Adventure Incoming!

Our family is about to do something we've never done, and I think it qualifies as an adventure.

In preparation for our adventure, we have spent the better part of a week cleaning my house. I did things I hadn't done in far too long—like washing all the floors and wiping down cupboard doors. I've vacuumed up several pets worth of fur and rediscovered the white stove-top. I even cleaned out the little compartments on the washer where you put in the soap and bleach and so forth. (One would think that a container for soap would not get dirty. One would, of course, be wrong.)

All of this has been in preparation for the arrival of a guest coming to us all the way from France!

And the kicker is, we don't even know the guy.

A group of students and their teachers from Barr, France, will be visiting my high school for the next two weeks. While the French students have all been farmed out to homes of our students, one of the teachers will be staying with us. We are officially ready to welcome Simon!

The door to Simon's room, decorated by Abby

Abby actually deserves a lot of credit for this adventure. When my colleague asked if I'd like to host a teacher, I said we couldn't. Our guest room is not really fit for guests. I mean, my poor dad gets stuck in there, but he wants to see his granddaughter, so he'll put up with the old window, the crappy carpet, and the water-stained ceiling. (We'll get to it all, eventually...) But I couldn't imagine offering the space to Simon.

When I told Abby about it, she did not hesitate before shouting out, "He can have MY room!"

And so...the adventure to make the eleven-year-old's room hospitable began. (This may have been the most dangerous part of our journey.)

And now it's done. The house is tidy, the surfaces dusted. And we wait.

The French folks are en route from New York City (they spent their first three days in the U.S. there), but their bus broke down, so instead of a 5:30 pm arrival, we're looking at 8 or 8:30...

In the meantime, I've been pondering what French I remember from high school. Not a lot, it turns out. We've exchanged a few emails with Simon, who has written to us in English, so probably we'll do just fine. Still, I wish I knew more French!

But I'm trying not to dwell on the potential troubles (I know! So unlike me!). Fingers crossed for a fabulous couple of weeks...I'll let you know how it goes!

Point and Click

The premise of this blog is that I have some sort of weird aversion to adventure, and I wanted a place to explore that a little, and also do some writing and share some stories. Not all of my posts are about attempted adventures, of course, but that's the general expectation.

It seems like, though, I might also take a moment now and again to acknowledge some things I do that are in fact pretty adventurous, at least by other people's standards. For one, I am a high school teacher. Lots of folks would rather take a fork to the eye than hang out with teenagers and expect them to do school work. But I love teaching. And an extension of my teaching is another thing I love to do that even lots of teachers fear:

Presenting.

Give me an hour in front of a crowd and I'll whip up a string of activities and a slideshow lickety-split.

I did not know this about myself until 2004, when I became a Teacher Consultant with the Maine Writing Project. I sort of accidentally fell into it, and it changed.my.life. Ok, maybe not my life, but certainly my career. I attended the Summer Institute for teachers and one of our projects was presenting a workshop to the class. I had never done such a thing, but I threw myself into the planning, and ultimately produced my first workshop:

This is the cover sheet from my workshop presentation at my first conference, where people actually paid to take my workshop (and other people's, of course. I have yet to be the headliner, but a girl can dream*). The title is goofy, with my attempt at referencing The X-Files, which had already stopped airing in 2002. But it launched me. I loved it.

Since then I've presented at many Writing Project conferences as well as offered professional development at my school. Some of my favorites include:

At this conference, I discovered the Holy Grail of presenting, a presentation remote, which happened to exist in the room where I was presenting.

Playing games at a conference was definitely a hit!

This was my most recent presentation, on academic honesty, to my entire high school faculty.

After fourteen years, I finally got this baby:

This is my Logitech Spotlight Presentation Remote with Bluetooth, and it has really upped my presentation game. 

So I may be afraid of bugs, roller skating, riding a bike, and a host of other things, but give me a room full of teachers, a projector, and a presentation remote? And I am Queen of the World.

*I'm not really a bucket list sort of person. I don't want to skydive or hike the AT or scale Mount Rainier, but if anything is rolling around at the bottom of my figurative bucket, it's giving a Ted Talk. Maybe someday...

Backyard Adventures

Hey, this adventure-averse lady just realized something: I have adventure happening right in my own back yard.

Meet the girls:

These are our Buff Orpingtons.

Well, no. These were our Buff Orpingtons.

Goodness. There's history here.

Way back in 2012 we decided to begin our chicken adventure. It's chronicled here in a blog I started in all my chicken-raising excitement. Loved that blog. Life got in the way, though.  Still, I look back at our first girls, barred rocks and sex links (I kid you not), fondly.

Unfortunately, a fox looked at them fondly, too. And foxes are sneaky as F&@%.

Our first girls lived mostly in a chicken tractor (described and photographed in loving detail on the ol' blog) but when we moved to our current house, they upgraded to a coop that was already in existence on the property.  It's well built, and we thought it was pretty well critter-proof, but a fox finally figured out how to work the latch.

They're super cute, til they run off with your chickens.

After a few months of general sadness and purchasing eggs from the grocery store (nowhere near as good as the eggs from our girls) we decided to raise chicks again. We dusted off the ol' brooder and got to work.

There are few things as cute as baby chickens (peep-peeps!), but woo are they messy. We were pleased when we could remove them from our dust-covered basement and deposit them in the coop (with a newly reinforced and hopefully fox-proof latch. It has proven so.).

And so the girls grew, began laying, and generally seemed happy in their new home. And we were happy with the return of fresh eggs.

Until this @$$#()!& showed up.

Caught two of these and relocated them. Cute but MEAN little critters.

It took us four nights—and four chickens—to figure out that the little creep was getting in through a teeny-tiny gap in the chicken wire, way up at the top of the coop.

So new fencing went up and all fencing was secured and re-secured.

Aaaaand....five more chickens were procured.

These girls, also Buff Orpingtons, were big enough to move right into the coop, albeit in their own pen.

So now we have eight chickens, a refortified coop, and a fridge full of fresh eggs. 

And I have a new favorite social media hangout: The Maine Poultry Connection on Facebook. Jon learned about this group from a guy at work, and that's where we got our newest Buffs. He logged in, saw a post about Buffs for sale, and bing-bang-boom, that was that. I don't think he's been back since.  But I? I have found my people. Good advice, good humor, good times!

Raising chickens is not super difficult, but it certainly has its challenges.  And I think that qualifies as an adventure.

The original girls

Eggs!

With a young Buff O.

Adventures in Teaching: Home Sick Edition

"Gosh, I'm not feeling all that great today. I think I'll call in sick from work," said no teacher ever.

I'm on day 3 of missing work for my current illness, a viral infection somewhere along the line between cold and flu. I think I'm finally on the mend because I am sitting up-right and typing without disastrous results and my fever seems to have abated.

But that means facing the horror of what may or may not have happened over the past three days at school. Talk about an adventure.

Teachers will tell you, repeatedly and without your urging, that it's easier to go to work sick than to miss a day. Sub plans, especially those drawn up at the eleventh hour and usually with a pounding headache or between bouts of nausea and vomiting, are challenging to craft. On any given day, a teacher has not only classes to teach, but meetings to attend with colleagues, administrators, and/or students, materials to prepare, emails to carefully craft or respond to, papers to grade, and plans to develop for future classes. Miss a day, miss a lot, as they say.

It's easier to stay home if you are literally unconscious rather than mildly incapacitated.

Today I am beginning to face the music: an email from a parent that came in on Monday, details from guidance about four different students, department requests for materials (I'm a department head),  messages from three students who tried to find me at some point during my absence, and looming deadlines for college recommendations, professional development planning, and a stipend position application I have yet to fill out. Not to mention all the planning, teaching, and grading I didn't get to in these three days. I am very grateful to have colleagues who teach the same course as me and who are willing to step in to make copies, share lesson plans, and even teach my kids when their schedules allow. They are as busy as I am, but they, too, know what it feels like when suddenly you can't make it in.

Like I said, being knocked out cold is easier.

But therein lies an important truth: if I hadn't been able to send a few quick messages about plans and coverage, about rescheduling meetings, about notes to share in the meetings that went on with out me anyway, the world would have kept on turning just the same. I'd be facing most of the same music today.

Kevin kept me company while I was stuck in bed for three days.

When I was lying in bed, binge-watching AP Bio on Hulu*, I was lucid enough to be fretting all the things I was missing, but I really wasn't capable of functioning in the world of other human beings. I couldn't even read. But in my calmer moments, I was able to remember what one of my former department heads said when I told her I had to miss work: "Take care of yourself. The students will be fine." And she was right. My missing a day or two or three of school is not likely to impact the lives of the students in any measurable way. It will be annoying to fall behind, but I'll get us caught up. It will be annoying to reschedule meetings, but they will still happen eventually. I may have a miserable weekend spent on work that didn't get done, but come next June, summer will arrive and I won't have anything left to grade or plan for. And that's the truth regardless of missing a day or not.

Teachers feel bad about missing school because a) we don't like letting our kids down; and b) we don't like putting extra work on our colleagues. Teachers, on the whole, are pretty noble lot.

Well, imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this little nugget of an article from The Washington Post: 1 in 4 U.S. teachers are chronically absent, missing more than 10 days of school.

Say what, now? Here I and my colleagues regularly bemoan being absent, but this article discusses teachers who feel so unsupported and anxious about working, that they miss school enough to be categorized as "chronically absent." And that does have consequences on student achievement. 

I'm pretty lucky that I want to go to work each day (well, most days—I'm not a saint). My colleagues are rock stars and my administration is supportive. 

I must not be 100% yet, though, because I wrote this blog entry instead of grading the papers that came in last week...guess I'd better get to it.

*Thought for future post--the representations of schools and teachers in mass media. I should probably hate AP Bio (the show, not the actual subject), but it entertained me greatly. I'll have to determine if that was fever-induced or for real!

Am I a Boat Person?

Y'all, we got a boat.

Friends on Facebook are probably sick of me posting photos like these (ha ha! I'm posting more photos of my family boating! #madeyoulook #cantstopwontstop #didiusethesehashtagscorrectly)

Having a boat seems like a very adventure-y thing to do and to post about on this here adventure-logging blog. So here we go.

When I met Jon, he had a sailboat. On our first date, he told me all about it and about some of his sailboating adventures. I enjoyed the stories, but the interior monologue I had going included things like:
*Wow! A sailboat!
*If this goes anywhere, I'll get to go on a sailboat!
*Oh shit. If this goes anywhere, I'll have to go on a sailboat.
*Uh...I'm prone to seasickness.
*What if I hate the sailboat?
*What if we are perfect for each other in every way except the boat comes between us?
(Remember, this was all on the first date.)

Well, there were many more dates, including a moonlit ride in the dingy around the harbor where the sailboat would eventually be moored (it had not yet been put in for the season), which provided evidence that the boat was very exciting and important to Jon and increased my anxiety about the boat coming between us.

Eventually the sailboat made its way into the ocean and I made my way onto the sailboat.

Much to my surprise, I kind of liked it. I took Bonine every time and never felt sick. Of course, we always went out on bright, sunny days. And it wasn't 100% fun and games. The thing about sailing is the need for wind. When there was no wind, we motored around at a very slow speed. When there was a lot of wind, we heeled right over and I freaked out. True sailboat people love this feeling. I did not pass the true-sailboat-person test.

Also, going sailing is a big process. We could get the packing of gear down pretty well--Jon had worked out a lot of those kinks in the years before he knew me--but we had to drive to the marina, schlep our stuff to the dock, drain rain water out of the dingy, pile in, putt-putt out to the boat, load the boat with our things, prep the boat (battery, hatch doors, sail prep, etc. etc. etc.), tie off the dingy, drop the mooring, and then s l o o o o o w l y motor out of the harbor into the relatively open water of Casco Bay. Then maybe we could sail. The sailboat is not a speedy way to get anywhere. Running on the motor, it took a good two hours to get from Freeport to Portland, under sail, longer, what with the need to zig zag to get just about anywhere.

And now, a math problem:

The process of getting ready + my fears of there being too little or too much wind + finding the oomph to complete the process and quell my fears + a kiddo with a schedule of her own adventures to manage = very few boat days.

We finally faced the inevitable, that we were not using the sailboat enough to warrant the amount of money it costs to maintain one (maintenance, mooring fee, putting it in fee, taking it out fee, hauling it fee, and so forth).

If I made a very short list of the worst days in Jon's entire life, the day he sold the sailboat would probably be nearish the top. The man loves to boat.

So of course I promised that I'd support us getting another boat eventually.

Enter camper, trip to Disney, new house, and many, many house projects.

Exit boat dreams.

Except not really. I always knew we'd get a boat again someday.  Jon was less convinced. He's a gemini, so his fatalism wasn't surprising.

On Don's boat in Boothbay

Imagine his luck when a friend of ours took us for a spin on his center-console motor boat on a visit to Boothbay last summer. Suddenly, I wanted a boat. Badly. It was so cool on the water and so hot on the land. For the rest of the summer, I kept saying things like, "Gosh, it's hot. This would be a good boat day" and Jon kept hearing me say "we should buy a boat."

And here we are with our own 23 ft center console with a t-top.

This produced a whole new crop of fears for me. Now we had a boat to trailer, which would mean "putting it in" and "taking it out" each time we wanted to use it. My visions of this process included pick-up trucks getting sucked under the water, or me driving the boat into the dock (or jagged rocks because SCARY!). I fretted about it for weeks during the looking-and-buying stage.

But what's a fun adventure without me fretting about something?

Turns out (thank goodness) it's not that bad of a process. And I am proud that it only takes us on average five minutes to put in, and maybe five and a half or six to haul it out.



Does all of this make me a boat person? (Nah. Let's not get carried away, on the tides or otherwise.)

Making Easter Bread

I made Paska, Slovak Easter bread, yesterday. It’s a slightly sweet bread, formed in a ring, with a cheese dough wrapped in a white dough. I first had it as a kid when my grandmother made it. We often spent Easters with Granny. I got the idea to make it this year from my dad and Joyce, who were likely talking about their Easter traditions. I bet Dad, like me, thinks first and foremost of all the delicious food associated with holidays, and when he described Paska, the plan to bake their own was born. This resulted in a flurry of emails and texts to folks who might have the recipe, me included. I’m certain there’s a copy of it somewhere in my father’s house, but I like that he reached out to his sister, his daughter, and his son for the recipe.

My aunt and cousin came through first, having just made some the day before, and Dad forwarded me their recipe. Learning that everyone else was making it made me want to make it too.

It’s a confusing recipe, due to its age and the dramatic if vague flair with which my relations have recorded recipes over the years.

First, the recipe calls for dry cottage cheese. A little Googling reveals lots of information about “dry curd cottage cheese,” including that your local grocery store is unlikely to have it. I’ve made this bread before, but it has been years, so all I had was a fuzzy memory of regular cottage cheese, cheesecloth, and a metal sieve. I fiddled around with those items for a while and aside from making a mess, I also managed to come up with a pile of dry cheese curds—for the win.

This ingredients list also involves boiled milk, melted butter, and, per my aunt’s version of the recipe, some pretty stern commentary on the subject of yeast. There are two types of dough involved (basic and cheese), and one calls for “1 small package fresh yeast or 1/2 household” and the other for “1 cake of yeast (not household).” I’m not an expert bread maker, but I can assure you that these days at the grocery store you will only find yeast called “active dry” or “fast-rising instant,” or even “rapid-rise.” No “household” yeast or “cake yeast,” which is not yeast for cakes, but yeast formed into cakes, or blocks, because it isn’t so dry as the yeast in those funny little packages of three we can so easily procure. Yeah, you can order yeast cakes on the internet, but when you decide today that you want Paska tomorrow, you have to punt. My aunt said to use “active dry” for both and it’s fine. I didn’t have enough on hand so improvised with “instant” for both. Stern warnings, be damned.

The “directions” part of the recipe felt a little like the pared down tasks Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood give to the contestants on The Great British Baking Show for the technical challenges: bits left out, vague commentary, and ominous warnings: “4 Cups flour (DO NOT add all four, make sticky).” I’ve made enough bread to know what this is getting at, but the pushiness of it reminded me of my grandmother. I imagined Granny up on her toes (she was 4 foot and a little in height), hand on hip, peering around my shoulder as I added flour, her voice rising as she said, “no no no! Not all of it! Not all of it!” And then laughing, laughing, laughing.

These curiosities in the directions on my aunt’s recipe led me to pull out my own copy (from my mother), which was more or less the same but not quite. Both copies were word-processed, and my mother’s was in ALL CAPS. My aunt’s bears the title “Easter Paska,” but Mom’s reads “EASTER BREAD.” I liked thinking of my mother typing this into her recipe files, making edits to suit her approach to preparing food. My mother definitely cooked in ALL CAPS.

One conspicuous difference is that my mother listed the cheese dough first, while my aunt’s listed the basic dough first. With no indication of which would be better to start with, I opted for my aunt’s, largely because my cheese curds were still draining. My mom had the same puzzling yeast details and the same injunction about the flour, though worded slightly differently: “DON’T USE ALL FLOUR MAKE DOUGH STICKIE.” And to complicate matters further, my copy of my mother’s version had edits written in pen by me, and they were pretty substantive changes—like 1/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of water instead of 1/2 cup of milk. Why? Who knows?!

So preparing the two doughs took some mental gymnastics about quantities and the order-of-operations, especially in an effort to avoid using every bowl in my house. My questions about both versions of the recipe caused me to wonder what my brother’s version looked like, so I had Dad send it along. Frank had recorded the recipe in his meticulous handwriting on an index card (basic dough first). Interestingly, both doughs on his version of the recipe called for “1 cake yeast,” further complicating (or maybe simplifying?) the confounding yeast situation. His directions were more or less the same (his amounts matched both typed-up versions, not my handwritten changes), and I foged head-long through them all (was I cooking in ALL CAPS too?). When left to proof, my basic dough rose like mad, while the cheese dough took its sweet time, making me think my mother was onto something making the cheese dough first.

And then it came time to assemble the bread. I knew it had to be baked in a tube pan, but my aunt’s directions and my mother’s directions for getting the two doughs commingled and into the pan were vastly different. My aunt’s had me pulling the basic dough into a rectangle upon which I would place the cheese dough, but my mother’s said, “ROLL BREAD DOUGH LIKE YOU WOULD FOR A PIE (1/4 OF AN INCH THICK). PLACE CHEESE DOUGH ON BREAD DOUGH LEAVING OUTER EDGE AND MIDDLE CLEAR. MAKE A HOLE WITH YOUR HAND IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BREAD DOUGH. PULL BREAD DOUGH FROM CENTER AND OUTER EDGE UP OER CHEESE DOUGH.” This seemed way more fun than the rectangle method, so I opted for it. My brother’s directions were closer to my mother’s, with a little more clarity about the size of the circle of dough (“a 10” circle”) and the instruction to “punch a small hole in the center.” His also explained making the cheese dough into a ring, which confirmed my interpretation of “PLACE CHEESE DOUGH ON BREAD DOUGH LEAVING OUTER EDGE AND MIDDLE CLEAR.”

After one more rise it was time to bake. All instructions said 45 minutes, but they also all said that this recipe would yield 2 loaves. Well, no. My brother’s said “makes 2 loaves” at the end of his notecard. The other two just said to use half the dough for assembling the ring, leaving me to infer that I would repeat the steps with the other half of the dough. Regardless, I only have one tube pan, and I have zero memories of making two loaves. I checked in with my dad and Joyce for the umpteenth time during this process, and they relayed my brother’s take that you could make two short loaves or one taller loaf. Bingo. One loaf for me. But this would increase the baking time, and unlike all the recipes on the King Arthur Flour website, there was no indication of what “done” would look like. I’ve never been good at the knock-on-it-to-to-see-if-it-sounds-hollow method, so I went with the 200-degrees-for-bread-made-with-milk-or-butter rule (thanks, K.A.) and called it good.

And good it was. We sliced into it on this Easter morning. Though I haven’t eaten Paska in years, I knew my loaf—a little dense, with the pale yellow cheese dough framed by the white basic dough, the firm crust, the slightly sweet taste—fit comfortably within family tradition.



As I thought more about the three versions of this recipe I consulted, I realized that when they were recorded—by my aunt, my mother, my brother—each of them was most likely talking with my grandmother. I was probably talking to her, too, when I made the changes in pen on my copy. That would explain all the fiddly differences. I imagined my mother on the phone with Granny, typing in the sentences as Granny rattled off the directions from her recipe, no doubt adding lots of do’s and don’ts (“Don’t add all the flour! Make the dough sticky!”). My aunt’s copy was perhaps typed up from her own hand-written version (no email back in those days for file sharing), likely penned at my grandmother’s kitchen table. And I’m almost certain my brother sat with Granny and wrote his version down. I can hear him asking her for a little more precision: “How big a circle should I roll the basic dough?” And she probably said, “oh, about yea-big,” making a ring with her hands. That looks about 10 inches, he decided. Or maybe he wasn’t at her table. Maybe they were on the phone, too, and Granny said, “about the size of a dinner plate.” Hers were Corelle, the “butterfly gold” pattern. I have some Corelle plates too, and I just measured one: exactly 10 inches.

Through the process of making my Easter Paska, I heard in one way or another from my dad and Joyce, my aunt, my brother, and even my mother and my grandmother. None of us lives in the same place—my Dad’s in Indiana, my aunt’s in Pennsylvania, my brother’s in Chicago, and Granny and Mom are in the great beyond. But I distinctly heard all their voices as I worked. And sampling the sweet bread, spread with butter and accompanied by a cup of tea, makes me think of us all together, a pleasant sensation on this Easter morning. Thanks for the help, everyone. I think it’s time for me to write down my own version of this recipe, so I can add my voice, too.

What's Antifa? And Other Musings.

As I've been sifting through and processing the events from Charlottesville this past weekend, I've found myself wondering about the violent counter-protesters, the ones who gave Trump the opening to spew his "both sides are bad" bull$#!%.  Scanning through right-wing viewpoints (difficult, but important for me), I kept reading about Antifa, the "violent militant far left group" who "threw punches" and caused problems. 

I had never heard of Antifa (which doesn't mean much. I haven't heard of a lot of things), so I had to look it up. (The link is to Wikipedia, but after reading several varied sources, I felt like the wikipedia page did a pretty good job of summing it up.)  Perhaps one of the most helpful tidbits was learning that Antifa is short for Anti-facists. That seems important.  Shouldn't that be a good way to describe all of us?

I admire another aspect of the mission of Antifa--constantly confronting neo-nazis and white supremacists everywhere, with one underlying belief being that a small group of neo-nazis has the power to grow into a large one (see: history), and so every appearance or action ought to be met head on.

I believe in the power of protest, too, and not just the stand-behind-the-barricade-and-hold-your-signs kind. Sometimes protest has to inconvenience people. The sit-ins of the 60s were a huge inconvenience for lunch-counter owners and their patrons.  Blocking a street may be super aggravating to the person who wants to get through so he can get to the movies on time, but it's nothing compared to the inconvenience faced by those who are systemically mistreated and oppressed.  Of course, lots of folks are far too selfish and unaware of their own privilege to realize that, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Still, I'm not ready to throw over the whole governmental system just yet. Anarchy stresses me out. I prefer to believe in justice and liberty for all as values we should continue to work towards.

MLK preached non-violence, but when you think about the reason, it's chilling.  He believed that a peaceful protester being humiliated, harassed, and even beaten, was going to make the racist look like the bad guy. When that action was directed at children, the racist looked even worse. Let the racists condemn themselves with their own actions! Great! But don't forget...in the process, those peaceful protesters--including children--were humiliated, harassed, beaten, and sometimes killed. 

Being a peaceful protester is dangerous work.  Ask Heather Heyer. Oh wait. We can't.

Some have argued that Antifa saved the lives of counter-protesters.

So maybe Antifa has a point. Maybe sometimes you have to throw a punch. Or a rock. Or light a fire.  Or maybe not.  But it's a lot easier to condemn the use of violence from a comfortable couch in a comfortable livingroom in a position of safety and privilege.

Even before doing any research, of course, it was clear that Trump's "both sides are bad" rhetoric is bullbull$#!%.  It diminishes the importance and danger of the entire situation, and it gives credibility to the white supremacists. We can't do that.  That's not an option.

As a teacher, I'm discouraged from bringing my political beliefs into the classroom. In a course that uses world events as a textbook, that can be challenging, but I work very hard to present multiple viewpoints from conservative to liberal. I understand that I should not be telling my students what to think.  My job is to help them learn how to think. So I don't tell my students whom I vote for. I don't generally share my position on most local or national issues, like bear-baiting or the legalization of marijuana.

But as I look at the current state of things in the United States, I can't look at white supremacists and neo-nazis and say, "well, they're entitled to their own opinions."  I mean, yes I can.  Free country, and all that. But though they are entitled to their own opinion, I can't keep quiet about mine in this case--my opinion that there is no superior race, that whites are not targets of discrimination just like blacks, Jews, Muslims, women, transgendered folks, etc.  That systemic racism doesn't exist. 

Sometimes I just have to call bull$#!%. 

Supporting equal rights for all is not taking a side. Speaking out against those who hate is not taking a side. Reflecting on my own implicit biases and the rewards of privilege I didn't even realize I had and asking students to do the same is not wrong. It's doing what is right.

This essay, What Trump Gets Wrong About Antifa, helped me clear my head about the issue of violence from both sides. And it also sums up my initial thoughts about Antifa. 

So now that I, like roughly a zillion other people, have written my thoughts about the state of things, where does that leave me? What are my next steps?

Well, this will surely impact my teaching this fall.

And here are just a few resources for taking more action (thank you to my Facebook friends for sharing these and other resources).

Knowing Our History to Build a Brighter Future: Books to Help Kids Understand the Fight for Racial Equality

Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide (from the Southern Poverty Law Center)

Curriculum for White Americans to Educate Themselves on Race and Racism–from Ferguson to Charleston

Charlottesville organizers ask you to take these 8 actions