Teachers and Relativity ... and Masochism

I figured out today that my standard "workweek" is somewhere near 80 hours.  Yes, I'm serious.  (I'm also something of a masochist when it comes to work, so to be fair you should probably figure that in)

This is why I'm wondering why teachers, who work incredibly hard and are entrusted, via in loco parentis, with the safety and, yeah, upraising of a veritable battalion of students, always seem to be on the political defecation list.

I don't want to hear, "You have every summer off."  No, I don't ... I'm working a second job (usually summer school ... this year, it might be flipping burgers) for the full month and parts of two others that I'm not teaching.

I don't want to hear the downright scary stuff coming down on teachers from the New Hampshire legislature ... walk in my shoes for a day.  In fact, never mind MY shoes ... my shoes are pretty comfortable as I am very fortunate in many, MANY aspects of my job (such as the fact that I have the most amazing students).  Put on the wingtips or sensible pumps of some of my colleagues ...

Sorry about the incoherent rant ... I've had Ambien and it's clearly showing, but this one's been coming for awhile.  I'll write a more ... well, coherent post about it soon.

Until then ... thank a teacher.  Seriously.  It totally means the world!

Friday Fragments: The Weekly Catch-Up

Thank you once again, Mrs. 4444, for giving me the opportunity to do a fragmentary post catching up on the things that have gone on this week.  If you're a blogger and don't "frag", definitely consider it.  Visit Half-Past Kissin' Time to link up.

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I got to see both of my nephews on Sunday, which is a rarity.

My brother lives about an hour away, but he just recently moved into a new house and has been busy with that, plus he and his girlfriend work all week, so weekends are pretty much their only time together.  They brought Pete down for a day at the beach, though, and it was as always great to see them.

My sister and brother-in-law spent some time at their cabin in Maine last week, and they stopped in on their way back to Maryland.  It was wonderful to see them all, especially my nephew Eddie.  They only stopped in for a minute because they had to get the rental car back, but Eddie and Belle had a great time playing together.

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I was so proud of my girls this week!

Belle has been desperately wanting to have a lemonade stand, and we've been putting her off.  After attending day camp at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) last week (she wants to be either a vet, a scientist, or a lion tamer when she grows up), though, Belle decided that she wanted to donate the proceeds of a lemonade stand to the SPCA.  

It was hard to say no to that ...

And I was very proud of Addie, who joined right in to help her sister out.

It's comforting to know that your kids really do get the moral lessons you try to teach them ...

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Since my ex-husband fell into the toilet of alcoholism and irresponsibility, this week has been a tough one, considering that August 4 was the day we got married.  I still try to focus on the positives, but sometimes it's really difficult.

This is especially true when he gets it into his head to call and make me feel badly about how little he gets to see Belle (as though this is my fault), and I want to scream at him, "You're trying to make this about YOU, you SOB, and it's not about you at all ... it's about Belle and what's best for her.  Well, at least it should be!"

I was as polite as I could possibly be, and I asked that future correspondence of this nature be done through e-mail.

That stupid high road is a tough climb sometimes ...

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Addie started marching band rehearsals this week.  When she left, there was a severe thunderstorm warning, and she had to drive through one heck of a storm.  

Although Addie doesn't mind thunderstorms (in fact, she actually enjoys them, something she certainly didn't get from me), she is still a very cautious driver.  

I was really impressed that she drove slowly and calmly.  I would have pulled into a gas station, hid in the bathroom, and cried until it was over.  

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Belle learned to swim!

You might think that, growing up on the ocean, my kids would be strong swimmers ... but they're not.  

They have water awareness and know how to go underwater and to respect the tides and such, but actual swimming isn't something that inherently comes with ocean water.

Anyway, Belle was invited to a birthday party at a local outdoor pool.  As soon as she saw the water slides (and the lines of kids going down them), she asked me to teach her to swim (the water slides empty into 12-foot-deep water, and you have to swim a fair amount to get to the ladder or even the side of the pool)

She asked me to teach her how to swim and, after about half an hour, I felt she was a good enough swimmer to try the water slides.  She was a superstar!

Belle's the one flying off the blue slide here.

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Summer school ended yesterday.  While I always enjoy teaching summer school, it is exhausting beyond words.  

I have three days to enjoy the summer, then I have a conference all next week, a two-day conference the week after that, and Addie and I are going up to UVM to visit the campus as soon as I get back from that one.  

What summer ;-)?

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The summer of the dentist continues ...

Both girls went to the dentist this week, Addie to get an old filling replaced and Belle to get a cavity filled.  

Addie hates the dentist (well, not the dentist personally, just the idea of dentists in general), but Belle as always viewed it as an adventure ... and a chance to show off her truly unique personality ;-)

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I've done a lot of reflecting this week, particularly about focusing on the positives.  When you have blessings like this, how can you not?

Friday Fragments--A Short Overview of My Week

I'm really into the whole "Friday Fragments" thing ... what a great way to do a quick catch-up on the week :-)

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So I got my hair cut last night.

It was kind of interesting because I went through a long phase of really not caring what I look like.  However, the grays were starting to get to me, and I realized that I'm 34 years old and, realistically speaking, the days when I can look really good are limited.  Plus, I'm single and looking, right ;-)?

My hairdresser was great ... I explained that I've decided that I want to start looking good (like, wear my contacts every day instead of my glasses and so on), so I gave her complete artistic license with both the color and the cut.  I'm glad that she didn't go far from my natural hair color, though ...

I was also reminded while trying to take pictures of it so that my friends could all see it via Facebook and Twitter how truly atrocious I am at taking pics of myself.

To wit ...

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On Wednesday, my mother brought Addie and Belle up to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew at their cabin in Maine.  My aunt and her partner were also there along with a lot of other cool people.  I was sorry to miss out, but I had to work in the morning and then had a dentist appointment in the afternoon (my life is currently revolving around dentists between Belle, Addie, and me).

Anyway, a good time appeared to be had by all :-)

On the way home, though, there was a very bad accident on the highway.  My mom and the girls were stuck in traffic for almost three hours ... they were about five minutes from home, but because the accident was so bad there was nothing they could do but wait.

Addie was especially shaken up by this because she is petrified of car accidents, particularly those involving big trucks.  My hearts go out to the victims of this terrible accident, and my thanks go out to whatever higher power exists for keeping my family safe.

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I am loving the summer school gig, even though I grumble about it from time to time.

Last week was especially exciting because I came up with an amazing lesson (actually, I totally stole an amazing lesson that one of my former colleagues did, but of course I adapted it a bit).

We'd been working on sequencing, following directions, and precision of language.  I felt like things were going well until I asked my students to write directions for how to make a peanut butter sandwich and most of the responses were something like:
1.  Put peanut butter on the bread.
2.  Eat it.

So I figured I'd try to come up with a creative way to get the point across ... and thus the robot game was born.  Basically, I brought in a bag of props (ranging from straws to a flyswatter to chocolate syrup), and the kids worked in small groups to give me, "the robot", directions for what to do with the props.

They loved it ... and also learned the very things (directions, sequencing, and precision of language) I'd been trying to get across.  To a child, they were able to articulate what they could have done differently and why some of the directions didn't get the results they'd envisioned because they weren't specific enough.

Regardless, I ended up covered with chocolate syrup, animal cracker crumbs, applesauce, and sticky garbage bags that were intended to protect my clothes.

Here's what happened  ....

Also, I figured I'd let the kids eat the animal crackers that were left over, and one of them found this:

Sometimes you just don't know whether to laugh or cry ;-)
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I noticed that there is a lot of bad stuff going on in New Hampshire this summer when I was reading through some of my recent Zelda Lily pieces.  I'm giving links and short descriptions, and I hope you check them out. Zelda Lily is a very cool site :-) (and not just my stuff, either!).

+ A 34-year-old mother left two bags of doggie doo and a nasty note on the doorstep of a kid her daughter was having problems with.  That sends a great message to a thirteen-year-old, don't you think?  The idea that some parents want to be "friends" with their kids ... it just scares me badly.

+ A little boy was found dead and abandoned on the side of the road.  It took several days before he was identified as Camden Hughes of Texas ... and that evidence points to his mother as the one who killed him.

+ A man was found guilty of the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl in his church congregation ... fourteen years after the fact.  In spite of the guilty verdict, it does not exactly give rape victims a lot of encouragement in terms of coming forward.  The girl's treatment by her congregation was dreadful, and this only underscores the myriad of difficulties faced by rape victims that go beyond the act itself.

+ An Amber Alert was issued for a four-month-old baby in order to capture his father, who was wanted for a crime; there was no evidence that the baby was "missing", and it was in fact known that the baby's mother was also with him.  The idea of such an important tool as the Amber Alert being used in kind of an underhanded way bothered me quite a bit.

+ A young mother disappeared without a trace, her abandoned (and still running) car with her baby daughter in the backseat puzzling the heck out of police.  Turns out the woman was killed as the result of a drug deal gone bad, and she went from a media darling to a publicity pariah overnight.

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Finally, I got over my literary snobbery (again ;-)) and read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy (the other two books are Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) and Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3).  I highly recommend them and once again wonder why I am so reluctant at times to read books that "everyone" is reading; I almost always end up loving them!  So odd ...

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Hope everyone's had a great week :-)

Tires-some

So I'm at VIP (a different location than the one where I evidently knew more about cars than the employee I spoke with). I'm getting new tires, and I'm kind of excited that there's free WiFi here. Still, it's kind of tiresome having to do stuff like this. It's kind of like waiting in a ridiculously long line at the Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru when you're desperate for coffee, or buying toilet paper en masse so you don't run out without realizing it. Kind of a pain in the ass, but a necessary evil.

Anyway ...

I had to go to work today. I've had to work virtually every day of my, ahem, summer vacation. Part of me would rather be reading a book on the beach or sailing or going mini-golfing with Addie and Belle, but I've actually really enjoyed the work I've done this summer.

First, there's summer school. Even if I wasn't enjoying it, I really can't complain about teaching summer school since I agreed to it and have a contract and am actually very well-compensated. The kids are all going-to-be-seniors, so they're pretty invested in doing well. They're also really nice kids, which is a treat. As always, I am amazed at the depth of the conversations we've had--kids are so much more astute than we give them credit for, and I seem to realize this even more during summer school. Kind of weird.

Then, there's professional development stuff. The first week was a three-day workshop on Project-Based Learning (we call it PBL in the education world), which is basically using a large long-term project to assess students instead of the more traditional paper and pencil test. I came up with a really cool project on connecting Romeo and Juliet to contemporary films. Kids would have to put together a five minute movie created via the lovely advanced technology opportunities, and I have a SmartBoard in my classroom now, so it will be really fantastic ... assuming I have my act together enough to actually do it.

Ideas are never my problem, nor is the actual instruction of students. I have never felt like my students get short-changed in their education. What does bother me, though, is following the great plans I come up with. Ultimately, they always end up being too much and too big, so I revert back to what I usually do because the prospect of having to be ... gasp ... organized is just so far beyond me. Maybe this year I'll be better about it. Haha, maybe pigs will fly out of my computer case, too.

The other workshop is actually a college course done in conjunction with Plymouth State University on Intentional Teaching and Differentiated Instruction, which is basically teaching in a way that is effective for every single student. It's a lot harder than it sounds, and the course has been a really great learning experience. We had the choice of receiving either four graduate credits or financial compensation and, since I already have my Master's Degree, I said, "Show me the money". It's very cool to focus on the idea of designing curriculum with a bottom line of student understanding. Instead of planning in terms of content, we're being taught to plan in terms of anticipated (and expected) student understanding of the content. It's kind of a dicey distinction, but it's really changed a lot of my educational philosophies.

Between my real job, my amazing experience writing for Zelda Lily (we have a new layout that is just so cool!), hanging out with Addie and Belle, helping my mother get ready for her trip to Italy (she's in the air right now), trying to find a spare minute to work on the novel, rediscovering pleasure reading, and trying to keep things as calm as possible with Pythagorus (and thank you so much for all the support people have given me ... especially MTM and Kathy P), I'm very busy.

It's not tiresome, though. And my tires are just about done, so this evening will no longer be tiresome, either :-)