The other day, a friend at work pinned this article to our bulletin board. Without going into specifics, I'll just say that I could've written this (though as a teacher, not a parent!), and her descriptions hit very close to home. I'm gratuitously reposting the whole thing because the website requires registration; however, you can read the ( Read more... )

I'm feeling much better. Only problem is that I'm sniffling like you wouldn't believe, but I'd much prefer that to how I felt last weekend! Today my classes began a month-long unit on poetry -- reading, not writing. We started things off with venn diagrams comparing poets and rappers; it's my way of circumventing the now-cliched lyrics=poetry ( Read more... )

I was supposed to spend the day working on a grant proposal instead of teaching; however, we decided this morning to ditch the grant. Probably the best course of action, but I’ve decided to cope with the abrupt change by blathering on LJ.

I did not watch either House or Veronica Mars last night, despite the first apparently being goooood, and the ( Read more... )

A few thoughts on tonight's ( Friday Night Lights. )

Off-campus today! I'm at a school on the other side of the county, meeting with five other Reading Coordinators from middle schools in my district, to talk about issues related to, er, reading! Quite interesting so far. Most of the others are from those super-posh schools with high test scores and well-behaved kids... pretty much the opposite of ( Read more... )

Wow! Those fingerless gloves really were quick and (relatively) easy! I finished the first one tonight. The pattern was apparently designed for smaller hands than mine, but it still turned out quite well. Of course I had to take a photo, plus another of a ball-band dishcloth I made earlier this week. ( Yarn porn. )

Massive storm system heading my way. Guess I'd better do the daily post while I still have electricity! (Just looked at my archive and saw that this is my 890th consecutive day of posting at least once. That probably says a lot about me, though I'm not sure whether it's good or bad.) One of these days, I'll be as prolific about replying to ( Read more... )

1. Subject line courtesy of indigo419, during our squeefest over the new BSG roundtable podcast (available on iTunes) with the actors -- specifically Jamie. God, I am such a sucker for an edjamacated guy. You can imagine the flailing when he used words like synaesthesia, versimilitude, and onanism. OMG! I haven't even listened to most of it yet; I need ( Read more... )

1. My classes continue to work on expository reading, this time focusing on how to determine which information is relevant to a task. Today I gave them a list of situations (going to a movie, cooking dinner for your family, etc...) and asked them to list five things they would need to know before beginning the task. One group received the prompt ( Read more... )

I am having a fabulous* day, and I must share it here ( Read more... )