Teacher Recognition Luncheon

I was greatly honored this morning/afternoon to attend a luncheon at Friendship Village to recognize  retired teachers; residents were given the opportunity to invite other retired teacher friends, and Mom wasn't shy about it.  She invited 5 friends (and me).  It was, of course, a great lunch, but also a very nice program.

Our hostess, and Director of Marketing, Pam Hall.

Our place settings included an apple for the teacher as well as the note paper , and an apple shaped calculator (w/ a bite taken out of it) in the box!  Very cute.

A very tasty spinach salad w/ mandarin oranges and strawberries.  I believe the dressing might have been a raspberry vinaigrette.  Sliced almonds for added crunch.  YUM.

Freshly sauteed veggies, rice pilaf, and chicken in a light cream sauce with mushrooms.  Very tasty and filling.

Dessert - not one, but FOUR!  I was so full I only tasted from each of them, and wanted to be pushed back to Mom's room in a wheel chair.

Chef Ben Cyr, who is an educator at heart, came out to thank all of the teachers for their years of hard work, and to express his particular appreciation for the work teachers do.

Two of the servers for the luncheon who will be starting college in the fall in Teacher Education!  They were very absorbed with the speakers.

There were two speakers from the local Northmont School District.  The first speaker presented the use of technology being used regularly in their school, and how the kids seem to eat it up.  She also talked about how none of the current technology was available when she started teaching 20 years ago, so she's had some adjusting to do.  The second speaker was a curriculum specialist who had a few more years experience to draw from.  She talked about some of the "technology" of our times - mimeographs, dittos, then moving on to the copiers and sharing that soon it will all be a paperless classroom (seems kind of odd to me, though).  Some of the retired teachers shared some of the funny stories from their years of teaching, including the one where the teacher asked "someone" to flip off the fan because it was making too much noise, so the whole classroom turned to the fan and flipped it off.  The nice conclusion was that students are basically the same; there are good ones, there are ones that don't really want to be there, but they are kids and they can all learn and grow with the right encouragement.  That hasn't changed since teaching began.

FYI, none of the people pictured are residents of Friendship Village; there are privacy issues and their photos cannot be displayed w/out their permission.  The two people you can see (other than Pam and Chef and the servers) are friends of Mom's, and one was my high school geometry teacher. They're fair game as far as I'm concerned!

It was a very nice couple of hours, and I hope it's something they do annually, even if the same people show up year after year.  They are still valued people who have a lot to offer, and are deserving of the recognition; God knows they probably didn't get a whole lot of positive recognition while they were teaching.

Hat's off to you, retired ladies and gentlemen of the teaching profession.  You shaped our lives for the better, and we are indebted to you.

Sigh

What a day.  It's never fun when I have to be up and moving before 8 a.m.!  Today was Mom's colonoscopy, so not only was it early to start, it has been one LOOOOOOOOOOONG day.

Fortunately, since Mom had one of the first appointments, her doctor wasn't running behind schedule; the last time Mom was the last appointment, and I think the doctor was at least 2 hours late on starting her procedure.  Today, the procedure was finished about 15 minutes after it was scheduled to begin!  Woo-hoo.  I guess letting the scheduler know just how upsetting the previous procedure had been helped out.  Whew.

Everything was fine - Mom's colon was given a clean bill of health, and she didn't have any bad reactions to the anesthesia.  I did have the text of the day for my brother (due to autocorrect) though.  I was telling him that it was obvious to me that her clear liquid diet of the previous two days affected her ability to think logically or make decisions.  The text he received was:
"Amazing what lack of protein & carnal can do to you."  Still makes me giggle.

I got Mom back to Friendship Village around 12:30, but she was pretty cranky still.  She'd had a small bottle of Gatorade in the car on the way home, along w/ about 6 peanut butter crackers.  But she was determined to walk from the front door to her room (this was one of those things I really wanted to argue w/ her about, but knew it would just completely destroy her, so I bit my tongue).  She kept saying that she felt like she was drunk.  When we got back to her room, I waited until she was sitting down before I went back to move the car.  None of the specials from the dining room appealed to her, but she was hungry, so I warmed up some of the chicken broth that was left from the clear liquid diet prep.  Once she had that down, she started snoozing.  I stayed for about 2 hours before I tried to wake her up, but she was OUT.

I managed to make it out of the parking lot before Mom called me on my cell.  From the way she was sawing logs, I'd figured she'd be out for a couple more hours, so I had asked the nurse to check in and make sure she knew when it was dinner time.  I don't know what woke her up, but she called me to find out if I'd decided we weren't going to the surprise retirement party for one of her former students who was later a co-worker.  

So, shortly thereafter, it was back to Friendship Village, then off to meet everyone at O'Charleys.  I'm glad we went - it was great for Mom to see a lot of the teachers she used to work with.  Some of them she hadn't seen in quite a while; others she had seen within the last few weeks.

We were saying our goodbyes when one of the other retired teachers asked Mom if she liked it at Friendship Village.  She paused for a minute, then said "No, not really."  This was just about 15 minutes after she asked the retiring teacher when she was going to come visit Mom at Friendship Village for lunch.  Mom was not fishing for an invite to "escape" or eat elsewhere; she enjoys having people join her for meals there.

All of this when I didn't get enough sleep, had a sinus headache, and wanted to be home curled up with my beastie boys and reading.

So, now that I'm home, I picked some flowery shots to post to brighten up my day.  No, it wasn't a bad day, but I needed a little boost.  I do feel a bit more optimistic now and am ready to take another of my sinus cocktails.

Most of the flowers are from my trip to Woodland Cemetery yesterday.  The first three are from my yard - primrose and yucca.  The yucca is a plant Mom transplanted from her dad's yard, and it's pretty for a very short time.  I think again this year I'll be cutting those huge stalks back once the blooms are gone.

I loved the orange of the lilies planted among the red/pink of the roses.  The sun was so bright that the normally red roses looked pink.  There's no mistaking the orange of the lilies though.

Once again, I am deeply thankful for a creator that provides so much beauty to uplift me when I need it.

You Can't Go Home Again??

I don't know how many times I've heard the adage "You can't go home again" and thought it was a bunch of bunk.  I still think that, especially since I'm living in the home I grew up in!

Today was an opportunity for me to walk through the hallowed halls of my high school.  When the new high school is finished (which I've heard could be another year), the school I attended will be torn down.  A lot of people are very upset with the thought that the school will be torn down, and I don't get it - they can't tear down my memories!

Welcome to the cafeteria; on the right side of the pic, you can make out the blue tile that's on the lower portion of the walls.  Even in the 70s it seemed a bit outdated!  But the cafeteria looks brighter and definitely cleaner than I remember it!  We also did not have TV screens on every wall. Boy, these kids today are so spoiled [ ;-D ].

This is a view in the cafeteria I recognize all too well, except I don't remember us having fans.  We didn't have air conditioning, and just had to suck it up and deal with it.  And we all had to walk miles to school, uphill all the way, both ways [ ;-D ].

I really liked all of the different art work painted directly on the walls.  That was a BIG no-no when I was a student.  Very glad to see THAT change.

The "infamous" breezeway.  The only time it wasn't like a huge cattle chute with kids going in both directions was during class or after school.  It was wonderful in the winter to be able to get to the buildings that weren't directly connected to each other.  We did have windows that opened, however.  These are all sealed shut.

Pop machines??  We got grief for having a candy bar vending machine!  Our vending machine was maintained by the Honor Society as a fund raiser.  I'm glad we didn't have the pop machines 'cause I probably would have been late to every class from stopping to buy a pop (although I would have wanted Pepsi or Dr. Pepper!).

The front of the drinking fountain looks like it's been updated somewhat, but the part connected to the wall looked more like the same parts from my era!

Just one of the offices.  This was in Storck Hall; we were divided into the different offices according to last name (for attendance or behavioral issues), and I worked for three of my high school years in another of the offices.  GREAT memories of those times.

No  more locker bays.  Those were nice for the students, but I'm sure not so easy to patrol for the teachers/principals.  I'm guessing that was one thing they did away with after the shootings in Columbine.  

Yet another sign of the times - the alarm pad in one of the buildings by an exterior door.  To think we relied on keys . . . 

I wonder if these are school provided locks or if the student has to provide one.  Our locks were built into the lockers (and our lockers were the full length, not 2 levels of lockers one above the other).

A different view of the breezeway.

Sad to hear that the yearbook is not still the same high quality bound book, but rather more of a paper or magazine type book.  I see the benefit of it, but they certainly don't hold up as well over time.

"My" home office as a high school student, and one that I spend MANY hours in as an "Office Assistant."  That was one of the most interesting and fun things I did in high school.  I met some wonderful people and learned a LOT about working for someone else.

The Jr. Air Force ROTC Display.  Glad to see it's still going strong.

You can't see it, but the sign on the door says "Speech Therapy"  The sign above the door says Clinic.  This was a girls bathroom when I was a student!

Yeah, I'd say things have changed a bit . . . this is something we just knew.  We didn't have to be told or reminded of it.

 

I'm sure we had our fair share of weapons in the school; I remember a couple of instances with knives, but nothing with guns.  

It was an interesting tour of the school.  There was a program in the gym to start it all off, but since Mom was with me (she taught math at the high school for 30 years), we skipped that part and went straight to the walking.  It was a good thing because I ran into one girl that I'd been in first grade with and hadn't seen since we graduated; several of Mom's former students come up to her to talk to her once the program was over (it helped that they mentioned her name during the program as being at the event); plus, it takes Mom a while longer to get from one place to another.  We also met up with several of her former co-teachers from the Math Department, which she thoroughly enjoyed.  It was a great experience, and I'm glad Mom was up to it.

But, getting back to the old adage, I still think, you CAN go home again.  Just don't expect everything to be the way you remember it was.  Life has a way of changing both our memories and our expectations.  As long as you're willing to roll with the changes, you can go home again, and stay there.  Change is not a bad thing (that's what inventions are, after all!) . . . where would we be without the computer, cell phone, or wi-fi?  Let's not assign good or bad to change, but let it be the the new and different adventure it can be.