The Waiting

"Agent Mulder died late last night of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

That quote by Agent Scully in May of 1997 began the longest summer of my life.  Agents Mulder and Scully were the two lead characters on The X-Files, the greatest TV series ever created.  Scully's tearful words were the fourth season's final line of the final episode, leaving fans to wonder if the show's protagonist had indeed blasted himself into oblivion or if it was yet another lie within a lie so commonly found in X-Files mythology.  This was before Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, and Internet forums were still relatively new.  Plenty of X-Philes, true fans of the show, were able to communicate with each other on the topic, and some may have even been able to find out what the future held for David Duchovny, the actor who played Mulder.  Compared to the ease with which information is shared today, however, fans were mostly in the dark about the finale's truth (the truth is out there!).  The darkness was deeper for this fan - my loyalty to the show was unmatched by anyone in my family or circle of friends, and I had very little access to the Internet.  So the summer crawled by one agonizing day at a time as I waited and anticipated and hungered for the answer to such a life-altering mystery.

Last night was the seventh season premier of The Walking Dead, a show giving The X-Files a strong challenge as the greatest TV series of all time.  I love the show, but I don't watch it on TV - I get my TWD fix via Netflix, meaning I am not "in the know" about last night's episode.  Colleagues were talking about it today, there were tweets galore in my Twitter feed about it...luckily I've avoided spoilers so far.  But how different this experience is....talking like Yoda I am.....two terrific shows enjoyed two entirely different ways.  

As much as I love TWD I am always regretful that I didn't climb on board the fan train sooner so I could relish the suspense from week to week and season to season.  But how many of us really do that anymore?  My colleagues offered to let me binge-watch all of season six today rather than attend to the professional development in front of us...gracious of them, but no thanks.  My TV binging is done four episodes at a time on the one Netflix disc that arrives every few days in the mailbox that hangs on my house, not inside my computer.  Yes, I'm still a non-streaming, disc-mailing Netflix customer.  I apologize for nothing (apology is policy!)  Streaming would be nice, being on the same page as the other fans of TWD would be fun...but there's something bigger at play here.  I like having the strength to wait until "later" or "soon", a rarity in this culture of "NOW!!"

I went archery hunting for deer this past weekend....you knew the hunting angle was coming, didn't you?  A few hours for several evenings was as much as I was able to get out to a stand - it was kind of like a warm-up for the long days of rifle season next month.  In the short time I hunted I discovered many differences between hunting with a bow and hunting with a rifle - a topic for a different post - but there was one solid similarity: the wait.  I absolutely love to hunt for deer, but I sum up the activity with a rather bleak truth - deer hunting is a few minutes of excitement surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.  The ability to consistently be successful at hunting is directly related to how well a hunter can handle the wait.  I struggled with this for many years as a hunter; I simply could not, or would not, wait long enough for the deer to arrive at the spot I thought they should.  When I finally gained the strength to endure five hours, six hours, eight hours of waiting the results of my hunts improved.  But like my Netflix account, my style of hunting is becoming a rarity.

We don't like to wait, do we?  We want to watch the whole season NOW!  We want our burgers and fries NOW!  We want score updates NOW!  We want to see a deer NOW!  Baiting deer, an illegal activity during hunting season, becomes a bigger problem each year.  Road hunting (driving around hoping to shoot a deer from the vehicle - also illegal) has always been a problem but has become harder to patrol with the increase in all terrain vehicles; cover more area quicker and see more deer NOW!  Hunting associations want higher deer numbers so hunters can see more deer more often.  Antler point restrictions are desired so hunters can have a better chance at getting a mature (big) buck, i.e. hunters don't want to wait as long to get a trophy.  In the early 80's Tom Petty crooned "The waiting is the hardest part."  Sorry Tom, nobody wants to hear that anymore.

Waiting requires discipline and self-regulation.  If we are a culture of NOW what does that say about our discipline?  What future does a society without discipline hope to enjoy?  I realize our futures will become much more bleak on or around November 8 (trust no one!) but maybe this will be the perfect opportunity, as a nation, to overcome our desire for NOW!  While we wait four years for a decent leader to emerge from somewhere....anywhere....maybe we can begin waiting an extra hour to watch that next episode.  Maybe you can keep your phone in your pocket a few extra minutes each time you hear the "ping" of a new whatever those pings are for.  And maybe, hopefully, more of you will begin to seek out activities like hunting or fishing; activities that, when done properly, create strength and discipline through waiting, traits needed to lead, to follow, and to live.  Yes Tom, the waiting is the hardest part...but it is the most empowering part.

An All Natural Weekend

My first hunting weekend of 2016 came and went.  The freezer is still empty.  The memory bank is full.  Some highlights:

**There was no rush out the door Saturday morning; a late Friday night arrival to the north country after a long week combined to keep my butt stuck to the mattress for an extra couple of hours past dawn.  When I finally did venture out I was surprised at the grey landscape, made more so by the heavy clouds that didn't hold rain but did hold back the sunshine.  Central Minnesota was rich with fall colors through the end of last week; but for the golden tamaracks and some stubborn aspen still clutching their golden leaves Northern Minnesota's colors had faded.  It was beautiful.  Peaceful.  The air dripping with the tangy sweet scent of leaves on the ground, the silence broken by the call of a goose looking for the flock, robins attacking the last crab apples, my dad grumbling at the cat.

**After weeks of listening to my parents bemoan the lack of ruffed grouse in the woods I was pleasantly surprised to flush one barely twenty yards down the first trail I hunted.  "Pleasantly surprised" is the grouse hunter's term for "shocked enough to wet myself a little."  The take-off of a grouse is explosive - a flurry of beating wings and rustling leaves and angry chirps followed closely by the blast of a shotgun that sends lead pellets sailing several feet behind the tail feathers of the disappearing bird.  Bird #2 escaped without even drawing a shot, while bird #3 felt safe enough to stand on the ground so I could squeeze off a shot that killed a clump of hazel brush but didn't even knick the neck of the bird.  Grouse four through eleven also lived to see another day, as did the three birds I flushed on Sunday.  I'm thoroughly disgusted to end the weekend without a meal of grouse (they're delicious...I'd choose them over chicken any day) but encouraged by the number of birds I saw.

**I have five trail cameras set up around the property.  My dad checks two of them weekly but the other three were off limits for the last month so as to not disturb the big bucks that like to run back and forth getting their picture taken.  Those three cameras held several hundred pictures and about 75 videos...and exactly one buck that looked more like an antelope than a whitetail.  96% of the pics and videos were of the same doe and fawn who I now recognize more easily than two of my daughters.  The other 4% of footage was of two senior citizens who seem to have a lot of spare time with which to ride four wheelers past my cameras.  Sigh.  Needless to say all three cameras have been moved, two of them far off the beaten path.  If that doe and fawn find them this week.....

**Spent some time caging young oak trees before Saturday lunch.  This time of year if you don't get a cage around those oaks they're liable to leave your property entirely.  Especially the young ones - not sure if it's something akin to the whitetail rut, but when the weather turns cooler the smallest oaks get livelier.  It took us a few years to figure out why the heck we had fewer oak trees each spring, but since we've started caging them in the fall our numbers have stabilized.  Anyone have any advice on how to contain those wily white pine?

**Daughter Two and I hunted grouse Saturday evening.  You already know the results of the hunt.  What you can't ever know is the half-hour of intense beauty that surrounded us at dusk.  As the sun fell below the western skyline in a blaze of yellow and orange a full supermoon silently crept over the treetops to the east.  An afternoon that was far too breezy instantly became an evening that was not far from perfect.  I've spent two days trying to figure out a way to properly describe the show Nature gave us to end our Saturday.  It can't be done.

**The intent of the weekend was to spend some time bowhunting for deer.  I half-heartedly pretended to take up archery when I was a senior in high school - this fall I've been preparing in earnest for an opportunity to poke an arrow into a whitetail for the first time ever.  Saturday morning's opportunity was slept away; Saturday evening's disappeared when Daughter Two asked if I'd take her grouse hunting and Sunday evening would have no opportunity because of a long drive south.  So Sunday morning I crawled out of bed at 5:15, left the house at 6:00, and was in a stand by 6:30.  That same beautiful moon threw enough light to keep my headlamp off.  A heavy frost coated everything.  The silence was deafening so any sound carried for miles.  The dance of orbs in the sky was repeated from the evening prior, but in reverse order - the moon faded from sight in the west as the sun arrived in the east.  I stayed in the stand until about 8:00, the only activity on the ground being two raccoons that bumbled by at about 7:00.  The temps were supposed to reach over 60 degrees, so shooting a deer would have been a bad decision....which is the deer hunter's way of masking disappointment with logic.  No, there wasn't any disappointment on such a beautiful morning - although it would have been nice to knock off one or both of those raccoons.  Nasty creatures.  Don't get me started.

Arriving late on Friday and leaving mid afternoon on Sunday makes a short weekend feel even shorter....seems like we spend more time packing, unpacking, and repacking than anything else...but I rarely regret a drive to the north woods, especially when my girls can come with.  I pointed out to my eldest daughter that she has only a handful of these trips left in her life, which sounds horrible when I read it.  She's a couple of years from college and her grandparents aren't going to be around forever - combine those two realities and I figure she's got maybe ten of these wild weekends left.  So grouse or no grouse, several deer hunts or one, a weekend with my girls at grandpa and grandma's house is always memorable, always worthwhile, and always too short.

And yes, we did put tree cages around some young oaks....for protection from nibbling deer.  The rest of the paragraph was complete nonsense.

A Milestone

I know, I know, I know - I set the stage for another hunting post and here you are with high hopes for deer stories and hunting philosophies and all you're going to get is a short blog that has nothing to do with hunting.  I'm confident my loyal readers will understand - in fact, tonight's topic will probably apply to all three of them.

Tonight I attended what very well may be the final for-credit class I ever take.  One should never say never, but as I look at the moldy tea leaves at the bottom of my cup I see no reason why I would ever take another class for credit.  With the credits I earn from this class I will shift into the most sought-after position on a teacher's pay scale: the bottom right corner.  Being a dweller of the bottom right means many things.  I'm old and overeducated.  I'm earning as much as I can from the district I'm working for.  I'm done taking credits.

I remember watching my high school social studies teacher/basketball coach leaving after practice (as I dedicatedly stayed in the gym to take a few hundred extra shots - toot toot!) with his book bag slung over his shoulder on his way to a night class.  I admired his drive but wanted no part of his work-all-day-take-classes-at-night routine.  I've done that routine off and on for the last 15 years.  Twenty five years if we count my college days prior to getting a teaching job.  But no more.

I have an Associate of Applied Science degree, a Bachelor's degree, and a Master's degree.  I have 45 credits beyond my Master's.  I have grades on transcripts from six different universities in three different states.  I have spent thousands of dollars, read countless books and journal articles, written hundreds of pages, and driven every available direction on a compass.  I have given speeches and presented power points, worked in groups and worked alone, written in APA and MLA.  I have gone to class in shorts and flip flops and had classes cancelled because of blizzards.  But no more.

Young teachers, or even younger not-yet teachers, hear this message:  Get to that bottom right corner. I was told the same thing when I first started teaching and for a few years I wanted no part of the journey I have now taken.  It's tough to come out of college and go right back into it, but the end will be worth the plunge.  Some thoughts to consider, youngsters, about your career and advancement:

**Get tenured, then get busy on advancement.  The first years of your career are your toughest.  Pour yourself into your teaching without taking on anything else.  Once you've survived to tenure status you can consider adding more to your plate.

**Taking classes because you want to is far different from taking classes because you have to.  When I started taking graduate classes I was stunned at how ready I was to learn, much more so than when I was an undergrad.

**There will never be a right time to take a class.  Next year won't be less busy.  When your kids are older won't be easier than when your kids are younger.  Register, pay, and go.  Hesitation killed the monkey.

**The right class can energize your career.  It might be the message, the instructor, the connections made with classmates.  If you're lucky it's all three.

**Don't let money stop you.  Whatever you pay will come back to you, and then some.  I absolutely did NOT want to start my Master's when I did - one young child, another one baking, and an unfinished basement seemed like better uses for my money - but I've made thousands of extra dollars because I got that degree far earlier than I had planned.

**Even more valuable than the money (but not much more) is the level of thinking I've reached through these years of extra studies.  Undergraduate classes get you ready for your career (sort of), but graduate classes get you thinking about your career, and also get you thinking about your thinking.  Meta-cognition is a powerful drug.

Done with classes, yes.  Done with learning, not even close.  I'm already sensing a freedom to learn, as if I've been driving towards that MA+45 sign for so long that being past it allows me to see the wide open possibilities that now line the road I'm on.  Ugh, that reads badly.  Or I'm reading badly.  Or writing badly.  Or fading fast.  It's been a long journey towards this night - I need an extended nap.  And some hunting.

A Time to Hunt

I am troubled by the deer management visions presented by various hunting groups in our state, visions that rarely align with each other or with traditional hunting values.  The APR initiative, desires for increased deer numbers, and the arguing over which style of hunting reigns supreme are based in selfish, short-sighted thinking.  The focus of these ideas is often on the destination rather than the journey.  Our hunting associations' infatuation with trophies and numbers has nearly erased the foundation of why hunting began - the need to eat.  As hunting evolved from a pursuit of food to a pursuit of antlers a third desire emerged - a pursuit of experience.  The true hunter knows where the beauty of hunting lies; it's not in the freezer or hanging on the wall, but in the mind and in the soul.  The experience of being able to hunt, the journey we take each time we enter the woods, became the lure of fall for countless hunters through the years.  We are losing that mindset in our hunting communities.

I wrote those words this weekend on an application to become an at-large member of a statewide (MN) whitetail deer management committee.  I am not holding much hope for being invited onto the committee; indeed, I'm not sure I would accept the invitation due to the time investment required of membership.  But I have a passion for hunting the wily whitetail, and rather than sit around talking about how the deer herd should be managed I thought I would at least make a token effort to be involved in the process.

Passion.  I don't use that word often...or ever, really.  I find it's overused by folks who like to talk, blog, or Tweet about their...well...passions.  I have a hard time believing people who claim to be passionate about more than one thing; passion is a time-sucker.  Passion consumes.  Passion leaves little room for other feelings.  So I avoid passion (though I'm not exactly bursting with other feelings).  Until the leaves start to change color.  And the first frost crushes what's left of summer.  And November's scent tauntingly dances past my nose on the whispers of an early morning breeze.  My one passion is triggered, pun intended, and I become consumed by thoughts of the hunt.

I am less than a week away from my first hunt of the year.  On Friday I will drive home and, for the first time in my life, spend a couple of days archery hunting for deer.  If time and weather allow I'll also take a stroll to hunt for ruffed grouse.  The official seasons for both opened nearly a month ago but for a variety of reasons this coming weekend will be my initial attempt at putting some fresh meat on the table.  To say I'm counting the minutes until Saturday morning would be completely accurate.

So, back to the idea of passion and the ideas I opened with.  Hunting is as varied as any hobby - the types of game, styles of pursuit, and weapons of choice could be combined an infinite number of ways.  I applaud those who choose to hunt, regardless of the season or style or weapon, and admire the passion so many hunters display for their hobby.  I worry, though, that the hunting community, especially the deer hunting community, has lost sight of what makes hunting worthy of the passion we give it.  The quest to have trophies for all and the nearly constant complaints that there aren't enough deer are evidence of a "destination" mentality, an approach to hunting that completely misses the mark of what makes hunting so special.  It's a shame to see such a spiritual activity reduced to a race for results.

If you're familiar with my blogging you know that I write on a variety of topics but generally stick to nature and education...thus the title of the blog. (And how many of you just gave the whimsical "ohhh...yeeaaah" as the light bulb clicked on?)  For the next month or so the topics are going to run pretty heavy to hunting.  I'm going to continue the thoughts I've started in this post, share some reports on my adventures afield, spin a yarn or two from the vault of past hunting adventures, and selfishly enjoy adding this medium to the mix of reasons why I am so....deep breath....passionate about this time of year and the outdoor opportunities that come with it.  I hope you non-hunting readers will find my musings enjoyable.  If any of you are anti-hunting, well, you may be surprised to know that I often don't blame you - but I'd especially appreciate your readership to continue.  Maybe I can give you a different perspective on hunting and explain why I understand your stance on the practice.

Thanks for reading, and happy hunting!  As if there's any other kind......

I Copied You - Deal With It

It's blog-writing night, but I'm bummin' about the Gophers' tough loss to Penn St. in tonight's volleyball match.  It's one thing to lose a tough game to a tough team; it's another to lose that game while getting hosed by the refs.  Penn St. feasted on multiple helpings of home cookin' tonight.  My daughters and I have tickets to the rematch, though, so we're already counting the days until we head to The Pav to witness another clash between these two volleyball powerhouses.

Down in the dumps with no ideas....so I've dug into the archives for a short piece I wrote a long time ago for a Master's class.  I believe it was an ethics class, the paper's topic was plagiarism, and my point was how tough it is to avoid plagiarizing in a world that is running out of new ideas.  In case you aren't connecting the dots here, I'm regurgitating an old piece of writing that spoke of a lack of ideas on a night when I have no ideas.  Enjoy.

           “Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.”  (Don’t know who, don’t know when).  Some in the academic world might accuse me of plagiarism in this case; some might believe the saying to be common knowledge, making citation unnecessary.  Either way, it is an example of a common ethical dilemma in the world of research and writing:  What should be sited and what should not?

            If plagiarism is the use of someone else’s thinking without giving them credit for it, the opening line of this paper was plagiarized.  I did not make the quote up, but I have used it many times in conversation without giving credit to its author.  Am I guilty of a crime?  Come to think of it, the definition of plagiarism in the first sentence of this paragraph is not my definition, but one I have been taught many times over during my academic career.  Again, have I committed a crime for not giving credit to the person who first described what plagiarism is?  This is getting very confusing, but I have to keep in mind that things are never so bad that they can’t get worse (Uncle David, circa 2000).

            Maybe we have reached a point in our society where it has become impossible to avoid plagiarism because we have used up all the ideas.  Oh brother, what if someone else has already written about this?!  I swear I came up with this one on my own!  With so many sources of information available and so many people publishing so much work in so many different venues how can we possibly know what is original thought and what has already been thought?  (I can almost guarantee nobody has ever written that sentence before.)  Citations are required when a writer uses information taken from someone else, but they do not necessarily help know whose thought is which, or something like that.  Reading the works of an author who borrowed data from their favorite author who studied the research of a college intern who got the idea for the research from a former professor gets very.......painful.  Perhaps it is time for some new rules about what needs to be sited and what does not.

            If your sentence has a number in it include the source unless you were responsible for generating the number.  Dates should be sited.  Song lyrics?  Site ‘em (Unless it's a country song; there are only three different topics for country songs, and none are all that special).  Everything else is off limits for charges of plagiarism.  When a student turns in a paper based on research, do not quibble over which ideas are his and which belong to somebody else.  Life is short, so just be happy with the effort given to get the paper done.

            If someone decided to copy my work I would be flattered.  If someone chose to copy this work I would be worried.  Too many people are getting lathered up about having their work copied instead of just enjoying the fact that their work was interesting enough to warrant being copied.  As my grandfather always said “No matter where you go in life, there you are.”  I have no clue what that has to do with plagiarism, but at least I gave it a decent citation.  Except I think he stole the quote from someone.......

References

Elhard, D.  (circa 2000, summer)  The Fish Aren’t Biting, The Mosquitoes Are, and the Rain              is Falling Harder.  Pine Lake Fishing Excursion.

            

It's Just a Number

We have several "data retreats" at my school the next couple of days.  Each grade level will attend a retreat for a half-day each, using the time to look at fall benchmark assessment scores.  As I sit at my kitchen table on the eve of this event, surrounded by piles of said scores, I do what I usually do prior to these kinds of events - I wonder.

What do all these numbers really mean?  And in the long run, what good are these numbers going to do for us as teachers and, ultimately, for the students?  Are we going to sit down tomorrow, see a negative anomaly in our first grade scores, and completely revamp the way we teach our Kindergartners so we never have another such occurrence?  Not likely.  We gather scores and we look at scores and we compare scores and we see patterns and identify trends and brainstorm ideas and what major changes do we make?  Very few.  Sorry, this is turning into a rant I've already made.

So here's what I wonder:  What if instead of "data retreats" we held "student retreats"?  We use a half-day to sit and talk with each student, one-on-one, for 5-10 minutes each.  Not a lot of time, I know, but it's a start.  Talk about the student's likes and dislikes and hopes and fears and dreams and wishes.  'Cause that's what we teach - students, not numbers.  Underneath or behind or attached to all of those numbers are stories the numbers can't tell us.....but the students can.  Without the stories the numbers are less significant.  Consider this example taken from a different, but every bit as important, realm than school....

Brian Dozier of the Minnesota Twins accumulated some of the best offensive numbers any player in Twins history has ever had.  In addition, the total homers (42), runs scored (104), and RBI (99) he amassed this summer rank among the best by any second baseman ever, for any team in either league.  His numbers are impressive, but the stories behind the numbers make them more so.  For instance, he played on a horrible team, the worst Twins team ever (according to the numbers); the ability to perform at such a high level when surrounded by ineptitude makes his accomplishments seem incredible.  His totals for the season look great...but consider that he spent the first two months of the year looking completely lost at home plate and again, his numbers look even better.  You look at 99 RBI and think "Geez, he was one away from 100."  He actually had that one - he hit a home run on August 10 in a game that was rained out; when the game became unofficial because it was less than five innings, Dozier lost what would have been his 43rd homer and RBI #100.  His numbers look the way they look; the stories give them meaning.

Back to school and our data.  We look at papers full of numbers that follow kids' names.  We see special symbols that tell us how much risk a student is at.  We get means and medians.  What we don't get is each student's story, the information that can't be numbered but could hold the meaning to the number.  Did that high-risk-for-failure student have a bed to sleep in the night before his test?  How many of our high-risk students can't see or hear within normal ranges?  Does the high achiever in math even like math?  Maybe that Kindergarten student who didn't know a single letter sound has never owned a book, or even held a book, prior to life as a student.

Numbers can't tell us the information we really need to know.  They are a snapshot in time, a tiny piece of the whole that is a student.  Without a story the numbers are nothing, really.  When I see a 6!! behind Student A's name what have I really learned about Student A?  I know her number is well below the number that a student her age is supposed to have on that test.  I know nothing about her.  I have to teach her.  I have to understand her.  Yet tomorrow her teacher will spend three hours away from her looking at that number and making judgements about who she is and what she knows.  As spoken at the best teacher training I've ever been to - "Judgement Trumps Truth".

Using student achievement data is necessary for making decisions about what and how to teach.  Using the data without knowing the truth that formed that data seems partial, like putting together the border of a puzzle and leaving the middle empty.  We need to hear each student's story - recognize each student's truth - and complete the puzzle by teaching the student instead of the number.