Standardized Testing and Butter
Mamacita says: I want to talk to you all about standardized testing and butter, and then I want you to tell me which is more important.
I ran into a former middle school student in a store yesterday. I recognized him right away, in spite of the beard, the wife, and the three little kids, but for the first time, I couldn’t remember a student’s name. This concerns me.
My mind’s eye could see him with the years stripped away, and I could remember where he sat and who sat on either side of him. I could remember things he did and said in class, and I could remember his handwriting and where he liked to sit in the cafeteria. I couldn’t, however, remember his name.
He said to me, “I bet you don’t remember me!” And I replied, “Of COURSE I remember you.” Because I did, even if his name was gone from my brain.
He said to me, “I will always remember that one thing we did in your class.”
I replied, “And which thing is that?”
“Remember when you read that olden-days book to us and they were always eating and making stuff from scratch, and you taught us how to make stuff? What I remember most was the butter. My kids and I love to make butter, just like you showed us in 8th grade.”
The book was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Farmer Boy. It was perfect for a low-ability class of 37 14-to-17 year old students, all boys, who hated reading and honestly couldn’t see any connection between something in a book and the outdoors/ hunting/farming/mechanic/taxidermy/4H/cattle-raising lives most of them were already considered experts in.
It was English class, but we cooked, and we whittled (GASP, how politically INCORRECT!) and we made sourdough starter and later we made bread with it, and we made pies and jerky and boiled candy (it’s just fudge or taffy) and jam. And about once a week, we made butter to go with our bread. I had a glass churn, but that was too complicated so we poured the cream into a big Tupperware thing and passed it all around the class and the boys shook it while listening to me read. I would read until the butter ‘came,’ and then the boys sprang into action. They poured off the buttermilk and squeezed the butter until it stopped weeping. They sprinkled just a little salt into the butter and kneaded it in. Then they all washed their hands and whoever’s turn it was that day sliced the bread and they all put napkins in their shirt collars and tucked in. We used KNIVES to slice the bread and to spread the butter. Heavens to BETSY.
I know that many of them were enthusiastic about this book because of the food, and they loved the food because all teenage boys love food, and also because these particular teenage boys were seriously hungry.
I loved those Laura Ingalls Wilder units. Other teachers criticized them because watching sourdough rise, and making butter, weren’t proper English lessons.
I maintained, and I still maintain, that anything we as teachers or parents do that makes learning come alive is a proper English lesson. Science lesson. History lesson. Math lesson. Life lesson.
I was sad when the principal forbade me to do this kind of thing any more. There really wasn’t time, anyway, what with all the ISTEP prep the boys needed to do. That was more important in the long run, right?
I ran into a grown man in a store yesterday who remembered those lessons and did them with his own children.
I’m sure he remembers and does the lessons required for ISTEP, too.
But I know for a fact that he remembers the butter.
Easter 2018: Rejoice.
One of two carved limestone Easter Island heads at the entrance to Thornton Park in Bedford, Indiana
Mamacita says: Happy Easter, everyone.
What? Oh, oops. . . . .
Vintage Easter card
Here. This is more like it. I do love those vintage Easter postcards. I hated growing up and finding out that those baby kittens were probably going to eat those baby chicks. I would also hate to have to tell you all how old I was before I realized that the bunnies weren’t really responsible for all those eggs.
THIS is Easter.
But ultimately, this is Easter to me.
And isn’t it wonderful that so many of us, with so many different beliefs, can hang out here in the Blogosphere and get along great and love each other without having to constantly proselytize and try to sway each other to our own beliefs?
Even after the election. . . Well, in spite of all that, we’re still all pretty nice. Those who aren’t, well, who wants to sit by them? “Those” people aren’t what the rest of us are all about.
Oh, sure, those people are online too, but I don’t pay much attention to them. You shouldn’t, either. Let them rant.. .
It’s the people whose beliefs are quietly lived every day, the people who show me by example what their values are, who get my attention.
And who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor? If you don’t believe me, just look around for a minute or two. Think of your family.
And if you’re alone, look in the mirror.
See?
Happy Easter, dear internet people. Eat chocolate. Smile. Have some eggs. Rejoice over something.
It’s a good day for rejoicing. . . .
Quotation Saturday: Easter
Mamacita says: It’s Easter weekend, and Quotation Saturday begs your leave to take full advantage of said fact. Nah, I’m kidding, Quotation Saturday does what it wants; sometimes it makes itself known when it’s not even Saturday.
Easter is a wonderful, special time of year. For some, it marks the end of harsh winter and the beginning of beautiful spring; for others, it’s the holiest of holy days, and for still others, it’s a children’s holiday full of bunnies, chickies, candy, and colored eggs.
Quotation Saturday wishes to please you all.
1. We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine. — Dwight L. Moody
2. Easter is very important to me, it’s a second chance. — Reba McEntire
3. The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes – undisturbed in form and position. — Josh McDowell
4. I have always wanted a bunny and I’ll always have a rabbit the rest of my life. — Amy Sedaris
5. I’ve got great people who handle my schedule, and everything does revolve around the children. If there’s a parents’ night or an Easter bonnet parade or a Nativity play, whatever it might be, then I plan everything around that. — Victoria Beckham
6. I read the Scriptures at the American Cathedral on Christmas and Easter; that’s it. It’s a task I love. — Olivia De Havilland
7. Easter is reflecting upon suffering for one thing, but it also reflects upon Jesus and his non compliance in the face of great authority where he holds to his truth – so there’s two stories there. — Michael Leunig
8. Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. — John Paul II
9. Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. 
The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith. — W.H. Auden
10. If anyone or anything tries to curse or kill the Goodness at the Center of all things, it will just keep coming back to life. Forever Easter. — David Housholder
11. Easter is never deserved. — Jan Karon
12. Love paid a price so hope could become a reality. — Susan Gaddis
13. Two thousand years ago Jesus is crucified, three days later he walks out of a cave and they celebrate with chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps and beautifully decorated eggs. I guess these were things Jesus loved as a child. — Billy Crystal
14. So with Easter. It was fun, as a child, to bound down the stairs to find seasonal sweet-treats under each plate, but again, with the passing of time, and the shadow of death over our broken family circle, I’ve seen Easter as highest necessity. If 
hope is to flourish, it had better be true. –Gerhard Frost
15. The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice. — Henry Knox Sherrill
16. Easter tells us that life is to be interpreted not simply in terms of things but in terms of ideals. — Charles M Crowe
17. The resurrection gives my life meaning and direction and the opportunity to start over no matter what my circumstances. — Robert Flatt
18. Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, “Christ is risen,” but “I shall rise.” — Phillips Brooks
19. You’ll wake up on Easter morning, And you’ll know that he was there, When you find those 
choc’late bunnies, That he’s hiding ev’rywhere. — Gene Autry
20. The resurrection asserts a truth which is by no means always written legibly for all men on the face of nature. It tells us that the spiritual is higher than the material; that in this universe spirit counts for more than matter. — H.P. Liddon
21. The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks. — Douglas Adams
22. It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart. — Rainer Maria Rilke
23. If people did not love one another, I really don’t see what use there would be in having any spring. — Victor Hugo
24. It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you 
don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! — Mark Twain
25. Strange as it may seem, the association of eggs and bunnies at Easter time are actually connected and, to discover more, we must once again turn our attention to the Saxon fertility Goddess, Eostre. — Carole Carlton
26. There would be no Christmas if there were no Easter. — Gordon B. Hinckley
27. The first thing that stuck in the minds of the disciples was not the empty tomb, but rather the empty grave clothes – undisturbed in form and position. — Josh McDowell
28. Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood. — Wallace Stevens
29. There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who love chocolate, and communists. — Leslie Moak Murray
30. The stone was rolled away from the door, not to permit Christ to come out, but to enable the disciples to go in. — Peter Marshall
