Not counting the charter school there are 27 schools in the district where I substitute teach. I have subbed in 26 of them. However in the past 11 quarters I have only subbed at 2 of them This is because In the last 9 quarters I have been a building sub, meaning I go to the same school each day and sub at whatever opening is available.
Prior to that I did long term subbing for a semester at one of the schools where I would eventually become a building sub. This quarter is going to be different. I am taking a long term position at the first school I ever did long term from when school starts after Spring Break until the end of the year.
For the next few weeks I'm just going from school to school in the district and working in whatever building needs a sub that day. My last building was a middle school and I am going to be in elementary schools for the rest of the year. In the few days I've been back in elementary I've been getting used to short educational videos that are so prevalent in elementary classrooms especially in the special ed classes that I prefer to work at.
On Monday we showed this video to our students at the beginning of math. I decided to share it here.
It's not exactly School House Rock but I liked it.
I have been trying to clean out my draft staus which is where posts I start but don't finish end up or where I put you tube videos just in case I may want to put them on the blog someday.
So today when my first Idea for Team Saturdazzle seemed a little too cumbersome to finish on time. I decided to look through some of the videos that I had in draft status. When my son was in F.L.L. FIRST Lego League he participted in a scrimmage table where different robotics teams would get together to practice together at the same facility. One of the tenets of FIRST Robotics is gracious professionalism, so even though these teams would soon compete against each other in competition. This was an opportunity for them to practice and learn from each other. I took some footage of the event and put some of it on my vlog probably 10 years ago or more. I don't think this particular video made the cut but I'm glad to show it today.
One thing I specifically remember from the event that it was in a building that my Orthodontist had been in years before and that the building had one of those old fashioned elevators complete with an elevator operator.
Watching that video reminded me of a movie that is currently playing at the theatre I work at. It is called rule breakers based on a true story of Afghanistan girls competing in a FIRST Robotics competition.
I like to consider myself the king of the segue but even I wasn't sure how to go from two segments on robotics to talking about Bob Bennet Weekly Live but I'm going to try:
From FIRST to First Things First
The 5 years anniversary of Co-Vid 19 shutting down life as we knew it at least for a time kind of came and went, in my opinion, without much to do. 5 years ago on Friday, March 13th was my last day working as a substitute teacher until September of 2022, and Saturday March 14th 2020 was my last day working at the movie theatre until a year later. Two weeks later I was stocking shelves overnight at a grocery store, which I did for a year. People in many lines of work had to be flexible at this time.
Bob Bennett, one of my favorite singers began on his 65th birthday March 21st of 2020 a series of weekly on-line interactive concerts called originally enough Bob Bennett Weekly Live. Tonight he finished his 5th year of such concerts. He streams these concerts replete with a virtual tip jar each week and on both You-Tube and Facebook.
My wife and I listened in while we were playing cribbage, and gin rummy and Bob even gave Amy a shout out during the concert. Tonight's concert featured many songs mostly made by request from Bennett's first album First Things First (1979) I also made a Spotify playlist that features the songs Bennett played tonight including multiple renditions of a few of the songs.
Finally tonight I'd like to end with a clip from Saturday Night Live from 1979 with Jimmy Fallon and Jerry Seinfelld both performing as Jerry Seinfeld
I am an old school blogger and as such I still list many blogs on multiple blogrolls at my site. There are many different types of blogs, sports blogs, music blogs, poetry blogs just to name a few. tonight as I was looking over some of the recent posts on my blog roll I noticed one that said 30 poems. So I assumed it was a poetry blog this being just a few hours from Poetry Friday. Boy was I wrong it was a blog called Fan Graphs which is a very insightful baseball blog that I understand only about a third of.
Well I clicked and there were 30 poems all right, but they were poems about baseball caps and not just any baseball caps but 30 poems dedicated to a new line of caps called overlap caps by the company New Era.
Davy Andrews wrote a poem for each of the 30 MLB teams caps. They are called overlap caps because each cap overlaps two of the baseball teams names or designs. Since I am a Chicago baseball fan I am including a picture of both Chicago teams caps and the first few lines of the poem to demonstrate the effect.
Chicago White Sox
Pay close attention, kids.
This is the danger of the limited color palette.
Life’s not black and white.
Or rather, it’s not all black and white.
There’s still right and wrong.
There’s right, and then there’s wrong.
So much wrong we’re drowning in it,
Chicago Cubs
“Nothing to see here,” said the huge, rotund C
That swallowed its skinny sibling whole.
“Nothing to see. Hop aboard the El.”
It looks like it’s about to throw the skinny C back up.
To see the pictures of the rest of the caps and read these poems in their entirety along with other teams of your choosing click here.
Poetry Friday is hosted this week by Janet at Salt City Verse. You can click here to see what she has going on. I have not been writing much poetry lately which is one of the reasons why I have not been participating in Poetry Fridays for a while, but as my old school blog role indicates I am still actively pursuing poetry in my blog reading.
