What in the world was I thinking?

We just had a couple of days when the heat index got to 100ºF, a combination of high temperature and a very high dew point such that it was getting tough to breathe if exercising and with a warm breeze blowing. Then Sunday morning after finishing breakfast before 7:30, I looked at the thermometer and the temperature had not quite reached 70º. “Aha!” says I, “Time to get out the bicycle for a little ride around town.” A fatal decision.

So this octogenarian decided that literally I should go around the town. I started heading southwest on Country Club Drive to the “Airport” road and thence on the bike trail cutting through part of the fairgrounds and the Marshall Golf Course and onward next to the diversion channel parkway by the softball fields and the U S Bank, crossing MN 19 and MN 68 and then crossing US 59 to Justice Park.

I then continued on the dike that brought me to MN 23 north of SMSU. The bike trail thus far was well marked, but as I came south on MN 23 I decided I wanted to go through the tunnel under MN 23 crossing from SMSU to the Marshall High School side. I really didn’t see any bike trail signs, but knowing that there was a bike trail by Good Shepherd Church, I crossed MN 19, but again I lost track of the bike trail as I got down toward Runnings. I crossed back a bit toward town but headed southwest again to get back where I started.

I had been doing pretty well until I was by Good Shepherd Church. That was when I began asking myself, “What was I thinking?”

Did I really think that the temperature would stay at 70º? Just because there was only a breeze at the start of this trek, what made me think that wind would not increase in SW Minnesota? Had I forgotten my experience of living here for most of my life? Pedaling against the wind I geared down to No. 2. That helped some, but pleasure in biking had changed to drudgery. To top it off, I also had not brought my water bottle! I had taken a mask along, but saw only a couple of people and none within the social distancing standard so I think I am safe from COVID-19 for a while. Home at last I drank two glasses of ice water.

jtr

Slight change of subject: With not much traffic and where the bike trail is plenty wide and comparatively smooth, I could not only enjoy the scenery, but I had time to consider what I would write about for this week’s column. Having taught middle school, high school and then taught as a professor at colleges and universities for 43 years, I got to pondering how I would have handled a situation like that confronting current teachers: The pandemic.

The closest I came to having to consider making up for time lost, when school was closed because of a crisis, happened during my first year of teaching. Fortunately, the problem was not as serious as what now has to be considered in 2020. We had our usual missed day or two because of snow days, but then in the spring of the year, we missed eight days in a row. They were not “virus” or even “sick” days, but we called them “mud” days.

The Ohio rural school district in which I taught was about five miles wide and about ten miles long. Some nine out of 10 roads, on which buses had to go to pick up the kids, were lightly graveled or just dirt lanes. When the frost went out of the ground in the spring, the roads were truly impassable, hence mud roads. I really don’t remember how I made up for the time missed — no internet e-learning back then. I suppose I talked faster and doubled the homework which probably brought groans from the kids.

jtr

Education and teaching have changed greatly not just from then to now, but had changed from my ancestors time to when I started teaching. As mentioned, computers and e-learning is comparatively a new field. Other technology has improved as well.

From my very cluttered desk here at home, I recently came across a small box of colored chalk – not the kind used to work on sidewalks – the kind that I had sometimes used to highlight items on a slate blackboard. Do they still have blackboards some place?

As for class sizes, I have watched some of the proposals for distancing in schools in order to open this coming fall. One proposal showed how they would rearrange the seating to go from 25 seats in the room to just 14 seats in the room.

How I wish I could have had just 25 students per class in my first year of teaching. I never had fewer than 35 students in each of my six classes and supervised a study hall with twice that many for a seventh period in the day.

Should I mention that I had about 20 minutes to each lunch so that I could get to the gym to supervise students who had finished their lunches but because of weather could not go outside?

Sometime and somewhere in the past, I picked up a printed card with “Rules for Teachers” for the year 1872. There are nine rules listed. Here are a couple of the rules:

• Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and scuttle of coal for the day’s session.

• Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.

• After 10 hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.

Until next time: Oh, Fiddlesticks!