I head to Las Vegas tomorrow and am excited to see the lights, hear the clinking of the coins, and most of all, see the Divine. Totally cool. Now, I haven't packed and haven't gotten everything together. I certainly don't take after my mom. She lays her suitcase out for a week. In fact, I think my grandma does too! It skipped a generation I think. I return in the dead of night like 1:30am! Since no one loves me enough to pick me up that late/early, I will will be driving my own car. The Harlettes, Bette Midler's backup troupe of singers and dancers are having a contest at Whole Foods in Vegas. The person with the best salad recipe gets tickets and a meet and greet. What are my chances? Are the stars collaborating to say, go, try, you are already in town the Saturday they are doing it. You have a good friend who is a cook...figure it out! So, off I go.
Driving car: $30 Doggie Sitting: $45 Staying at the Luxor: $100 Having a damn good time in Vegas: Priceless
I have promised my mother for weeks that I would show the curtains Diane and I made (okay, mostly Diane) for the new house. They are great. I should give a shout out to my buddy Sherry who had the fabric we added to lengthen the curtains. Aren't they awesome? Also, for mom, the bedding. Oh yes, and the new couch too.
As I was heading to get certified as a substitute in Austin, NPR was blaring through the speakers of the car. Because I was, as usual, running late, I entered the car, coffee in hand, and raced to the training. The whole time driving, this strange short story about a plane hitting the World Trade Center in NY was being told. I thought, "Huh, selected shorts doesn't usually play on a weekday." A red light. An insight. Oh my, God, it isn't a story. Entering the training, I asked if anyone had heard if a plane had hit a building in NY. We turned on a rolling TV cart just in time to see the second plane hit. We would watch transfixed and horrified for days. So far away we were in Texas and yet, so close.
My mom says she won't forget the day Kennedy was assassinated. I won't forget this day, the day I thought was a selected short.
Las Vegas: I have wanted to go for months. There was a plan to go with 3 of my bestest friends over the new year. I was so elated to have those I enjoy the most planning to come with me to a new place, where my most favorite icon, Bette Midler was/is playing at Caesar's Palace. New Years at such a fun place? Priceless. We didnt go. The tickets were bought and the humms...began. So, we canceled and Bette sang on without us. Now, after many months we are planning to go again. But the "Christmas Presents" promised in Bette memorabilia have lapsed and one friend has bailed. I am left with the other two who have rather differing ideas of travel. One, high end luxury. One, low end tent life. Me? I just want to see Bette Midler. I want to stay at the hotel where she lives in hopes, that she will walk by as we sip cocktails. Yes, I know there is only a .001% chance of seeing her there, but there is a chance. I have a feeling that the chances at the Motel 6 Las Vegas are less, as is true of the fancy Luxor. We surely can't afford Caesar's, so who cares? So, fuck it all. This month is crazy with travel, to the point of it almost not feeling fun. This weekend, a conference on Friday, Saturday and then to Austin for one night. Back to SA. Then next weekend, Vegas. Back to San Antonio Monday at 1:30am. Then, the following weekend, San Diego for another conference. Too much. How can travel, one of my most favorite thing, sound so not fun?
I had the pleasure of playing two games tonight. The Texas Tech Team was missing one girl, I was one girl with a mitt and a beer, and thus, I was crowned the pinch. I got to hit and played catcher. My knees are hurting even now. But, what fun! We did well at our game too and won, 10-5. After a loss last week of 21-2, we were elated and celebrated with beer at the clubhouse. It is nice to play though, not only because I love ball, but because there is literally NO competition. Dropped a ball? Yeah! Way to run towards it. Went through your legs? Ways to charge it! My competitive nature is learning, and I like it. Plus, it is hard to be competitive when you are bad at something. Is there ever someone who is competitive at something they are horrible at? Insight: If kids arent good at reading, they will never want to compete at it. Accelerated reader sucks.
Anyways, just got in, thought I would drop a hello to the world. Off to bed.
That is a lot of work! Should a professor hold off on some proposals and only do one or two? It is hard to know which one or two to choose. I really need to stop. I want to write, not propose. So, now how about only AERA, CRA, and KDP (CRA is Jackie's favorite, AERA is mine, and PDK was already accepted)?
Alas, away from work and school and its in-separatable-ness, Loretta and her cat Clarice were here for the week. It is weird to have someone in your abode when no one is normally here! For example, on Tuesday I awoke and went to the living room to eat oatmeal before work. Looking at the clock on the mantle, I added an hour, knowing that I had not reset the clocks in the house when the time changed the weekend before. I thought to myself, "Self, you sure got up earlier than you thought!" I know you know where this is going. I was an hour late getting to work because my dear housemate had changed it. It was so nice to have her here though. I think I should get a 1950 era wife-someone to take care of the kids (Cita, Mitzie, and Baby Zoey), make dinner when I get home at 10, and bring in a second salary. I think it is harder to find a man that does it (although I know there are some). It is perhaps easier to find a wife. Im sure that is a bad thing to say being that I am straight and single.
This weekend I wrote my paper for AERA, graded, emailed students, watched too many episodes of the addictive America's Next Top Model, and went shopping at the mall. Now, it is back to work. Boy, weekends, while fun, have a way of disappearing on ya.
I have a most beloved friend who made such an interesting commentary in an email to me. After She has spent her life devoted to kids and school, thinking and learning she wonders what to do about those teachers who don't care, don't want to work in a space fraught with emotion and hard labor. What do we do with the % of teachers who act as the proverbial "glorified babysitters?" How will we ever be professionals if those who work within the profession deprofessionalize us? Good question.
So, who had a good spring break? My brother. Here is the glory. The glory of love.
The National Reading Panel (1999) describes vocabulary instruction as one of the pillars of an effective reading program. so, I wonder, why is it that we call the week schools let out a Spring Break? I mean, it isnt a break. Break is a misnomer. It is a word that should be reserved for only students who are in the early years. For all school personnel, it is NOT a break! Instead, it is a week to which more gets piled on and one is left to conteplate how they will get it done for which they feel guilty when they don't work, but want a break. It is, for those like me, the time when employers attempt to see which teachers can manage their own time wisely and therefore catch up. What a crock of shit. Spring Break.
So, I am up in Dallas now. I drove in this afternoon from Austin. I spent almost the entire drive talking to my best buddy Jody in LA. Can you imagine a 3 hour phone call? I must admit I hate the phone and I spent the entire journey with it pressed to my ear. You know it's bad when you start changing hands because you arm is tired! I do love hearing all about her crazy life in LA. Just in the last few months there has been a roommate who is crazy (even knocked all of her own teeth out), jail time, a new car, a new boyfriend, a house fire, her sister's pregnancy, her grandfather's first date....the list goes on. I swear it is so entertaining.
Now I am here and my mother is "watching her shows." I guess she has line ups for every day of the week. She is addicted to TV. Tonights agenda was a 2 hour Dancing with the Stars (who I might add arent big stars). Two hours of any show is too much for me. Plus, my tastes are much more inthe line of Intervention and Law & Order. But anyway, the Carrollton home has gotten high speed internet/ No more dial up! So, in the least I can get online now. Did you know that when you call about dial up (which she had until about a week ago) the technical service doesnt even know how to help? It is so antiquated! I am glad she has updated, to say the least.
Zoey has become a little fatty girl. According to Aunt Loretta's baby scale (used for her 7 pound cat), she is up to a wopping 18.75 pounds. I think everybody, other than Mitzie, will be on a diet soon: Cita, me, and Zoey. She was so good today though. Not only did she sleep the entire 4 hours here, but we went to an elementary school field and played ball without her leash and she stayed around me, not running anywhere. So good.
Now, I am going to go get something to drink and settle in to do some work.I must get on my students' blogs soon. I think I will tomorrow. (wink). I also will be handling grandparent stuff.
To-Do Lists are necessary for the teflon brain I have. The problem is that when one is diligent about writing things down so as not to end up in a teflon-caused problem such as a missed meeting, one must be able to cross things off the list to make room for new things. So, what is one supposed to do when the list keeps getting longer and things only theoretically get crossed off? Let me give an example to illustrate the point. A student asked me to write a letter of recommendation. I said I would and that she should follow up with an email as a reminder. Hint: Never ask a teflon disabled professor "to do" something in the hall. She won't remember. Luckily, I am aware of my disability and always respond to send me an email. So, her rec letter got added to the to do list. I wrote it and saved it to my desk top (time spent: approx. 45min). BUT it remains on the to do list because it is not yet printed and sealed. A couple of days later, it gets printed on letterhead with the logo in the right spot (time spent: approx. 20 mins). Then, I file it in her folder as not to lose it (something else teflon disabled people do is forget where something is). So today I got an email from her. I put the wrong grade level in the letter. One word, not two: kindergarten and not first grade. So, now the whole letter must be redone (time spent: another 25 minutes). So the "yes" I gave from the hallway is worth over an hour and has remained on and off my to-do list for a long time. Dont get my started on articles. Revise, resubmit, revise, revise, read, read, edit. Ahh!
Also, while I am in complaint mode, I have spent all morning grading annotated bibliographies. After much angst, these people STILL dont know: 1) how to do an APA citation; 2) how to save their work on a CD; and 3) that grading these things takes as long as it does for them to write them, especially when their writing is so error full. But I press on because I want them to be good writers; I want them to see their errors and get better. It is how I learned. If I give them papers at the end of the semester, they dont get redone and sometimes, dont get picked up! All my hard work sits in a crate waiting for their person to get them, with all the hours of writing I did to show them, for them to learn. Dumb people. I think I did the same thing.
Yesterday I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the utility room floor. It gleamed until this morning when muddy Zoey came racing in after her hullabaloo in the backyard. You know, she is so damned proud of her poop. Maybe I should add that to my to-do list so I can cross it off and be proud of my accomplishment. No- Damn. Id have to add it on there every fucking day. Ahhh!
Mitz is going in next week for another blood test on her liver function. The money on this sweet pupper is crazy. But. of course, I will do what it takes. She is the love of my life.
Hello everyone...well, those that chose to check my blog to see how the heck this thing works. There are a couple of caveats for you, should you decide to keep reading and become a follower: 1) This blog is not about Dr. Wilson. It is about me, Jenny. It is personal and yet public, but not the same as teaching a class or being a stand for something and, 2) This blog, because it is personal contains only my opinions, thoughts, regurgitations, and a lot of cuss words. So, be forewarned.
So, now for the practice blog.
Reading: Here I would, if I had my book input about 10 bullets, quotes, summaries about the actual text. These would serve me as a review sheet for the final. Especially if my professor decided to print the blogs out and let those that did them use them on the final.
Connections: So far, I have really been thinking about high stakes assessment and the impact it has on students. I have known of the ill fated students who stuggle to pass and the impact it will have on future and further schooling, but I think that this reading is the first time that I have been thinking of my little brother in particular. It took him 3 times to pass his exit level TASP test in high school. Our school, at the time, made everyone take it as sophmores and if you passed, kudos. If not, you were remediated so as not to fail when it must be passed, namely as a senior. I took it as a sophmore and-Kudos. I never thought about it again. Eric, my little brother, took it and took it. I think it made him feel like a failure for years, schooling did, high stakes tests did. Sad thing is, he is smart. Even though college was hard, he worked his ass off and made it, in engineering! I mean really! But, he never did do well on tests, never did do well with high stakes and still today, despite owning his own business and graduating college, does he believe he is a good student, a good writer or a good thinker. It is so damaging to have such high stakes attaached to a test. It should not just be a test that makes the difference. Scary.
Is it possible that high stakes do in fact help keep standards and expectations high?
In the movie Beaches, Bette Midler was with Barbara Hershey to the end. Barbara was lying on a chaise-lounge on the beach wearing an oxygen mask, because she was dying of congestive heart failure from cardiomyopathy (enlarged, weakened heart).
The audience heard Bette singing “Wind beneath My Wings,” and I’m sorry, but I cry every single time I see that scene! Water fountains burst from my eyes, and I can hardly breathe. I’m worse than Tammy Faye Baker.
But you know what? That’s how I want to die. I want to be a famous, world-altering professor and writer, on the beach typing my last article on my laptop. Just before I take my last breath, I will hit “send” to my unending world audience, and then Bette Midler will croon out, “A beautiful smile to hide the pain!” Yep, that's how I want to go.
Will I die from congestive heart failure? cancer? or just melancholia?
IS it bad that I am sitting in a meeting (phone meeting) and blogging? Humm...nah-I call it making use of my time, managing time, being practical. Don't we want the people to multi-task, to be able to move in and between things effortlessly and practically?
So I am still struggling with a sore throat but taught today. Fluency was the name of the game. Specifically, how to calculate a child's fluency and what it does and does not tell us. I also taught this morning with Jackie. That class discussion was about the different models involved in the act and development of reading. I loved it, especially when a student started asking questions about cognition.
Now, I have eaten about 10 mini candy bars while sitting here-not good for my Bette diet. Okay very bad! I go back and forth on the idea of dieting. I mean, why can't I just accept myself for my size, stay healthy but be okay with my heavy nature? If I am not working on my eating in ways that help and instread spend most of my time upset at my lack of control, does it add to my life to be on a diet or does it hinder though self-hatred and guilt?
You probably remember the flap last September when Kathy Griffin won an Emmy for her cable-TV reality show, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. The award was presented at the Creative Arts Emmy awards. The program was taped and scheduled for broadcast the following week on the E! cable network. She pissed off a lot of people with her acceptance speech which went as follows:
"Now, a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus. He didn’t help me a bit. If it was up to him, Cesar Milan would be up here with that damn dog. So all I can say is suck it, Jesus, this award is my god now!"
This caused enough of a stink that E! was forced to cut her acceptance speech out of the broadcast. Through some iron reasoning I think I can explain why Kathy Griffin is wrong and Jesus is actually to thank for her award:
And here’s the reasoning:
Jesus died on a cross 2,000 years ago. His dying words were, “Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” He died and they buried him in a rock cut tomb. Three days later, as the Bible says, he rose from the dead. That day is what we Christians celebrate as Easter.
After the resurrection, Christianity began to take off like wildfire, spreading from the Middle East northward to Europe and westward into Ethiopia. Everyone seemed to like the story of the Zombie God. In 300 A.D. Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity and it became the religion of Europe wherein Rome took charge and became the epitome of Godliness, believing that the Zombie God had a profound understanding of people and in particular, that they don't know what the hell they are doing. In celebration of the rising of the wise Zombie God whose incredible thoughts such as, but not limited to, "They know not what they do," and "Yo soy Jesus," was celebrated with bunnies of chocolate to commemorate his favorite animal.
Well then. I hope that ‘shows‘ you. Some guy who may or may not have existed, was or was not executed on a cross (Muslims disagree with that one), and said one thing or another (depending on the gospel), and may or may not have been put behind a rock, then became a Zombie. A dead Roman thought highly of the Zombie Christ, but then things sucked, and Kathy Griffin beat the Dog Whisperer and so there you are. D’uh - Hello people, it’s crystal clear! The eating of chocolate bunnies in celebration of the Zombie God allowed the birth of joyful noises like the Emmy Awards therefore begetting Kathy Griffin. How Can’t you see it? She definitely owes a lot to Jesus...we all do.
I was a researcher. I was savvy, smart, and incredibly tenacious. I worked hard for months on end and kept to a routine. So why is it when I look back at my dissertation, at my rigor, it seems like it was someone else? I read the words, feel the world I was in, as if it were yesterday and yet, it feels like an eternity ago, another lifetime, another body.
The job I have now, at the college I am currently working, does not really let me be a researcher. There is not a mentor to push me, not someone who is a researcher to work with. I am not sure that I am a teacher either. I am approached as a prophet, as if I have a code, a key that I can give to another and then they will also possess the power of the written word to be passed on to their children. I teach, but I dont think that it changes the ways these teachers will go about their jobs later. I try to balance high expectations with the need for spoon-feeding, knowing that most will not cross the river with me, they can't. They actually cannot even see there is a river. So, a teacher, I am not sure that I am. So, the very thing that I love about my job, the teaching, isn't really the same, or as rewarding as, teaching young children. While children come to school wanting to be engaged, wanting to learn interesting things, these students mostly want to be done as fast as possible. They take as many courses as possible and are upset when they cant get it all done. Yet, they don't make time for the work. I have figured out something important however: When a lifelong student is out of school, they want back in. When they are in school, they want out. I want to want to do my work. Does that make sense? I want to want to. I don't have that.
I am feeling better after that damn cold knocked me out for the entire weekend. I even missed out on having Logan come and play here. I hate that! My kid time is very important to me. So, he and Karen are coming by tomorrow for breakfast so I get a little bit of Logo time. I just adore him. I am about to go make some hot dogs in celebration of the Super Bowl.
