School Trail: A Hike Around JRT

One of my students, J (front right), knows how much I like to hike. The AP Stats exam is over so there is slack time in the class, and she asked me what are we going to do tomorrow. I just bought some new hiking footwear (thank you REI for your annual sale and thank you Mrs. H for the gift card), so I had been wanting to try out my new trail-runners. When J said, "Hey, let's go on a hike!" I responded affirmatively that a jaunt around the Tucker grounds could be in the cards. So last Friday, right after lunch, a small group headed out.  The rest of the class were on the Physics Field Trip. 

We took a loop around the baseball field, found a tired-looking baseball, threw it around a bit, talked about summer and fall plans, watched some PE kids playing some kind of bat and ball game (too many on the field to match any rules I remember), talked about the challenge of scaling the playing field light poles, and decided to escape the moderate heat by returning to the classroom. Would you expect that someone in America would know that when you hit the ball into play you run? Apparently not, for no sooner had we begun to watch the PE kids, some young lady smacked the ball well and proceeded to stand at the plate while the entire crowd of players and onlookers shouted, "Run!" She finally got the message, but once frozen at the plate with what seems like the entire world yelling at you is not necessarily an incentive to run but more likely to go into a deeper freeze. She redeemed herself. She actually made it to first base safely ahead of a series of terrible throws. These folk are not bound for the Red Sox (man, they are hot right now).

One of  the joys of teaching are those times when the pressures are off and you can have longer and more meaningful conversations with students. Most of my students are seniors and my juniors are high achievers, so they, for the most part, are not sit-around-kind-of-people and have interesting things going on in their lives. The joy comes when they are comfortable sharing of themselves. This was one of those special times.