up treats once due to overfeeding. Ooops.

    During our meal times and at night, he was crated. No free roaming was possible, so he learned within about three days where to do his business and where to sleep. By the time I was ready to return to work after Thanksgiving, Bailey was accustomed to the house.

    Accustomed-he conquered it.

    Soon he learned, by the constant bribing with freeze-dried liver treats, to ring a bell hanging from the door handle when he needs to go out. He is a Yorkie, an intelligent and motivated breed, and he learns like a sponge. 

    As long as he is motivated..

    And he has turned out to be Mr. Personality Plus. Boundless energy. Will chase a ball about 30 minutes. A strong chewer, he destroys ropes and Kong toys and squeaky bones and all-but not furniture or shoes or anything of ours.

    Leaps from couch to recliner and back like a gazelle. Accompanies me to grocery pickup on Saturday morning, leaning eagerly toward the window to keep a suspicious eye on every dog we see on the sidewalk.

    And the cats? He gets along with them fine-but he has elected himself as their sheriff. If they growl at each other, Bailey rushes in to break up the alarm, and sends them to their neutral corners. 

       

    So, yes, it is intelligent to have a plan.

    But it is wise, and sometimes more rewarding, to deviate from the plan and follow your heart.

    

    

    

Nothing succeeds like....

     Once upon a time, long ago during a time of dragons and terrible destruction, there lived a little boy who didn't want to go to school...

    Well, to be honest, it was not that long ago.

    

    And it was not a time of dragons and terrible destruction.

    But it was during a time of terrible fear. Death. Anxiety. Upheaval.

    Yep, that's right. The lost days of the pandemic.

    I don't know how school went in your neck of the woods, but we went on Spring Break--very nervous about the rest of the year.

    Then didn't come back. Texas approved remote instruction. Online teaching. We found out it was a lot like Dora the Explorer.

    

    You ask a question. Wait expectantly and hopefully. No one answers.

    

    Ten or fifteen awkward seconds later, you answer the question yourself and move on.

    

    

    We took attendance daily, required students to show up on a Zoom meeting during the normal class schedule, and posted daily work online for them. If you are imagining that was a total disaster for kids with very little English, you would be 100% correct. 

    Some of our kids were still really engaged during remote learning. Like Victoria, who is the subject of a couple of other posts (A Face From The Past and Student of The...)   She was a superstar, and kept me on my toes by continually asking for more work once she caught up. 

    Other kiddoes? Not so much.

    

    Which brings us to Khalil, who was somewhat less diligent and motivated than the average students that year.

    As a stereotypical 7th grade boy, actually, he wasn't convinced that he needed a lot of schooling. He was conversant in social English--it was just the academic usage that he was weak in. As a stereotypical 7th grade boy, he was convinced that he was going to earn his daily bread in one of two ways.  Ways that DO NOT require a lot of schooling.

    One of his 7th grade goals was to be a famous YouTuber. I mean, Mr. Beast made it, so can anyone, right?

    Another of his 7th grade goals was to be a famous footballer. If Messi made it, so can anyone, right?

    So Khalil spent most of that year dodging work-first in class, and then on Zoom. He was one of the students who would "pretend" his Zoom camera was messed up, or set it pointing to the ceiling-I saw an awful lot of ceiling fans that year, I remember-and then tune out during the class. Turn in minimally completed assignments. Late, always late. 

    But Khalil was a naturally bright student, a glib and confident smooth-talker. A born salesman with charisma to spare. Those kids are the ones who break teacher's hearts and crush their optimistic outlooks. Those who could do it--but won't. Those who get get in their own way.

    But a funny thing happened during that awful year. He fell into success quite against his expectations.

    There are several supplementary programs that ESL students use in Katy ISD. One of them provides online news articles at the students' current reading levels, through which they progress with progressively harder and more challenging selections. Like the best of such programs for students, it incorporates some competition. 

    Both competition against themselves, for who makes the most progress against their beginning levels. And competition for who completes the most articles or the highest scores in a school. Or district. Even the entire state of Texas.

    So on a slower-than-normal Tuesday it began. Khalil logged into the program and completed two or three articles during class, on a day where no one else was really online.

    So he received a congratulatory email--Adobe Flash fanfare and confetti, even--that he was the daily top scorer for McMeans Junior High School. He showed it to me, and we noted together that he was pretty close to the daily leader for Katy ISD, the entire district. At the time, that was about 25 schools.

    That day he went into Beast Mode. Spent hours and hours completing articles. Learned how to answer the questions efficiently and quickly. How to pick out the main idea from the details. How to characterize opinion from fact. How to summarize properly. How to sequence events.

    Within the week, he was the top scorer in the program for the entire state of Texas. No idea how many students that includes, but I have never since had another student who came remotely close to his numbers. He literally completed over a hundred articles that week.

    And began to swagger. Noticeably. Perked up, showed interest in the rest of the class, in the work we were doing. Began to answer questions, to speak up and give his opinion when working with others.

    Once a month, I have my students submit a page-length writing sample. I use this to gauge the effectiveness of instruction in the class. This way I can tweak and monitor what they are learning as they learn it. Most months, I suggest a topic and a genre--fiction or informational, persuasive or entertainment. 

    That is how I assigned a personal reflection soon after his triumph. I was impressed at the newfound detail in his writing, which had been before now perfunctory and short. He went on at length about how he felt like a champion, how teachers he did not even know went out of their way to congratulate him--because you know I told everyone about his performance--and how he liked getting all the attention for his success. Of course he did. Of course he did.

    I would like to say this one taste of success turned him into a scholar, that he passed the STAAR that year and graduated the ESL program. That was a little too much to ask.

      But he did grow almost 3 years in reading level that year. He came to me reading on a 2nd-grade level, and at the end of the year, he was reading 5th grade texts successfully. That was a lot of deficit made up, and set him up for his 8th grade year only a couple of years behind. He did stop shirking work, as he saw he could stand with his peers and surpass them with a maniacal level of commitment. 

    And then he moved on after 8th grade. Moved to high school, and vanished from my student dashboard, as they all do. Khalil was one of the kids I always wondered about, and I used his story often in class, as an exemplar to what a dedicated student could pull off.

    

    

    I saw Khalil two days ago in the municipal library. At first he was unfamiliar to me-those puny little 7th graders change A LOT after they leave me. When a tall and serious young man stepped out from behind his computer and hailed me with a firm handshake, that same impish smile he sported as a 7th grader broke out on his face. He was amazed that I remembered his name, his story, his classmates. 

   

    Sheepishly, he admitted that he realized he was NOT going to be the next Mr. Beast, or the next Messi. He told me that he had decided to become a serious student in high school, and he had just applied online to the local community college. Probably a healthcare career, since he realizes his personality makes him good with people.

    Did I remember how he was the leading scorer in the whole state of Texas that week during Covid? That was one of his best memories of his school years, because it showed him he was a winner and was as smart as anyone else.

    

    Yep, I remember. How could I forget?

    Good luck, my friend. You have a brilliant future-cause I know you are going to light them up!

    

    

    

    

    

Everyone is obsessed with china-or not?

     Just a few days ago was 4th of July. As with any other 4th, I bought a couple of slabs of ribs, made sure I had a goodly supply of hardwood for smoking, and cleaned the smoker inside and out. Let the kids know the plans so they could drop in as their schedules allowed. Ribs, deviled eggs, cabbage, cornbread. Just the usual. Nothing fancy.

    But-and this is what makes it into a holiday...into a celebration....

    Table service was on china. 

    My grandmother's china, to be exact.

    The pattern is Royal Swirl. Mid-1960's. Fine China from Japan, according to the maker's mark on the back. Each plate has a pink rose in the center, with a scroll pattern on the rim of more flowers and grey curlicues, with a silverish rim. Maybe platinum? 

    The whole set, mind you. Plates, salad plates, cups and saucers. Gravy boats and underliners. Three separate sizes of small plates larger than a saucer and smaller than a salad plate. Soup tureens. Lids. Serving platters. Salt and pepper shakers. Everything.

    This china was intertwined with holidays and vacations in my childhood. Thanksgiving, Christmas, anytime we visited my grandmother, we ate off this china. 

    She must have had casual dinner plates, too, but I can't for the life of me remember using them. I do remember the huge oval glass tumblers, all embossed with a stylized Gothic "H" For Harrington, which held sweet tea. A sweet tea that was almost black, into which ice cubes would disappear, which was sweet enough to stand a spoon on end.

    When Grandmother moved into an assisted living facility, she sold the house. Furniture and furnishings went to whoever in the family wanted them. I remember no arguments between us. Kelly got the silver. Mom got her bedroom suit. Adam got the old console TV--which may still work. I got the china, the sideboard, the china cabinet.

    All these years later, I honor the memory of grandmother and her gatherings by using her china for important meals. It is remarkably light, and remarkably durable. No chips, no cracks, no fading. Maybe there is a metaphor there about life and family and memory and celebration. 

    Maybe there is a reminder that family, like well-made china, is forged to last for generations. 

    Or maybe it is just about plates. I don't know.

    Anyway, I have some great memories of using those plates. Our chaotic Christmas Eve dinners in Pelham, crowded into the kitchen and dining room around Grandmother's dining room table, eating from her heritage china.

    We've always washed those dishes by hand. Never trusted them to a dishwasher. The metallic trim would probably be discolored or damaged. So we always washed by hand. Following the age-old traditions, everyone would pitch in after dinner, fill the sink basin with soapy water as hot as could be tolerated, and wash and dry together.

    David would usually take over the soaping and scrubbing, with a kid on rinse and a couple or three to dry. I remember him hunched over the sink, toothpick working from side-to-side in his mouth. Hands plunged into soapy steam up to those bony elbows of his. Haranguing the rest of his team to work harder and keep up with him. 

    Setting the pace. 

    David really really set the pace. With everything. Since we lost him just a couple of months ago, I have reflected on just how central he was to all of us.

    Although it has been almost 15 years since the most recent of those huge Christmas dinners with everyone around the table, every time I pull Grandmother's china out of the cabinet, the one with the door that sticks on the top right corner, I think of all we did and said together. Sitting at the table over interminable cups of coffee and cake after dinner. 

    David on dish duty, directing his crew like George Patton barking out orders to the 3rd Army as they drove into Germany in the last months of WWII. 

    Culture changes, tastes change. Fine china, the type that costs hundreds of dollars and lasts a lifetime or more, has fallen out of favor. Estate sales and antique shops can't find buyers for their vintage sets, and young couples no longer register a china or silver pattern for wedding gifts. Which is a shame, I suppose.

    Treated with care, a good set of china will last for generations. 

    Just like the memories created whenever families gather to sit down together.