Anthony starts his senior year of high school this week. For college, presently, it is looking like he might be attending Mizzou to study Journalism. Given this interest Marty, Anfer and I visited the school on their summer visit day. It was a fun day that began at day-break when we had to set out on the two hour drive to the school. We enjoyed seeing the campus and hearing the various schools and...

Aleo began his college career this Fall. Like Bella, he elected to stay local. I already talked about his unsolicited scholarship, which made his attendance in a film program at this private university possible.

Alex has been interested in video production for years. He's watched hundreds, possibly thousands, of hours of videos on the subject...

Anthony began high school this year. This means a few things. First, it is the last time he and his brother will attend the same school at the same time. They had a nice long run in elementary but will only have this one year left. Unless you count the covid year, that was a very special setup for the two of them as they spent that entire year side by side, and as each other's best friend, they we...

Bella didn't want to go to college. Like at all. Instead, she wanted to volunteer at a Nepalese orphanage slash womens' shelter. Do you know how hard it is to convince your child, or anyone, to not give their energy and support to people that desperately need your child's, or anyone's, energy and support? For me, it makes my top twenty list. But I did argue against my child going and helping these...

Click for a fuller-size rendering of the above.
PART 5 - Meanwhile, at home

The above picture was taken on the first day that all three of our kids were back to school, virtually, of course. Our tradition has been to take individual photos with each child on the first day of a new school y...

PART 4 - Saved

It turns out Marty's apprehension about starting a new semester online was wrong—it turned out far worse than she imagined. While many teachers did lots of preparation for day one, everyone knew there would be bumps. Some you could predict. Others you could not. Marty's institution got double-hit by a decision made the previous year before the word co...

PART 3 - Take it from the top

When it was decided that the Fall term would be entirely virtual, Marty began her preparation. After a few days of thought, she made a worrisome discovery. Closing out that Spring term was as successful as it was because she knew her students, and they knew her. Given the seven months of in-class time she had with her kids, she knew who could...

PART 2 - Marty Catches a Break

Marty was running into lots of setbacks and few solutions in the early going of online teaching. Then she finally caught her first break. Many might predict the person to come to her rescue would be her husband. He has worked in the technology industry for twenty-five years, ran an online photo competition for fifteen years, and taught a uni...

PART 1 - The New Norm

Before properly starting the story about Marty's experience of teaching through a pandemic, I need to address a few administrative matters.

I'm not sure if you have ever personally taught in a formal setting or not. I believe that to be a hard-prerequisite to having a qualified opinion about the art of teaching. For me, I "taught" for four y...

When searching through my email for a work matter, I stumbled upon this forgotten diamond from a fourteen-year-old Aleo. Yes, it may appear to have been written at academic-gunpoint, but it is still an all-net, three-pointer on this father's scorecard.

After Marty got her online-curriculum process in place, she turned her attention to students who seemed to be struggling with this new virtual schooling. Her idea was to invite small groups to video chats and talk through the challenges they were having. Before doing a for-real call with her first set of students, she wanted to practice running a Zoom meeting. Like all of us, she had heard the horror stories and didn't want to be the next casualty. To this end, she sent an invite to Bella, Alex, Anthony, and I. In the invitation, she asked us to (1) join her on a practice Zoom call and to (2) try to wreck the meeting.

At the appointed hour, I joined the meeting. Marty's office is right next to mine, so after joining, I went to her desk to explain the process. Bella was down the hall in her room, and the boys were downstairs in our "computer cafe."

Bella was next to join the meeting. Bella and Marty were talking nicely when Alex chimed in. The second he appeared, he started screaming. Loudly. Then Anthony popped up and started screaming too. Also loudly. Remember, Marty asked the kids to try to wreck her call. I've held many Zoom calls since starting my company, and the most significant challenge I've encountered is a lagging internet connection. I was about to learn how badly one of these could go.

From the moment they joined, the boys were screaming jokes and trading memes, totally taking over what moments earlier was a peaceful conversation between Marty and Bella. Marty immediately got flustered and asked how she could shut them up, hands flared over the keyboard. I, leaning over her shoulder, helped her find the Manage Users / Mute option. She hit it for Alex, and his voice dropped out. Then she hit Anthony's switch. But the moment she muted Anthony, Alex's voice returned, saying demonically, "I will not be silenced, mother."

More panic. A deeper dive into the settings revealed a second mute switch that would let the meeting organizer mute people and keep them muted. After silencing Alex a second time, you could see she was starting to understand the setup. But the moment she killed Anthony's mic, Alex started writing on the screen in a huge jagged scrawl using the Annotation tool--TURN OUR SOUND ON!!!

It took Marty a few moments to find how to disable the writing tool. All the time this was happening, Bella was helping Marty find the settings and giving her additional suggestions.

BELLA
Mom, make sure you don't have any porn tabs up.

MARTY
I tend to not run a lot of porn in my browser, so I should be safe.

BELLA
Well, check your history too. People have been bitten there also.

MARTY
Again, I think I'll be safe Bella.

BELLA
And make sure other people don't play porn on their screens.

MARTY
They can do that?

To this question, Bella changed her background to a beach scene. In the time we asked her how she did that, she changed the picture to an old boyfriend. While we asked how she did that (again), she contorted in her bean bag chair, pretending to make out with his large smiling face. While we looked for how to defend this setting, Bella put up a textbook drawing of a penis with some medicinal (I hope) thing on it. Even though Marty had figured out how to silence the boys of both their verbal and annotated barbs, we could still hear them downstairs howling hysterically at Bella's phallic background.

After much laughter and more than a few obscenities from Marty, she figured out how to run a defensive zoom campaign. Granted, she spent the whole time squinting at her screen and hovering over her keyboard in a frenzied battle-pose, which made her look like our own Ender Wiggen.

In one of her first meetings, she had a couple of kids show up she didn't recognize. She immediately asked them who they were and why they were there. When they didn't respond quickly, she bounced them from the room without pause or question. She then turned her attention back to her for-real students as if not a thing had happened.

If you would like to rent out the DeArmitt-children for your own Zoom training or Marty to run your Zoom-events, they all have an unprecedented amount of free time on their hands.

TOMORROW: Part 5 - Soapy Bottoms

The moment they announced the remainder of the school year would happen online, Marty began researching how to convert her instruction to a fully digital format. For as dynamic as she is in the classroom, she is admittedly un-dynamic on a computer. The fact is, technology is just not her medium. She knew what she wanted, but she didn't know how to get there. When Alex and I pool our experiences and abilities, it turns out we make a decently comprehensive support team. Given this, Marty was able to start publishing online versions of her lectures on day one.

After the first week of online lectures, a few students reached out to Marty. They thanked her for figuring out how to still present the material to them personally. Through conversing with them, Marty learned this was not the norm, and many teachers were just sending worksheets to do, videos to watch, and articles to read. I've seen a few of Marty's video lectures, and they are pretty top-flight given four days prior she had zero experience in the craft.

She mixes her speaking into the camera shots, with "action" shots using my tripod-mounted GoPro pointed down at the tabletop. An example of action shot might have Marty pointing out details of a worksheet or using sock puppets to demonstrate some biology tenet just as she would have done in the classroom. After Alex and I taught her how to do the various shooting techniques, she writes out her scripts and then shoots all the various pieces. Once everything has been recorded, she and Alex go through the footage selecting the best versions of each. Alex then stitches all the footage together via his editing software/skills so she can distribute the end video to her students. Once we got her workflow figured out, my support role became appearing at her side anytime I heard more than four obscenities strung together. Three consecutive swears is just Marty using a computer. Four in a row is Marty having problems with a computer.

TOMORROW: Part 4 - Zoom-Bomb Prevention

in case my level of joy at how things played out wasn't clear enough yesterday (ref), allow me to submit the following. i think bella's emotion is a bit more fear-based in that she is less than ninety minutes from her first college class. mine is pure elation that i get to see my girl off for another first day of school from the same spot i have for the last fifteen years.

do good baya as you always have and you always will.

there is something in the dearmitt-world that merits a bit more discussion. those paying super-fine attention will have noticed that my days-left-with-bella counter (REF) started displaying negative numbers last week. no one dreaded that moment more than i. 

i've talked a little bit about bella and college but let me hit ...

bella merits one more shout-out this week. earlier i had talked about bella reaching one of her high school goals but there were a few more i didn't mention. shortly after starting her freshman year, bella learned that at her school there were a few service awards presented every year to the senior class. she immediately pointed to the s ...

anfer has a new nickname at school. it is "ol grandpa anthony back at it again withe the new kycks" (anthony tells me the spelling matters, like a lot).

this came from a conversation where anthony and some classmates were talking about going back and playing minecraft again for nostalgia sake. anthony said, if he did, his username would be "ol grandpa anthony back at it again withe the n ...

last week bella achieved a long-term goal she set several years back--to pay for her own college education (or more plainly, to exit college debt-free). she has been saying this since she was in the sixth grade. and every time she did i would essentially pat her on the head and tell her that was not something she had to worry about because i worked at a university and one of my benefits was having ...

one or alex's teachers forwarded an email exchange he had with our aleo. it follows:

---

From: Alexander Dearmitt
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:00 PM
To: Social Studies Teacher
Subject: Australia Questions

I would just like to check to see if I was answering the questions you were asking so here are 3 questions I have about the project:

1. For the structure of the government do you mean like the branches of government in Australia?
2. For where the gov. meets do I need to say what buildings or just that they meet in the Parliamentary Triangle in Canberra?
3. Also, can we have more than five links in our bibliography?

If you could answer these questions that would help me immensely.

From,
Alex

---

From: Social Studies Teacher
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2019 9:10 PM
To: Alexander Dearmitt
Subject: Re: Australia Questions

1. Yes
2. PT in Canberra is fine
3. Yes

Cool?

---

From: Alexander Dearmitt
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 7:07 AM
To: Social Studies Teacher
Subject: Re: Australia Questions

Cool beans!

Thanks, see you 2nd hour!

---

Bella DeArmitt
Ms. Gray
African American Literature ACC
August 20 2018

The Impact of a Tradition

My family holds great value for traditions: Sunday mornings are reserved for cuddling in my parents' bed, winter breaks are spent holed up with our favorite action heroes--my family will take Jason Bourne and Lieutenant Ripley over the Grinch and Frosty the Snowman any yea ...

the below pictures need some explaining.

it was the last day of elementary for anthony and it was the last day of middle school for alex. when anthony and i were walking to school, our last one-mile walk to school ever (next year he will be taking the bus), i asked him if we would remember this final day with any sort of vividness or if it would just blend into the soup like most days. he said we probably wouldn't remember it in any special way other than it happened. sadly, i had to agree.

after dropping anthony off and returning home, i went to alex's middle school graduation. when the ceremony was over he came home with me to start his summer. we were home for about an hour before we had to walk back up to anthony's school to greet him for his end of school and start of summer. alex and i got there a few minutes before the last bell and grabbed a comfy spot on this bench in front of the school. we waved and chatted with the other families as they arrived. many people commented on how big alex (and his hair) had gotten. then the kids started getting released and there were lots of whoops and cheers and smiles.

anthony spotted us and joined us on the bench. we sat for a bit chatting with each other and folks passing by. after a bit the boys asked if we should start heading home. i said we should wait a minute. they asked why. i told them that when you were a celebrity it was good to make yourself available to the people, so they could see you out in public and take you in. the boys looked at each other and then started taking turns making jokes about me. the short story was that if i WERE a celebrity sticking around might be a nice thing to do BUT since i was just a loser who didn't know how to dress, we were probably safe to start home. when they were mostly done, i said that i would bet them that in the next minute someone would ask to take our picture. they looked at one another, deemed it a safe bet and said i was on. with some ceremony, anthony raised his wrist, called out the time, and the game was afoot.

he held his hand out so both he and alex could see the second hand charging around the watch face. they called out the times. 30 seconds left. 20 seconds left. 15. 10. just after they called out the number 5, a woman stepped forward and said, "well look at this handsome set of men, would you mind if i took your picture?"

the boys looked at each other in shock and disbelief. they then fell into hysterics, aided by my tickling them. while they reacted i calmly said to the lady, "yes, of course, we would love to have our picture taken." and that is what led to the below series of photos.















now part of me feels that fathers, like magicians, should never reveal their trade secrets but in this case it is only fair to let you in a bit more on this moment. as the boys started suggesting we head home i noticed a woman had seen us on the bench and was making her way toward us. and it wasn't just any woman but marty's best friend jona. i had seen a phone in her hand so had a sense she was going to ask for a picture since marty couldn't be here at pickup (marty had to go back to work after alex's graduation), and jona is thoughtful like that. on her way to us a family stopped jona to chat. this was when the boys started asking if we could go and i brokered the bet. i was hoping, desperately in the end, that jona could peel away from her conversation before my minute was up. my hope almost didn't come true, as you could see the boys got all the way to 5, but because of the last second save, it made the moment all the more dramatic. as you'd imagine, jona was a bit perplexed at the boys reaction and is why she thankfully snapped this series of images, images i am super-grateful to have.

the best part of this expertly and luckily executed plan is anthony and i will now forever remember not only his last day of elementary, but his last moment of elementary.

this year when parent-teacher conferences swung around, marty announced that she would miss dinner the next night. i followed up by asking the kids what we should do since we wouldn't have the dead weight around. bella immediately piped up asking what i meant because i was going to be gone too. i asked where i was going and bella said i was going to be meeting with her teachers because as mother announced it was parent-teacher conferences. mildly confused and glancing at marty for support i told bella that having a parent at your child's school (marty teaches where bella attends) carries the awesome perk of me not having to go to those meetings because we've got a for-real boots-on-the-ground resource in the building. bella's body sagged to one side and after a beat or two she said, "i work hard in my classes. that is my job. your job, a few times a year, is to go hear about how hard i'm working in my classes. that is how it works."

so i'm at parent-teacher conferences, my first ever at the high school and i spied marty doing her thing. over the years i have always felt for her on these evenings because they are wicked long days and i always hear about the salty and pissy parents as like with the students themselves, they are the ones that stick on your brain's wall like neon post-it notes. but when i saw it live i got the sense they held the event for marty. it was like a talking-gala where you got to wear a pretty dress for a rotating cast of strangers and talk all night. marty's dreamscape. worst possible environment imaginable to me. so now i feel no kinda sadness for marty who looked like true royalty and whose dance card was blurringly deep.

for me, i shouldered my core objective—hearing my daughter's teachers lavish her with praise and laughingly comment on her perpetual need to knit. one guy leaned in to me and said in a hushed voice, "i honestly think bella has done more good in the world by fifteen than i have in my whole life. i mean seriously. one day i asked her what she was knitting and she said 'hats for premature babies' and i was like 'hats for premature babies' are you kidding me.".

inbetween those gush-fests, i took in the tumultuous event and studied the organization of it all. my biggest question was why are some teachers so busy and others standing patiently by their clipboards amidst a sea of people. those teachers-in-waiting looked pretty exactly like me at every high school social event i ever attended. did that imply they were a good teacher or a bad teacher? i obviously didn't know the players well enough to do a proper assessment but it didn't curb my fascination in it all. and if i can use the only inside-baseball info i have, marty's table was hoppin' so i imagine there is at least one path that makes the good teachers a little more booked than others. i can kinda hear kids saying to their follks, "and you totally have to talk to mrs. walters because she is crazy ... and wears wild stockings ... and will say ANYTHING!".

marty told me about one of her last meetings of the night. the lady was reasonably miffed as she had to wait over an hour for her turn to speak with marty. thus the conversation began on the cool side. but marty, ever the pro, went about her task. in time the sleight seemed forgotten and their business was done. marty shook her hand, apologized for the wait and went to call her next name.

the following morning marty found a message in her inbox from this lady with a subject line of "conferences last night". marty saw that the school principal had been cc'd. minutes into this new day that followed a fourteen hour workday and not enough sleep, marty drew a breath and clicked on the message. there are so many hidden gems in the world. professions you love. life-long friendships that keep unfolding. hope-inspiring children. new tantalizing experiences. unexpected kindnesses paid by strangers. these precious gems are everywhere really. they can be given and gotten with unreasonable frequency. this life can be just endlessly wondrous.

in case you were worrying for alex based on his sour demeanor in yesterday's family gallery entry, worry not. our aleo is fine and well. he was just mean-mugging the camera before his first day of middle school. in evidence.







anfer is also fine and well.

one night at bedtime anthony suddenly became very sad, distraught even. in trying to calm him down, marty learned that he was upset about a school assignment. it turns out that he had fallen behind in a in-class assignment because he was getting pulled out a bunch for other programs he participates in and as result he was very behind and even concerned that he might have to repeat the third grade. when marty told him that was silly and would just never happen, anthony replied: that being the case, i reckon i'd be a tad irked as well.

at a holiday gathering someone asked me how the kids were doing. the following stories spilled out and i thought i'd share them with those of you i might not bump into at a holiday event.

ANTHONY
i was approached by a parent at anthony's elementary. she introduced herself and explained someone told her that anthony might be a good fit for an equations team her husband runs. i told her that anthony did seem to like math so, yes, he may be interested. she said that the program was for older kids and that they had already started the training but it might not be a bad idea to get him in this year so he could familiarize himself with the process. i took anthony to their next meeting. the "coach" got the other kids working and said he was going to be over here getting anthony setup. the man proceeded to unpack a game. while doing so he started asking a third grade anthony questions like:

• do you know what the square root of 9 is? he did.
• how about the square root of 81. he did.

then he asked if anthony knew what powers were. he did not. the man explained and then ran anthony through some problems which anthony answered without fail. he then taught anthony how to play the game. after the session i thanked the man for teaching anthony and letting him sit in this year. to this the man said, "sit in? i'm going to have anthony compete this year! he's great!". if great means that in third grade he already knows more about math than i ever have, yes he is great.

ALEX
alex is in a robotics club. in this club the team gets a challenges to solve and then works as a team to solve the challenge. this year the team assigned nicknames to all the members. alex's nickname was "the guy who can fix anything". not too bad a designation on a team that exists to solve problems.

BELLA
bella is at a new school district. we were a little curious how she would fare entering an entirely new population of people without a history or reputation. two months after her arrival she was chosen as one of five female school ambassadors. these ambassadors are existing students who show prospective students around to interest them in the school. this is obviously a role the school's administration does not take lightly and for bella to get tapped this soon after her arrival gives marty and i the sense that our baby girl will perhaps be ok out there in the bigger world.

alex started middle school this year. for what it's worth, bella started high school, which means we have reached that unenviable milestone where we have three kids at three different schools. we were more than a little nervous towards the end of summer as the days left grew fewer with each sunrise. i don't think it would be a secret to say most of our nervousness was reserved for aleo. there are ...