Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

Katherine and Nathaniel are home 24/7.  Like many kids around the country, they’re having to figure out how to occupy themselves–and, thankfully, help out around the house–while their parents get back to work.  Sydney and I can largely confine our classes to different days of the week, but the work continues after we come home.

Our kids have both opted to be homeschooled this fall.  Their arguments against remote learning were pretty strong, and they both committed to shouldering much of the responsibility for getting through their school work.

With the help of friends, we’ve equipped them with math and Spanish textbooks, and the kids have done well in making those subjects part of their daily rhythm.  I’ve set both kids to reading and writing activities (based on books they were already reading), and Sydney’s informal logic workbooks just arrived in the mail (they have cartoons!).

We are jotting down fun and creative family activities we’d like to build in, but a big part of this fall effort is getting the kids to forge ahead with their own work even when their parents are too swamped to check their homework.

The kids have also slowly taken on more responsibilities at the farm and at home.  Nathaniel is caring for the cats and chickens, and Katherine has stepped in to help with dishes and picking the tiny cherry tomatoes that are currently abundant at the farm.  Both kids are also contributing to cooking: Katherine tends to prefer baking, and can be relied on for a good pan of cornbread, whereas Nathaniel’s signature dish is a big pan of roasted root vegetables.  And we’re all making time to drop by the chicken coop in hopes of spying another egg, since the chickens just started laying this week.

Erin

Although it will stay hot in Kentucky for quite a while, we are firmly in “fall” mode.  Sydney and I just survived our first week back at school, and it has thrown us a number of curve balls: how to be heard through a mask, how to hear through our students’ masks, how to recognize students wearing masks, and how not to get a massive headache if you bring any of your usual energy to a masked class hour.  That’s just the mask stuff.  Other things have shifted, too.  You know the “ick” factor of picking up an abandoned hairband from the ground?  Yeah, well, now we apply that to everything from door handles to paper handouts.

This, of course, is after we battled some of the bigger issues.  How do we not let new requirements that we be ready to shift online and help students who are forced to go online keep us from investing in the in-person conversations that we think are essential to our disciplines?  The answer, as we argued to our administrators, is work.  There is no shortcut: to do right by our online students and to create a strong conversation community for our in-seat students is to tailor classes differently for those two modes.  I did offer an optional Zoom session yesterday for my classes, and it reminded me why I have no desire to just “talk at” a screen full of blank Zoom boxes, or even (for those who had their cameras on) at a screen full of dorm rooms, with my students’ roommates wandering through the background!  Even if I could bring myself to do it, my students aren’t able to hold a strong conversation among themselves in that mode, and that is my main goal with class discussion.

I’ve taken my classes outside, and will plan on being a campus spectacle for the rest of the fall.  I’ll keep working on getting students to speak up over the cicadas.  Sydney will keep working to figure out a way to read his students’ expressions and personalities despite the cloth over their faces.  We both demand a lot of class participation, which is particularly challenging this year.  Interestingly, my 8am class elected to continue meeting in person even though I offered to meet them over Zoom on Fridays.  I was surprised and pleased by that choice, given the unpopular class hour!  Students are more overwhelmed than usual, and the combination of in-seat classes but also much activity on the course website has meant that we’re responding to a lot of emails and repeating a lot of information.

Erin

Our lavender produced beautifully this year, so the kids and I set aside a number of hours this week to cut and sort the blooms for drying.  Katherine couldn’t bring herself to leave me to it, though I could tell she was incredulous that it took so long to make a few dozen bunches.  As I walk down the stairs to the basement, though, I can’t help but think that it’s never smelled so good.

Erin

Yesterday I surprised Katherine and Nathaniel by pulling out a tent and sleeping bags and announcing that dinner, bedtime reading, and sleep would be outside.  You don’t get much better than this in Kentucky: 60 degrees for the nighttime low, little humidity and no rain, and nearly bug-free.

The kids played games in the yard while I took over Katherine’s hammock and stole some reading time under Sydney’s fruit trees.  Dessert on the front porch consisted of Nutella on graham crackers, with a handful of marshmallows.  It was a hit!  When I was searching for Nutella in the grocery store, they were out of every size except a big jar . . .

I fully expected the kids to make a dash for the house some time in the night, but they stayed outside all night and said they had had a great time.  It probably helps that they were only a few steps away from the chicken coop, so they knew they had company out there.

Erin

Our summer is going all too quickly.  The first barrage of work emails has arrived, reminding us that our fall teaching, and the kids’ fall schooling, will be quite a challenge.

This seems like a straightforward math problem: to teach the same number of students, but with more physical distance requirements and with additional support for students to guide them through any and all shifts to online learning, we need more instructors and either more classrooms or a longer school day (or both), more cleaning, as well as perhaps more technological investment.  As in, each student’s learning just got a whole lot more expensive, and that expense can manifest in a variety of ways.

Every educational system I consult is clear that we’ll make the distancing and learning happen; if I drill down into their planning, though, they leave it up to the school/program/instructor to make it happen with the usual resources–or fewer ones.  I’m not into magical thinking or making promises we can’t keep, so I’m still working the math problem . . .

At the moment, that pot is simmering in the background as more local concerns crowd our field of vision.  Sydney has revived our backyard garden bed after it got lost under a pile of weeds, and it’s now half filled with strawberries.  The bushy things just to the right of the white row cover are Sydney’s beloved fava beans, which we recently made into a tasty spread alongside flatbread.  The flowers in the front yard also just keep coming.

I also finally got the chicken coop painted, and the chickens are busy enjoying it and the lengthy run extension Sydney taught the kids how to build out of PVC pipe and netting (not pictured).  These are some spoiled chickens!

The kids have been demonstrating some interesting play patterns this summer.  For the first time, I let go of a clear sense of schedule and left them to find their own diversions outside our meal times and farm or yard work.  They settled in for a month of Legos in the basement and rereading old favorites (I think Katherine first read these Nancy Drew books five years ago!), but now, after I feared the loop would never end, the kids are getting more adventurous again.

They’ve also helped considerably with cooking this summer.  They made samosas at Nathaniel’s instigation, and this is a half-gallon jar containing cornmeal that Nathaniel and I made from Sydney’s dried corn and our new grain mill.  Nathaniel and I were both panting by the time we finished, but we were also very proud of our accomplishment!

Erin

Katherine and Nathaniel currently share their parents’ distaste for computers (particularly video) and for car rides.  We like both our education and our socializing in person and on foot.  So our biggest struggle with staying at home these past few months has been with the substitutes that are being offered for school and for socializing.  When I told Katherine there was a drive-through celebration for fifth-grade graduates this week, she looked appalled at the thought that we might go; neither kid can be convinced to Zoom with family members.

So, what have they been doing?  Well, some schooling, though their teachers pulled back pretty quickly after initial lessons proved difficult to manage online.  As Sydney and I hunkered down for the final grading push this week, the kids knew they were on their own, so they played with the chicks (peekaboo in the spinach in the greenhouse), dug out all the Legos, helped on the farm (Sydney’s first radishes have arrived), and organized their books.

Nathaniel, only ever having known life with Katherine, may not yet realize that it’s not normal to have color-sorted Legos and alphabetized and labeled books, but she set the tone before he arrived on the scene.  Yes, we know bookcases are usually used vertically, but since those bookcases are ceiling-height, we aren’t setting them up unless Sydney secures them to the wall studs, in case they come crashing down!

Erin

Since this is the first May I can remember when temperatures are not already in the nineties, we’ve been getting out for a lot more hiking than we manage most springs.  Some parks are closed because of crowding, but we’ve enjoyed several hikes at Camp Nelson, the recently expanded trails at Tom Dorman, and today we wound our way through Veterans Park in Lexington.  Erin

Exactly one month ago, I collected from our post office a small box that emitted soft, but incessant, cheeping sounds.  The box contained 6 day-old chicks, whom we kept in the basement until they grew adventurous and could be moved to the outside coop.  We then, of course, promptly endured some of the coldest Kentucky spring nights on record.

Thankfully, Chickpea, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Paprika, Poblano, and Pepper are all alive and well, and served as lovely distraction for us over the past month.  Knowing that they would only be fluff balls for a few days, we took pictures incessantly (probably more than we did when our children were newborns . . .), and enjoyed playing with them in the greenhouse.  Whenever we could escape screen time, you’d probably find us in something like the posture of the last picture, just watching them discover the world.

Erin

Surprising no one, Sydney has been ambitious in his yard projects.  A very wet couple of weeks has put work at the farm on hold, so he has built a large new bed in the front yard, created a rock path (suddenly we all have arm muscles after our winter sloth), and is hard at work on a chicken coop.

Although the kids remain distinctly unimpressed by our computer work, they have come up with projects of their own around the yard, including lots of jump roping.  The school jump rope team, of which they were both members, had several spring performances scheduled–and then canceled–so the kids are making do with our sidewalk and driveway.

Erin

It is currently 77 degrees in Kentucky . . . at 7pm, at the end of March.  Although I think normal temperatures will resume, this heat is a reminder of the hot summer to come.  But it’s also a signal for plants and animals to get on with growing and blooming.  Here are a few pictures from our yard.

Redbud Trees:

Our new English Hornbeams:

The very first flower on our magnolia tree:

Fig trees:

Peach and plum trees:

Our resident mourning dove, who is not thrilled about our being home to watch her nest:Erin