Yosemite

Mirror Lake Click to see this photo's flickr page

I realize that I’m almost a year behind in posting notes about our trips. Oh well. I'll work in real-time and catch up with older posts as I go along.

With the end of the school year, we (J in particular) start to get wanderlust, our feed itching to get out and onto the trails.

J’s camera stopped working last spring during out Yosemite trip. He was very disappointed and bought another one immediately after we returned home. Our trip this month was his first back to Yosemite with the new camera. After looking over the photos from last summer, he’s taking more time in setting up shots and taking photos at even more multiple settings, to better his chances of capturing the landscapes optimally. This means he takes a little longer at each photo stop, which means I finally have enough time to settle in and do very quick sketches and take notes as well. Our overall pace is slower, but the hikes are far more enjoyable.

With our stops and the spectacle of J’s humongous tripod, we struck up more conversations with other hikers. J, he likes to enjoy people, truth be told. Me, I tend to prefer to be left alone. We chatted with a couple from Europe, on a three-week stay in the US. They were intent on settling in at each place, enough to soak in everything, rather than rushing through to see a list of highlights in a tour book. We agreed that we liked this approach and traded notes on where we’d all visited. J commented that the man’s English (he was German, she was from Italy) was quite good; the man commented that J’s English was quite good, as well! Ha! The woman and I both rolled our eyes: This off-the-wall sense of humor is universal too!

We ran into a geology buff that was quite knowledgeable about the formations of all the features of the park. Lots of history. Me, on the other hand, I’m thinking, “Oh, look at the textures in that big slab of granite!”

The best line I overheard was while we were packing up to head downhill from Vernal Falls. Several groups of hikers had converged and had stopped to checked their respective maps to plan where they were heading next. One jovial group heaved their backpacks back on and headed off. As they were trotting away, I heard, “Oh man, I can’t reach it. Shoot. Can you reach in and grab my banana?” He stopped his hungry train of thought and all we could hear was the crunching of the path as they continued walking. “Oh. Geez. That didn’t sound so good”.

Photos and sketches from Yosemite, here.

Hug a Teacher

20090503_Hug_a_Teacher Click to see this photo's flickr page

Did you know this is Teacher Appreciation Week?

- Teachers put together individual AP exam baggies, sharpening all those 120 pencils and adding in LifeSavers, for good measure.
- Teachers take homemade cookies, granola bars, fresh grapes and juice packs to their students the weekend they're putting together their graduation show, because we know that the cafeteria is closed on Sundays, and that that last Sunday is a very long, very tough one.
- Teachers write letters of recommendation.
- Teachers write letters of recommendation for students to attend graduate programs that perhaps we should be attending, ourselves.
- Teachers stay up late, writing tests and answer keys.
- Teachers stay up late, grading those tests.
- Teachers stand physically tough, when their school is under siege.
- Teachers stand emotionally tough, when their school is under siege, sometimes from within.
- Good teachers know not to show bias and encourage kids from the other, rival schools. Even when they beat our own students.
- Teachers stay late to understand what it is that makes each student special.
- Teachers stay late to meet each student's parent that comes for Open House night.
- Teachers worry about budgets and funding, about standardized testing, about tuition and scholarships, about enrollment, about graduate job placement opportunities.
- Teachers have to stand and field questions like, "Was is worth it? Was the price of this education worth it?" and hope that we've trained our students well enough to be willing to try to answer all the tough questions that will come through their lives, for themselves.
- Teachers discipline, comfort, focus and, hopefully, inspire.
- Teachers shape our future.

So maybe today, or maybe at the end of the school year, show your appreciation. We appreciate the flowers, the chocolate, the Chai Tea mix, the sweater (?), and the fancy desk pen sets. We have a growing, very mismatched set of "Hug a Teacher" coffee mugs.

The one thing that teachers will keep, though, tucked away in our year books is this:
The letters of thanks.

So do this: Sit down and write a letter to show your appreciation. Be generous with your gratitude. Did your teachers inspire you? Did they make a difference?
Yes?
Let them know.