whispers in the dark

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There was a phrase that I used in my classroom when my students would ask me about doing questionable things, and my response was always, “Technically you can, but should you?”
The reason I used this instead of a simple yes or no answer is because it opened up conversation. Instead of blindly looking for permission, the conversation became more about cause and effect. Usually it navigated the “well you can’t tell me what to do I’m going to do it anyway” instinct in kids when I’d say no, because all they were looking for is something to challenge them.
For example: “Can I jump off the slide?”
“Technically you can, but should you?”
If they answer no, I’d ask why. Usually they’d say because it’s against the rules or I don’t know.
If they say it’s against the rules, I’d ask them why they think it’s a rule. And if they’d say I don’t know, I’d explain that the slide is five feet off of the ground, and jumping that high is a good way to hurt your knees or worse.
And then the most important part: if you did do it, how can you make it safer?
That’s when the creativity juices started to flow. I’d get anything from pillows to beds to bouncy shoes to wings to someone catching them (which became a whole different conversation). And I told them since we didn’t have those things here, it wasn’t safe. And safety is everyone’s number one job at school.
It stopped them from doing it behind my back. It got them to engage in critical thinking. And it helped them figure out how to do things without help.
However, there’s always been an itching thought in the back of my head. Somewhere out there, did one of my past students drag their mattress out to the slide and jump off of it?

nemospecific:

headspace-hotel:
cat-mermaid:
transientpetersen:
depsidase:
Sustaining a garden required me to get very comfortable with killing plants. I did not expect that going in - if any one warned me, I missed it.
And it’s not just the weeds that are constantly intruding and need to be fought back. Sometimes it’s the plant that the previous person placed precisely in that portion of the plot that gets the good sunlight and it’s just the wrong plant to be taking that space. Sometimes it’s the plant that was the right plant but was let grow so wild that it’s suckers are going to destroy the rest of the garden unless it is removed. Often it’s the many seedlings that were started because, hey, some of them will fail, but now you’ve gotten good enough that twice as many survived as last year and you don’t have room for twice as many.
Plants grow. It’s great and rewarding to watch them live out their cycle over the course of a season or years. I work hard to keep them alive and thriving when they’re young and not yet established. But there’s still so much killing.
listen man, u wanna know a great truth of the universe?
every plant person stands upon a mountain of plant corpses
i have killed endless plants, and once i’ve mastered one type i inevitably will kill a new type because so many plants have so many different requirements
y'all have no idea how true this is
I am a plant mass murderer
You have to try, and fail, and fail, and fail again. You have to try lots and lots of variations of different things until something works.
It’s not even just the learning process, though. I’m trapped in an endless loop of: plant seeds or gather transplants-> plants grow-> too many plants-> some of them die of neglect-> need more plants -> and so on.
I usually lose about half my stock to overwintering cause I can never get arrangements for all my potted plants before the hard freezes hit…
I’m getting it under control though. I have lots of plant recipients now that are more skilled and don’t kill my adoptees as much.
Right now my trouble is with the seeds. I launched a huge personal seed starting project this winter and I got HUGE success with some species (jack-in-the-pulpit had near 100% germination!) and huge failure with others (Not a single Scutellaria…)
If you plant 100 seeds you gathered from the wild, it’s a reasonable estimate to expect maybe, like, 10-20 plants. BUT you might get 100 plants. Or 1 plant. Or none.
You don’t want to be like “Dammit! I wish I had planted more seeds!” But you might end up like “FUCK FUCK FUCK WHY DID I PLANT SO MANY SEEDS”
Fun fact:
This can be applied to pretty much every endeavor.
“How did you get to be such a good artist?” I drew a hundred pictures and hid or burned 99 of them.
“You’re such a talented knitter!” No, I’ve just unraveled these same socks twenty times.
“I could never bake like that.” I had to throw out so many biscuits, they were literally hazardous to eat.
And so on and so on.

teaboot:

The biggest misconception in public schools is that literary analysis is about proving you can be right or wrong about a book you read
Literary analysis isn’t about the book
It’s not even about being right
It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury
It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won
And the incredible life skill of spinning bulletproof bullshit out your ass with a handful of facts and a prayer is soooooooo much more valuable than anyone’s ever gonna tell you