Roland Allen: Weblog

This is a four-day weekend for the students. The school threw in a long weekend just for fun. The school was closed on Friday. Students are off today, but the faculty is gathering at 7:30 for a day of meetings. It’s been a nice break.

The heat has abated a bit and the house cooled down nicely last night, unlike the night before. I’m up early because I want to bake some vegetables for lunch. It was too hot to do so last night.

I started watching Bergman’s Wild Strawberries last night. Although the movie’s shorts (94 minutes), I didn’t watch it all. I got tired. It’s simple movie that develops a lot of characters in a short time.

I haven’t written a conclusion to last week’s visit to Serra High School. Readers will recall that I was an accreditation visiting committee last week in Gardena. I was at the school from Sunday through Wednesday. I enjoyed being there a great deal, although it is draining work. Being on a visiting committee is volunteer work. Experienced educators are invited to serve on committees. I can’t write about a lot of details, but I can share some things. A lot of things impressed me about Serra, particularly the dedication of faculty/staff, students and parents. Basically, all of the constituents have a stake in the school, which makes it nice to be there.

But, being away for most of last week, and coming back to my school for only one day, meant that I was pretty busy on Thursday. In fact, I had to come in on Friday to catch up on stuff, including scheduling a couple of meetings with students who had urgent things that needed to be dealt with.

I did get to an important track meet on Thursday afternoon and evening. Quite a few students on our team qualified to advance on to league championship competition. And, on Saturday, I spent the middle of the day at a swim meet.

I was the doting uncle this past Saturday afternoon at the UCLA Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner Kersee Invitational outdoor track meet.

My nephew is a freshman at Texas A&M. He ran the 400 and was anchor for the 4 X 400 meter relay. The first race (400m) didn’t go well for Bryan. However, there was not another team even close in the 4 X 400 relay, and Bryan’s team came in first.

Texas A&M men’s team rose from number 16 to the top spot in the nation last week. And, they should hold on to that position after a very successful meet at UCLA.

Of course, I have photos from the meet. It was cool to see Jackie Joyner-Kersee on the field cheering on the athletes, along with her children. I heard from some of the athletes that she attended all three days of the meet. That, to me, is a class act for one of the greatest women athletes of our time.

Here’s a photo of Bryan, my nephew, in the home stretch of the relay, that his team won.

It was fortuitous that I got to see a former student of mine, Johnny Quinn, who is a pole vaulter for UCLA. Johnny competed at the same time as my nephew, so I got a two-fer on Saturday and it was nice to sit with his family at the meet.

Here’s a link to my photos of the meet. Saturday was one of the hottest days we’ve had in Southern California so far this year. It was so hot that I had to keep the top up on my car!