More Back to School Memories

Today is the day that I will always associate with going back to school.  In New York, you always started the Wednesday after Labor Day.  In my school district, there was a high Jewish population so you almost always had time off very soon for Rosh Hashanah and then Yom Kippur in October.

Here's a list of "Things You Learned in School That Are Now Completely Useless" [from BuzzFeed]

1. How to write in cursive - it disappoints me that this is not taught anymore.
2. How to drop an egg from a five-story building without breaking it - I must have been absent this day.
3. How to climb a rope - I really wanted to be absent on this day.
4. How to play Hot Cross Buns on the recorder - would that I still had mine, I might be able to do this.
5. How to make the most badass erupting volcano - I was not a big science guy
6. How to find a book using the card catalog system - I worked in a library for a while and became quite familiar with Melvil and his card filing system.  To this day, the scene from the Breakfast Club where Judd Nelson rearranges the cards in the drawers gives me the heebee jeebees.
7. How to use long division - remember to show your work!
8. Memorizing the periodic table of elements - yeah, not so much.  But I did what I had to, to avoid the wrath of Mrs. Feit.
9. How to forge a river on the Oregon Trail - and with its resurgence, so can LBA and SoBA!
10. Memorizing the preamble to the U.S. Constitution - duh, Schoolhouse Rock!
11. How to spell boobs on a calculator - no, I never did this.
12. How to do the limbo - that was in "elective gym."
13. Reciting the state capitals - my mother used to be able to do this.  I could probably do 40 of them.
14. How to make a potato battery - again, more science, not so much.
15. Learning to sing in a round - Row Row Row Your Boat, anyone?
16. How to make a Cat's Cradle 
17. How to make paper snowflakes
18. How to make a cootie catcher - I had no idea that's what they were called.
19. How to play foursquare - and it does not involve "checking in."
20. How to do the Macarena - luckily, I just missed this.
21. How to keep a Tamagotchi alive - also I'm older than these.
22. How to make papier mache anything
23. How to make a shoebox diorama - I loved making these
24. How to care for a fake infant egg - why?
25. How to grow a plant in a wet paper towel
26. How to line up by height
27. How to color in the lines
28. Latin - semper ubi, sub ubi.
29. Memorizing all of the presidents in order - Bruce Farbstein used to be able to do this forward and backwards in under a minute.  I can do it, but I usually screw up the order pre- and post-Lincoln.
30. How to navigate the Encyclopedia Britannica - what's an encyclopedia?
31. How to find arrowheads
32. How to dissect a frog - again, the wrath of Mrs. Feit came down on me when I nearly passed out.
33. How to say 'no' to drugs
34. How to put a condom on a phallic fruit
35. How to differentiate between different types of dinosaurs
36. How to cite a source using MLA 
37. How to build a styrofoam solar system - hey, and mine included Pluto, it'll always be a planet to me!
38. How to extract liquid from a pouch - that's not a euphemism for anything.
39. How to use WordArt for fancy fonts - similarly there was using BASIC to create banners with your name or writing loop "go to" programs.
40. How to write poetry
41. How to make an acrostic
42. How to write a book report - or the dreaded "five paragraph essay"
43. How to jump out of the back of a bus - that was always a fun way to start one's day.
44. How to decorate for a dance
45. How to sell worthless coupon books
46. How to scratch and sniff
47. How to care for your Pokemon cards - LBA has some of those around somewhere - wait are they worth money?
48. How to make a tornado in a soda bottle - before Mentos and Diet Coke that is.
49. How to spell - so you mean that red line doesn't automatically appear when you misspell a word when writing longhand?  What's up with that?

School's OUT!

Yesterday 's was LBA's last day of school.  It was a half day and we added to the celebrating last night with a pizza party for LBA and his baseball buddies at the pool.  LBA is now officially a "rising third grader."  Next week he will start his "camp run" with British Soccer Camp, followed by a three-day canoe camp, courtesy of my MIL.

As some of you, my faithful readers, know, I used to be a school teacher.  Despite what some people say - Summer Vacation is not all it's cracked up to be.  You still have to work and a lot of kids head to summer school or camp.  I was lucky enough to have a stay at home mother so I had a lot of free time during the summer - but that is not the case for most kids anymore.

All totaled, I was a school teacher for about six years.  My brother has been a teacher for many years and one of my sisters has recently gotten into teaching. I was not a teacher for too long (as described in this post from BuzzFeed), but I may have made some of the jokes.

Happy Summer!

Congratulations to all those Graduates Out There

I have to admit to freaking out the neighbor boy the other day when I asked him how many more days of school he had. He replied, "two weeks." This was at the end of May. I stunned him with the tale of the dark days of my youth when we went to school until the end of June! His mother made him feel even worse with tales of year round school!

To celebrate the season of high school graduations, here are a few stories that showed up on the Brave Astronaut radar over the past few weeks.

1. Perfect Attendance - Really? This story from the Washington Post about a local high schooler and this AP story from June 1 about a student from Indiana that are graduating from their respective high schools with perfect attendance records. That is never having missed a day of school from Kindergarten through 12th Grade. I say again, really? My mother and the school nurses exchanged Christmas cards as a result of the time I spent in the nurse's office. I was constantly home - how else was I to get my Price is Right fix? Sure, there may have been some days that I could have gone to school, but my mother didn't push the issue. God bless her.
2. Dodging Gym - dodgeball anyone? While that "game of chance" is certainly passe in schools, evidently completing the rope climb is not. Unless you live in Little Falls, New York. There you can choose your gym experience in the form of Dance Dance Revolution. Really? What's next Wii? Get out there are dodge some balls, you big wienies! Then again, I did fulfill a phys ed requirement in college by bowling. And my sister got her requirement by taking "circus arts."
3. Local Flavor and Mandatory Archival Content Alert! - An elementary school in my hometown is in trouble with its former students. In 1981, students at Berry Hill Elementary School buried a time capsule on the school grounds. The site was later paved over for a parking lot. The time capsule is nowhere to be found. And the students are wondering what is up (or is it down)?

A Much Needed Vacation, Missing a Meeting, and Watching a Convention!

Written earlier for posting on Wednesday August 27, 2008

I've talked about vacation here before. Normally at this time of year, I would be on a "work vacation" at the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting. This year the meeting is taking place in San Francisco, California. Those of you who are there, I hope you are all having a good time at the baseball game tonight. I'm sad not to be there, but I am making up for it with a few days "R&R" at the beach.

And here's some vacation tips that found their way into my Google reader, from Marginal Revolution, citing this post on this blog:

1. Start packing early - Doesn't everyone? I have been known to lay out clothes several days in advance of trips.
2. Keep a list - these tips are clearly for someone else. Who doesn't make lists?
3. Spend money where it helps - well sure. Duh.
4. Pack almonds - snacks are an essential with a three year old. He needs them just for a short car ride. But unfortunately, for now, no nuts. Cheerios, raisins, fine. But she recommends the snacks for the grown-ups, which is a good idea as well.
5. Return a day early - sure it's hateful, but becoming more and more necessary. I would love to stay at the beach through Monday, but we'll be back on Sunday.
6. Unpack right away - Again, who are these tips for? Mrs. BA, did you get all these?
   

We are also approaching Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer. This means that school children around the country are running for cover. In New York, where I went to school, the first day of school always took place on the Wednesday after Labor Day (remind me to tell you someday about when I got my first teaching job). Back at the end of June, Time magazine had an article on "A Brief History of Summer Vacation." As a somewhat responsible adult, I long for the days of summer vacation, where one had not a care in the world, and the only worry was to go to the ocean beaches or the ones on Long Island Sound.

Unfortunately, the article points out, summer vacation has not always been around and it may even be endangered yet again. In the days leading up to the Civil War, school operated on two calendars, neither of which had a summer break. This was largely as a result of the agrarian economy, which permitted students to help with the harvests in the fall and the spring plantings. Students living in cities operated under a 48 week school calendar (that's only four short of a full year, people), with a break each quarter. The good thing was that school was not compulsory!

In the United States, school years average 180 days although schools in Asia, specifically South Korea and Japan hold their students in school for 220 and 243 days, respectively. When the "summer break" gathered steam (around the turn of the 20th Century), it was believed that it was in the best interests of the medical and mental health of children. Keeping them out of school in the summer months would cut down on heat-related disease and give their brains a rest. However, that rest has led the United States down a path where we are consistently behind in math skills and graduation rates.

So as we sit back and enjoy the final few days of "summer," think about those lazy, hazy days of summer and remember that we have had it pretty good. I can't complain about not being in San Francisco (I've already done enough of that) and I will relax tonight and tomorrow night while watching the Democratic ticket accept their nominations for Vice President and President. We are under 150 days until we get a new president!

The Top 1000 Books Owned by Libraries

A friend sent me the following link to the "Top 1000" titles owned by OCLC member libraries—the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the "purchase vote" of libraries.

Here is the top ten:

1. The Bible
2. The Census
3. Mother Goose
4. The Divine Comedy, Dante
5. The Odyssey, Homer
6. The Iliad, Homer
7. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
8. Lord of the Rings (trilogy), J.R.R. Tolkien
9. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

A few observations:

• The Bible, number 1. Well, um, OK.
• Lots of "classics" - the Greeks, the Romans, American literature. Again, not surprising.
• Number 15 on the list - Garfield. Yes, the lasagna eating cat beats out Macbeth (#19), Moby Dick (#34), and Tale of Two Cities (#42), just to name three.
• No Stephen King. But yes to Michael Crichton, Mary Higgins Clark, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy, even John Grisham.
• The definitive work on reference (used by a generation on Albany MLS students and taught by the man, until his death) by Bill Katz (#905).
• Lots of children's books. I have one (a child) so lots of those titles I know (and the stories by heart).
• One cookbook (that I found), "The Joy of . . ." and one drug reference (Merck).

It takes a while to navigate the list, but it's an interesting read, no pun intended. How many have you read?

The Power of Peppermint

An article in Tuesday's Washington Post reports that a Silver Spring principal went one step further. She went out and bought 3,600 peppermint candies. She went with evidence she had found (on the Internet) that (along with good teaching, careful preparation, a good night's sleep, and a full stomach - DUH) the use of peppermint helped with brain boosting. If nothing else, the kids will have fresh breath.

There is actual scientific evidence to back up the claim. The article reports that a 1990s study at the University of Cincinnati found that the smell of peppermint helped test subjects concentrate and do better on tasks that required sustained concentration. A psychology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia found that athletes performed better after catching a whiff of peppermint.

This was enough for a superintendent in Montgomery County, Maryland. He directed several schools to distribute the candies at test time. There are a fair amount of skeptics that believe the findings are mind games, that people think they can do better because of the candies.

Perhaps this is where I went wrong in my school career. I prefer chocolate.