Steal This! Take It! Work With It! @writingproject @ncte There's Time Before the 12th

So, I was reading online and heard about "Trim-a-beard" and an activity where kids are given 12 tasks to do leading up to the holiday that some celebrate as Christmas, and I thought, "This is wonderful."

I looked into it, but couldn't find anything online but beards with fonts that were too small for me to read.

When Crandall can't find what he's looking for, but has an idea, he's crazy enough to make it himself.

I shared with some of my graduate students and some elementary teachers quickly jumped on it immediately, and create 12 items for their students, but also templates so that kids could create 12 tasks of their own.

The action is simple: each day, beginning the 12 days before Christmas, you read the task to be done and you trim Santa's beard until he's left with a mustache.

It's a variation of the advent calendar, without the chocolate.

It's also a promotion of random acts of kindness which I prefer much more. Give. Give. Give. Appreciate. Appreciate. Appreciate.

Administrative assistants at the University printed out a few copies in color for me (without asking) and I handed them out at an Advisory Board meeting last night and said, "Here. I made you Fridge Art for the holidays...something to guide the spirit through December." I came home from work and threw a few noggins into Santa's beard for others I know would appreciate the creativity, so too can spread good cheers into the world.

I know most don't want another thing to do, but I'm thinking about little kids at home and giving them a good deed every day to distract them from the inevitable excitement of getting so many gifts that they've asked the big guy for.

Feel free to save this photo and hang it wherever you have scissors. Sharing the magic. That's what it is about.

Because @AbuBility and @LBility make @akbar_offishio Possible. Ubuntu, All The Way

In 2008, because I signed up for a course on Oral History Methodologies in a Ph.D program, I met Abu and Lossine Bility. They were in advanced ESL classes and, to be honest, they changed my life: they made me a better man, they introduced me to global realities, they shared their life stories, and they became central to my world.

Fast forward to 2017 - a graduate course on teaching writing, where the last chapters of our academic reading were centered on English Language Learners. Tonight, I presented the posters graduate students and I created 10 years ago, when we interviewed relocated youth and used their stories to create visual narratives that could be used to teach others about global literacies and colonial stories.

This year, too, I've asked juniors and seniors in high school - kids who immigrated and relocated to the United States, to co-teach with me in my graduate courses. They, as experts of their own lives, are instructors for pre-service teachers entering the field.

Many of the kids who co-teach with me are youth who have attended Young Adult Literacy Labs, including Ubuntu Academy. For the first three years, Abu and Lossine were central to making our literacy initiatives - the Young Adult Literacy Labs - possible. They were teachers. They were role models. They were college achieving students. They are a demonstration of the complicated, but possible journey ahead.

I'm forever grateful to them both.

Last night, I pulled out the posters from 10 years ago to model one project that promoted the literacies of similar youth and, with kids co-teaching in my classroom, made the case of global histories, the importance of building relationships, and the historical nature of everything we do, including the current ostracizing of young people who arrive from other lands (an immigrant tradition that has made the United States magical).

I am forever grateful to Abu and Lossine, as well as the others, for all they have provided to make my work possible. Because of them, I'm able to offer hope, possibility, instruction, and guidance to an entire new generation of beautiful young people trying to live the American Dream. This is what I believe in.

We all touch the lives of others when we share our stories.

I believe in diversity, inclusion, togetherness and love. I stand against bigotry, exclusion, and prejudice. We are much stronger together, and we need to invest in the possibility of the United States, not limit the dreams of so many.

Well, I Guess We Didn't Start The Fire, But We Know More About Fire Than Ever Before, So Why?

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television

North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom

Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye

Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen

Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning

We didn't start the fire

No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it.

The only thing giving me the slightest inkling of solace in 2017, is the fact that chaos has always been the norm, as I'm reminded by the Billy Joel song from the early 80s. I was too young to understand the global politics of the time, but in retrospect, I can see we lived in a far from perfect world. I am also thinking about Whoops by Blues Traveler where they sing, The possibility exists / no matter how scary it may seem / that paradise was once this world / and it wasn't just a dream / The earth was our heaven and we did not know / there were rules for us to break / Maybe now we'll find out too late what a clever hell we can make.

Monday began with a meeting with local superintendents and University Presidents, as well as strong community leaders. The pressures placed on K-12 schools right now are entering territories never seen before in America's history. Budgets are being slashed at extreme levels and they no longer know where else they can cut, besides doing more damage to teachers and staff. The infrastructures are being challenged, and the kids will be the ones that lose out. Class sizes are at capacity, and guidance counselors, if schools are lucky to keep them, are serving numbers that are unimaginable. 

I walked out with one of the University Presidents and said, "How is it in a nation that supports the ridiculousness of Hollywood and ESPN sports, Wall Street, and the Hamptons, can also cripple and destroy its schools?" His answer was, "It's all in the design. Those at the top don't want success for those at the bottom. They want success for their kids, and they send their kids to boarding schools or private institutions. They are beyond detached about the vast majority of America and now, because of Democracy, they were voted in to go in for the kill. The very ones who will be hurt most by these new decisions, though, are the ones who stood behind those that want to screw them. Odd times, indeed."

The only response I can have as more and more of the ugliness continues, is to fight a little harder for what is good, to believe in love, and to embrace knowledge, books, and history. I didn't start the fire, but I will continue to work for those that get burned by it most.

It's hard not to cry as I work in classrooms and I see what is happening, and now have knowledge of more that is coming their way. My job, which is in support of teachers and students, is getting trickier and trickier. I'm not sure where any of this will end.

Firefighters. Police. Teachers. Social Workers. Nurses. They do so much for so little. Heroes. That's what they are.

Work, Work, Work, Work, Moon Rise Covered With Clouds, Work, Work, Work, Work

I had a goal early in the morning. Get prepped for the week, check off items on the to-do list, then head to Walnut Beach for the moonrise at 4:30 p.m.

Sadly, arriving with me came a blanket of clouds and we never saw the moon. It would have been beautiful, too. Beverly said, "I'm totally going to have a fit if the moon doesn't show," and it showed, but we couldn't see it. So I doctored a moon for her.

It was a wonderful night for a moonrise, and we were all ready to dance. Instead, we got left over holiday food (thanks Dr. Hannafin and the GSEAP department party for leaving leftovers) and a few minutes of The Grinch starring Jim Carey.

It's all luck. I saw beautiful photos from Tennessee and was jealous that they had clear skies for the occasion. I looked to Syracuse, too, and saw their skies were open. Nope, not us on the Long Island sound.

At one point, Pam found a photo of the moon and held it up for Bev to see. "Use your imagination, Bev. Come on. This is what it would look like."

Ah, but the only entertainment was from another gruntled customer who gave up waiting for the clouds to depart, so he hovered away on his disco-lit hover-board along the Walnut Beach pier. There's always next year! We have something to look forward to.

When I Am Fixated, I Get Obsessed. My Focus Is Disturbing, Even To Me

I'm at it again. I couldn't get it out of my mind, and when I learned someone in my office loves molasses cookies, I marked it in my neurons that I need to make Molasses Slabs one more time (or at least attempt them). The recipe at the Sherburne Big M has been handed down for generations and they only make them on Tuesdays, often selling out before anyone can get some.

So, I went back into my research mode and while searching, I kept coming back to my blogs over the years. I never saw the comments left in previous years, which inspired me to keep on searching. People, even on the West Coast, want to know what the recipe is, so I'm back at it. I found one recipe for the slabs written in 1899 from a publication from Masonic Lodge matrons. It's just a lumped paragraph, with only the ingredients and many assumptions of how everything goes together.

I read many recipes for hermits, too, but I want a slab and am obsessed with finding the right ingredients to go at it once again.

I didn't have all the ingredients for the final recipe I put together - a combination of several (without as much molasses that the 1899 one used) and even added some strange ingredients I read about online (crystalized ginger turns out to be sugarized ginger and at $11.99 for a small bottle, I opted to mix sugar and ginger to get he same effect).

This recipe calls for a cooling in the fridge for a couple of hours, too, so the dough sets.

But I didn't have everything, and as I watched Syracuse lose to Kansas, I became more and more fixated that tonight was going to be another attempt. I was wearing my XXXL sweatpants for relaxing (all I had on after the shower) and put on a coat. I got the cloves, some butter, the ginger, and the all spice. I also had to walk very peculiar because my pants were falling down (as these sweats always do) and it would not have been a pretty sight. I am sure security was watching me from the second I went in the store. Every time I found a new item, I had to put them down and be sure to hike the sweats up as high as I could. I also kept one hand in a coat pocket to hold them up from inside.

I made it out without an embarrassing moment, but excited by my achievement, I had to tell the teller everything: about Slabs, about my quest, about the ingredients, about finding a close recipe from 1899, but leaving out the fact that I didn't have underwear on and I was holding desperately to keep my circus pants up.

I don't know why I get obsessed like this, but I can't focus on anything when I get an idea in my head. I want to master the slabs. I want to give the IGA a run for it's money. When people from California find my blog and ask me to share the recipe (even to bake me a batch and mail it my way if I do), I know I'm not the only one mesmerized by this cookie.

So, here I am this morning read to roll the slabs out to bake. I'll probably be fixated on something else tomorrow night and fail to write how it goes. But I also imagine that if it goes well, everyone will know. And if I figure it out, I'm likely to keep it a secret. I learned that from Colonel Sanders in my KY days.

This just in!

Nope. The dough didn't set, and so the slabs had to be made brownie style. They were flavorful, but far from what a slab should be. In fact, they turned out nowhere near what a slab should be.

I'm guessing it is because I mixed and matched a hodge podge of ideas. I'm thinking I need to keep trying new things until I finally figure it out.

From my sister: Why don't you just call the Sherburne Big M and or order some to be delivered to your house?

I Look Like an Ewok, But I Did Another November Without a Shave.

Growing up, I always remember November as a month where my father took time off for work and where he grew out his beard while sitting out in the woods of Sherburne and other regions waiting for deer to cross his path so we could have venison for the winter months.

I still can't grow a full beard, although every November I try. So, for the last month (when I remembered) I snapped a selfie to capture the historic growth of whiteness, which is my beard. My goatee still comes in with brown hair, but everything else is totally white.

I am welcoming December in with my semi-Santa beard and now I need to decide if I nurture it through the winter or if I give up and say, "Um, Crandall, it just doesn't work for you."

I try to be Dumbledore or Gandalf, really I do. Instead, I'm crazy Crandall with straggly, scrappy Shaggy hair.

Scooby-dooby-doo.

Bring on the holidays!

A Story From My Second Year of Teaching Still Resonates With Me

In Kentucky, students in 12th grade had to produce a portfolio to showcase their writing in personal, literary, and transitive categories. I'm forever grateful to the requirement because it helped me to learn my students as writers, but also as individuals. The last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about a personal narrative a girl wrote (one who I loved, cherished, and learned from) about an experience she had when she and her friends went to the opposite end of town.

She was from a zip code not 'celebrated' by the city of Louisville...a community of struggling working class families who were stereotyped as being tough, anti-school, mouthy and, well, poor. I'm not sure what the assignment was or why she chose to explore the narrative, but she wrote about a single party she and her friends went to in a more affluent neighborhood. The way I remember it is that one of the girls met a boy at a mall, and he invited her to meet him at this party, so she gathered her girls, they got themselves dressed up, and they went to explore the world, like teenagers do.

They drove the 20 miles across the city to attend the party, and as the evening went on with shenanigans adults would frown upon, the girls began to feel like they were being stared at. Several girls from the wealthier community began giggling under their breath, making fun of the girls and whispering things like, "trailer trash," and "scum whores," as their friend was getting to know the boy a little more. The girls felt uncomfortable and foreign, and the essay described the barbs felt as the stares came, the judgments, but also the self control of not starting anything...not delivering on the stereotype placed upon them. They were girls who faced many obstacles, many of them stemming from the struggling economics of their homes, and although dolled up and trying to be social as the age calls, they were very aware that they didn't belong. They belonged, of course, but the behavior of the wealthier girls made them feel unwanted.

The story continued, and it was written in such a way that readers could feel the departure from confidence the girls originally had as they were doing teenage things, to a location of being placed and scribed into how others, in this case, more privileged girls, demeaned and belittled to the point of absolute frustration. They went out of innocence, and left with their pride shredded.

The whole story came to its end when one of the more abrasive rich girls became louder with the taunts and one of the girls from the poorer community came to the defense of their friend. Words were exchanged, and this led to a physical altercation where the young women who didn't belong moved to their fists and mouths and the fight began.

I just remember that the girls quickly got into their car to drive home and without talking to one another they all began to cry. They cried together. They cried for their circumstance, they cried for their histories, they cried for their lot in their life, and they cried for themselves.

And that's the way it ended. With tears, and I couldn't help but read this as one of the most honest, heart-felt social criticisms I've ever read from a high school writer. She was a good kid with tremendous promise. The pressure on her to achieve, to do school, and to make it in the world was in constant contrast to what she saw around her in her neighborhood, the struggles of her peers, and the deep rooted oppression that was not named, but felt. In the zest of a senior year, with confidence to move into the world and to find a way to what comes next, they traveled to a community of those who have what they always were taught what they should work for. Yet, when they arrived, they found cruelty.

I guess I'm tapping my working class roots here, but that story remains with me so many years later, especially as I work at an institution known for its privileges and wealth.

I read a quote that I really liked from a friend who was told by her academic advisor while finishing her dissertation.

If you finish a doctorate, you are supposed to be smart. Everyone in higher education is intelligent for many reasons. Yet, to distinguish yourself in a University, aim to be kind. That is rare.

I'm thinking about empathy, kindness, and being a good person, no matter what your social circumstance, and I am thinking of the roots of what causes one person to be mean to another without an understanding that not all people have the luxuries of others. I am wondering how one can judge those who are born into lesser circumstances and opportunities, and why they feel entitled to look down on them.

It's just wrong. It always has been and it always will be. 24 days until the holiday that asks us to think twice or he'll find out if we've been naughty at nice. Choose kindness. Don't be lame.