Wise Woman

it's always heartening to read the words of someone who gets it:

Where can teachers find such collegiality today? Where are the institutions or publications that are built around deep respect for the intelligence and inventiveness of teachers—and kids? Are they there, but I'm missing them? The teachers I run into seem instead overwhelmed with study groups and programs driven by contextually empty data. Garbage in, garbage out. 

Read the whole post here.

I Heart Divergent Thinkers

First day back from break, and I decided to do a little grammar to ease back into our routine. I know. It's out of character, but there you have it, and who can't use a little practice with pronoun agreement? I made it as palatable as possible-- I used a chompchomp.com exercise; the students worked in collaborative groups; there was a smartboard involved-- high interest, I tell you, engaging, even.

The final sentence was a bit of a challenge, referring to some crickets and a frog making such a racket outside a poor kid's window that he couldn't study properly for his pronoun agreement quiz, and one of my students was extremely confused. "But wait," he said with furrowed brow. "Wouldn't the frog eat the crickets?"

Call it Denial

I whiled away the day in mindless leisure. At 9:40 this morning we caught the first show of The King's Speech at our local cinema, enjoying coffee, cookies, and clementines in the dark of the nearly deserted theater. Back home, it was lucky leftovers from the traditional New Years dinner, and an hour on YouTube watching newsreels and listening to recordings of the real King George VI.

I moved from computer screen to TV screen next, spending a couple of hours on Epic Mickey, the Wii game I asked for and received for Christmas. I am not a natural or experienced gamer, so it was by extreme trial and error that I made it out of Dark Beauty Castle, and although I never tired of the implicit menace in the arrangement of Once Upon a Dream in minor chords, I felt a great sense of accomplishment in doing so.

But then, while trying to update my Wii internet connection, I totally screwed up the settings for my home wifi network, and I was engrossed in configuring and reconfiguring this and that wireless router, without complete success, I'm afraid, which leaves that particular puzzle for another day. And that brings us to now-- me in front of a screen again, thinking of the final preparations for dinner, and the movie we'll watch tonight, but not at all about returning to work tomorrow.

Those Things, Those Fabulous Things

It's another family tradition of ours to have holiday crackers on the table at this time of year. For those who may not be familiar, crackers are an English tradition; they are rolls of cardboard covered in colorful foil that is twisted at both ends. Each has a snap, a paper crown, a toy or novelty, and a joke of some kind inside. You open them a little like you break a wishbone: two people tug on either end until the snap pops and one person has the larger half with all the goodies inside.

By the end of any festive meal, everyone is wearing a crown, and some may have two or three on. My favorite part is the joke or riddle-- usually a terrible pun but occasionally an unfathomable British joke, for example, Q: What do ghosts wear on wet days? A: Khaghouls. Funny right? (Seriously-- comment if you get it and are willing to explain it to a dim witted Yank like myself.) Years ago, the crackers we used to get had the jokes in English, French, Spanish, and Italian, and trying to read and translate them was lots of fun and much hilarity always ensued.

Tonight's New Years Day dinner was the last cracker event of the season, but rather than be done with them entirely, I found this article on The Telegraph website: Top Ten Worst Cracker Jokes Ever. The jokes are only in English, but I think they are corny enough to get me through until next year.

For Auld Lang Syne

It's become a tradition for us to end the year by snuffing a couple of crustaceans, throwing some potatoes in the oven, tossing a salad, popping the cork on some decent champagne, and then eating dinner in our pajamas.

Why should this year be any different?

Thanks to Mr. Time Magazine Man of the Year

Almost 20 years ago I did my student teaching in two parts, six weeks in a first grade class and another six in a fourth grade class. I started the school year with that first grade teacher and her students: I helped set the room up, I was there on the first day, back to school night, and conferences. My sense of ownership was strong, and I was sad to leave for the second half of my assignment.

As luck would have it, my real teaching job was in the middle school that many of those students would eventually attend, and my toe was tapping for the five years it took for them to reach me. Their parents were super impressed that I remembered their children, but I could never have forgotten them, never mind that to this day, I have their school pictures from that year in the top drawer of my desk at school.

And here the story takes a facebook turn: a couple of those kids are friends of friends and so occasionally I am smacked in the face by evidence of how much time has actually passed. Today it was a photo of one of their children opening Christmas gifts. To me, he's still a six-year-old missing his front teeth, but to somebody else, he's Dad.

Dinner and a Movie

Back in Buffalo, we went out with Heidi's mom for a movie and then dinner. The movie was terrible-- we all agreed it was one of the worst in recent memory, despite a likable cast and a familiar setting. Dinner, too, was disappointing, but the evening itself was way greater than the sum of its parts, and we all had a really good time.