The Christmas Celebrations have Begun

Today the entirety of PUCS took part in a traditional Mexican Christmas celebration involving a procession, songs, dancing, and general folderol. The middle schoolers, who have done this before, pretended to remember how everything is supposed to run and are were in charge of herding groups of smaller children from classroom to classroom and then into the gym. Mrs. Matos attempted to be five places at once so she could oversee the middle school students. Once in the gym the student body proceeded to dance, hit pinatas, sing, and eat tacos more or less simultaneously. Meanwhile the rest of the staff milled about wearing the mildly perplexed look that teachers get this time of year. I took pictures.

 

Busy Day

Sometimes there is just a lot going on around here.

There are currently a bevy of parent volunteers in the building for Art Expression Day. This is the annual day during which elementary students are scattered all over the building painting, building things out of vegetables, and making granola bars.  (I can vouch for the granola bars their good – a little crumbly but good). This is all very educational…No really, it is.

All the teachers are a little punchy because of the changes to the schedule and because well, its Friday.

While that is going on upstairs the middle school had another cooking class today led by Eduardo Matos. I didn’t even have time to ask what they were making, but it smelled fishy.

The 6th graders finished up an interesting but very odorous science experiment that involved colored eggs, nearly a gallon of vinegar, some corn syrup, and spoiled milk.

The 7th graders are feverishly making plans to bury things in the back yard and I was running around like a madman trying to find a shovel this morning (For some reason there was one in boiler room) before we decided to hold off on the burial until next week.

Because of these events about four people were looking for the schools digital camera none of whom could find it because it was laying on my desk.

Meanwhile it is also pizza day. Have you ever seen a troupe of 4th and 5th grade students waiting in orderly quiet lines for pizza? … Neither has anyone else.

Eggs with their shells dissolved and only the inner membrane holding them together will take on the color and other properties of liquids they are placed in. The closest was left in Diet Coke.

Eggs left in corn syrup will lose water due to osmosis

Left over granola bars. I think they’re all gone by now.

Art Expression Day

Insightful?

I give the middle school boys a lot of flak for… just about everything. Being late, asking repetitive questions, failing to exercise common sense, failing to exercise common hygiene, moving their mouths faster than they move their brains, and jumping out of bushes at people, just to name a few. However, there are surreal moments when they have flashes of insight…or something very close to it.

 

Let me set the stage a bit. In history class we’ve been talking at length about early societies and the hallmarks of civilizations. All civilizations have certain basics in common; a system of writing, divisions of labor, surplus food etc. The kids in my class have basically been accepting of all this. Although I think I stretched their brains a bit when I claimed that everything they know as ‘civilized’ is the result of agriculture. I’m moving through this material quickly because, to be honest, studying Sumer and Egypt is much more…lively (more on that later). I do get a bit excited about agriculture but that’s just because I grew up in the middle of nowhere full of small farmers who had nothing better to do than be literal and figurative touchstone for a society that has no idea they exist. But I digress.

One of the requirements of civilization following a division of labor is a government of some sort. My classes briefly talked about what the first governments might have looked like, and I was prepared to move on when a hand went up. I almost ignored the hand, which happened to be attached to a 6th grader in the back row. Fairly often I call on one of the boys who has raised their hand for the sole purpose of asking me what type of cheese I favor as a hair treatment or something equally inane. Hopefully you’ll forgive me for my tendency to ignore the questions of adolescent male minds in my class. One can only take so many questions about cheese and bodily functions (sometimes in the same question). But I digress.

I did (eventually) call on the 6th grade boy, who had kept his hand up for several minutes. This is a good tactic for teachers; If questions or comments are forgotten or dropped after being ignored for more than a few minutes they were probably not worth answering in the first place. Cheese questions are amusing but soon fade. This question had endured, however, and when given the chance to speak I realized why. “Mr. Wilson? Government is a necessary part of civilization? What does that mean about our government?” At first I didn’t quite see what he meant and started to explain that our government serves the functions of all governments. And I began to list off what those some of the functions are but realized mid-sentence that our federal government wasn’t doing those things at the moment. That was the point of his question all along. Realizing that I told him that, yes, part of our government was ‘shutdown’ but other parts definitely continued to play their role and we have local and state governments that are operating like usual.  Still the question was apt and timely and persistent. What does it say about the state of our civilization that we voluntarily undid a part (small or large) of what makes up our civilization?

I thought I’d take a line or two to inform you all that the Library of Congress website is back up and running. You probably didn’t notice, but the first two days of the shutdown saw the LOC website disabled. I use that resource a lot at times throughout the year and I’m glad to see it accessible again. Through some miracle of bureaucracy the website is back but the Library of Congress buildings are still closed. The library is the single biggest public repository of knowledge and civilization in the world. Closing it is worrisome. But I digress…

 

 

Superheroes and World Domination

Today is the kickoff of the elementary school’s heroes unit. You might ask “What one does do to initiate such a unit.” The answer, of course, is hold a SUPERHERO TRAINING DAY! With capes whirling and masks obscuring their identity the elementary students filed into the gym where they… Well I don’t know what they did. No cameras are permitted inside SUPERHERO TRAINING DAY!   I can only assume they learned to melt steel with their laser-vision, carry a belt full of gadgets, make witty one liners, create exuberant amounts of collateral damage to public property, and avoid their secret weaknesses. It seems that taking a course in outrageous costumes was a prerequisite.

Some of those in attendance were:

Lady Grey

W Girl

Captain Cool

The Green Gecko

Miss Terious

 

 

 

 

But wait! Villany is a foot. Our aspiring heroes have their work cut out for them because….Meanwhile, nearby in their secret underground lair the middle school is plotting to Take Over the World!

 

 

 

You can tell they’re villains. Look, they have a skull and maps and things.

I wasn’t kidding about the underground lair.

They’re ruthless. Some of them even have red eye.

Absolutely reprehensible

 

 

Every year my classes play a game titled simply the Take Over the World Game. Its meant to help with physical and cultural geography, map reading skills, and report writing. Its sort of like a bigger more complicated version of Risk. We generally dedicate some time every Friday to the game. Without fail every Friday someone comes in to ask me, “What are we doing today?” even though they already know. This continual question reminds me of this cartoon, which might provide you a glimpse into my mind when I was in middle school.

Mystery Books Published at PUCS

A grand total of 93 new mystery books were “published” Friday October 19, 2012 at PUCS to raves by the critics! Original artwork decorates the cover of each book. Styles of art include: brush painting, dot painting, wax resist, scratch board and 3 styles of collage.

Since the beginning of the Mysterious Unit, the K-5^th grade authors have been working hard to write, edit, revise and illustrate their works. The group effort by Kindergarten is entitled: The Mystery of the Missing Candy.  First Grade’s story is The Amazing Book Bag Mystery.   Each 2^nd-5^th grader has written an original story –every subject from a lost pet to a detective car chase to a tropical island thriller.

On Art Expression AM, each student chose an art workshop in which to illustrate her book cover. Thank you to the thirty+ parents, teachers, staff and friends who made Art Expression a successful event.

Be sure to read some of the mystery books and admire the artwork. Here’s a good idea- one parent is going to make color copies of their student’s book and give it as gifts for relatives at Christmas!

Garden Play Day in the PUCS Backyard

What a beautiful fall we have had and PUCS elementary students have been out to enjoy a few afternoons in the back yard. Activities included

digging in the sandbox,

dressing  in detective disguises,

pretending in a “tent”,

painting at an easel,

watering and weeding the gardens

and shoveling and hauling compost to the garden beds.

Thanks to the Borough of Wilkinsburg for the big pile of free leaf compost.

Some of you may not know the story of our school back yard. Up until last year, that unused yard was overgrown with weeds, invasive plants and broken junk. When our all school unit, Earth Diggers was announced, students had a chance to participate in digging and planting a “rain garden”*, seeding raised gardens with lettuce, spinach and radishes, removing invasive plants and replacing Pennsylvania native plants. Now, Kindergarten and First Graders enjoy our back yard at recess.

Students continue to maintain our gardens by watering, weeding and composting. Last summer, Mr. Phelps arranged to have an unused outside stairwell filled in with soil making a larger and safer space.  Future plans are as follows: installing our rain barrel, constructing a play structure made from recycled tires, a raspberry patch and more edibles.  PUCS has been awarded a grant to work with Audubon Society of Western Pa on an environmental project using our own school yard. Stop at PUCS some nice day and check out how beautiful the rain garden looks in just 1 year!  Are you intrigued? Join the committee. Talk to Mrs. Salo or Mrs. Rhonda Smith.

*A rain garden is a space to help handle storm run off water so it does not go into the (already overloaded) city sewer system. The rain from our school roof runs down into our bowl shaped garden where native Pa. plants enjoy it and it is naturally filtered as it goes down through the soil to the aquifer. PUCS is a member of the Rain Garden Alliance in Western Pa.

Middle School Solves Mysteries at Frick Park

 

The middle school scavenger hunt went well yesterday. As the culminating activity of the Mystery Unit groups of middle schoolers spent all day trying to find things hidden throughout Frick Park. Some were obvious and others less so. Teachers watched and waited as the students tried to retrieve a missing box of candy, spot a container full of balloons, and find a message in a bottle. In all there were about a dozen little mysteries for the aspiring Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews to try their hand at.

It may have seemed a bit mysterious to passersby and indeed there were some questioning glances from joggers and dog walkers as gaggles of PUCS kids searched the rocks, under bridges, and around stone walls.

Fall weather was in full swing yesterday and the students enjoyed exhausting themselves wandering the many trails in the park. There is something about the cool air this close to Halloween that lends itself to tasks like Grave Robbing Rubbing, Finding a Troll’s Lair, and searching for Candy. 

Picture Day

The student body that arrived yesterday morning was a beautiful vision of pressed shirts, pleated skirts, and polished shoes… there were even a few ties to be seen. Visions are often fleeting and, like a mirage, this one has vanished and there are now few signs that it ever existed.

Picture day is one of many little milestones that we hit throughout the year.  It’s a day when the kids come to school in their best, unless they forgot, and for the most part stay reasonably neat and tidy until the photographs are taken. After the click of the camera all bets are off. Middle schoolers who arrived in skirts or slacks with their hair done and faces bright somehow   depart in jeans and winkled t-shirts. These were presumably stowed in the bilge-water compartment of their backpacks until needed. Hopefully they could change out of their nicer attire quickly enough that their friends would forget that those pieces of clothing ever existed. Hair that was neatly coiffed when the morning began is usually mussed and bedraggled or pulled back into a more utilitarian shape by the time dismissal rolls around. The elementary students typically stay dressed up, but quickly dismiss the possibility that the clothes they were photographed in deserve any better treatment than the clothes they wear everyday. The upshot is that by the time recess is over most of the smaller children have managed to smudge, smear, tear, stretch, and stain their garments and themselves into a state of happy dishevelment.

Picture day also gives rise to a variety of comments from the students and staff. Below are a few I was able to overhear.

“Why did he get a blue background and we got green?”

– 3rd Grader

 

“Woah, his hair is spiked!”

– 4th Grader

 

“My mom always makes me wear a dress, and I hate them.”

– 6th Grader

 

“No one will see that I have shorts on; I always stand in the back of the group picture.”

– 8th Grader

 

“I need a machete and a crossbow for my picture.”

– 8th Grader

 

” Can she borrow your brush it’s a dire emergency!”

– 6th Grader

 

“I need my brush back in like ten seconds!”

– 8th Grader

 

“I hate picture day.”

– Mr. Wilson

 

Kindergarten joins Pittsburgh Undercover Class for Sleuths

Kindergarten groups bravely set out Monday Oct 1 to attempt to follow the Mysterious Clue Hunt to its end. Each group brought along a handy adult or two to help decode the clues.  Using detective sneakiness, they succeeded in finding each clue and puzzle piece.  The completed puzzle announced the new surprise name of PUCS: Pittsburgh Undercover Class for Sleuths.  There was no time to rest on their laurels. Immediately, their first assignment was to taste test 5 Jelly Belly’s and determine the flavor.  Welcome to detective school!

MYSTERY UNIT KICK OFF is a REAL MYSTERY

Here are some photos (Thanks, Mrs. Merryman) from the 1st through 5th grade Mystery Clue Hunt.which took place Sept 10th.
Each group of an adult and 4-5 students had to follow clues leading all over the PUCS school property inside and outside-even at the playground!  Some clues contained scrambled letters, some were riddles or a map!  The final clues contained pieces of a puzzle.

Many groups followed their clues to the end, but mysteriously, some clues disappeared, leaving groups (and even Mrs. Salo) guessing!  All puzzle pieces were eventually found and the resulting picture explained our new name: PUCS- Pittsburgh Undercover Class for Sleuths. It seems as though PUCS has mysteriously turned into a detective school!