IndefiniteArticles

School Dreams

2007-08-23T19:45:00.000-05:00

I have been having first day of school dreams since school let out last May. Lots of dreams. Like every night. 80% of them go like this: I am standing in the front of my class talking to the students, getting to know them. I don't really know what we are doing other than that. Then the bell rings. And as they are walking out the door I suddenly remember about all that first day stuff that I DID NOT DO. So I yell at them, "I'll get you your syllabus and everything later" and the dream ends.

Then the other night I had another dream which goes much better. I do remember to hand out all the materials. But then I am reflecting about the day at the end of the day and it occurs to me that I skipped fifth period. I went to lunch and didn't ever make it back to class. Nice.

Here's hoping that the actual first day goes off flawlessly.

Grammar revelations

2007-07-05T18:31:00.000-05:00

So I have read/skimmed the four books. The book that I found most useful, was the first one I read (perhaps because it was the first and I read it word for word?) Breaking the Rules, Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction. The thing that I liked about it was that it pointed out how some of our grammar rules that we teachers drill into the kids are not really being used by published, respected writers of today. Language evolves. This can be good or bad, but I want to spend my grammar time as efficiently as possible. So here are my goals for the year:

10th grade - Start off with them brainstorming why it is important that they learn correct grammar. What is the purpose of grammar as they know it in a high school English classroom? We will talk about that. Then I want to hit on the one concept that we didn't cover last year - appositives. Then I want to move into sentence combining, both with unrelated activities and in their own work. The goal of the year will be relevance. Emphasis on writing instead of identifying.

9th grade - Also start with brainstorming, just so they can have a little reflection on grammar in the classroom. Then I am not so sure. I suppose work a little on the concepts that we did last year in 9th grade. I want them to have some background. But just try to make it more meaningful. I am really less excited about this group than the 10th graders because I know exactly what the 10th graders already know (or don't know as the case probably will be).

I know what is good and what is bad in theory. Useful and not so useful. It is actually putting that into practice that is difficult. Because grammar (useful activities with grammar, anyway) are so related to writing, and I feel I have no idea how to teach writing. But the second book I read was very useful with that.

Other points from Breaking the Rules: 1. pre-testing in the introduction - I really like the idea of pretesting. I liked it when we talked about it in my week of GT training. It seems that a usage pretest might be harder to compile than an identification of parts of speech, phrases pretest. Not in the lay/lie/lain sort of way but in the creative, using varied sentence structure, more complex sentences way.
Hmm.

2. Language Acquisition. Chapter 1. Basically in order to speak correct English 98% of the time, students already know grammar. They might not be able to label it, but they can use it.

3. "Knowing a word, being able to use it, necessitates knowing its part of speech" (5). This made me think of when doing grammar instruction and thinking about all the clues of words (ending in -ing, -ion) that I recognized as MEANING SOMETHING and I am not sure that my students did. At least, not as explicitly.

4. The explanation of how the traditional grammar definitions are not good--they do not actually define the, aren't meaningful for students--was very sad to read. I like neat definitions. I understood what he was saying. A definition must be correct. But all along I always understood what the concept of a noun is despite any shortcomings of the definition. For example, I learned young that a noun was a person, place, or thing. Then somewhere, the definition was expanded to include "idea". That never confused me. I think of "thing" to include ideas. (Even persons and places.)

5. Cool preposition statistics - Of, To, and In are the 2nd, 5th, and 6th most commonly used words in the English language. Adding for, on, with, at, from, and by gives the list of the nine prepositions that make up 92.6% of all prepositional phrases. (pg35)

6. Love the appositives lesson.

7. Love the list of confused words (77). THIS might be good for a pretest. Or for focus activities. Might also be interesting to show students the Collins Cobuild corpus or the Kantz/Yates survey results. Oh! Or give them the survey first. Then look at how their answers are the same or different than the English professors' answers.

8. I love the analysis of REAL writing. And this sentence: "Our formulas--use topic sentences, never use passives, vary sentence openings--deny students the resources routinely used by good writers, and our concentration on correctness puts the emphasis on the least important aspect of good writing" (92).

9. Note to self: Don't focus on errors. Focus on the writing and big picture.

10. Nice concept: as writers try new things, they make mistakes. Just like a baby learning to walk.

11. On the discussion of first person. The author says that 82% of some example essays chosen (as models of first rate expository/persuasive prose) uses the first person. Fine. But I am guessing that the these essays were not literary analysis pieces. Those (to my knowledge) need to keep avoiding the first person,

12.

*** this is not finished but I started it in July and figured I should publish. May finish it later.

Generation Gap?

2007-06-27T18:45:00.000-05:00

Conversation between me and my sister while watching the opening credits of The Italian Job.

Sister: Does this have Matt Damon in it?
Me: No but it has Mark Wahlberg.
Sister: Who is that?
Me: Marky Mark?
Sister: Oh the guy who plants trees.
Me: What?
Sister: In Clueless, she says that he is going to come and plant a tree.
Me: Well maybe he was, but not because he planted trees. He was a rapper. Marky Mark and and the funky bunch?
Sister: The Brady Bunch!

Grammar

2007-06-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

When I am not watching TV or thinking about painting the other bedroom I am waging a constant grammar debate in my head. What the value is. What I taught last year. How that needs to change this year. What the purpose of learning a predicate adjective is.

I got two books from the library. Grammar in Context by Constance Weaver and Understanding Written Grammar by Jane Walpole. Then I bought Breaking the Rules: Liberating Writers Through Innovative Grammar Instruction, which I am currently reading. I have also bought but have not yet received Crafting Expository Argument: Practical Approaches to the Writing Process for Students and Teachers Fourth Edition.

That is keeping me busy for now. Perhaps more posts to come as I think everything through.

April Gone

2007-05-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

April was a busy month. After spring break was over the days at school started flying by. I started looking at buying a house. And then I found one. And then I bought it. I went from no house to closed on a house in a matter of weeks. Crazy. Buying a house not in the summer is not something I would recommend to a teacher. Taking days off is a pain. I now have to get the gas turned on so I can have hot water. And Centerpoint only makes all day appointments. And I don't have all day. Grrr.

But the house is lovely and I am really looking forward to moving in and getting everything all set up this summer.

Wish I had some leftover money to buy this cute shirt though.

I have my teaching assignment for next year. As of now I stay in the same school and the same room and teach 4 classes PreAP 9th and 2 classes PreAP 10th. I am very excited about that.

Tomorrow I have a meeting about the curriculum.

Stud.icio.us

2007-03-21T16:12:00.000-05:00

Through someone on my del.icio.us network, I discovered stud.icio.us. It is a college level (although it doesn't have to be) notes collection social networking thing. It will be interesting to see where this goes. It does cool things like easily links to wikipedia and google and facebook. I don't know if it would have been that useful to me, though, because typing out notes or taking notes WAS how I studied them. The act of getting it out on paper was enough usually that I didn't spend that much time reading over it. They have a blog too (blog.dicio.us) which hasn't been updated in 41 days. (Why did they have to take a cool name like blog.dicio.us?)

End of year teaching and reflections on my love of research

2007-03-20T20:42:00.000-05:00

We have 10 weeks of school left, counting this week and the last week of school. The last week will be finals. This week is already almost half over. Then one week will have a math taks test. One week has a holiday for Good Friday. One week has the freshman picnic. So that's like 6 weeks?

I am loving the end of the year. I am going to miss my student so so much. But I am finally at the point of the year where everything else is nothing new. No firsts. I have read everything that we will be doing for the rest of the year, so I don't have to feel anxious about barely keeping one step ahead of the students. And I love research.

Research (and my 11th grade research paper process) is one of the reasons that I majored in English (not literature, not creative writing, but the technical writing track) and certainly one of the reasons I love libraries. I love finding other people's words and putting them together. Seeing how they mesh. I love looking up articles and seeing where I can fit what. I love looking for a specific fact and finding something that will work perfectly.

I love the MLA handbook and I love that every question has an answer. Oh how I love rules. English rules!

I love my paper. It is excellent and I got a 93. I love the binder it sits in. I love the weight of the papers behind it and the dividers that organize everything. It is really a shame that my research paper was on breastfeeding. We chose our own topics --basically anything. My teacher thought it was funny that we had both breastfeeding and Hugh Hefner as topics in our class. And as weird as it might seem to choose that as a topic as a 17 year old, it made a great paper. Scientific fact plus controversy. But quite awkward to share that with my students today.

Delicious and Teaching

2007-03-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago we had a professional development day at school where we went to three sessions. I learned to make a jeopardy powerpoint game (super useful), created a video with windows movie maker (fun but possibly not that useful) and learned more about podcasting. The podcasting one was rather frustrating because of the restrictions that the district I am in puts on using the internet and technology. One thing that I found so interesting in the session was that the teacher showed us the her del.icio.us links that she has collected. She introduced the idea to other teachers and it was awesome. I told her about the tutorial that I made for my master's thesis. I felt a certain propriety over the whole issue of del.icio.us in my human world (as opposed to the virtual internet world, where I see the blogs, feeds, and links of "famous" people whom I have never met). It was different being TAUGHT by someone who knew less in an area than I.

Tonight I was organizing my del.icio.us links. (I am really into organizing these days. The files. The desk drawers. The spice cabinet. Now onto less tangible items) I really like the new tag description idea. Although I don't know if anyone cares what some of my acronyms stand for, it makes me feel better to explain what OMAM, OAMC, and TKAM stand for. After writing my English acronyms on the board over and over again, the acronym looks more familiar to me than the actual title. But it is not that way for everyone.

Spring Break

2007-03-12T12:56:00.000-05:00

A time to organize the closet in color order. Ah I love Spring Break. Actually this is my old closet and mine now is perhaps to large to organize in this fashion. But oh how happy it makes me.

Other Spring Break Activities -

Random Errands, Mailing 403b information, Preliminary buying a house activities, planning the Romeo and Juliet unit for 7th period, grading papers, spending time with my grandparents, getting a manicure, organizing closets and cabinets, laundry, laundry, laundry, buying a plane ticket to Europe (destination tbd).

February Post

2007-02-26T19:49:00.000-06:00

Hehe. I just filled out a form listing the beneficiaries of my 403b as my spouse, children, and grandchildren. Ha. My students in my seventh period class today asked me if I had a cat. I told them I barely had any plants. One student said, "She has no time to have a pet because she is too busy taking care of us." Duh.

I have a lot to think about these days. I will know more information about my job next year in the next few weeks. At what campus I will be teaching, what subject (perhaps), or perhaps which library.

I am still thinking about Europe and house and car. No plans have been made.

My grandfather is holding strong in a state where he can play catch but not touch his nose on command.

Life is precious.

Harry Potter Ruins Summer Vacation...

2007-02-02T19:29:00.000-06:00

Is it bad that the thought of missing the release of the seventh and final Harry Potter book because I am in Europe makes me start to hyperventilate?

Right now I am looking at the dates July 16th to August 6. Spain then Ireland. Well that was what I was looking at. Now I am thinking July 16-Aug. 6 with a side trip to London on the 21st to get the book in London (because really... what could be cooler?) Four days to just read the book. Then continue vacation.

I read the last book on vacation in San Diego. But that was a trip where we stayed in one place and had mucho luggage. How can I possibly travel light with a five pound book? I can't! How can I remain spoiler free for three weeks? Is it possible?

Wind Chimes

2007-01-29T15:23:00.001-06:00

2007 so far

2007-01-21T20:22:00.000-06:00

Last Friday I was at a movie night where I left when the movie started. "Rough day?" someone asked. "Rough year, so far" I replied.

This may be the year that I buy a car, a house, and go to Europe.

But so far this has just been the year that my grandfather had a stroke on the night before we were supposed to have brunch for my aunts birthday. The year that my family and extended came together from miles and miles away. In cars and planes. The year that I have spent more time in the hospital than all my other years put together. And when I have thought more about life and death and living wills and purpose. When I have cried so much I had that crying headache for days. And when teaching has become a blur and an escape.

My grandfather is still with us, and we wait to see what God has in store for the next weeks, months, and years.

New Year, New Resolutions

2007-01-04T17:32:00.000-06:00

Our first day back with the students was today. It was a good day, with a few students changing sections of my class but not too many. I got 3 totally new students, one new to the school, one new to Pre-AP, and one just new to me. I lost three that I can think of. One student just popped into my head. Was he absent or not on the roster at all? Either I didn't take roll effectively or didn't notice that he was there or not there in class until just now. Hmph.

I spent the Christmas Break in Kansas with my family, hoping for snow, watching movies (Pursuit of Happyness, Dreamgirls, and the Holiday -- all fantastic) and checking prices of flights from Houston to Dublin. For some reason, ever since seeing Stranger than Fiction over Christmas Break, I have been obsessed with going to Ireland. I check the flights almost every day. I have 4 books on Ireland and I think I had a dream (bad dream) about staying in a hostel last night. I am planning on going to both Spain and Ireland this summer. And speaking of plans...

2007 Resolutions....

5 Personal
1. Fit into Bridesmaid Dress in March
2. Go to Ireland / Europe in Summer
3. Read more books
4. Write more
5. Watch less TV (but I LOVE TV!!!)

5 Professional
1. Stay out of negativity in department
2. successfully teach Huck Finn
3. go to GT conference
4. Try to stay better organized
5. Read more

5 Financial
1. Open up 403b
2. Look into buying a house
3. Look into buying a car
4. Look into going to Europe
5. Spend the perfect amt. of money on my new flexible spending account

Knitting Haiku

2006-12-10T21:42:00.000-06:00

Knitting for myself
Perfectionists start over
Scarf is better now.

Thanksgiving Break

2006-11-18T10:56:00.000-06:00

Off for the Thanksgiving Break! I will leave on Wednesday to go to the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City. Until then I have a list of things to keep me busy:

cleaning out my car
Cleaning my apartment
buying a birthday present for my mom
packing
watching Veronica mars with my sister!
buying gifts for Secret Santa at school
grading 3 classes worth of Grammar/ Vocabulary tests
Grading 5 classes worth of Sirens AP Lit Exam Essays
working on the final exam and exam review
ORGANIZING!

Perspective

2006-11-02T18:06:00.000-06:00

I have five Pre-AP classes and one regular class. Sometimes doing lesson plans for both is very stressful. I can't imagine how people with three, four, or five preps do it.

I love all of my classes. They have very different personalities. From the one that cannot get quiet but are full of energetic, thoughtful minds, to the more calm 80% female class full of excellent writers. Then there is my seventh period, regular English class. They get away with more sometimes because it is the end of the day and I am tired and ready to say yes to anything.

A few weeks ago I got a new student, originally from New Orleans. Half the time I can't understand what he is saying. My initial impression was that he was not very bright and he was going to be a frustrating and time consuming student. I was doubtful that he could read and hopeful to get him transferred into a co-teach class where he could be someone else's problem. But I gave him a reading test and saw the counselor. There wasn't much they could do. I had a breakthrough. I emailed all of his teachers and had him come and sit in on my fourth period class while they were taking a test and we did his research paper together. That is how he ended up with a 93 for the six weeks. He was so proud of that 93, had me print it out, and had a friend come by to hear it from me. Then today another small breakthrough. We were reading the first chapter of Of Mice and Men. I was circling the room while student read along with Gary Sinise on CD. This student was falling asleep. I knew from experience he read better when my finger pointed the words out, so I gave him a piece of paper to follow the lines of the book as they were read. So easy. But it worked so well.

Little battles won make this job SO worth it.

CBS News

2006-10-12T18:05:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I tune into the last few minutes of the CBS Evening News so I can hear Katie's horrible tag line and cringe. "I'll be here tomorrow night and I hope you will too" just sounds so needy. I can't believe it has lasted so long.

Pictures with my new Camera

2006-10-09T16:58:00.000-05:00

First six weeks grades

2006-09-17T14:27:00.000-05:00

This last week was a little crazy. We had our Curriculum Based Exams in all English class periods on Tuesday. That ended up rolling over to Wednesday in two classes because of a practice Lock down. Then one day we had a fire drill when the dishwasher in the kitchen set off the smoke alarm. And I was out for a meeting one afternoon. Crazy.

Grades are due on Monday and I am remarkably ready. I did stay until 6:30 on Friday to ensure that happened, but having weekends stress free of grading is important.

I was able to finish some grades in class and one student asked what his grade was. An extra credit assignment brought his grade from a 96 to a 99. He was dissapointed. I saw the disappointment on his face and quite sternly said, "Oh no. We are not disappointed with an A. We are happy with an A. We do the happy dance." He smiled and said ok. Then later as he was leaving class he told me that he just didn't like nines. I told him I would be happy to give him an 88. He passed on the offer.

When I was chiding him for not being thankful for having a 99, I had two things running through my head. First, my seventh period class where I had about 7 people failing because of zeros. They all would have been very happy to have that 99. Then I have been reading the book Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. And it just makes me sick. I went through high school just 7 years ago and I don't remember this crazy pressure. Have things really changed that much?

School Update

2006-09-02T10:48:00.000-05:00

August 23rd My sister sent me these beautiful flowers. That was also the morning I walked up a ramp and thought I was walkind down a ramp but soon realized (as I tripped over myself and on my knee) that it was less ramp and more stairs.

I had a fabulous birthday and continue to have a fabulous year. My students are wonderful. Both my PreAP and my regular. The amount of grading is proving to be more this year, but it is still managable. I am really enjoying what I am doing and so happy to have my job. I am looking forward to moving off of Great Expectations and on to The Odyssey, where I have slightly more experience. I do need to read the book though. (We will read the prose version in Pre-AP.)

Why would you lick stamps?

2006-08-12T08:16:00.000-05:00

During homeroom on Monday I rushed through the required reading of the student handbook because I wasn't sure how long it would take. So then we had about half and hour to kill. So I got out my book of lateral thinking puzzles.

The puzzle scenario was something like A kidnapper sent a ransome note but didn't sign it. He was caught. How? The solution is that he left his DNA on the stamp.

One student asked, "Why would you lick a stamp?" So then I felt old... or no... more like they were really young. I explained how stamps used to have to be licked; they were not stickers. Then this led to a funny moment where a girl said that she always licked her stamps. You don't have to?

Great First Day

2006-08-10T20:31:00.000-05:00

Really. Pretty great. Except I woke up at 5:13. Which is dangerously close to the 4 o'clock hour which is NIGHTIME. But then I drove to work when the sun was coming up and I thought, "God. Awesome."

I was smiling walking into the building thinking about the minds that I would get to meet and mold and form. I looked over the balcony, down at the kids, thinking that those were the students I would get to know over the next nine months. Months from now I will look down and know who they were, but for a few moments they were just a mass of khakis and polos, tucked in. They looked sharp. They were potential.

Eventually I got my game face on. And answered questions and gave out information. Overall a successful day.

New Year!!!

2006-08-09T16:54:00.000-05:00

My room is done. Copies are made and I am so excited about the new year. It will be awesome.

Veronica Mars

2006-08-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

Just have to promote the show with this video shown at Comic Con. The video is awesome, but the quality is not. The way that Veronica's "S's" sound, it reminds me of the way Holly Hunter talks, especially at the end of The Firm, where all of her S's sound like "sh". ........ hehe.... Marsh Inveshtigashions.....

2006-08-07T20:16:00.000-05:00

A paper tree in the corner of my room.

First Day!

2006-08-07T20:07:00.000-05:00

First day (no students) today. We got the going-over-policies- stuff over with in 5 hours. That's where getting there at 7:30 didn't seem so bad. We were done by lunch time. I also got to get a lot of curriculum planned for the first few weeks. It was really an awesome day. So far I have met 2 students and after seeing the rosters, I was excited to see that I don't have more than 27 students per class (yet).

Del.icio.us thoughts.... again!

2006-07-31T22:58:00.000-05:00

I should be in bed.

But... so many exciting things are going on. Today is the one year anniversary of my call to come interview for my current job. I can't believe I was called and at my first day of work within one week. Crazy! How did I do it? I spend today up at the school making a paper tree lining one corner and going up the ceiling. Pictures later.

Then on the AP English Listserv, someone mentioned this cool thing called del.icio.us. de-what? Oh yeah. Only the thing that I lived and breathed and turned into a major project last summer. Del.icio.us for Teachers. And now a TEACHER is wondering all about it. So I got my lurker self to reply and shared what I know. I feel like my library/technology world and my teaching worlds are colliding. And it is awesome.

I see more education related tags in my future.

Technorati Tags: APEnglish, education, english, del.icio.us,

Summer: Over

2006-07-30T18:15:00.000-05:00

One week from today I will be anxious and nervous about starting a new year of school. Now, I feel confident and on schedule and excited. I have already been up to school three times to work on my room. And I have another whole week to get it done. And not too much to do. I am 18 pages away from finishing Great Expectations. Unfortunatly, it HAS taken me all summer. I would try to read it or feel guilty about not reading it and wouldn't allow myself to read anything else on the side. For the most part, anyway. I have read two books in the past few days.

I read/skimmed all of Teaching with Love and Logic. My mom went to a week long conference on the topic and really enjoyed it. I had already had the book and went ahead and looked though it. So now I am ready with empathy, enforceable statements, and providing choices.

I am also about half way done with How to Read Literature Like a Professor. This has been a great experience. It is always good to have things to look for when reading good literature. So I can look smart... because I am...

teaching 5 section of Pre-AP. In one sense, I feel like I am returning to my people. In another, I wonder if I am up to the task. But I am very excited about actually giving homework and having them do it and being able to have more class discussions. I went to a AP Institute a few weeks ago and came back pumped and full of ideas.

Veronica Mars, Myspace, and Great Expectations

2006-07-09T13:09:00.000-05:00

While I should have used the majority of the weekend to read Great Expectations, I have really spent more time watching Veronica Mars, and exploring MySpace. But all of this sort of comes together.

A few weeks ago I read in the comments of weblogg-ed about this Medieval Space thing. Which I have just now looked at on the original post by the teacher. The teacher has given a template and directions too. Awesome.

This idea was in the back of my mind when I found myself watching Veronica Mars (great show... watch it!) this weekend and then (inevitablly, embarrasingly) turning to MySpace and discovering the things that people have done with MySpace and the characters on Veronica Mars. I'm sure this exists for many other shows too. What they have done is make profiles for the characters and interact with other characters. They have even invented new characters (long lost sisters and cousins) so there can be new interations and storylines.

What are they doing? Interacting with the text. The text is the tv show which they watch and love. They summarize, draw conclusions, interpret, retell, and analyze. They choose songs and backgrounds that are appropriate for that character's personality and mood. They make comments on other characters' boards in the voice of their character. All for fun. All not prompted by an english teacher.

There is a lot that could be done with this. Similar to what the Medieval Space did. It would be cool to see these on the internet, maybe on a site just like MySpace, but for literature. Where Pip could comment that he loves Jane Eyre's newest song.

On another note, an awesome Great Expectations video by students here.

Technorati Tags: VeronicaMars, MySpace, GreatExpectations, literature

July 4, 2006

2006-07-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I went to Wichita, Kansas to see my parents and house and dog. While there, we tried the whole diet soda and mentos thing. It was great.

It's the end of an era . . .

2006-06-29T12:06:00.000-05:00

It all started with a big snow storm and an impatient girl wanting to move to Austin on time. Then there were the woefully inept solutions to the problem (scroll to Feb. 22). So a year and a half later, I finally got a new gasoline door.

But does it work? (ewwww... someone needs to vacuum the car out)

It works!

Look Ma! No Ducktape!

Now I can switch out the locking gas cap with the other one and have a normal experience at the gas station.

Summer Week 4

2006-06-28T14:51:00.000-05:00

Saturday- my parents drove into town from Kansas to spend time with my mom's parents (and me!)
Sunday - Father's day - went to Texas Land and Cattle
Monday - take my dad to the airport, lunch at Arandas
Tuesday - mall with my mom and grandmother, Astro's game
Wednesday - more shopping, church
Thursday- watch my cousin's, out to lunch in Rosenberg, more shopping, pick my dad up at the airport where they have lost his luggage for the second time in four days.
Friday - run errands, pick up more pottery, make lasagna, movie night
Saturday - lazy day, laundry, dishes, spend night with friends in Richmond
Sunday - drive to Friendswood, shower at home, drive to Houston, shop at Galleria, drive to church in Sugar Land, pizza dinner with friends, drive home so tired but can't sleep.

Notice the lack of reading Great Expectations. I am forcing myself to read that before reading anything else, but since I am not reading that either, I'm not reading much of anything. But I did read My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picault which my mom made me read. (She called me crying... "You just have to read it"). It was well worth it.

Summer Week 3

2006-06-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

California Vacation!

Sunday: leave in the morning, get to California and eat at In and Out Burger, go to Railroad Museum, tour Old Sacramento, go home for steak at Emily's parent's house.

Monday: Wineries and then Emily's aunt and uncle's for dinner, trampoline time, go-carts, fun.

Tuesday: Drive to Lake Tahoe, afternoon at Lake Folsom.

Wednesday: San Francisco: Ghiradelli Square, Kite flying, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39 and the sea lions, Exploratorium, Palace of Fine Arts, Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, Golden Gate Park, tour of the neighborhoods, Legion of Honor museum, Seal Rock, more kite flying, Pacific Ocean, Lombard St, dinner.

Thursday: fly home, (draw these pictures on my Dell Axim on the flight... I am so proud of them), dinner at Chuy's

Friday: post pictures, sleep, recuperate.

See pictures here

Summer Week 2

2006-06-16T15:36:00.000-05:00

Monday: Drive to Austin with a friend
Tuesday: Dentist appt.
Wednesday up at school moving things from one room to another
Thursday: AP curriculum planning
Friday: Galveston with friends, dinner and bowling
Saturday: get ready for vacation! sit at Barnes and Noble for hours.

Plate no. 4

2006-06-08T18:15:00.000-05:00

My latest creation. Quite possibly the most random.

Refrigerator Poetry

2006-06-07T11:35:00.000-05:00

My version of magnetic poetry is the book lover's edition. So I have lots of book related words. But sometimes I want to write things that are not so book related. This is the result. Because crack is never the answer.

Summer: Week One

2006-06-06T16:55:00.000-05:00

Monday and Tuesday were filled with too much rain.But on Tuesday I did break free and paint pottery. I had started a series of plates with song lyrics on them in the last year. So far I have two that decorate the area above my kitchen cabinets. On Tuesday I painted the third. On Wednesday I painted one more (picture to come) . On Thursday I had mucho people over to my apartment. On Friday I went to Barnes and Noble and started reading Great Expectations and painted one more plate. Saturday I spent time with family and painted one more plate. On Sunday I spent more time with family and church. Monday I went to Austin with a friend. Well I guess that covers more than my first week. But it was a busy, painting pottery week. Not too bad for something that started out with a disappointing rainstorm.

Summer: Day One

2006-05-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

8:00 I'm out of bed and watching some of Katie Couric's last day.

8:15 I've had breakfast and am swimsuit clad

8:55 I'm sunscreened. I have watched the weather. May need an umbrella this afternoon, but that's ok because I want to go swimming this MORNING.

9:03 I'm at the pool.

9:03:30 The pool is locked.

9:05 Getting the mail, I see an apartment worker lady. I ask about the pool. They are cleaning the pool. She asks another employee.

9:07 Pool gets unlocked. They will be cleaning it, but I can stay and read for about an hour.

9:08 Perfect

9:10 Towel arranged on chair

9:10:20 iPod on

9:10:30 Latest Nora Roberts book open and ready

9:20 Rain starts spitting down. Not much. I can handle this. It's not real rain, it's not real rain, it's not real rain.

9:25 It is real rain, it is real rain, it is real rain.

9:26 Grab ipod, book, towel, water. Go back to apartment.

9:27 Sit on porch. In cushy chair. This is nice. I can do this. Who needs a pool?

9:35 Is that the sunshine?

9:36 It is!

9:42 Back at the pool. Towel arranged, book open, iPod on.

9:45 Reading. This is nice.

10:05 Real rain. Big fat drops of rain. Like the sky is laughing at me.

10:07 Walking back to my apartment, realizing the irony of covering myself with a towel to avoid the rain when I am in a swimsuit that was designed to be wet.

10:15 Screw this. I'll do pilates instead of swim laps, shower, and try again tomorrow. Hmph.

Year One: Check

2006-05-26T15:15:00.000-05:00

Top Ten things I will not be saying this summer.

10. Be in your seats when the bell rings.
9. No, you can't go to the restroom.
8. Do you have your ID?
7. Hurry up, the bell is about to ring.
6. Tuck your shirt in.
5. Shh.
4. Too late. Sign the tardy log.
3. Put your ID on.
2. Do you have your pass?
1. Pull your pants up. Your waist is (while demonstrating) here.

Blue Like Jazz

2006-05-25T15:57:00.000-05:00

Today during my fourth period's final, I finished Blue Like Jazz. I had started in months ago and then never finished. This time I read the whole thing. It was a great book to read during finals because it is quite random and easy to just pick up and read a chapter. I liked the writer's style and laughed out loud several times. There were some things in the book that I disagreed with, but overall it was thought-provoking and interesting.

The book was about this one guy's spirituality. He talks about how he doesn't like to use the word Christian (even though he is ceratinly a Christian) because that word has a bad connotation. The book is not linear, which makes it slightly hard to follow when he had what thoughts, but that really isn't the point, so I guess it's ok.

Favorite quotes:
In the worship chapter, how it is important to realize there is Something bigger with everything worked out:

At the end of the day, when I am lying in bed and I know the chances of any of our theology being exactly right are a million to one, I need to know that God has things figured out, that if my math is wrong we are still going to be okay.

In the belief chapter:

If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe.

Funny bit in the chapter on Grace:

We were the direct opposite of a frat house; instead of funneling our testosterone into binge drinking and rowdy parties, we were manning up to Jesus, bumping Him chest to chest as it were, like Bible salesman on steroids.

This book was on my summer reading list and the first book for me to complete. Way to go, me!

Veronica Mars

2006-05-23T16:22:00.000-05:00

Friday, I get the Season One DVD of Veronica Mars. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I watch Season One of Veronica Mars. And the only thing that I am ashamed about is that I am so not ashamed. Yes, I watched more tv in the past three days than in the past three days, but Veronica Mars is just so fabulous.

I also washed my car, waxed my car, vacuumed my apartment (twice!), cleaned out most of the stuff in the fridge, went to the grocery store, organized my magnetic poetry by part of speech (is there any other way??), saw friends, worked on ripping apart the rolltop portion to my desk, went to the pool, read, went to a baseball game, went to church, ran more errands, and taught a day of school. It was perhaps the most productive weekend ever.

I gave my first two of 6 finals today and after grading them today, I saw how much better students do if you actually give them time, incentive (extra credit) and the correct answers on the exam review. Imagine that.

Pudding Pops

2006-05-21T10:42:00.000-05:00

Google pudding pops and you will get this article about the return of the pudding pops (written in 2004). I don't remember seeing those puddding pops on the shelves so I am doubtful that they made a national release. But looking at the shape of the new pudding pops reminded me of what I like best about the old ones. They were thinner and fatter. Probably about three inches wide. My favorite bites (I tended to be a biter, until towards the end when it got mushy and lickable) were the bites at the very bottom. Turn the popsicle upside down and take the two bites at the bottom on either side of the stick. Those were the best two bites. There were usually little icy bits hanging off of the frozen pudding goodness. Yum.

Indeed, no Jell-O Pudding Pop feels complete without the requisite amount of crunchy, odorless ice mold; the addition somehow makes the pops even more glorious. Aiding to form a surrogate "shell" around the soft molded pudding, freezer burn is credited for turning an otherwise "just okay" dessert into something children have been known to battle over with swords, maces and water guns.

Even if the pudding pops are back, (and apparently I can get them at Fiesta), without the same shape, it's not quite the same.

Poetry 5-20

2006-05-20T16:22:00.000-05:00

Another step into adulthood

2006-05-17T17:04:00.000-05:00

In January 2005, when I moved to Austin, I bought a "vacuum" cleaner. It's kinda cute in that I've-got-my-first-apartment kind of way. But when it comes to suckage, it well, didn't. But I hung on to it for almost a year and a half. Even though its not anything more than a dustbuster on a stick. Remove stick, get dustbuster.

A few days ago, I bought a real vacuum.

And got giddy trying it out.

The whole experience can be summed up in a limmerick:

I once bought a Bissell without bags.
Against other vacuums it lags.
But I bought a new Boss
And its really a hoss
Look at the carpet: it zags!

Reading . . .

2006-05-15T21:53:00.000-05:00

I'm stuck in Love in the Ruins. The first 70 pages was entertaining and awesome. But it just got sorta blah. Maybe it is my mood change. Oh well. I trudge on.

One of my favorite parts so far was the description of life in the world Dr. Thomas More lives in:

The reason the tang is warm is that the refrigerator doesn't work. Nothing works. All my household motors are silent: airconditioning, vacuum, dishwasher, dryer, automobile. Appliances and automobiles are more splendid than ever, but when they break down no one will fix them. My car broke down at the A & P three weeks ago and nobody would come and fix it so I abandoned it. Paradise is litered with the rusting hulks of splendid Pontiacs, Olds, and Chrystlers that develped vapor locks and dead batteries and were abandoned. Nowadays people buy cars, drive them until they break down, abandon them, and buy another. Most of my friends have switched to Toyotas, which have one moving part.

Dont tell me the U.S.A. went down the drain because of Leftism, Knotheadism, apostasy, pornography, polarization, etcetera, etcetera. All these things may have happened, but what finally tore it was that things stopped working and nobody wanted a repairman (62-63).

Typing that just now made me think of parallels to euthenasia, abandonment of the elderly today. Hmph.

In other news, I went to not my usual half price book store and bought:
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (SUPER BUY! $3.00!)
Angela'sAshes by Frank McCourt (SUPER BUY! $2.00!) and
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody.

Add those to the LIST.

Also: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, which looks interesting.

Summer Reading List

2006-05-13T13:59:00.000-05:00

Summmer Reading List includes Mrs. Galloway.

Yes, it was AP English, but yes, it was summer reading. I stumbled upon his journal: "Why am I reading about a woman looking at herself in her dresser mirror?" Why indeed is a 17-year-old boy reading Virginia Woolf during the summer?"

This brings back the awful memories of reading To the Lighthouse one summer. The whole summer assignment was that, Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and watching 6 movies: It Happened One Night, Since You Went Away, Norma Rae, and I can't remember what else. I hated To the Lighthouse. Then my teacher appologized the first week of school. She had forgotten what that book was like.

My summer reading list for me and the students is just Great Expectations. It will be interesting doing the summer assignment along with them.

Masks

2006-05-02T19:56:00.000-05:00

Last week we made masks. Give kids some paper plates, popsicle sticks, glue, tissue paper, and lots and lots of glitter and feathers and they will come up with some amazing stuff. The masks cover half of my wall that sits opposite my desk and I just look at the colorful chaos and am immediately happy.

My Camera Toss Experience

2006-04-27T20:44:00.000-05:00

After reading about Camera Toss in the Houston Chronicle I tried it out for myself. This was the best I got. Certainly no where as cool as those posted on the blog.

Quiz on the Axims

2006-04-27T16:57:00.000-05:00

Today I gave a test on Act II of Romeo and Juliet on the Dell handhelds. It was only 20 questions, multiple choice, in HTML format that my technology guru put together. She also made a sample test for the students to do before taking the real test so that they had a feel for it before doing it for real. I also gave all of the students the opportunity to take the test on paper and pencil, after seeing how the electronic test would work. About 6 took the paper test. Overall, the test was WAY easier for me. I just had to watch for cheaters and then write down the scores in the gradebook. I am quiet sure that there were cheaters. There always are. In this case, they took the test and then closed it, went back and took it again. I saw one student taking the test like this. I'm sure there were others.

Tomorrow I need to ask the students what they thought about the test and why they did or did not like using the computers. Maybe I will get to that. Fridays are crazy. FOUR WEEKS LEFT!!!

Reading List

2006-04-23T18:56:00.000-05:00

I have 5 weeks until summer. I am very much looking forward to a summer by the pool with a book. Or books. And these are them:

Books that I OWN that I might or might not get to: (in no order)
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
- Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
- Teaching with Love and Logic by
- Setting Limits in the Classroom
-Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clark
-Catholic Christianity by Peter Kreeft
-Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
-Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
- Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
- Gifts from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
-The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman
- Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton
-Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
- Shadowplay by Clare Asquith
- The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble
- The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
-The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
-Rabbit Run by John Updike
-The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
- A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
-Jane Austen Book Club
-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont
- The Twelve Step Program to Quit Becoming a Compulsive Book Buyer by Anonymous

This isn't counting any young adult or other books now in my classroom.

And others that I don't own . . . yet:
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Reading Lolita in Tehran

and others. I know there are others. Oh, Summer!

Romeo and Juliet

2006-04-23T18:44:00.000-05:00

I am staying one small step ahead of my students in reading Romeo and Juliet. I have now read through Act II. They have read only the first two scenes. Reading it in chunks and teaching it bits at a time has proved interesting. I wouldn't recommend it. Some students were arguing about who killed him/herself first and with what instrument. I was struggling to recollect from reading it years ago and watching the movie years ago. I am loving the Romeo and Juliet Navigator for my understanding.

The actual teaching of it is going well. We are not spending all class time just reading and answering questions. We sat in a circle on the floor the very first day and read the prologue several different times and ways. We almost acted out the opening scene and the sword fight. Students got into groups and recited the 2nd prologue in their own way. Most of them were ordinary, but one group did an awesome step routine. Would have been even better with more than 20 minutes to prepare. Tomorrow we will use the handhelds again and analyze the language in 2.3. On Thursday they will take a test on the handhelds. That will be interesting. Hopefully the good kind.

Oh, Axim.

2006-04-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day that I used a bunch of Dell Axims in my classroom. And it is all a blur. I was talking and on my feet all class period. E.X.H.A.U.S.T.I.N.G. I learned a lot about a first day with new *cool* technology. You pretty much have to throw any real lesson plans out the window and just go with teaching some basic skills. Starting this during Romeo and Juliet isn't the smartest idea, but it's what I got. I'm gonna take a few days and try to use this technology and if it majorly messes up learning about Romeo and Juliet, we'll have enough time to backtrack and just read old style, paper and pencil.

Eeek!

2006-03-28T17:08:00.000-06:00

There was a mouse in the sticky trap in my room today. I was the only one who saw it. I emaild the secretary and ttold her. Then I moved the podium in front of the trap and went on with life. A little more queezy than before. And I never looked to see if it was removed. I have a substitute tomorrow. I hope it was taken care of. Otherwise, someone else could stumble upon it (not literally, its in a corner) or see (smell?) it. I am a horrible person.

And we had an immigration walk out today. 35 kids. We were told to keep all students in the rooms during 5th period. I just wonder if those students understood why they were walking out or if they were just following a crowd. I think I know.

Research

2006-03-23T19:01:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow will be the last day my students have had to work on research projects. We have spent three weeks on research and it has been different than I expected. I love research, personally. My thoughts on teaching research are varied. My big research experience comes from my high school APLAC paper written on breastfeeding (that was fun to share with my students) and from anything I did in college. When teaching the whole research process, part of my wanted to slow down and teach it very well. The other part just wanted me to get done with it. This part also realized that these are ninth graders and it doesn't have to be a college level paper. The final product in this process is not a paper. Well, it is a paper, cut out and posted on a poster.

I have enjoyed seeing the little light bulbs going off during class. I have seen students finally realize what parenthetical documentation looks like or say to me that they cited something, so they wouldn't be plagerising. I have convinced several students that it is not always best to start a paragraph with "This paragraph is about" and "I think that" has no place in a research paper. Then there is the clarification of topics. One of the possible topics is Elizabethan Music and Dance. For several weeks I have been trying to convince a certain student that the this is not about what Queen Elizabeth's favorite kind of music is and how she likes to dance in her spare time.

Books of 2006: Various

2006-03-15T21:45:00.000-06:00

I'm going to the library tomorrow to return library books. At leats 1800 pages of books. But none of real quality. Just fun reads. When I get my Barnes and Noble gift card in the mail, I'll go buy more quality stuff.

2006-03-14T11:11:00.000-06:00

My flowers for being the New Teacher of the Year. (They are currently wilted, dead, and in the Trash. But they were beautiful and immortalized here)

Spring Break!

2006-03-11T09:07:00.000-06:00

I am so excited to be on my first Spring Break as a teacher. I had been bracing myself for the day before vacation all week. It turned out to be calmer than I had expected, so that was great. On Thursday, I got a visit from our technology person. A week before, she had been in the break room talking to another teacher about a need for a teacher to go to a training day for using some pocket PCs that we have. I said, "Awesome" before I knew what I was saying, and the next things I knew, I was signed up. So on Thursday I got the new toy to use and play with. That is my homework for Spring Break. To play, download, practice, and think of how this could be used in my classroom. I am very excited.

Library woes

2006-02-20T19:42:00.000-06:00

I have two library cards right now (not counting those from Austin and Wichita which are really invalid but I still technically have) but not card from my own town. I decided to change that today. We have the TAKS test tomorrow. I thought a great treat after completing the test would be to listen to a young adult book on tape. So I left early in time to go to the library before it closed. And then I couldn't find the library. And then it was closed. So sad.

I ended up buying Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli on iTunes. That means making sure the iPod is charged up enough to play for many hours and bringing in my computer speakers to school. But I think it will be with it.

Award

2006-02-07T17:49:00.000-06:00

Today I got an email from my principal saying that I needed to stop by her office. Nothing bad, she said. Turns out I have been nominated for the school district's First Year Teacher of the Year Award. That feels very nice. It's one of those things I need to hold close when my students aren't learning, acting, or participating like I think they should.

Finally! A delete button.

2006-01-18T17:43:00.000-06:00

Oh bless you, Gmail.

Books of 2006: Prep

2006-01-14T14:57:00.000-06:00

I am trying to document what books I read this year. Sort of a New Years Resolution. (Side note: on a journal on the first day back at school, I wrote: What is your New Years Revolution, which was pretty funny). My first book to officially start 2006was The Real Mother by Judith Michael. But I can't get into it, so I quit and started reading Prep by Curtis Sittenfield. I am really enjoying this book. It has many parts that seem just so real. But I do need to stop reading reviews so that I don't ruin any more of the book for myself.

Censorship

2006-01-14T14:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I took my classes to the library and then we read for about 20-30 minutes. During one class a boy called me aside and said something like, "You should see what this book says." He pointed to the word errection and said to me in surprise, "They don't censor these books." He seemed a little confused and even a little angry maybe that they would have that book in the library. It might have been an R.L. Stein book, although I am not sure. I looked at him and said, "Hmm. I guess you will have to censor yourself, then. You always have the power to put the book down."

I don't know what he was expecting. If it was for me to tear the book from his hands and mark the word out with a sharpie or put the book in the trashcan, he certainly didn't get it. Was he assuming that every book in our school library was free from anything anyone might find offensive?His reaction was an interesting thing to see.

New Year, New Dreams

2005-12-30T08:34:00.000-06:00

As I suppose comes with a new semester, I have had dreams about the first day two nights in the year. In these dreams (nightmares?) I remember a few things that I have planned to do on the first day but forget about those big things, like a new seating chart or going over the policies/procedures again (and emphasizing those that REALLY need some work). I have a running to do list that will never get done. Things I want to do before I have to return to work. I return on Monday, but thankfully students do not return until Thursday.

I have been thinking about how to approach teaching the Odyssey. My goals include giving the students a good overview of what the story is and a sense of what the story actually is (that it is an old story, written originally in Greek, translated many many times.) I also want to emphasize how current writers, tv writers, pop culture people use references from The Odyssey. So I collected the first stanza or so of the Odyssey from several versions. About 6 english, one Greek, and one French, just for fun. I want to introduce these all and have students look for similarities and differences in each version before we begin reading. I hope this will really cement the idea that this story wasn't written directly from someone's head into their textbook. If they think that, I will have certainly failed. Otherwise I think it will be going ok.

The Odyssey: Many Versions – all Book I

andra + moi ennepe ++, mousa, polutropon +, hos mala polla

planchthê, epei Troiês hieron ptoliethron epersen:

pollôn d' anthrôpôn iden astea kai noon egnô,

polla d' ho g' en pontôi pathen algea hon kata thumon,

arnumenos hên te psuchên kai noston hetairôn.

all' oud' hôs hetarous errusato, hiemenos per:

autôn gar spheterêisin atasthaliêisin olonto,
nêpioi, hoi kata bous Huperionos Êelioio
êsthion: autar ho toisin apheileto nostimon êmar.

tôn hamothen ge, thea, thugater Dios, eipe kai hêmin.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0135:book=1:card=1

      The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way

      Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;

      That wandered wondrous far, when he the town

      Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down;

      The cities of a world of nations,                                5

      With all their manners, minds, and fashions,

      He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes,

      Much care sustained, to save from overthrows

      Himself and friends in their retreat for home;

      But so their fates he could not overcome,                       10

      Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise,

      They perish'd by their own impieties,

      That in their hunger's rapine would not shun

      The oxen of the lofty-going Sun,

      Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft                    15

      Of safe return. These acts, in some part left,

      Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.

http://www.bartleby.com/111/chapman14.html

Chapman, George, trans. (1559?–1634).

The man for wisdom's various arts renown'd,

Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;

Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall

Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,

Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd,

Their manners noted, and their states survey'd,

On stormy seas unnumber'd toils he bore,

Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:

Vain toils! their impious folly dared to prey

On herds devoted to the god of day;

The god vindictive doom'd them never more

(Ah, men unbless'd!) to touch that natal shore.

Oh, snatch some portion of these acts from fate,

Celestial Muse! and to our world relate.

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext02/dyssy11b.txt   Translated by Pope (1688-1744)

Tell me, Muse, of that man, so ready at need, who wandered

far and wide, after he had sacked the sacred citadel of

Troy, and many were the men whose towns he saw and whose

mind he learnt, yea, and many the woes he suffered in his

heart upon the deep, striving to win his own life and the

return of his company.  Nay, but even so he saved not his

company, though he desired it sore. For through the

blindness of their own hearts they perished, fools, who

devoured the oxen of Helios Hyperion: but the god took from

them their day of returning. Of these things, goddess,

daughter of Zeus, whencesoever thou hast heard thereof,

declare thou even unto us.

                  Butcher (1850-1910) and Lang (1844-1912)Translation

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/dyssy08a.txt

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and

wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities

did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and

customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea

while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home;

but do what he might he could not save his men, for they

perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of

the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever

reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter

of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them.

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/dyssy10.txt

Translated by Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns

driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.

Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,

many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,

fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.

But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove—

the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all

the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun

and the Sungod blotted out the day of their return.

Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,

start from where you will—sing for our time too.

"Oh Goddess of Inspiration, help me sing of wily Odysseus, that master of schemes!" So Homer begins his epic, though the hero himself is still offstage.

http://www.mythweb.com/odyssey/book01s.html

Dis-moi, Muse, cet homme subtil qui erra si longtemps, après qu'il

eut renversé la citadelle sacrée de Troie Et il vit les cités de

peuples nombreux, et il connut leur esprit; et, dans son coeur, il

endura beaucoup de maux, sur la mer, pour sa propre vie et le

retour de ses compagnons Mais il ne les sauva point, contre son

désir; et ils périrent par leur impiété, les insensés! ayant mangé

les boeufs de Hèlios Hypérionade.

        (French Version) Traduction Charles-René-Marie Leconte de L'Isle

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14286/14286-8.txt

Melody ponders the meaning of life while looking out at the snow

2005-12-22T14:42:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year again...

2005-12-15T16:44:00.000-06:00

I have one day. One HALF DAY of school left and I can feel myself getting sick. I will do everything in my power to be there tomorrow but I did leave my desk so that a sub could easily administer finals. I am thinking of going to buy a thermometer. I have two students out right now with fever/sore throat or the flu.

Otherwise, giving my first set of finals has gone well. I underestimated how lazy my students are and how poorly they would do on the final unless I spoonfed them. So I am looking at each class individually and curving accordingly.

In three days I wil be in Kansas. Yahooooo.

And If That Isn't A True Blue Miracle....

2005-11-30T17:52:00.000-06:00

When the christmas season comes, I have to do certain things, and watching christmas movies is definately one of them. I have to see It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and (embarrasingly) Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.

I love the Sesame street story. Every moment, from when the characters ice skate, to when they finally find Big Bird on the rooftop, with icicles hanging off of his beak. I love the songs and the message. I love the allusion to Gift of the Magi as Bert and Ernie exchange gifts, but sell their favorite possessions along the way. Oh! And then the end when Mr. Hooper (bless his soul) gives back their favorites so everyone has everything.

With the extra time that I have with my fourth period class I intend to first read The Gift of the Magi and then view all or parts of the movie (which I got in the mail via Amazon today, did I mention that I got Christmas Eve on Sesame Street in the mail which makes this the best day ever?). It should be fun.

Collage

2005-11-25T15:16:00.000-06:00

This is what I have spent the last few hours creating. I'm not quite sure if it is worth the superglue residue on my hands, but it might be. And in the end, (after squirting superglue on my hands but thankfully having the presence of mind to separate my fingers before it dried) I didn't even use the superglue to attach it.

TRASH IT

2005-11-21T08:05:00.000-06:00

TRASHIT was something that I did in 10th grade English and then emailed my teacher to find out what everything stood for. I had fun teaching it to my students.

T - Title and Author -What are they? What do the words in the title remind you of? What else have you read by that author?

R - Read and Rephrase

A - Analyze the language - figurative language

S - Sound and Structure - rhyme, rhythm - sentence lenght

H - How the author presents it - tone, mood

I - Ideas - your personal take on it / connections to other things you have read

T - Theme

He Ain't Heavy, He's My brother

2005-11-21T08:01:00.000-06:00

After my very successful figurative language in songs lesson, I decided to play this song before reading The Scarlet Ibis. Instead of copying the song onto a CD (after I legally bought it), I just brought my iPod and set of computer speakers to school. I was a little nervous about having a $300 iPod within reach of 150 15 year olds, but it turned out ok. They were impressed that I had one and respected my rule about not touching it. 7th period later put a note on the board - "Touch the iPod and die".

So for the lesson, we listened to the song and then "Trashed It". The lesson went pretty well.

Daylight Savings

2005-11-09T17:05:00.000-06:00

I am living a lie. I still have not changed the clocks in my living room, kitchen, or car. And I am not quite sure that I am going to. It's not that I really love daylight savings time, because I don't. I think it is stupid. But I usually treasure my extra hour every Sunday when we fall back. This year I am trying a different approach. I have sprung forward and fallen back so many times in the last weeks that I am exhausted. But my math skills are astounding and I do love that feeling when I realize, Oh wait, I have an extra hour.

Figurative Language in Songs

2005-10-31T17:34:00.000-06:00

I am pretty excited about my lesson tomorrow. We are going to listen to some songs and analyze them for simile, metaphor, cliche, alliteration, etc. Today I told one class what we would be doing and she asked, "Are these recent songs?" I laughed and told her they were songs from my computer. I would like to show them through songs they know, but it took me long enough to find figurative language in songs that I know, it would take so much longer with songs I don't know. So these are the songs that I ended up with:

We didn't start the fire by Billy Joel. (allusions)
On a Prayer by Garth Brooks (metaphor)
Blinded By the Light by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band (parallel structure, alliteration)
All for Love by Bryan Adams, with Sting and Rod Stewart (cliche) And I DO have to say that I did not own this one but purchased it for the cliche.
The Freshman by Verve Pipe alliteration
Don't Rain on my Parade (idiom)
Maxwell's Silver Hammer by the Beatles (onomatopoeia)
Every Other Time by LFO (repetition, hyperbole, simile)
You are the Sunshine of My Life by Stevie Wonder (metaphor)

I think it will be a fun day.

so i can have it if i am at a party

2005-10-29T18:27:00.000-05:00

I broke down and bought an iPod today. I got my first paycheck that is not dedicated to car repairs or tuition yesterday so I thought I would go spend it. When I walked into the Apple store, it was very hot, as places raditating so much technology sometimes are. The store was packed with people too. I browsed around a minute, even though I pretty much knew that I wanted the 30 G version. I listened in to a salesperson. She was talking to a couple of people deciding between the 30 G and 60 G. She said that SHE would have to have the 60 G so that all of her music would be on there so that if someone mentioned that they liked a song at a party, she would have it on her iPod, even if she didn't even like that song.

Well, I am just going to be selfish here, and only put songs that I LIKE on my iPod, so sorry if you ever encounter me at a party and choose to rely on me for your listening pleasure.

big stack of paper.

2005-10-25T19:56:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I got a bag full of Houston telephone books. It was a surprise because I thought that you actually had to purchase a phone number to get one. That has been my experience, anyway. But more than a surprise it has been just plain weird. I grew up having only one phone book. All the cities of northwest Arkansas fit in just one phonebook that never had to be separated into A-L and M-Z. It doesn't seem normal to have the Adams in a separate book from the Smiths.
But I guess I use the Internet to look up numbers anyway. So now maybe I have an additional kitchen stool?

books books books

2005-10-16T20:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Barnes and Noble's Educator Savings Week and the fact that I redeem my credit card rewards with Barnes and Noble gift certificates I got a bunch of Young Adult books today for my students to read. A little of me cringes when I am slowly but surely building a classroom library which detracts from students using the school library, but with some of these kids, if I didn't hand them a book, they would read nothing.

Anyway, this is Teen Read Week and I would like to do a book talk for one of my new books each day this week. And I will try. But in the midst of cramming everything else into the curriculum, I'm not sure if it will happen.

On Thursday we have a TAKS benchmark test in the morning and I will only see my afternoon students. Maybe I could spend the afternoon reading a few chapters of a few books to my students. They would love that.

Great webquest experience and rewards

2005-10-13T19:13:00.000-05:00

I have been so busy with grades, life, and school that I haven't posted much. I had such a successful experience with my webquest. I took three days in the computer lab and the students turned out some awesome projects. Some of the best were great looking Publisher newsletter documents with creative titles, several articles about things related to Of Mice and Men, and extra items to make it look like a real newspaper. Some of the worst were simply questions and answers, but at least they turned something in and learned something.

We are now diving into the book, Of Mice and Men. We have read a chapter so far and will take a quiz on it tomorrow.

This week, in order to get late work to be turned in, I offered a semi-party to the class that got the most work turned in. My fourth period class suprised me and actually won. I would have bet money that it would have been a different class. Fourth period is the lunch period, and a very lively, social class. Today when I announced that they had won, I told them that I was frankly, surprised, but so very proud of them. One of them said, "Aw, Ms. Lauve, you're gonna make me cry." And then I actually teared up. But I didn't cry or anything. (Not like with the four year olds when they deliberately spilled the vegetables in the middle of lunch.) But it was a nice moment. And for the rest of the class period, I had the threat of taking away the food if they weren't good. That was very nice.

silly kids

2005-10-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

We recently had our parent teacher night, where I found out that one of my kids has forged his grade. Nice. Please, if you are going to forge it, you have to go all the way, do the best you can, make it look real, and catch the school's copy in the mail before it gets to mom. But then, if you are going to put that much work into it, why don't you just do the work in the first place?

New Webquest

2005-09-29T21:52:00.000-05:00

I have been down on technology lately. So many things are blocked on my computer at school that I was just really frustrated with what my possibilities were. Not to mention that I have several students without permission to use the internet. I have just been in a technology funk.

But we are starting Of Mice and Men soon, and instead of standing in front of the class and giving them background notes, I wanted to do something fun. So I have been spending ALL of my spare time working on my newest webquest. It is still a work in progress, but it needs to be done by Monday and it will.

And I feel alive again.

Rita update

2005-09-23T16:42:00.000-05:00

I evacuated first to Sugar Land and then to College Station. I am here at my old sorority house in my sister's room with her roommate. We have plenty of fig newtons, sugar cookies and boxed juice drinks. We have flashlights and a radio. We are preparing as best we can for rain, wind, and power outages.

I wonder about my apartment on the first floor. I wonder about my computer sitting in my bathroom. I wonder about my bedspread that I love and my bed that my aunt and uncle brought to my house just a few weeks ago. I wonder about what will happen if any strong winds do anything to destroy my stuff. I have all of my pictures and sentimental things, so they will be ok. But I wonder about the rest.

I also wonder about what happens after Rita passes. How are the 3 million people going to get back into Houston? When am I going to go back to work? How many students will be there?

I feel so lucky to be safe and for the fact that I left so soon that I was not stuck in traffic. I also feel lucky that the hurricane is going more east than west. But I think and pray for the people that are now in the path of the storm. Poor Louisiana.

Disasters

2005-09-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

I know how to prepare for earthquakes, tornados, and snow, but I just realized I really have no idea what to do to prepare my apartment for Hurricane Rita. I lived in Memphis in 1990 when the earthquake was predicted and I remember the trash can full of canned food and radio and batteries and then I remember the t-shirts that were printed up to commemorate the non-event. I know that when you live in hilly Fayetteville, Arkansas and they predict snow, you go out and buy milk and dog food and plan to stay indoors until you go stir crazy. But I have never experienced a hurricane.

School was cancelled for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I need to be in Austin anyway this weekend, so I am just going early to avoid the Galveston traffic. And I doubt that anything will happen to my stuff in my apartment, but I might take my computer and pictures with me just in case. I feel so dumb. I don't even know what county I live in.

teachers

2005-09-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

I haven't talked that much in my classes about Hurricane Katrina, even though its effects are felt in the very room. I did have two students from New Orleans but now I just have one. The other went to live with family in Baton Rouge.

However, when I came across this poem that I used as a warm up. I asked students to respond to it. Before my first class, though, I remembered how we used to TRASH IT. Thats how we analyzed poetry in my 10th grade AP History and Honors English Block. I wanted to use this acronym with my class but I couldn't remember what everything stood for. I ended up frantically emailing the very teacher that taught me. She emailed me back and said she was glad I was teaching and glad I remembered something I had learned in her class.

While putting away my banana bread that I cooked over the weekend tonight I wrapped thirds in foil. I looked for the shiny side of the foil and was reminded of a story my ninth grade physical science teacher told. She was picking her daughter up from school and taking her somewhere else. She made her bagel pizza to take with her. She prepared the pizzas and then wrapped them in such a way that they were kept so hot that they burned the kid's mouth when she ate them. She told us about the foil and about the 3 kinds of heat or something like that. But I remember the foil and how it has a shiny side and a dull side and if you are keeping something warm, the shiny side should go toward the food.

So here is to my teachers, the ones that I remember while teaching, while cooking, and whenever else.

Grading Joys

2005-09-10T18:37:00.000-05:00

It is almost the end of the first six weeks. Today I went and graded at Starbucks to the tune of every Bob Dylan song ever recorded thanks to Starbucks Radio. I was grading some projects and creative continuations to "The Most Dangerous Game" so it was enjoyable stuff. I liked the creativity and imagination that I saw. Several times I laughed out loud. I also saw some self corrections in spelling that would not have been visible if I allowed pencil. In pen I saw this:

~~through~~ threw

Having seen so many other spelling mistakes among the 100 or so papers I graded today, it was nice to see a student that thought, "Wait a minute, that's not how you spell it," and went ahead and revised it.

I'm back!

2005-09-05T19:32:00.000-05:00

After relocating and then not having internet, I am officially back. I have had the first few weeks of school down here and I am still really enjoying it. I have a really supportive staff and the students are great too. So far, it has been a lot of work, but really enjoyable. Two statements from me stand out:

I don't remember what exactly we were talking about. Probably something grammar or spelling related. But some student asked a question and I found myself saying, "Yeah, the English language is stupid." Or something along that line. And then I stopped and said to myself, Maybe I, the English teacher, shouldn't be saying things like that.

I hope I got the chance to redeem myself last friday during SSR time. Students were supposed to be reading a book they had chosen from my room or a trip to the library a week before. I try to spend my time both modeling reading and walking around to make sure they are reading and not sleeping. I stopped by one desk and told a student to keep reading. "Why do we have to read?" he asked. I spouted off everything I knew about reading. Because reading is needed to succeed in high school. Because reading is a worthwhile activity. Reading is a safe activity. Reading improves test scores. Reading is essential in life. Reading will help you get a better job and make more money. Because I said so. He picked up the book and started reading.

Teaching and bellwork

2005-08-17T19:25:00.000-05:00

Not much to say except everything to say. I love my job. I have been here for five days now and I truly love it. I am really enjoying it.

And my guess work on teacher related delicious words has struck gold. Well a little nugget or two. A user has now used "bellwork". Twice. And it popped up in my bloglines account. Even though it didn't even exist anywhere before. Those two entries are the only two. How cool.

Why I hate loops...

2005-08-09T18:14:00.000-05:00

I have millions of teaching type things that I should be doing right now, but my brain is pretty fried. When I am sleepless at night, my mind often turns to how much I hate loops. Loops- like the big loops that go around big cities.

This has to be read with this in mind: I have no sense of direction. Or if I have one, it is the anti-direction because I am always wrong. So this is why loops cause me so much trouble and I hate them.

Reasons:

1. If you are traveling in a circle, the city is always in the middle. As long as you stay going one way on the loop, the city will always be either to the left or the right. You cannot make any assumptions like, "I know where I am. The big tall building are to the left, therefore I am in the north." I have made these assumptions and been proved wrong.

2. The whole north west south east thing is too confusing. Because the loop can suddenly switch from north to west, it is not always easy to determine which is the right way to go. Sometimes going to a final destination east and south of the original location means getting onto the north loop. I know. I have experienced this.

3. There are no clear pictures where you are on the loop. There are no maps or anything. No pictures. There should be.

Which leads to my proposal: loops should not be called north, south, east, and west. They should be called clockwise and counterclockwise. Exits should be numbered according to the clock. 1-12. Maybe even exit numbers like 12:45. That way, a person (me) would always know exactly where I am. There should also be pictures on big green sigs that show exactly where you are on the loop and which direction you are going.

Maybe normal people don't have loop issues. But I do. And I think these changes would help me out.

Life Update from Houston

2005-08-06T20:54:00.000-05:00

I passed my PPR qualifying exam with flying colors this morning. 93% yo! I was a little worried because with all the upheaval in my life last week I had zero time to study. But apparently I am getting it.

Then I drove to Houston today, which took me half the time then it took to drive from Houston to Austin on Tuesday. Thats what happens when you drive straight through.

I got to look at two apartments and put down a hold check deposit on two. I will then decide which one to keep tomorrow. It is two hundred square feet bigger than my old one so that is very happy! Its really open. And it has a fan in the living room. So I am excited about that.

I start work on Monday. And except for my MIA copy of English Teacher's Companion I think I have all my supplies. It's gonna be a good year.

new del.icio.us linkroll

2005-08-04T20:55:00.000-05:00

I just learned about the new linkroll option that del.icio.us now offers. I just implemented it into my blog and I love it! It takes awhile to get to it. Its all the way down below the books. Makes me really want to have a three column blog again. Oh if I had the time. But unfortunately I am needed to find an apartment, pack, practice for my PPR test, and think about my new job.

But this new option is really cool.

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, linkroll, blog, blogging, tagging

Job Details

2005-08-04T13:08:00.000-05:00

I have had teacher job applications in for about 5 Austin school districts since June. Then in July I started to get really nervous and casted my net a little wider. I started watching the job openings in the Dallas and Houston areas and started applying. So then Monday I got a call from an Assistant Principal in the Houston area. They wanted me to come interview. So I drove down on Monday afternoon and stayed with my grandparents and interviewed Tuesday at 10. They told me they would let me know that day. But not knowing if I had a reason to stay, I started the drive back. While getting on 290, I got a call from the principal, offering me the job.

So within 24 hours I got the call, had the interview, and got the job. Its pretty exciting and I know I am still getting used to the idea.I really liked the two people I interviewed with and the principal sounded great too. I start on Monday and then students are there on Thursday. Eeeek! I am really happy with my decision, though, and I am looking forward to a successful year.

So now I have to make a bunch of decisions, prepare to teach, and move. By the way, this will be my fourth move in 2.5 years. Wow.

Jobless no more

2005-08-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

I got a job. And I am leaving on Saturday. Details to come.

Favicons and Amazon pictures

2005-07-31T21:12:00.000-05:00

I had been saving things in my bloglines account to look at later. I am finally getting to that. One of them is this thing from lifehacker. The Favicon Picker Firefox Extension is amazing. It lets you pick a favicon for sites that do not pick there on. Then you are able to delete the text and save room on your linkbar for all the cool things that you want. (I guess there is also the assumption that you pick the pictures based on some sort of system and are able to go back and remember what is what. I am not so lucky. I am quite sure I will be bugging-me-not when I really just want see what people linked to a page via del.icio.us. Hehe. This should be fun. I tried to pick pictures that made sense, but what link should go with a picture of quiche? Actually I would recommend making some simple pictures of solid colors or big letters or something rather than using pictures. I am having trouble telling the difference between the quiche and the water lilies.)

And here is an explanation on the pictures of what I am reading in the sidebar of this blog. (By popular demand!) (Speaking of, I should probably change that, I have been reading some really intersting stuff lately.) I have an associates account at amazon.com (on the main website scroll down until you see the Make Money in green on the left side. Associates is the second thing under that. The Associates program is about getting people to buy things from Amazon and then you get a share of that. Its a money making thing. You can read about the Building Links here ).

Once you are logged into the associates account, you click on build links on the left of the screen. Then Product Links. Then Search for the product, find it, and customize that link. It then gives you the HTML that shows the picture and provides a link to the amazon page. You customize it to be a big or small picture, show the price or not, and so on. Then you copy the HTML and put it in the template. Then I usually have to tweak the link for the picture source to make it come from amazon. And then I am done. Any questions?

Technology makes me lazy

2005-07-31T13:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think about how lazy technology makes me. I love the find function on firefox. I like entering the little words and having something else look for me. It does a lot of work and saves me a lot of time. Right now I am taking a test. It is a stupid test with 17 essay questions when we were told that it is all multiple choice, but I guess that is beside the point. The test is open book and so I use the index a lot to search for answers. But what about when the index is not sufficient? My fingers itch to just type the word in and find someone else look for it. And if there was an electronic copy of the book available I might just do it. But there isn't so I can't.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2005-07-25T17:44:00.000-05:00

I read the latest Harry Potter book while on vacation. I read it in the DFW Airport. I read it on the airplane. I read it in hotels. I read it on the beach in La Jolla, California. I finished it, in tears, while in bed. My sister was nice enough to let me keep the light on and finish it. It was remarkable, because that is exactly how I finished the fourth book too. It was over the Christmas holiday so I was kicked out of my room and had to bunk with my little sister.

I would rate the fourth book right up there with number one, three, and four. It is very easy for me to classify the books at good (#2 and #5) and really good (#1, #3, #4, and now #6). Going beyond that sort of classification is hard for me, because I just cannot choose.

Things I loved about this book. (Jacki, you might not want to read this unless you have read the whole book. )

I liked how mature Harry was, and how mature Harry becomes. Harry has experienced love and loss. When he mentioned Sirius, it just made me sad. Knowing how close Harry was to having a family and then losing it was just heartbreaking.
I liked the relationship between Harry and Dumbledore. Harry realizes that Dumbledore values him and is treating him as an adult.
I liked the pace. It was a nice ride. I didn't feel like it was too hurried or too exciting until the very end.
I liked the romance. Seeing Ron and Hermoine dance around their relationship was very amusing. And seeing Ginny and Harry get together was something I was waiting for since Ginny set her eye on Harry in the first book.
I liked how finally all of the pieces are coming together. This book, more than others (or maybe I was just paying more attention in this book) talks about things that happened in previous books and makes a lot of connections. I really felt like I would have benefitted from re-reading all of the books to get the full experience when reading this book. I really had to stretch my memory and think about what previous events they were talking about.

This book tied elements of the books together and also gives us a great idea of what the next book will be about. It struck me as so odd that I bought this book not knowing a thing about the plot. I knew there would be a major character dying. I knew that this would be another year at Hogwarts. But I knew nothing else. I have a better idea of what will happen next book. And I have some questions that I know should be answered. That is exciting.

This was my favorite part. At the very end. Page 644-645:

And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had discussed fighting a losing battle not long thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated... And Harry saw clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the shelter of a parent's arms meant nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been before.

That is a great piece of literature. I thought about some of the other good vs. evil stories and how they compared to this. I thought about Star Wars and ET and Jesus. I read in an article in Newsweek (I think) how there are some college courses about Harry Potter that compare the story to other classic pieces of literature. And the things that might have influenced Rowling. That would be a facinating class to take.

At the end of the book, where Ron and Hermoine show their support for Harry in his quest, it reminded me of the end of (R.I.P) Joan of Arcadia. Joan is told that she will be fighting good vs. evil. And her "army" is made up of her friends.

God: The universe is kinetic, Joan. Every day, you have to make a choice. Make it better or worse. Most people do a little bit of both. And there are those powerful enough to overbalance the scales on either end.

Joan: So is this fancy talk for you expect me to save the world?

God: Counterbalance is a better word.

Joan: You want me to fight back?

God: I expect you to fulfill your true nature, same as it ever was.

Joan: I really don't think I'm up to this.

God: I think you are or else you wouldn't have met him.

Joan: This is seriously going to cut into my normal high school routine.

God: You never liked high school that much.

Joan: If you want me to do this, I get it, but I can't do it alone. My own father doesn't believe me. My ex-boyfriend is siding with the devil. I have no weapons. Other people who have fought back, you know, the other Joan, she had an army, ok? I don't have anything like that. Where's my army?

[God looks pointedly to the side. Joan follows his gaze to see her group of friends. Grace says, "Quit it, Friedman!" and both Grace and Glynis smack Friedman. Luke is tossing something at Friedman. Adam is seemingly oblivious, lost in his own thoughts.]

Joan: Yeah. So basically I'm on my own.

God: You have everything you need, Joan. [He walks off, giving a low Godwave.]

I had the same feeling reading the end of Harry Potter that I had watching this very last episode of Joan of Arcadia.

Technorati Tags: HarryPotter, HalfBloodPrince, Book6, Reading, Books

Hello from Kansas

2005-07-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

I'm back from a fabulous vacation in San Diego. We saw the zoo, the wild animal park and the beach. We went out to eat at some fabulous places. I took many many pictures, but forgot the cord that attaches the camera to the computer so I cannot post. They are pretty though.

While away I read all of Harry Potter. And Freakanomics. And I am 80% the way through Blink (which, I might add, saved me from being without reading material and facing my greatest fear.)

I return to Austin on Thursday when I will get a job. Hopefully. And work on my website and a bunch of other stuff.

The last days of work

2005-07-13T19:03:00.000-05:00

This is my last week with the four year olds. I will spend next week in California and then I need to FIND A JOB. A high school teaching job. Yesterday we had a circle time where I announced that this is my last week. They asked me questions about where I would be going (don't know) and who would be replacing me (don't know). They said that I should visit and bring the high schoolers to visit. They said simply, "We are going to miss you." And I am going to miss them. (Of course not during any Monday-Friday from 12:30 - 1:30. Then I will be sitting in a room of silence thanking my lucky stars that 22 four year olds are not driving ME crazy.) Since I cannot (in good conscience) post any of their pictures (no parental consent), here is some of their work.

not many del.icio.us lesson plans

2005-07-12T20:28:00.000-05:00

Sign #48 that del.icio.us is not being used effectively (IMHO) by educators: the tag lessonplan 32 times (although lessonplans is used about 300 times, so there is that. This singular plural thing does spell problems sometimes. But I wouldn't dare change it. Besides, I usually mean lessonplan to tag a specific lesson plan and lessonplans to tag stuff general to lesson plans: info, templates, general ideas. )

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, tags, tagging, education, lessons, lessonplans, lessonplan,

Harry Potter Decision

2005-07-11T20:28:00.000-05:00

I love my life sometimes. Right now, one of the major decisions on my mind is whether to take the new Harry Potter book on vacation. It comes out Friday night. I am seriously considering going to Barnes and Noble for one of the release parties. I figure that would be fun. Chaotic, crazy fun. Then on Monday I leave for vacation to California. I cannot read the book in the time between the release and when I get on the plane. Book 5 took me 3 solid days to read. So the question is: Do I take the mammoth (although apparently not as mammoth as 4 or 5) book to California? And so I do a comparison:

Pro:

I like reading Harry Potter books.
I like the idea of reading the book along with millions of other people.
I need a book to read in the airport, on the planes anyway
Do I really need an extra pair of shoes or whatever else would take up the room in my suitcase?

Con:

A 670 page book to lug around
A single minded vacation (MUST. FINISH. BOOK.) (I can picture it now, my dad pointing out the beach or mountains or pretty things outside of the window and I risk carsickness just to find out who dies. That would just be sad.)
Reading the book while away from my other five. What if I need to reference something and I am 1339.8 miles away?
Reading the book while away from regular high speed internet access. What if I need to... well... I don't know. But the internet might be the answer.
Tears in public. At the end of 4, I bawled. I don't really remember much about 5 but I'm pretty sure I cried then too. What if one of my favorites dies and I am inconsolable, just as they are calling that it is my time to board?

I am going to cave in and start the book on Sunday probably. I don't have time on Saturday, because I am throwing a wedding shower. But by Sunday the book will be calling to me. I will cave and I will be the one reading in the airport, on the plane, in the rental car, and on the beach. I should take pictures and document it. Oh, fun.

Technorati Tags: HarryPotter, HalfBloodPrince, Book6, Reading, Books

Freakonomics

2005-07-10T15:33:00.000-05:00

I am really enjoying reading Freakonomics. I am just about half way done and the book is really interesting. It is also quite an experience to be able to read the blog that goes along with the book. I think every book should have a blog associated with it to discuss ideas that are similar, what is going on with the press tour, interviews, etc. It is pretty cool. But no matter how cool the book is, it still doesn't hold up to a dip in Lake Cypress Springs. I borrowed my brother's copy and it got wet on the Fourth of July weekend. So he gets a brand new copy (left) and I will keep the thicker, warped one (right) .
Technorati Tags: freakonomics, bookblogs

del.icio.us haiku

2005-07-10T14:07:00.000-05:00

This is a site that when you enter a del.icio.us tag, it will create a haiku based on related tags.

Here is a sample:

Del.icio.us
del.icio.us tips
del.icio.us delicious
internet maps tools

However, this is not a haiku. I guess the computer is counting del.icio.us as having four syllables. Because on this version they count delicious as 3 syllables and del.icio.us as 4. Intersting. (Am I the only one who doublecheks the syllables in every haiku I read?)

Delicious
delicious tag maps
tools web del.icio.us new
tagging tags techcrunch

Technorati Tags: del.icio.us, haiku, poetry,

so lame

2005-07-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

So I finally found the lame file that I needed to use Audacity to export recordings in MP3. And I don't know what was so hard about it in the first place. I simply searched for it and there it was. So no more virtual ducktape for me. I wonder if I went back and re-packaged my screencasts I would get better (more accuracy between pointing and saying) results. So thats a thought. When I am done with work (this week is my last) and back from vacation to California maybe I will play with all that.

Technorati Tags: lame, audacity, screencasting, mp3,

del.icio.us new feature: for

2005-07-09T07:36:00.000-05:00

Now you can send links to specific usernames and receive links that others have designated for you.

We've just begun rolling out support for tagging items for others. To do
so, use "for:username" where username is the name of the user you
want to
send the item to.

You can see items tagged for you at http://del.icio.us/for/ -- it'll
redirect to your own page, which other users will not be able to see.

This could be really awesome.

Technorati Tags: tagging, tags, del.icio.us,