Leavings

Last night was Tony's last Friday dinner with us. He leaves for Aynor, SC (35.1 miles from the BEACH!) on Wednesday. At Taylor's suggestion, I made a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup...Tony's favorite. I did a twist on the noodles this time, though. Because of a shortage of flour, I used half Masa flour. They turned out well, and I think I may do that more often. They are a sort of unappetizing gray color, though.

After supper I shot some portraits of him, which I have not uploaded yet. I'm hoping to get a really nice one to give to some of our church members. He's become my little brother and also a sort of son to a couple of the ladies at church. So I hope to have a nice one I can use to print 8x10s and give them away. Sometime this weekend I have to write a story about him. It will be column, not a news story. And it will have quite a few examples of how he's managed to crawl into our hearts to reside.

I have another few days of work this week. I've lost track of how many days I owe the district, but I'm pretty sure it's 4 or 5, so I'll work all next week and be done of the summer. Sort of. I'm organizing our vault of student records, and I won't have time during the school year, so if I don't get it completed this week I know I'll stop in later on to finish up. Taylor and I will be going to Minnesota for a couple of weeks, so it'll probably be late July before I stop in there again.

We have records of every Indian Land student dating back to 1923. That includes not only graduates, but also drop-outs and withdrawals. I've already moved the graduate files to plastic totes with lids so that the records won't be damaged if there's a fire and they get sprinkled. Now I'm working on the drop-out/withdrawal files, which are held in several 4-drawer file cabinets. Most of the drawers are too full to get your fingers into, so when you get a request for records it's hard to pull the file you want. I've decided to pull out all the ones that are more than 10 years old and put them in plastic totes too. For now I'm piling those totes on top of the cabinets, with the hope that I can get facilities management to build me more shelves up there.

The drop-out files are not filed by date, just alphabetically. So this necessitates pulling each file and checking inside to see if there is some sort of clue as to what year they left. I generally don't read students files -- just pull them, get what I need, and get out. But in some cases I have to search for a date and this can lead to some interesting finds. Most of the time there is no reason given for dropping-out or any mention of where the student went when they withdrew. But occasionally I find a poignant comment that gives me pause.

One file said that this 6th grader had been withdrawn from our school for "failure to report." Scribbled across the page was "Ran Away." And in another file was a request for a transcript a couple of years ago from the Ohio Department of Corrections. The request said that they had an inmate who indicated he'd attended Indian Land High School in the 70s and now wanted to pursue his GED.

And there are others that indicate how much personal attention our students receive. I found a note written by my friend Trish when she taught second grade many many years ago. A student of hers was moving to a new state and Trish wrote a brief note to the new school telling them what a delightful little girl the student was, and that she's an excellent student, but needs to get more sleep.

And now it's time to go to Jazzercise. And then maybe a little shopping this afternoon.