How to Write a Personal Narrative

Cake Mix Cookies

2012-01-15T15:31:00.003-06:00

Just discovered a great way to make quick cookies: use a cake mix! I am trying it right now. Cookies are in the oven. I just softened a stick of butter (margarine, actually) and mixed it with a white cake mix and an egg. Sugar cookies! The recipe I found said you can also use chocolate cake mix- be sure to add 2 T of water along with the butter and egg - and mix in chocolate chips, candy coated chips, nuts, oatmeal ... Sounds like an easy way to make M&M cookies. If these turn out, I'm trying the M&M idea tomorrow. I like cookies. :)

Michael Fullan: Leading in a Culture of Change

2012-01-07T10:54:00.003-06:00

Whatever one’s style, every leader, to be effective, must have and work on
improving his or her moral purpose.
Authentic leaders display character, and character is the defining
characteristic of authentic leadership.
Whether people are driven by egoistic (self-centered) or altruistic (unselfish)
motives, the fact is that all effective leaders are driven by both.

Leadership, if it is to be effective has to;
(1) Have an explicit “making-a-difference” sense of purpose,
(2) Use strategies that mobilize many people to tackle though problems,
(3) Be held accountable by measured and debatable indicators of success, and
(4) Be ultimately assessed by the extent to which it awakens people’s intrinsic
commitment, which is none other than the mobilizing of everyone’s sense of moral
purpose.

We are more likely to learn something from people who disagree with us
than we are from people who agree. Leaders should have good ideas and present
them well (the authoritative element) while at the same time seeking and listening
to doubters (aspects of democratic leadership). They must try to build good
relationships (be affiliative) even with those who may not trust them.
We need to represent resisters for two reasons. First, they sometimes have
ideas that we might have missed, especially in situations of diversity or
complexity or in the tackling of problems for which the answer is unknown.
Second, resisters are crucial when it comes to the politics of implementation. In
democratic organizations, such as university, being alert to differences of opinion
is vital.
Successful organizations don’t go with only like-minded innovators; they
deliberately build in differences.

Five main emotional competency sets:

* Self-awareness (knowing one’s internal state, preferences, resources, and
intuitions)
* Self-regulation (managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources)
* Motivation (emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals)
* Empathy (awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns)
* Social skills (adeptness at inducing desirable responses from others)

World's Top Destinations: 2012

2011-12-27T10:45:00.000-06:00

Just as I posted last year, here are the top 9 places to visit in the world according to four "travel experts:"

1. England
2. "World of the Maya" - Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras
3. Myanmar a.k.a Burma
4. Chicago!!!
5. St. Vincent and the Grenadines (32 Caribbean islands, between St. Lucia and Grenada)
6. The Netherlands
7. "Atlantic Canada" - Maritime provinces; think Nova Scotia
8. Uruguay
9. Orlando

What is College For? (NYTimes)

2011-12-17T06:55:00.001-06:00

In What is College For? the author makes some important points to remember about the point of college- it's not only about learning, but about learning how to learn and become a lifelong learner.

Is college worth it? he asks and cites in the affirmative a Pew research survey this year that found 74% of graduates from four-year colleges who say their education was “very useful in helping them grow intellectually;” 69% that “it was very useful in helping them grow and mature as a person;” and 55% that “it was very useful in helping prepare them for a job or career.” 86% think “college has been a good investment for them personally.”

There has been however much discussion recently about the “failure” of higher education. Criticisms include it’s too expensive, admissions policies are unfair, the drop-out rate is too high. The article continues, "There are serious concerns about the quality of this experience. In particular, the university curriculum leaves students disengaged from the material they are supposed to be learning." Students perceive most of their courses as intrinsically “boring” and spend on average only about 12-14 hours a week studying. "Professors have ceased to expect genuine engagement from students and often give good grades (B or better) to work that is at best minimally adequate."

*****

This lack of academic engagement is real, even among schools with the best students and the best teachers, and it increases dramatically as the quality of the school decreases. But it results from a basic misunderstanding — by both students and teachers — of what colleges are for.

First of all, they are not simply for the education of students. This is an essential function, but the raison d’être of a college is to nourish a world of intellectual culture; that is, a world of ideas, dedicated to what we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically. In our society, this world is mainly populated by members of college faculties: scientists, humanists, social scientists (who straddle the humanities and the sciences properly speaking), and those who study the fine arts. Law, medicine and engineering are included to the extent that they are still understood as “learned professions,” deploying practical skills that are nonetheless deeply rooted in scientific knowledge or humanistic understanding. When, as is often the case in business education and teacher training, practical skills far outweigh theoretical understanding, we are moving beyond the intellectual culture that defines higher education.

Our support for higher education makes sense only if we regard this intellectual culture as essential to our society. Otherwise, we could provide job-training and basic social and moral formation for young adults far more efficiently and cheaply, through, say, a combination of professional and trade schools, and public service programs. There would be no need to support, at great expense, the highly specialized interests of, for example, physicists, philosophers, anthropologists and art historians. Colleges and universities have no point if we do not value the knowledge and understanding to which their faculties are dedicated.

This has important consequences for how we regard what goes on in college classrooms. Teachers need to see themselves as, first of all, intellectuals, dedicated to understanding poetry, history, human psychology, physics, biology — or whatever is the focus of their discipline. But they also need to realize that this dedication expresses not just their idiosyncratic interest in certain questions but a conviction that those questions have general human significance, even apart from immediately practical applications. This is why a discipline requires not just research but also teaching. Non-experts need access to what experts have learned, and experts need to make sure that their research remains in contact with general human concerns. The classroom is the primary locus of such contact.

Students, in turn, need to recognize that their college education is above all a matter of opening themselves up to new dimensions of knowledge and understanding. Teaching is not a matter of (as we too often say) “making a subject (poetry, physics, philosophy) interesting” to students but of students coming to see how such subjects are intrinsically interesting. It is more a matter of students moving beyond their interests than of teachers fitting their subjects to interests that students already have. Good teaching does not make a course’s subject more interesting; it gives the students more interests — and so makes them more interesting.

Students readily accept the alleged wisdom that their most important learning at college takes place outside the classroom. Many faculty members — thinking of their labs, libraries or studies — would agree. But the truth is that, for both students and faculty members, the classroom is precisely where the most important learning occurs.

From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model (NYTimes)

2011-12-14T21:07:00.000-06:00

I love the ending to this story: "“Education policies here are always written to be ‘the best’ or ‘the top this or that,’ ” he said. “We’re not like that. We want to be better than the Swedes. That’s enough for us.”

Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and author, had a simple question for the high school seniors he was speaking to one morning last week in Manhattan: “Who here wants to be a teacher?”
Out of a class of 15, two hands went up — one a little reluctantly.
“In my country, that would be 25 percent of people,” Dr. Sahlberg said. “And,” he added, thrusting his hand in the air with enthusiasm, “it would be more like this.”
In his country, Dr. Sahlberg said later in an interview, teachers typically spend about four hours a day in the classroom, and are paid to spend two hours a week on professional development. At the University of Helsinki, where he teaches, 2,400 people competed last year for 120 slots in the (fully subsidized) master’s program for schoolteachers. “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine,” he said.
Dr. Sahlberg puts high-quality teachers at the heart of Finland’s education success story — which, as it happens, has become a personal success story of sorts, part of an American obsession with all things Finnish when it comes to schools.
Take last week. On Monday, Dr. Sahlberg was the keynote speaker at an education conference in Chicago. On Tuesday, he had to return to Helsinki for an Independence Day party held by Finland’s president — a coveted invitation to an event that much of the country watches on television.
On Wednesday, it was Washington, for a party for the release of his latest book, “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland?,” that drew staff members from the White House and Congress.
And Thursday brought him to the Upper West Side, for a daylong visit to the Dwight School, a for-profit school that prides itself on internationalism, where he talked to those seniors.
Ever since Finland, a nation of about 5.5 million that does not start formal education until age 7 and scorns homework and testing until well into the teenage years, scored at the top of a well-respected international test in 2001 in math, science and reading, it has been an object of fascination among American educators and policy makers.
Finlandophilia only picked up when the nation placed close to the top again in 2009, while the United States ranked 15th in reading, 19th in math and 27th in science.
The Finnish Embassy in Washington hosts brunch seminars with titles like “Why Are Finnish Kids So Smart?” and organizes trips to Finland for education journalists eager to see for themselves. In Helsinki, the Education Ministry has had 100 official delegations from 40 to 45 countries visit each year since 2005. Schools there used to love the attention, making cakes and doing folk dances for the foreigners, Dr. Sahlberg said, but now the crush of observers is considered a national distraction.
Critics say that Finland is an irrelevant laboratory for the United States. It has a tiny economy, a low poverty rate, a homogenous population — 5 percent are foreign-born — and socialist underpinnings (speeding tickets are calculated according to income).
Its school system has roughly the same number of teachers as New York City’s but far fewer students, 600,000 compared with New York’s 1.1 million. Finnish students speak Finnish and Swedish and usually English. (Patrick F. Bassett, head of the Washington-based National Association of Independent Schools, a fan of what Finland has been doing, said one of the things he learned on his own pilgrimage to Finland was that the average resident checks out 17 books a year from the library.)
“There are things they do right,” said Mark S. Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, “but I’m not sure how many lessons we get are portable.” Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said Finlandophilia was “totally deified” and “blown out of proportion.”
But Linda Darling-Hammond, an education professor at Stanford, said Finland could be an excellent model for individual states, noting that it is about the size of Kentucky.
“The fact that we have more race, ethnicity and economic heterogeneity, and we have this huge problem of poverty, should not mean we don’t want qualified teachers — the strategies become even more important,” Dr. Darling-Hammond said. “Thirty years ago, Finland’s education system was a mess. It was quite mediocre, very inequitable. It had a lot of features our system has: very top-down testing, extensive tracking, highly variable teachers, and they managed to reboot the whole system.”
Both Dr. Darling-Hammond and Dr. Sahlberg said a turning point was a government decision in the 1970s to require all teachers to have master’s degrees — and to pay for their acquisition. The starting salary for school teachers in Finland, 96 percent of whom are unionized, was about $29,000 in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, compared with about $36,000 in the United States.
More bear than tiger, Finland scorns almost all standardized testing before age 16 and discourages homework, and it is seen as a violation of children’s right to be children for them to start school any sooner than 7, Dr. Sahlberg said during his day at Dwight. He spoke to seniors taking a “Theory of Knowledge” class, then met with administrators and faculty members.
“The first six years of education are not about academic success,” he said. “We don’t measure children at all. It’s about being ready to learn and finding your passion.”
Dr. Sahlberg, 52, an Education Ministry official and a former math teacher, is the author of 15 books. He said he wrote the latest one, which sold out its first printing in a week, in response to the overwhelming interest in his country’s educational system. It was not meant to claim that Finland’s way was the best way, he said, and he was quick to caution against countries’ trying to import ideas à la carte and then expecting results.
“Don’t try to apply anything,” he told the Dwight teachers. “It won’t work because education is a very complex system.”
Besides high-quality teachers, Dr. Sahlberg pointed to Finland’s Lutheran leanings, almost religious belief in equality of opportunity, and a decision in 1957 to require subtitles on foreign television as key ingredients to the success story.
He emphasized that Finland’s success is one of basic education, from age 7 until 16, at which point 95 percent of the country goes on to vocational or academic high schools. “The primary aim of education is to serve as an equalizing instrument for society,” he said.
Dr. Sahlberg said another reason the system had succeeded was that “only dead fish follow the stream” — a Finnish expression.
Finland is going against the tide of the “global education reform movement,” which is based on core subjects, competition, standardization, test-based accountability, control.
“Education policies here are always written to be ‘the best’ or ‘the top this or that,’ ” he said. “We’re not like that. We want to be better than the Swedes. That’s enough for us.”

David McCullough, On Teaching History

2011-06-19T16:25:00.001-05:00

excerpted from The Weekend Interview, The Wall Street Journal:

This week, the Department of Education released the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which found that only 12% of high-school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation's history. And consider: Just 2% of those students understand the significance of Brown v. Board of Education.

We've been teaching history poorly. And Mr. McCullough wants us to amend our ways. "History is a source of strength," he says. "It sets higher standards for all of us."

"People who come out of college with a degree in education and not a degree in a subject are severely handicapped in their capacity to teach effectively," Mr. McCullough argues. "Because they're often assigned to teach subjects about which they know little or nothing." The great teachers love what they're teaching, he says, and "you can't love something you don't know anymore than you can love someone you don't know."

Many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. And they're so badly written. They're boring!"

Mr. McCullough learned to write from a series of great teachers, most notably Thornton Wilder, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and novelist who was also a resident scholar at Yale, where Mr. McCullough graduated in 1951. To this day, he remembers Wilder's teaching that a good writer preserves "an air of freedom" in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end—even if he's reading a history book.

Wilder's example, he believes, provides another lesson. "Teachers are the most important people in our society. They need far more pay, obviously, but they need more encouragement. They need more respect. They need more appreciation from all of us. And we shouldn't do anything to hinder them or to make their job harder."

"We have to talk about history, talk about the books we love, the biographies and histories." He continues, "We should all take our children to historic places. Go to Gettysburg. Go to the Capitol."

And teach history, he says—while tapping three fingers on the table between us—with "the lab technique." In other words, "give the student a problem to work on."

"If I were teaching a class," he says, "I would tell my students, 'I want you to do a documentary on the building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Or I want to you to interview Farmer Jones or former sergeant Fred or whatever." He adds, "I have been feeling increasingly that history ought to be understood and taught to be considerably more than just politics and the military."

What about textbooks? "I'd take one of those textbooks. I'd clip off all the numbers on the pages. I'd pull out three pages here, two pages there, five pages here—all the way through. I'd put them aside, mix them all up, and give them to you and three other students and say, 'Put it back in order and tell me what's missing.'" You'd know that book inside and out."

Mr. McCullough advises us to concentrate on grade school. "Grade school children, as we all know, can learn a foreign language in a flash," he says. "They can learn anything in a flash. The brain at that stage in life is like a sponge. And one of the ways they get it is through art: drawing, making things out of clay, constructing models, and dramatic productions. If you play the part of Abigail Adams or Johnny Appleseed in a fourth-grade play, you're never going to forget it as long as you live."

"We're too concentrated on having our children learn the answers," he summarizes. "I would teach them how to ask questions—because that's how you learn."

Snow Day

2011-01-10T13:05:00.003-06:00

The view from the front, a little after 10 this morning:

Backyard:

We're not exactly snowed in, but schools may not open tomorrow as it's not expected to get much above freezing today, and snow plows are scarce around here.

It seems middle Mississippi fared better. While the schools were closed, my mom and brother did go in to work.

It's a lazy day. Now: decadent afternoon coffee and brownies ...

Snowed In

2011-01-09T20:07:00.004-06:00

Well the winter weather warning has finally born fruit; the snow started falling a couple of hours ago. We went out in it briefly, but there wasn't enough on the ground yet to be much fun- although my spouse was able to scrape up enough to LOVINGLY (his word) pelt me in the back of the head with a snowball. That's when I knew it was time to come in. I'm sure tomorrow will be lots of fun. Really.
Having the day off, and knowing well in advance that we would most likely have the day off, makes it feel like Christmas vacation all over again. We watched High School Musical, played Sorry, played video games, read books, cooked, drank coffee, and watched lots of football.
I just started reading a good book: Peak by Roland Smith. Ironically, given my current job, I don't often read much fiction. I feel good about myself when I do. Like I'm not a phony, constantly encouraging kids to read when I don't do it much myself.
One of my goals this year is to read more, and to write more. I started journaling again in order to keep my goals in focus and my thoughts clear. Not every day, but some.
I was doing some goal-setting tonight and realized that I've reached a point where my goals are fairly succinct and attainable. They all fit together pretty well.
Last week was not quite normal, and already I can see this week will not be normal. Perhaps tomorrow I'll post some pictures of this year's first snow.

mug

2010-12-30T15:09:00.002-06:00

This is the mug my son and husband designed and glazed for me. Isn't it great? The flash kind of washed it out here, but it's great. Even the inside is full of color! It was truly one of my favorite gifts, and I can use it every day!

World's top destinations for 2011

2010-12-30T08:51:00.003-06:00

World's top destinations for 2011 according to CNN Travel:

1. New York
2. New Zealand
3. Peruvian rain forest
4. Barcelona
5. Norway
6. Albania
7. Japan
8. Guatemala
9. Bulgaria

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T09:27:00.002-06:00

We've had a GREAT week hanging out at home and to top it off, Santa came! leaving games and toys to amuse us for hours. Truly we are blessed.
We did not go to Mexico this year. Instead we stayed here, played lots of Mario Bros and Dance Revolution on the wii, went bowling, wrapped presents, mailed cards and boxes, watched "High School Musical" multiple times, and cleaned out a little.
My Christmas gifts were outstanding and perfect: a handmade mug, a new laptop battery, the coziest pajamas, and a peaceful morning at home with my family.
I wish for all of you as wonderful a Christmas.

Michigan State

2010-11-26T08:49:00.001-06:00

On Recruiting Teachers

2010-11-25T06:53:00.002-06:00

from "Teaching for America," by Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 11/20/10

If you look at the countries leading the pack ... (like Finland and Denmark), one thing stands out: they insist that their teachers come from the top one-third of their college graduating classes.

Arne Duncan: “Three countries that outperform us — Singapore, South Korea, Finland — don’t let anyone teach who doesn’t come from the top third of their graduating class. And in South Korea, they refer to their teachers as ‘nation builders.’ ”

There are 3.2 million active teachers in America today. In the next decade, half (the baby boomers) will retire. How we recruit, train, support, evaluate and compensate their successors “is going to shape public education for the next 30 years,” said Duncan.

On to .... Chicago!

2010-11-19T03:51:00.002-06:00

No, not forever. But after school today we are midwest-bound, and I am delighted. Our first stop is the Mich State-Purdue game on Saturday, but our main destination is Chicago, and we will be there for days. I have been there only once, for less than 24 hours, so this is an event for me. Other than visiting with friends, plans are: John Hancock Building; Shedd Aquarium; and Museum of Science and Industry. A walk on the Magnificent Mile decked out in holiday lights, a little shopping, terrific! Perhaps I can take some photos and add some color to this blog. Here we go! And happy pre-Thanksgiving everyone. See you soon friends.

A Blur

2010-11-14T04:24:00.002-06:00

My life is seriously speeding past my eyes this year, but in a happy way I suppose. Only one more week 'til Thanksgiving Break (also this should be an easy week for me) and then it's a few 'til Christmas Break. We're staying here this year, so it will seem L O N G-in a good way. I am excited about everything. Holidays, don't let me down.

Happy Daylight Savings Time!

2010-11-07T11:38:00.002-06:00

I slept well this week, though it sped by in a blur. I got up around 6:30 this morning, surprised that it wasn't earlier, and in fact it was, but I didn't figure that out until a few hours later. Yay for an extra hour of Sunday!
Cool weather has arrived. We put the electric blanket on our bed last night. Sooo cozy.
Went to a beautiful wedding yesterday. Beautiful day, beautiful bride, wonderful to catch up with old friends we haven't seen in years ... a nice day. I have been so blessed with so many wonderful friends in my life.
Took my time at the grocery store this morning (lesisurely enjoying my "extra hour") and am now messing around in the kitchen. Croutons in the oven smell amazing!
In two weeks we'll be on fall break enjoying the great Midwest! So excited, can't wait. I'm planning my cold weather attire now. It will be here before we know it! After that, fast forward to Christmas, and the school year will be half over: wow. Time flies when you're having fun.
Hope you are enjoying YOUR extra hour today. Have fun!

Basketball Game Duty Hangover

2010-11-02T06:00:00.002-05:00

Is what I feel like I have. After working at school all day, I reported to the concession stand to work for the first game of the season. Apparently that's the busiest game, and there were three of them, with way too many whistles for that age division. Finally got to shut down the store at 9 pm. Worked a 14 hour day. On a Monday. After a weekend of Halloween festivities. I'm tired. Luckily I don't have duty again for another month, so I have time to rest up. My objective in choosing apparel this morning: as comfortable as possible. I hope it will be a good day. And hope to be back here on the couch in 10 short hours.

Sleep=Rested

2010-10-30T13:16:00.004-05:00

Two days this week I managed to sleep until 5:30, and this morning I didn't get out of bed until around seven-THIRTY. I stayed home yesterday, bypassing what I anticipated to be a mess of day (go with your gut), had a GREAT day instead, and today I feel AWESOME-much in contrast to usual Saturdays. I'm zipping around feeling only slightly fatigued. Last Saturday I pretty much spent on the couch. But, that's what you gotta do sometimes. And after some catch-up housework in the morning, that's what I did yesterday. It was glorious and I know I deserved every minute of it-it's the first day I've taken off in the three months school's been in session. Plus, I had worked the previous three days straight without breaks, and I was exhausted. My head hurt. I did not feel guilty for a minute. Now I feel triumphant. Ta-da.
Tonight we are going to a Halloween party. I plan to dress like a roll of sushi. My spouse will be a ninja, with an authentic outfit ordered from Osaka. It's VERY cool. The child will be a Transformer. What do you know, wikipedia says Transformers originated in Japan too (トランスフォーマー, Toransufomā), so I guess all three of us are dressing with a Japanese theme. Ha.
We are excited to be planning our trip to Chicago- actually we may first drive to East Lansing for a game at a certain person's alma mater (and Dad, they're the SPARTANS not the Trojans. I think he will forgive you because he knows your intentions were sincere, but I would not make this mistake again). Then on to Chicago. We can always go back to Chicago now that all our friends live there (how did that happen?) but who knows when an MSU opportunity will arise again. OK, well, probably next year. But anyway it'll be fun. If I don't freeze to death.
I will try to post some photos of our costumes and maybe of the party tomorrow.

Go Fish

2010-10-22T19:40:00.003-05:00

I am playing 'Go Fish' with Connor. The blog and I are estranged friends, as are me and exercise, alas. But early mornings and I are closer than ever! 3:30, 4, 4:30. It's great to have quiet, peaceful, uninterrupted, silent time to myself to think and work, but it does result in occasional on-the-job fatigue. I just have to be sure not to operate any heavy machinery (or do any unsupervised cooking). Come to think of it, I did have a mishap with hot glue yesterday. A couple of hours of ice, and today I barely notice it.
Where has October gone? Seems like yesterday the month had just begun. We are looking forward to Halloween, then a friend's wedding, and Thanksgiving. The year is racing by!
Work is going allright. I am so busy, juggling what feels like about ten different things. So happy I am not taking classes now. Next month I am slated to start tutoring after school. I wish I could also pull out kids during school, but I haven't figured out how to clone myself yet.

September

2010-09-12T18:22:00.005-05:00

Happy birthday Maria! Beautiful weather today. This morning we took the kid to a big park and skated around a pond. He has been playing outside with the neighbor friends for about five hours straight. I foresee a meltdown once the party ends.
Things are going pretty well. My laptop zzzt the other day and until a new power adapter arrives in the mail, I am using a new mac book. It's pretty sweet. I like it. I am using it mainly to create an audiobook library.
Our neighbors are slated to arrive home from their European vacation later today. We are also hoping to get Isabella back from Brazil in a few days. It has been quiet without her. I wonder if she will face some readjustment to speaking English upon her return?
Need to go round up the child. Wish me luck. He has soccer games two nights in a row this week. He did great in his first game last week, scored a goal and assisted in another. He was mad when the game ended, because he wanted to keep playing.
Have a good week everyone and I'll try to write again soon. Cheers!

Looking Ahead

2010-07-25T22:48:00.002-05:00

Can't believe that it'll be August in about a week! Where has the summer gone. Fast & furious. My batteries are mostly recharged. Today I realized hey, I'm not depressed anymore- and my interest in reading has also revived (thank goodness. I'd otherwise be a sad excuse for a librarian). Here in the YS household we've been reading the Captain Underpants series (currently on the fourth epic novel) plus The Magic Finger at least once a day. Ever since James and the Giant Peach on CD, Roald Dahl has become a favorite: The Witches, The Enormous Crocodile, etc. Dahl is a terrific writer- very clever- and I look forward to reading more. I saw today that there is a Roald Dahl museum outside of London- I hope to visit it someday.

Around Town, San Francisco

2010-07-18T15:13:00.004-05:00

Anchor Steam: San Francisco Original, Since 1896

Coit Tower can be seen in the distance.

Just around the corner from 826 Valencia, "San Francisco's only independent pirate supply store." It actually fronts for a writing center! Being in the store was a surreal experience. I will not attempt to describe it. Only in SF. So weird. OK, so I described it a little.

Sunny Sunday afternoon, Delores Park (I opted not to include any naked people in my photograph)

Lombard St

2010-07-18T14:44:00.005-05:00

Yeah, we drove down it. I've been to SF a number of times, but never with my own car. Gorgeous day!

Backyard, Sunflower

2010-07-18T14:31:00.003-05:00

Waldo Tunnel

2010-07-17T09:18:00.001-05:00

This tunnel connects San Francisco to Marin County. It's just between the Golden Gate Bridge and Sausalito. We were on our way to Muir Woods.

Golden Gate

2010-07-17T08:54:00.008-05:00

All except the last were images shot on the way out of the city; this one is obviously on the way back in.

The Ferry Building

2010-07-17T08:22:00.005-05:00

Neither of us remembered this "sculpture" from previous trips, perhaps because it wasn't there? Built in 2003, it symbolizes "where Tony Bennett left his heart."

The interior of the Ferry Building is filled with shops, cafes, and restaurants. This stand sold live seafood.

Bay Bridge

2010-07-17T08:08:00.005-05:00

San Francisco

2010-07-16T20:35:00.003-05:00

Santa Cruz

2010-07-16T20:30:00.002-05:00

Southern CA Roadscapes

2010-07-16T20:25:00.003-05:00

San Diego

2010-07-16T20:17:00.002-05:00

The Grand Canyon

2010-07-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

NM - Grand Canyon

2010-07-16T07:46:00.003-05:00

back on the road

Okla - Albuquerque

2010-07-16T07:34:00.003-05:00

en route to New Mexico ... somewhere along I-40

arriving Albuquerque ... I think those are the Sandia Mtns.

courtyard in Old Town Albuquerque

Tenjin Shrine Fire

2010-07-06T07:51:00.005-05:00

Recently we received some sad news: the Tenjin Shrine near our home in Japan caught fire. The annual Tenjin festival may not be held this year. Luckily, the danjiri (similar to floats) used in the festival processions are housed in little garages all around the town, so they are safe.

We are very sad that this very beautiful and ancient sacred place, a symbol of the Ueno community, has been damaged by fire. Because it was so near our home - maybe 1000 yards from our door if that - I would literally visit the shrine every day. It was a very peaceful place where once inside, time seemed not to exist. Below are pictures my friend sent.

She said it may be arson. Who would do that? That makes it even worse. She said, "Perhaps it will rebuild. But it is vast expense. Shrine is classic building. A lot of time and money are necessary."

All things of the world are transient, but it seems that some things should be exempt from the destructive rules of nature. It saddens me to know the shrine will not be there if I return, but even more, it saddens me to think of all the people of the community, young and old, who can no longer go to Tenjin shrine. There were older people who would visit the shrine every morning as part of their daily ritual, and it was the shrine children and families of the town would visit on ceremonial days (shi-chi-go-san, for example). In a very physical sense, the shrine was the center of the community.

Here is a photo of the shrine taken on the New Year's Day we lived in Japan.

Time Zones

2010-06-25T23:27:00.003-05:00

I seem to be still operating in the Pacific time zone, although I'm living back in Central. My son too. He went to bed at ten- that's late.

The first day back after the great American road trip: the West has been great! We got to hang out with our neighbors tonight and plan to cookout with them tomorrow. We are SO LUCKY to have such wonderful neighbors. Yay for awesome neighbors. It's so 1950s. Or what we imagine the 1950s to be like.

My grandmother, now in her 80s, is thoroughly modern, always up on the latest trends and political developments (moreso than me!), but I always think of her when I think of the 1950s. A simpler time in America when women cooked and cleaned and shopped, and men worked, and children played outside- or that's how the story goes in my head. I don't really know.

Lately I feel nostalgic for the 1950s, which of course is impossible as I was born decades too late. I want things to be simple, neat, clean: how the 1950s appeared, not how it actually was.

Life is always full of contradictions and contrasts. I desire to get back to basics, or back to the source, in our home's cooking and eating patterns, but suspect the appliances I have in my kitchen to facilitate this would astound a 1950s housewife.

I return from my travels with renewed enthusiasm for more experimental food preparation. In other words, I would like to try cooking more and different things. Turning to my brother's blog in search of his hummus recipe, I found lots of great recipes I'd like to try. Good resource, The Comestible Station (see new link, right).

Maybe I'll get around to commenting on/posting pics from the trip tomorrow. But maybe not.

Home Again, Home Again

2010-06-25T09:13:00.002-05:00

... jiggety jig. We made it back after a long day of driving and now have lots to clean and organize. Back to the heat and humidity of the Deep South. Great to be home! Pictures of our trip to come.

Cactus

2010-06-19T11:06:00.001-05:00

Albuquerque, NM

2010-06-11T07:50:00.003-05:00

These are some snapshots from the drive in. This is the first time I've visited Albuquerque. I love it!

Top 100 Children's Novels (according to one survey)

2010-06-11T07:37:00.003-05:00

This is a list of the top 100 children's books, assembled by a children's librarian at the New York Public Library (who also blogs). It's interesting - some are classics, some rather recent. Which ones have you read? #1, Charlotte's Web, was the first chapter book I read to my son, and it was a hit. I may even feel like reading again sometime soon, and this will be a great resource from which to draw ideas. Happy summer reading, no matter what your choice!

Windmills (Roadtrip Posting 1)

2010-06-10T07:40:00.002-05:00

LOTS of windmills on the Oklahoma-Texas-New Mexico drive

The 10,000 Hour Rule

2010-06-06T21:05:00.002-05:00

I don't feel so bad. Just read in an article about success books that according to psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, 10,000 hours of intensely focused training is required to reach expert level. When applied to teaching, considering one teaches for 7 hours a day for 180 days, it would take 8 years to become an expert teacher. So THAT's why I'm no good at it- I'm not even halfway there. I wonder what else I could spend 10,000 hours at? Or have spent 10,000 hours at? Breathing. Sleeping. Eating? Lately I feel like I'm surely approaching the 10,000 hour mark for doing laundry ...

Summer (vacation)

2010-06-04T21:33:00.003-05:00

School's out, my work is officially over for a while. I am going back next year, but have no idea what the year will bring. Hopefully it will be "better"? than this year, who knows, I have abandoned all expectations. It will be different, a new start of a sorts, and I suppose that is something.
I have super-New York nostalgia and longing. Thinking of my friends there. Remembering times there. Wishing I could instantly be there, walking through Union Square Park, or to some bar with friends on a warm early summer's night. -- Wait, it's not really summer yet. Anyway, I miss New York. Six years now. Love New York. Shakespeare in the Park. Central Park!
I am finally recovering after having been sick for two weeks. It was a weird year, but so was the one before, and the one before, and even the one before that, and I realize the common denominator there is me. So what gives! I've gotta change something. Me or something.
Anyway, it's time for some R & R before bed. Thought I'd give this blog thing a shot as I sort out my thoughts. Hope everyone is enjoying early June. U.S. roadways, here we come.

Jubilee!

2010-05-17T20:33:00.003-05:00

My husband, now with a little more free time since his seniors took their exams early, found this news article today on CNN, and I just have to post it, because it's so personal.
One thing I did not realize is that jubilees are unique to Mobile Bay. It's a neat article.

Oil threatens Alabama's 'jolly good time'

Doris Bishop has strolled to the beach in Point Clear, Alabama, in the predawn hours of summer every morning for decades. She goes in search of tiny eels, baby flounder and blue crabs at the water's surface.

That's the sign.

If the critters are spotted, it's the start of a "happy, jolly good time," when thousands of crab, shrimp, flounder, sting rays and other fish -- alive, but dazed and confused -- wash up on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay.

It's a rare phenomenon known as a "jubilee," when the tide, winds and a lack of oxygen at the bottom of Mobile Bay force fish and sea creatures to the surface.

News of a jubilee sets off bedlam along the coast. Phones ring off the hook and shouts of "Jubileeeeeeeeee!" echo through the night. Residents rush to the beach with gigs, fishing nets and coolers. A good jubilee can fetch a summer's worth of seafood in less than an hour.

"I seen people," Doris says, "the backs of their pickups were loaded with flounder." The biggest catch she's ever witnessed was about eight years ago: A man filled his truck with more than 800 flounder. Her son stuffed a 14-foot boat with 700 flounder around 1985: "All that was sticking out of the water was maybe two inches, just a little rim of the boat."

At 74, Doris is known as the Jubilee Watcher of Point Clear. Her jubilee routine begins around June 1 and goes every day through September. She wakes up shortly after midnight, walks to the beach and looks for the signs. Jubilees typically occur between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.

With the oil slick in the Gulf, Doris and other locals are wondering the fate of jubilees. Even if the slick misses Mobile Bay, will the "jubilee" seafood be safe to eat? What will happen if the crabs, flounder, and others rise to the surface in thick black crude?

"The stench of the seafood will be a horrible thing," Doris says. "Stop to think about thousands and thousands and thousands of crabs, fish, porpoises, sharks, all coming to shore dead."

Doris has a unique idea on how to plug the oil well that has leaked 210,000 gallons of crude a day into the Gulf. Her plan involves BP executives.

"Bunch them up and stick them in that great big hole that they're trying to stop up. Excuse my being ugly," she says in a Southern drawl as sweet as a mint julep, "but that's what I think about them."

'Heavens to Betsy'

Doris has an emergency "jubilee phone list" of about 25-30 people -- relatives and friends to be notified first. But before she begins calling everyone, she grabs her gig and gets all the flounder she needs. You know, why waste time on the phone when there's fish to be had?

If there's no sign of a jubilee, Doris washes her feet and gets back in bed before going to check again a couple hours later. Her father and grandfather --- both Bay fishermen -- instilled it in her at an early age. Jubilees are in her blood, and just about everyone's here.

"Whewwww, my heavens to Betsy," she says when asked how many she's taken part in over the years. Too many to count. "It's just a happy time."

Jubilees are a rare occurrence throughout the world. Fishery experts say it's not uncommon for shallow bays to have oxygen deprivation, known as "hypoxic events," for short periods of time that might bring some fish to the surface.

But, they say, the combination of factors in Mobile Bay that sends thousands of fish and crustaceans to the shore all at once -- and that the critters are all alive -- is unique to the area.

"At infrequent intervals in Mobile Bay, crabs, shrimp and several species of fish crowd to the shallow water where they may be easily taken by anyone on the beach," marine biologist Harold Loesch wrote in 1960 in the journal Ecology, the first in-depth study of jubilees.

The phenomenon begins when a large amount of organic material on the sea floor decomposes, robbing oxygen along the bottom of the sea. That, combined with a layering of warm saltwater and freshwater from rivers pouring into the Bay, pushes the bottom-dwelling flounder, crabs, eels and others to the surface.

An easterly wind and incoming tide then sends the seafood to the shore.

"It's all those things coming together that leads to jubilees," says Bill Walton, an assistant professor at Auburn University's Marine Extension & Research Center.

The jubilees can stretch about 15 miles on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, from Daphne to Mullet Point. Other times, they are highly localized to a few hundred yards of shore. Last year, the state put a limit of 10 12-inch flounder per day per person.

Marine biologists say if oil makes its way into the bay, then the oil itself could cause an unnatural -- and potentially catastrophic -- jubilee by eating up oxygen in the water. Tar balls from the spill have already washed ashore on Dauphin Island, a barrier island at the mouth of Mobile Bay.

"If we have crude oil on the shore," says Walton, "it potentially could kill that."

Typically, there are about five jubilees per summer. Once, in the 1980s, there were seven jubilees in one week.

Word of a jubilee spreads like wildfire. "Within 10 minutes, the beach is covered with people," Doris says. "I don't know where they come from. They come outta the woodwork, I think."

By sunrise, photosynthesis occurs and oxygen levels return to normal. The crabs, flounder and other fish that aren't scooped up by locals scoot back out to sea.

There are few good photos of jubilees -- most of them decades old and hung in local restaurants -- adding to its aura. Out-of-towners roll their eyes when locals describe the phenomenon. They think: complete folklore.

That was the case when a group of tourists came into the Yardarm Restaurant in Fairhope several years ago. Bob Pope told them all about jubilees; they dismissed him as a nut.

That night, a jubilee occurred outside their beach-side hotel. The next day, the group returned: "Hey, man, this really happens!"

"It's just one of those crazy, phenomenal deals, and people just really go crazy over it," says Pope. "They go nuts!"

(Full disclosure: This writer took part in many jubilees when he lived along the Alabama coast in his youth and can vouch that they do happen.)

In nearby Orange Beach, boat captain Philip Taylor understands people's skepticism. But nothing makes his suntanned face crack like telling tourists about jubilees.

"Until you see that thousands and thousands of fish or crabs, it's unbelievable," he says.

Oral histories have it that jubilees existed as far back as man has lived in the region. According to her grandfather, Doris says, jubilees were originally called "rushes," as in the fish are rushing to the shore. "Most people don't know that," she says with pride.

To those who might be appalled at the thought of fish and crab being scooped up en masse, fishery experts say jubilees don't pose a major ecological risk to the seafood, and the populations are able to rebound.

Doris is more direct: "I'd say to them, you're just jealous because you didn't get in on it. It's free food!"

In a few weeks, she'll start her annual routine. She just doesn't know what to expect.

Exhausted

2010-05-16T16:04:00.002-05:00

As we near the end, it gets more & more interesting in my mind. I think in different ways, feel removed from my distant past. Was that really me? It was.

One of my New Year's goals was to simplify, stop adding extra things- but I didn't stop- and my life only became more completely complicated (not entirely by my choice). Now I am here.

I've worked so hard this year, and now at the end, not even the end yet! I feel tired & foolish. Tired, because I worked so hard; foolish, because I expected anything different. I wondered at least twice before whether this life was for me; and tried different paths toward the same goal, ever enthusiastic. Now, downhearted, my husband reminds me: you knew what you were getting into. And he's right! That's why I'm foolish. Idealistic is a kinder word. So I think I'm done. Let me spend my energy on other things, and not be so tired, and feel so foolish (stupid is a less kind word).

Good luck to me! I hope I've done some good in the six years. Can you believe it's been six years since I moved back from the great NYC? Six years almost that I've posted to this blog. Six years, wow. Years keep passing, too fast. I just want to slow down. Stay tuned.

Family Movie Night

2010-05-15T18:59:00.003-05:00

Watching Star Wars. Star Wars makes me think of Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth makes me think of my high school English teacher. He's still teaching last I knew. Has a fan club on Facebook.

Went to a book sale this afternoon with a colleague. I am so burnt out. I can hardly look at books. The only books I want to read are those to my child. We are on the last chapter of our third Ramona Quimby book - Ramona and Her Father. I like reading about life in a different time.

Jabba the Hut. What is that language he is speaking?

I've been suffering a real crisis of conscience lately. You know what I mean: you get to a certain point and ask, Did I take a wrong turn somewhere? Or rather, where did I take a wrong turn? It's funny, in reflection, I felt this way last year at this time, and the year before, and the year before. Will I ever get it right? Overall everything is good (so good, I have been blessed with more than I deserve), but I suppose it's human to want more. And the thing is, I believe that I can get it right ... just haven't found the right path yet. Still on the lookout.

Ooh the light saber fight scene!

...he's speaking Huttese, a constructed language based on Quechua, with many distorted English words.

"He's got to follow his own path; no one can choose it for him..." Princess Leia

May the Force be with You.

Go Outside and Get Your Green

2010-04-29T05:23:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was my third day in a row without a planning period, which also meant the third day in a row that my students had no "activity" - 10 and 11 year-olds expected to sit still in classrooms all day long, from 7:30 A.M. until 3:00 P.M. --->NOT NORMAL. I can't get on board with that. It's so unhealthy in so many ways, especially when we're preparing for this big test. Rah.

This New York Times article kind of goes along with that. It's nearly two years old, but I just found it the other day, and its report, though common sense, is worth thinking about and sharing.

*****
"A Dose of Nature for Attention Problems" by Tara Parker-Pope, October 2008.

Parents of children with attention deficit problems are always looking for new strategies to help their children cope. An interesting new study suggests that spending time in nature may help.

A small study conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign looked at how the environment influenced a child’s concentration skills. The researchers evaluated 17 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, who all took part in three 20-minute walks in a park, a residential neighborhood and a downtown area.

After each walk, the children were given a standard test called Digit Span Backwards, in which a series of numbers are said aloud and the child recites them backwards. The test is a useful measure of attention and concentration because practice doesn’t improve the score. The order of the walks varied for all the children, and the tester wasn’t aware of which walk the child had just taken.

The study, published online in the August The Journal of Attention Disorders, found that children were able to focus better after the “green” walks compared to walks in other settings.

Although the study is small, the data support several earlier studies suggesting that natural settings influence psychological health. In 2004, a survey of parents of 450 children found that “green” outdoor activities reduced A.D.H.D. symptoms more than activities in other settings.

“What this particular study tells us is that the physical environment matters,” said Frances E. Kuo, director of the university’s Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. “We don’t know what it is about the park, exactly — the greenness or lack of buildings — that seems to improve attention.”

Dr. Kuo noted that the study used tight controls to make sure that the walks were identical except for the environment. Who the child was with, noise levels, the length of time, the time of day and whether the child was on medication stayed constant.

“If we kept everything else the same, and we just changed the environment, we still saw a measurable difference in children’s symptoms,” Dr. Kuo said. “And that’s completely new. No one has done a study looking at a child in different environments, in a controlled comparison where everything else is the same.”

Despite the small size, the study is important because it involves an objective test of attention and doesn’t rely on children’s or parents’ impressions. During the walks, all of the children were unmedicated — participants who normally took medications to control their A.D.H.D. symptoms stayed off the drugs on the days of the walks.

The researchers found that a “dose of nature” worked as well or better than a dose of medication on the child’s ability to concentrate. What’s not clear is how long the nature effect can last.

“We can’t say for sure, ‘two hours of outdoor play will get you this many days of good behavior,’ but we can say it’s worth trying,” she said. “We can say that as little as 20 minutes of outdoor exposure could potentially buy you an afternoon or a couple of hours to get homework done.”

Dr. Kuo said it’s notable that parents themselves consistently report benefits for their children from green settings.

“One reason we believe this is that if the effect were short-lived, we don’t think that parents would have so consistently observed it,” she said. “But they do. They report it over and over.”

****
So get your kids outside, and they won't be so crazy! Ha ha. At least my students are country kids, and they probably do play outside when they get home from school.

2 Weeks 'Til MCT2!

2010-04-25T21:10:00.002-05:00

I missed a couple of days last week due to childcaring (what a wonderful word!) but luckily got the scoop from a colleague on what I missed at last week's staff meeting.

The consultants (of whom I continue to be very skeptical, sorry) apparently reported that teachers were not doing a good job preparing students for the test (but that's not why I'm skeptical of them) and from now on, it's been decreed, all test questions, all the time (funny music plays in my head whenever I say that phrase to myself). Also, students are to be working in groups at all times. So right now I'm creating heterogeneous groups of my students based on their reading levels (well, I was until I started writing this).

We'll do our silent independent reading to start the day, then we'll launch into various versions of solve this test question. I'm kind of nervous about it, but hopefully it will be fun. The master teacher in my household advised turning it into a competition, game-style.

Also, there is to be no more science or social studies taught- which is nice for me, because I can close that subject out. But it's like crash dieting. I would never want my child to be in a situation like this - actually, I don't like being in a situation like this.

I continue to place faith in the adage, "Moderation in all things." But I also would like to know, really, how students can arrive in the 5th grade, receiving no special services (indicating a learning disability), and read on kindergarten, first, and second grade levels. To me, it's a crime. A. Crime. The teacher they had before me (who was transferred to teach the honors students) had them working on a reading program meant to catch them up on the skills they missed in the earlier grades. I intended to keep them going on this, but the computers were moved out of the classroom. Soooooooooooooooo depressing. And after the test cram, school will be over, and they will be on summer vacation, and probably lose whatever they did learn. Argh. There's always next year ...

And this ladies and gentlemen is what it looks like in a critical-needs school in rural Mississippi. I heard that one nearby district is doing away with social studies entirely next year!

I will establish a reading program at this school next year, and it will be successful. It's not really brain surgery. And I probably won't need a consultant to tell me how to do it. Just a little teamwork. I'll keep you posted.

Strategies for Curbing School Violence

2010-04-24T06:55:00.003-05:00

This semester I've been enrolled in a seminar for secondary educators - the one for which I'm researching the impact of school libraries on student achievement. (That paper is due in less than 2 weeks - eek!)

This week's topic was school violence, and the instructor shared with us an article from the Journal of School Health by a doctor in academic pediatrics at John Hopkins School of Medicine. She began by noting that recent statistics indicate that 63 out of every 1000 students in U.S. schools are the victims of violence at school.

The entire article is interesting, but here I'd like to post some of the recommendations based on her review of the literature about school violence. I think they are important to keep in mind as we begin to plan for next school year, and also for individual teachers to take into consideration when envisioning how their classrooms will operate:

Using a classification system she created, she concluded that studies show that lower rates of school violence were associated with the following (italics are mine):

* positive relationships with teachers

* a student population that is aware of school rules and believes they are fair

* students who have ownership in their school

* classroom and school environments that are positive and focused on student comprehension

* school safety interventions that are focused on improving the physical environment of the school, especially reducing the amount of perceived school physical disorder

If you are interested, the article is Improving the School Environment to Reduce School Violence: A Review of the Literature by Sarah Lindstrom Johnson, from the Journal of School Health, October 2009, Vol. 79, No. 10.

The Value of School Libraries

2010-04-08T20:45:00.003-05:00

So glad tomorrow is Friday!

Just found this blog post: The Value of School Libraries

To emphasize what an earlier posting illuminated: Standardized scores tend to be 10 to 20% higher than in schools without an investment in a school library program and the relationship between library resource levels and increased achievement is not explained away by other school variables (e.g., per student spending, teacher-pupil ratios) or community conditions (e.g., poverty, demographics).

Games: Good for the Brain

2010-03-27T20:32:00.006-05:00

I happened upon this really fascinating article last night- it's from a Newsweek blog called "Nurture Shock" written by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. I read Bronson's book What Should I Do with My Life? a few years ago upon recommendation from a friend. An interesting read.
I have pasted the article here. It's common sense, and a breath of fresh air as I try to keep my focus on the idea that learning should be fun. (Bah! Testing. Bah! I don't love you.)

*****

New Research: $13 Christmas gifts = 13 point gain in kids’ IQ

Dr. Silvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at UC Berkeley, has long been interested in understanding the development of children’s intelligence. She’s been measuring kids’ intelligence and scanning their brains for several years in order to understand what exactly makes some brains function better than others. This has given her unique insight into the mental processes kids are capable of, and how to test for it. Last year, Bunge and her graduate students decided to see if they could train up, or sharpen, children’s minds. Their study might sound remarkably simple, but the results have been flat-out astonishing.

First, they went looking for off-the-shelf board games, card games, and video games that demanded distinct mental functions. One group of these games was chosen because they’d give children’s reasoning ability a workout – these games require forethought, planning, comparisons and logical integration. The games chosen were card games like SET, the traffic-jam puzzle Rush Hour, and Qwirkle, a cross between Dominos and Scrabble. For the Nintendo DS, they chose Picross and Big Brain Academy. There were also two games for the computer – one called Azada, another called Chocolate Fix.

Bunge’s team brought the games to an elementary school in Oakland with historically low state test scores. The researchers asked some second, third and fourth graders to stay after school to play. The kids’ IQ averaged a 90, and their brain speed (a subtest of intelligence) ranked them at only the 27th percentile. The children’s parents, on average, were high-school dropouts. These were the kids every education policy hopes to target, and every thought leader has an opinion on how to improve.

Twice a week, the kids played the games for an hour and fifteen minutes. Every fifteen minutes the kids moved to a new table, to make sure their brains always had something new to figure out. (The neuroscientists thought it was important the sessions remained fun.)

After just eight weeks – twenty total hours of game playing – Bunge’s team retested the children’s intelligence. They were specifically interested in the kids’ reasoning ability. According to the classic theories of intelligence, reasoning ability is considered both the core element of intelligence and also the hardest to change. Allyson Mackey, Bunge’s graduate student who supervised the study, thought she might see gains of 3 to 6 points, at most.

“From adult training studies, we knew some improvement was possible,” said Bunge. “But it was enormous.”

The children’s reasoning scores, on average, leapt 32%. Translated to an IQ standard, that bumped them 13 points.

For comparison, consider that a 12 point gain is normally how much a child’s IQ goes up after an entire year of school. By giving the children precisely targeted games, Bunge and Mackey were able to beat that, in just 20 hours of game playing.

Reasoning ability was not the neuroscientists’ only target. Bunge’s team was also interested in another component of intelligence, called processing speed. So, at the same time, a second group of games was assembled, and a second group of kids spent their afternoons in that classroom. “Those games didn’t require memory or strategy, just very rapid visual recognition,” described Mackey. These included traditional card games like Spoons and Speed, the video game Brickbuster, the board game Blink, and Perfection, in which kids must push 25 plastic shapes into a springboard in under a minute.

After the eight weeks, these kids’ cognitive scores were tested as well. The kids who trained for speed saw their processing speed scores leap 27%; they began well-below average, but quickly reached a level far above-average. In football, a famous adage is “You can’t teach speed.” That doesn’t seem to be the case for the brain.

Each group’s improvements were domain-specific, so it was clear the games were the cause. The speed group saw only insignificant gains in reasoning ability. Those who trained on the reasoning games (and improved their reasoning) saw almost no speed benefit. Neither group saw improvement in working memory. This also suggests that cross-training is necessary for full-scale intelligence.

Bunge has concluded, “All parts of intelligence are malleable. They’re all in the brain, and all of the brain shows plasticity. There’s no evidence that some regions are most or less plastic than others.” The presumption that some components of intelligence are more fixed than others isn’t backed up by the new science.

Bunge’s team, thrilled with their results, are continuing to build on this with new experiments. They’re currently looking for more schools in Northern California to participate. The original study is now being reproduced, with kids who are having their brains scanned before and after the game training. Bunge is hoping to learn what’s changed, on a neural level, in just eight weeks. She expects to find a pattern toward greater efficiency – more focused activity in the specific regions required by the tasks, and less activation of unnecessary brain regions. She might also find how the frontal lobe and the parietal lobe fire in concert, or even a physical change in the nerves connecting the two brain regions, making the network faster.

Perhaps the most important finding in Bunge’s data is that the training helped the neediest kids the most. The farther down a child started on the rankings, the quicker and greater was his cognitive improvement. This is extremely rare in education interventions. Usually, smart kids benefit most, and the kids who struggle at the beginning only fall farther behind. Broadscale education reforms like smaller classes, teacher training, charter schools, and all-day schedules have pricetags in the millions of dollars.

Compare that to the cost of these games, which average only $13 (and Brickbuster [also called Breakout or Brickbreaker] can be played online for free):

Deck of Cards $1.25
Blink $5
Azada $7
SET $10
Perfection $12
Chocolate Fix $12

Rush Hour $18
Qwirkle $19
Big Brain Academy $26
Picross $20

****
P.S. Here is a website: Games for Educators.

MCT2 Awareness Campaign

2010-03-22T22:23:00.005-05:00

In my box this morning was a memo: MCT2 Plan of Action.

Action#1 is "MCT2 Awareness Campaign:"
1. Keep count of the number of days until MCT2.
a. Do NOT emphasize any other timelines. (I'm wondering, what other timelines? The Mayan end of the world in 2012?)
b. Focus students on MCT2 timeline - Regularly and with Sincerity (With sincerity?)
EVIDENCE: Countdown on board, in hallways, mentioned in lessons
Obvious attention to timeline by teachers and students
2. Initiate hall-wide, grade level and classroom based activities to promote the MCT2
EVIDENCE: Creative, innovative activities/poster/etc. in hallways and classroom

Maybe I'm crazy, or maybe it's because I've been thrown into a situation where I'm just trying to teach something, but wouldn't it make more sense to exert your efforts on actually preparing students for the test, rather than trying to advertise you know it's coming up? What better way to burn the kids out or freak them out by CONSTANTLY reminding them about some test? What a nightmare for them, to never be able to escape THE TEST looming over them. But man, what a nightmare it must be for our administrators, because this year has not turned out well. It was like an old car that never got up to speed.

It just seems so backwards. I deeply feel the irony that the library has been closed, the librarian deposed (haha), and now someone goes out to babysit classes an hour at a time so teachers can have their planning times (an hour when students used to visit the library to check out books, read, research, etc.) I don't think any meaningful test preparation is being done then. You care about test scores, but you close the library. Brilliant, guys.

Check this out --

School Library Media Programs and Academic Achievement

The results of studies from more than 3,300 schools in Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas yield consistent results:

Reading scores tend to rise with levels of:

• Professional and support staff in the school library;
• The size of the library collection;
• Spending on library collections; and
• The extent of school-wide networks that extend access to collection resources.
That Is, More is Better

Higher levels of teacher-librarian staffing are associated with:

• Longer library hours;
• Higher levels of library staff activity;
• Higher student usage; and consequently,
• Higher test scores.

The impact of library programs on academic achievement cannot be explained away by other school or community conditions.

School conditions include:
• Teacher-pupil ratio;
• Per pupil spending; and
• Characteristics of teachers.

Community conditions include:
• Poverty;
• Low adult education; and
• Race/ethnicity.

Students and teachers who take advantage of this information-rich and technology-rich environment can expect:
• Capable and avid readers;
• Learners who are information literate; and
• Teachers who are partnering with the teacher-librarian to create high-quality learning experiences.

When these happen, scores can be expected to be 10-20 percent higher than in schools without this investment. It's worth it.

Research Finding:
The positive impact of the school library media program is consistent: If you were setting out a balanced meal for a learner, the school library media program would be part of the main course, not the butter on the bread (Lance & Loertscher, 2003).

Lance, K., & Loertscher, D. (2003). Powering achievement: School library media programs make a difference: The evidence. (2nd ed.). San Jose: Hi Willow Research and Publishing. 133 pp. ISBN 0-931510-84-8. Distributed by LMC Source.

Spring Break

2010-03-20T15:05:00.002-05:00

Ah, another spring break come and nearly gone. Am I satisfied? Well, of course I didn't accomplish all I aspired to, but it wasn't a total waste. I can mark off one of my new year's goals: I replaced my old ride with a vehicle manufactured in this decade. It's larger too, and we have identified it as the summer road trip car of choice. Yes, we are going to take our show on the road this summer (America look out).
We also cleaned out our attic and shed a few unwanted possessions via yard sale. Yatta!
And I got to spend a lot of great time with my wonderful spouse. (Happy birthday!)
I attended pilates/yoga classes with my very favorite instructor and dreamed about having a life in which I could once again attend her morning classes .... that prompted the realization that it's time to update my 3 to 5 year plan. My post-Japan three-year plan is expiring soon; new direction is needed. While I've done some thinking and graphic organizing on that subject, nothing definite has been established. What should I think about?

Move Toward National Curriculum

2010-03-11T05:54:00.003-06:00

Wonder where Mississippi stands on all of this? Jokes and snide remarks are welling up inside of me, but I'll refrain.

from The New York Times, March 10, 2010
Panel Proposes Single Standard for All Schools
By SAM DILLON

A panel of educators convened by the nation’s governors and state school superintendents proposed a uniform set of academic standards on Wednesday, laying out their vision for what all the nation’s public school children should learn in math and English, year by year, from kindergarten to high school graduation.

The new proposals could transform American education, replacing the patchwork of standards ranging from mediocre to world-class that have been written by local educators in every state.

Under the proposed standards for English, for example, fifth graders would be expected to explain the differences between drama and prose, and to identify elements of drama like characters, dialogue and stage directions. Seventh graders would study, among other math concepts, proportional relationships, operations with rational numbers and solutions for linear equations.

The new standards are likely to touch off a vast effort to rewrite textbooks, train teachers and produce appropriate tests, if a critical mass of states adopts them in coming months, as seems likely. But there could be opposition in some states, like Massachusetts, which already has high standards that advocates may want to keep.

“I’d say this is one of the most important events of the last several years in American education,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education who has been an advocate for national standards for nearly two decades. “Now we have the possibility that for the first time, states could come together around new standards and high school graduation requirements that are ambitious and coherent. This is a big deal.”

In recent years, many states moved in the opposite direction, lowering standards to make it easier for students to pass tests and for schools to avoid penalties under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law.

After educators, business executives and others criticized the corrosive impact of a race to the bottom, the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set the common-standards initiative in motion last year. They convened panels of English and math experts from the College Board and A.C.T., and from Achieve Inc., a group with years of experience working to upgrade graduation standards.

Alaska and Texas are the only states that declined to participate in the standards-writing effort. In keeping his state out, Gov. Rick Perry argued that only Texans should decide what children there learn.

The Obama administration quickly endorsed the effort. Under the Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards. Under current law, there is no penalty for states that choose not to participate.

The standards are open for public comment through April 2, before final versions are published later in the spring.

Kentucky, working with a draft, last month became the first state to formally adopt the standards. The state said it would train teachers to the standards this summer and begin teaching them this fall. Officials in Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina and other states have begun laying the groundwork for adoption, said Dane Linn, the education division director at the National Governors Association.

The adoption process varies greatly from state to state. In some, the state schools superintendent has considerable power to move forward in as little as three months. But other states, including California, have complicated procedures, involving the state board of education and other bodies that could prolong the process for a year or more, Mr. Linn said.

Educators and officials involved in the writing process pointed to what they considered to be strengths in the proposed standards, including that they are concise.

“Many states have too many expectations in their academic standards that force teachers to cover too much in a superficial way,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers. “We said: ‘Let’s keep these very understandable and at a number that is manageable. Let’s not put on teachers more requirements than they can deliver.’ ”

Another improvement over current state benchmarks, people involved in the initiative said, is that the proposed standards are what educators call vertically aligned, meaning that material students are to learn in early years builds a foundation for what is to come in the next grade.

“Students are asked to do progressively more challenging things, and although that may sound obvious, it’s a real breakthrough,” said Michael Cohen, an Education Department official in the Clinton administration who is president of Achieve.

But not everyone was so enthusiastic.

“We’re not at all satisfied,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, a Boston nonprofit group that helped Massachusetts revise its state benchmarks in the 1990s. “Ours in Massachusetts are much higher, so why should we adopt these?” Mr. Stergios also criticized the three-week public comment period.

“When was the last time you saw a national effort that was rammed through in three weeks?” he asked.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Association of State Boards of Education, and a string of other business and education groups immediately endorsed the draft standards. The Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the nation’s largest urban public school systems, called the standards “high quality grade-by-grade standards that the nation can be proud of.”

They outline concepts to be learned, but do not lay down a specific curriculum.

In English, for instance, they do not prescribe individual works of literature, but instead suggest texts illustrating the quality and complexity of student reading appropriate for various grades. The middle school list includes “Little Women” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” as well as works of nonfiction like “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad,” by Ann Petry. The 11th-grade nonfiction list includes Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

Because the standards cover only English and math, their writers did not include proposals related to evolution, a cause of controversy in some states, or to any other specific science concepts.

Since the late 1980s, many educators and policy makers have considered the current system of state standards a weak link in American education. Because the standards vary so widely, standardized tests keyed to them are not comparable from state to state, nor to national tests. Eighty-seven percent of Tennessee students scored at or above the proficiency level in math on state tests in 2005, for instance, while 21 percent did so on the federal math test.

Efforts to draft voluntary national standards during the first Bush and Clinton administrations foundered after conservatives attacked them as federal meddling in classroom teaching. Because of that tumultuous history, leaders of the latest effort have defended its state-led nature, despite frequent endorsements by the Obama administration.

Also, they enlisted considerable help from education groups, including the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and others.

Writers who participated said they had sought to build on the best of what is already in some states’ standards, while clarifying and simplifying.

“We tried to clean house a bit, keeping only what is most important and most critical,” said Susan Pimentel, a consultant in New Hampshire who helped write the English standards.

But what makes a good teacher?

2010-03-04T22:45:00.003-06:00

From The New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2010, Building a Better Teacher

There have been many quests for the one essential trait, and they have all come up empty-handed. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. When Bill Gates announced recently that his foundation was investing millions in a project to improve teaching quality in the United States, he added a rueful caveat. “Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn’t have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,” Gates said. “I’m personally very curious.”

****

Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who studies education, is serious about finding the answers. He took a leave from Harvard in 2008 to work on a $335 million Gates Foundation project that will identify and support effective teaching practices.

By figuring out what makes the great teachers great, and passing that on to the mass of teachers in the middle, he said, “we could ensure that the average classroom tomorrow was seeing the types of gains that the top quarter of our classrooms see today.” He has made a guess about the effect that change would have. “We could close the gap between the United States and Japan on these international tests within two years.”

I think I'm a critical needs school junkie.

2010-03-03T22:27:00.002-06:00

I think I'm addicted to the challenge of navigating the constant upheaval and chaotic conditions of critical-needs schools. It's kind of like surfing a dangerous wave. You have to be on your toes.

Last week my school started a completely new schedule, the THIRD schedule this year for some middle school students. My schedule as librarian was changed so that I had classes in the library all day, except for one planning period, just like a classroom teacher. Although I've worked really hard to get the poor library into shape, there's still no holdings catalog and we just received almost $20,000 in new books needing to be processed (labeled and cataloged). So that was kind of discouraging- that time was not allocated to me to work in/on the library.

Monday I was assigned to cover a 6th grade classroom for a teacher who was out (with no "planning" period because the music teacher was covering another 6th grade room). Tuesday I was assigned to a 5th grade classroom indefinitely. Today, Wednesday, I administered the state science test to those students.

Naturally no one has told me anything about anything (except that I'm a certified teacher and I'll be in there for a long time)- and the poor students. They had just gotten switched to a new teacher, some of them for the second time this year, and then they lost that teacher. And now they have me. Here are my questions: what about the library? Is it just closed for the year? (Teachers are asking me that- because library is how they get one of their planning periods.) What about all the stuff in that classroom? Is that teacher coming back for it, or can I move it around as needed? (There's a lot of junk that is driving me crazy.) What are you going to tell the parents? Because I'm going to be needing to call some of them and explain who I am ...

In a sense it's stressful-it always is. But strangely I find the entire school year absurd. In a Vonnegut kind of way, I just told a colleague. My colleagues are great. The students are great. The administration? Hmmm. How did we get in this mess to begin with? I'm sure it's hard to be them too, but ...

I hope tomorrow is a good day. I want to do a good job. I want these kids to have a good experience for the remainder of the year. I hope I can make that happen. We'll see ...

There are some pros:

- I have 50 students instead of 500
- I have an actual curriculum to teach and resources with which to do it.
- I wasn't going to have any work in the library time to speak of anyway.
- These kids will get a decent teacher. I am better than anyone else they could find.
- I get to experience being a 5th grade teacher. Who could have foretold it?

Stay tuned for further exciting adventures from the land of the absurd.

Declaration of Spring

2010-02-28T08:46:00.003-06:00

The weekends see me crazily catching up on all kinds of household chores - cleaning, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping. Honestly I don't know how people with more than one child manage. I guess it just gets done.

This weekend, the last in February, marks my own personal end of winter, hello to spring. I know that the official start of spring is yet three weeks away, but this winter has been so long- so cold for so long. Today is forecast to be sunny with a high of 52 - good enough for me. I plan to go out and work in the other half of the garden that has not yet been turned. I have a whole bucket of coffee grounds to add to the mix. My goal is to plant a few things over spring break (which comes in two weeks). My husband wants to raise the garden plot so that our ambitious grass (Bermuda?) won't take over like it did last year.

So today is my start to spring. My spring time initiatives? Turn the garden, shop for a new car, update my wardrobe (back in January, inspired by Infinite Whimsy, I added many skirts and dresses to my collection, but the cold temps discouraged me from wearing them- I think I'm ready now), post to my blog more often, and maybe even take a walk around the neighborhood. :) Happy spring, everyone! We've waited a long time.

No skl

2010-02-09T09:10:00.002-06:00

The text message received this morning was more direct: "No skl"
My husband said, sounds like we need to get back in school as soon as possible. I concur. Can I just say that I HATE text language. (Yes, Dad.) It seems cheap and unsophisticated and LAZY. Really I guess it's just the equivalent of the secretary's shorthand of yesterday. BUT, those secretaries at some point converted those abbreviated notes to sensible prose.

Last night I saw parts of an interesting program, Harlem in Montmartre, on the Paris jazz club scene between the first and second world wars, which featured Josephine Baker, among others. Check out the link and watch or read excerpts from historian Tyler Stovall there to the right- great stuff for African-American/American history enthusiasts.

Building a Snowman

2010-02-08T12:59:00.005-06:00

The guys went outside to romp in the snow with the neighbors. They built a snowman.
I stayed inside and took photos from the front window.

Third Time's the Charm

2010-02-08T09:32:00.002-06:00

After being off school twice already this year due to winter weather, we finally REALLY got some snow, and this time it wasn't even expected!

This morning a moment before my 5:15 alarm went off, I heard a beep indicating I had received a new text message. "OK, who would play this mean joke on me?" I wondered when I read it: "School is covered in snow. No school today!" I was SHOCKED when I looked out the back door, saw our backyard covered in white, with flakes pouring down furiously. Now, at 9:30, the snow has stopped falling, but there is a good 4 to 6 inches covering the ground.

After running around the house for about an hour in his Who D@? T-shirt and Batman mask and cape, and another hour playing Mario Kart and completely turning his bedroom upside down, my child is now watching Sesame Street. My spouse weighed his options, announced a plan to do spring cleaning, and has gone back to bed. Both are disappointed that they cannot go to school today. I, on the other hand, am not. A batch of sweet rolls just came out of the oven, and pizza is in the works for lunch.

I figured I would take the opportunity to actually update my blog. :)

You know the funny thing about all this snow? Yesterday I went out and turned up the soil in one of our garden plots, adding compost and getting it all ready for spring. I have been feeling under the weather, so I even did a little sunbathing to soak up some vitamin D rays. It was warm and sunny enough in the afternoon for bare skin. Now, this. Oh, well. I am feeling better today, and it's a good time for getting caught up on things. We are off next Monday for Presidents' Day, and one month later have spring break- yeah! And then only ... ten more weeks of school.

Except for my family, my job totally consumes my life. Gradually I am getting more organized, but much remains to be done. With the governor repeatedly cutting the state's education budget, it has crossed my mind that my position could be eliminated. Though I've enjoyed it, it hasn't been easy this year, so I'm open to whatever the future holds.

I'll try to post more later, and maybe some photos too. Happy snow day! Yay Saints!

Punta Lobos, BCS

2009-12-28T16:54:00.004-06:00

This beach is about 1.5 miles south of Todos Santos. The dirt road off the highway to the beach is unmarked; my husband's amazing internal Navi found the way.
The waves were strong, and we watched as some enjoyed skim surfing.

Todos Santos, BCS

2009-12-27T09:17:00.003-06:00

Yesterday we visited a town about an hour's drive south of here. An "oasis in the desert" (literally), it grew into something of an artists' mecca after Santa Fe and Taos lost their novelty. Below are a few glimpses of Todos Santos. We enjoyed browsing the shops and exploring the town.

Assorted Images: BCS

2009-12-27T08:44:00.003-06:00

This is the fridge in our casita that "maybe" will work and maybe, will not. There have been several cycles of moving items from ice chest and back again. So far, it is functioning, but the future is uncertain (Mabe).

Curiously, there are now teepees at the campground. I have not ventured any closer than this to see who/what is residing inside.

Another new feature since last year is organic/non-organic trash receptacles stationed all along the malecon. I haven't availed myself of one yet, but found it cute enough to photograph.

Connor and me at the taco stand down the road where we enjoyed a yummy meal a few days ago: fried fish tacos. Connor ate two (stinky cheese) quesadillas and is ready to go back.

Campestre Maranatha

2009-12-27T08:16:00.002-06:00

our humble abode while on holiday

laundry on the line

pretty flowers!

BCS

2009-12-27T08:06:00.003-06:00

morning along the malecon (in downtown La Paz)

my sweethearts, before they set out to snorkel (what a funny word!)

Bahia Balandra

La La Library

2009-11-14T05:21:00.004-06:00

You've seen the pictures. Things are coming together in other ways too: yesterday I submitted the first book order, for 181 permanently bound books for the library. SO exciting.
Barcodes are being processed and printed.
Yesterday a new motherboard was installed in my computer that conked out; next week I can install the cataloging software and start entering student and book info.
And, I found out how to eventually make the catalog accessible from other computers.
A cart of fifteen laptops was assigned to the library (and they're actually functional! and students are actually using them!).
So the library is beginning to both look and function as a true library.
Except for an LCD projector, I have just about everything I need. (Except time. I wish I could put in an order for more time.)
I even have a cool cart for laptop/projector. I heard that AARA funds have finally been released to the school districts in our state, and have been told that I'll get a projector from that.

One more week 'til Thanksgiving break, then three more 'til Christmas. The semester has flown by.

Friday

2009-10-24T07:52:00.007-05:00

Here is how things look at the week's end. There is one more shelf to move, eventually.

Now we can concentrate on organizing the books so that a library catalog can be created. There was one at some point in the past, but I don't know how recently it was updated, so we're starting anew.

Week before last the school began a work-service program, which provides 10-12 library assistants daily (some more capable than others). I haven't had a chance to formally train any of them, because they come in while I have classes. To some, I've observed that "shelving" books means putting them anywhere on a shelf. This week I will compose detailed instructions and assign tasks to individuals specifically in order to pinpoint problem areas. It's great to have assistants and also really good experience for them.

Mid-Week

2009-10-23T20:28:00.005-05:00

"It's starting to look like a real library," a teacher commented while passing through. "In the five years I've been here, it's never looked like a library."

A Work in Progress

2009-10-18T16:00:00.009-05:00

School has been in session for about 10 weeks. During the short break last weekend at the end of our first term (our school calendar is divided into four terms of approximately nine weeks each), I had a chance to visit my parents, and my mom hinted that my blog was in dire need of update.

Sooooo, I thought I'd post some before-and-after photos of my work space so you can see where my energy has been going.

First: this is before school began - all kinds of stuff everywhere. Somewhat of a mess. Not the most functional-looking library.

Here it is one month later, looking much better. You can see what a nice space it really is. It has amazing potential.

And now, in the past couple of weeks, undergoing transformation (notice the shelves):

While I can control the physical space somewhat, technological resources are another matter entirely:

These desktops are about ten years old, a bit past their prime. We are hoping for replacements soon ....

Hanazono House

2009-08-19T22:08:00.006-05:00

I would love to visit this house!

from today's issue of The New York Times: In Japan, a House of Steel
By ALEX FREW McMILLAN

On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, overlooking a pasture where dairy cows roam in summer, is a two-story house clad entirely in steel. The facade, which is less than a year old, already has a layer of rust that its owner, Peter Grigg, says protects the surface and gives it an unusual reddish color.

But then the 500-square-meter (5,382-square-foot) home, called Hanazono House, was always meant to be something of a showpiece, a way for Mr. Grigg to display some of his creative flair.

The 40-year-old entrepreneur, born in Leeds, England, and raised in Perth, Australia, came to Japan in 1994 to learn the language. But after short stints as a radio DJ and freelance photographer, Mr. Grigg opened a restaurant in 2004 in the nearby ski resort of Niseko. It was the first business he branded Sekka, a name that now appears on several of his condominium projects and other buildings in town.

“I’ve never really considered myself a businessman,” said Mr. Grigg, who is more commonly known by his Japanese name Shouya, or “soaring arrow.” “Even though I guess I have had a little bit of success in business, it doesn’t actually interest me that much. I like to be creative — that’s what drives me. I like producing things.”

In 2008, Mr. Grigg and his wife decided to build a second home in Hanazono, around 100 kilometers, or 60 miles, southwest of Sapporo, where they have their primary home.

They bought a 15,000-tsubo (12-acre) lot for the equivalent of $3 million. Makoto Nakayama, a local architect who has worked on some of the Sekka projects, designed the house, which was built by the Town Kensetsu construction company for the equivalent of about $2.5 million.

Mr. Grigg originally planned for the house to be 800 square meters (8,611 square feet), but construction regulations in Japan are more stringent for buildings greater than 500 square meters (around 5,500 square feet). “I decided to keep it at just 500 but with the option of actually building stage two,” he said. “I wanted to add a pool and a spa-type zone to the place.”

Since the area averages nearly 600 inches of snow every year, Mr. Grigg’s architects were given a significant challenge of creating a structure that can withstand the weight of the snow. Another challenge: Mr. Grigg wanted a flat roof. To support the weight, the house was constructed with steel girders usually employed for 10-story buildings.

Hanazono House is built on long, low lines and split into sections. An entry corridor, which is open to the elements at one end — despite the area’s harsh winters — leads to a stone statue of Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy, and the house’s front door.

The floor-to-ceiling windows just inside have views of a pond, with a tsukubai at its center, the stone basin found at the entrances to Japanese temples and shrines for visitors to wash their hands. The water comes from an 85-meter-deep (279-foot-deep) well so it does not freeze, even in mid-winter.

The first section of the house was built as a hiraya, or a one-level dwelling, a style that was considered prestigious in old Japan because only the wealthy could afford the luxury of a single floor.

Mr. Grigg has an office overlooking silver birch trees. The office is decorated with about 70 vintage cameras, including Leicas and a Hasselblad.

Opposite the office, there is a traditional mizuya, a small area for preparing tea, which has an adjacent toilet and shower so it can be used as a spare bedroom.

A passageway — finished in concrete, a treatment that has been used in several of Mr. Grigg’s Sekka projects — leads to the second part of the building. It is two stories, although the gentle slope of the terrain allowed the architect to maintain a single roof level. The rooms include an open living room, kitchen and a total of five bedrooms.

The walls of the Hanazono House are plastered with kaiso do, a plaster from northern Hokkaido that absorbs odors, and there is an under-floor heating system that circulates hot water from a kerosene-burning boiler. Much of the interior of the house, like many homes in Japan, is covered with a variety of woods, including walnut, oak and rosewood.

Day in the Life

2009-08-19T21:37:00.002-05:00

typical weekday:

4:30-5:15 wake up
5:15-5:45 get ready for the day - make coffee, clean, dress, pack lunch
5:45-6:00 wake child up, get ready
6:15-6:20 leave house
6:30 drop off child at school
6:55 arrive school
7 - 7:30 morning duty: greet kids as they start their day (good morning; tuck your shirt in, please. thank you.)
7:30 - 8:30 prepare for first class
8:35 - 10:40 first two classes
1:10 - 2:55 last two classes
2: 55 - 3:30 afternoon duty
3:45 - 4:15 check out, head homeward
4:15 - 4:45 pick up child, get home - ahhhh
5 - 5:30 supper
5:30 - 7:30 play outside with child, hang out with neighbors
7:30 - 8:00 make way back indoors, prepare child for bed
8:30 child is in bed, shower, take a few minutes for self to check e-mail, read the news, etc.

(probably more information than you needed, but that's what I've been doing lately)

“What is an educated person?”

2009-08-17T22:01:00.000-05:00

according to Michigan State University:

An educated person is someone who has learned how to acquire, analyze, synthesize, evaluate, understand, and communicate knowledge and information. An educated person has to develop skills that respond to changing professional requirements and new challenges in society and the world at large. He or she must be able to take skills previously gained from serious study of one set of problems and apply them to another. He or she must be able to locate, understand, interpret, evaluate, and use information in an appropriate way and ultimately communicate his or her synthesis and understanding of that information in a clear and accurate manner.

Happy School Year

2009-08-15T06:05:00.003-05:00

I am starting anew AGAIN. This year I landed a job as a middle school librarian, and so far I LOVE it. I started seeing students on Tuesday. I get one class of 8th, 7th, 6th, and 5th each day (in that order). This week has been devoted to introductions, student information, expectations, and reading surveys.

Here's my spiel: I tell them I'm from this state, went to college here, worked in the publishing industry before getting into education, lived in NYC for about 5 years, am an alumni of MTC (a few of the school's teachers are current participants), taught in the MS Delta, taught English in Japan for a year, previously taught at another school in the district, last year studied, taught, and worked at the university. I'm certified as a teacher and a librarian and have worked in public and university libraries, but never a school library. I mention that my husband teaches at the high school and tell them about my son.

At this point one of the younger ones will raise his or her hand to ask incredulously, "How OLD are you?" because I possibly look like I just graduated college, and I tell them that is not an appropriate question and move on. "Japan" also catches their attention, and some of them want to know about that. And so does husband at the high school. If they ask, I say I'll let them figure it out. We have different last names, so it's not a dead giveaway.

By my count, I have over 500 students. I wonder how long it will take me to remember their names, since I'll only see them in class once a week? Here's something that already happened: yesterday after school, I took my child to the (local public) library. A little girl approached me and greeted by name. She did not look especially familiar to me.

"Are you a student at [our school]?" I asked. She smiled and nodded.

"Have you come to my class yet?" I asked, thinking I probably hadn't met her yet.

"Yes, today!" she said with the happiest smile. So we talked for a moment, and I introduced her to son.

I had had her in class probably only hours before, and I didn't recognize her. Terrible. So I believe I'm going to assign seats for my larger classes so I can learn their names more quickly.

This library has not been staffed by a certified librarian in a number of years, and in certain ways that shows. It needs some organization. And presently there is not even any sort of catalog! No inventory list that details the library's holdings. That will be remedied.

Many dated and/or disintegrating books need to be retired. The nonfiction shelves are blocked by a variety of old, apparently unused? equipment (since no one's claimed it by now). The fiction stacks actually serve as a continual source of amusement: you'll find paperback Harlequin novels next to elementary reading textbooks next to quality literature next to easy readers, with a few Spanish language novels mixed in. Also, the majority of books have been labeled with masking tape! Sadly hilarious. Masking tape! I guess that was the best they could do.

Another thing that blows my mind is that the masking tapers had no concept of how libraries are set up -- that books are organized within categories such as biography, nonfiction, and fiction. Books have had their nonfiction call numbers covered with a piece of masking tape marked "F" (for fiction) and thrown on the shelf. I have seen MANY biographies in with the fiction (re-labeled as such, of course). So someone took much effort to wrongly reclassify books that were already fine.

Old textbooks from a range of subjects were on the shelf, classified as "Reference." What middle school student is going to come in and say, "I need to consult a 2nd grade science textbook from the 1980s?"

I have to record all of this stuff so I won't forget how mixed up it once was.

Hot Springs, AR

2009-07-29T11:22:00.008-05:00

Hot Springs was designated a federal reservation all the way back in 1832, making it the oldest federal reserve in the country. In 1921 it was renamed Hot Springs National Park.

Along the main street ("Bathhouse Row") are eight of the old bathhouses in restored condition. Only one still operates as a bathhouse (not pictured). One serves as a visitor's center and another, a museum.

The Atwell Curriculum

2009-07-10T11:35:00.003-05:00

Seven Principles That Guide Teaching and Student Learning in the Atwell Curriculum

1. Writers need regular chunks of time -- They need time to think, write, confer, read, change their minds, and write some more. Writers need time they can count on, so even when they aren't writing, they're anticipating the time they will be. Writers need time to write well.

2. Writers need their own topics -- Right from the first day of kindergarten students should use writing as a way to think about and give shape to their own ideas and concerns.

3. Writers need response -- Helpful response comes during -- not after -- the composing. It comes from the writers' peers and from the teacher, who consistently models the kinds of restatements and questions that help writers reflect on the content of their writing.

4. Writers learn mechanics in context -- They learn from teachers who address errors as they occur within individual pieces of writing, where these rules and forms will have meaning.

5. Children need to know adults who write -- We need to write, share our writing with our students, and demonstrate what experienced writers do in the process of composing, letting our students see our own drafts in all their messiness and tentativeness.

6. Writers need to read -- They need access to a wide-ranging variety of texts, prose and poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

7. Writing teachers need to take responsibility for their knowledge and teaching -- We must seek out professional resources that reflect the far-reaching conclusions of recent research into children's writing. And we must become writers and researchers, observing and learning from our own and our students' writing.

Source: "In The Middle: Writing, Reading and Learning With Adolescents," by Nancie Atwell

An Honest Answer

2009-06-30T10:44:00.003-05:00

Mr. Bonds, at the start of his lesson, wanted to be sure that students understood his objective: TSW analyze and compose compound/complex sentences. After discussing the meaning of analyze, he moved on to compose. "You did this in some of your earlier classes," he hinted.
Michael raised his hand. "Sleep?"

English Teaching Workshop

2009-06-30T08:56:00.004-05:00

Yesterday the English TEAM instructors presented a workshop to the new English teachers who will be going into their own classrooms next month (August). Five experienced English teachers shared information with nine teachers-in-training about four general areas: Teaching for the State Test, Planning, Organization, and Teaching Strategies. At the conclusion of the workshop, I asked teachers to write down what they liked and what they would like to know more about (we have another workshop scheduled for late in July).

What participants specifically liked:

* organizational advice (esp. about dealing with absent students; filing cabinet student folder system)
* state test prep teaching strategies
* handouts
* different opinions/anecdotes/techniques from multiple teachers on a variety of topics
* differentiated instruction ideas
* well-structured and informative presentation

What they would like to know more about:

* first week of school
* specific activities for teaching certain things, such as grammar/subject-verb agreement
* teaching strategies for reading comprehension (esp. poetry)
* making effective consequences
* homework: yes or no?
* EEF money
* more state test teaching tips
* where to find good teacher resources
* examples of pacing guides
* lists of books often taught
* information on principals (likes/dislikes)
* more organizational strategies

Renovations

2009-06-03T15:40:00.004-05:00

kitchen with fresh paint, new cabinets and counter tops

pattern for new "backsplash" (first time I encountered this term)

new ceiling fan in the master bedroom (installed by my skillful spouse)

bathroom is now blue, instead of brown- quite different

We look forward to moving back in next week, inshallah.

Garden

2009-06-02T06:29:00.003-05:00

This is our garden in our backyard. I can take little credit for it as my husband built the plots (the one on the left is a recent addition) and planted nearly all of the seeds. I guess he is like the little red hen, and I am one of her lazy acquaintances. Anyway, the garden is coming along, and looks very nice.

Peace Garden

2009-05-19T22:07:00.008-05:00

The Japanese Garden of Peace which is part of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, was a bicentennial gift from Japan in 1976.

Before enjoying the garden, I toured the Admiral Nimitz Museum, also part of the National Museum of the Pacific War. There I learned of Admiral Nimitz's admiration for and friendship with Admiral Heihachiro Togo, considered Japan's greatest naval hero. The garden's meditation center (not pictured here) is a replica of Admiral Togo's in Japan.

Vereins Kirche

2009-05-14T00:01:00.005-05:00

Fredericksburg, Texas

Vereins kirche means "community church." This building is but a replica of the original, which was constructed in 1847 and used for church services by all denominations represented by the settlers of Fredericksburg: Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists. It was also used for the first school and the town hall. In 1897 the real Vereins Kirche was demolished.

This one was completed in 1935 and has throughout the years housed a pioneer museum, the chamber of commerce, the county archives, and a local history collection. It is octagonal in shape, modeled after the "Carolingian octagon" style of German architecture which may be seen in the original cathedral of Charlemagne at Aachen. (source: The Handbook of Texas Online)

About a month ago I heard a story on NPR about the widespread use of German in public schools in German communities (contrasting current attitudes about contemporary bilingual education) up until WWI, and the placard above makes note of this. I did ask my grandfather, born shortly after this time, if he remembered German being spoken in school, but he said no, because not everyone could understand it.

Recycling

2009-03-27T13:02:00.002-05:00

Now that I know where to send empty yogurt containers, what about all these empty CD cases? Here are a few ideas. (I just LOVE the Internet.)

First, you can ask artists, such as musicians or photographers, if they can use them. I am checking with my brother.

Next, I discovered GreenDisk, a company that "handles all your technotrash disposal needs." Here is a full list of what items they accept. As you can see, it does include CDs and cases. It looks pretty cool- you put your stuff in a box, estimate its weight, order the service ($6.95 for 20 lbs or less), print the shipping label, and send it off. ($.30 extra for each additional pound over 20)

Plastic Recycling Incorporated 2015 South Pennsylvania Indianapolis, IN 46225 (317-780-6100) may accept CDs and cases (info was a couple of years old, so I'm not completely sure).

Finally, another possible outlet is Freecycle, a global network (it appears to be like a Craig's List for free stuff) that allows you to post items you want to discard, as well as search for or request items you would like to receive. There are a number of groups active in Mississippi.

I am not sure how I will discard the cases at this point, but I have several options that will keep them out of a landfill (as least for now).

Recycling # 5s

2009-03-25T09:36:00.004-05:00

It's easy to recycle #1 and #2 plastics; most curbside recycling programs accept them, including ours. But what about the #5s?

The triangular symbol with the "5" inside means the plastic is made of the chemical compound Polypropylene (or PP). Yogurt, syrup, and ketchup containers, as well as bottle caps, plastic straws, and medicine bottles are generally packaged in this type of plastic.

Plastic yogurt containers especially proliferate in various places in our house (garage, craft bin, kitchen cabinet, sandbox, bathtub). I just hate the thought of them sitting in a landfill! Apart from planting seeds in them and reusing them as snack cups ... what to do with them?

On a blog called Eat. Drink. Better. I found an answer, in the form of a program that takes #5 containers. You can drop them off in certain places (mostly midwest and northeast) and if that's not convenient, mail them.

Send your clean #5s (via ground) to:

Preserve Gimme 5
823 NYS Rte 13
Cortland, NY 13045

Include a return address on the outside of the box and a name and email address inside.

I am going to try it. Perfect- just in time for spring cleaning!

Who Is Arne Duncan?

2009-03-22T22:02:00.010-05:00

The evening after President Obama addressed Congress, I flipped on Charlie Rose to see who was guest. Some crazy guy was advocating keeping schools open 12 hours a day, 12 months of the year, six or seven days of the week to serve as community centers. Has he really worked in schools? I wondered. Every other word seemed to be "innovation," with vague explanations as to what this meant. Who is this guy? I thought.

In a few moments his name and title flashed on the screen: Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education. Ohhh, it's this guy. I'd heard his name but knew little of him. Here was my chance.

Regarding the school as a community center, an idea many in my Teacher Corps class played with when we designed our own school district as a final project for our "Innovations in Education" course (myself included), Mr. Duncan argued that there are schools in every neighborhood, with classrooms, computer labs, libraries, and gyms, whose resources are not being maximized. "Schools belong to the community," he said, and suggested that schools partner with nonprofits such as YMCA or Boys and Girls Club to offer a variety of activities and programs: sports, debate, chess, drama, enrichment, GED, ESL, family literacy, potlucks. "Our society has changed; our schools have not kept pace. This needs to be what the 21st century school looks like- the norm, not the exception."

I love the idea. It's great. It makes sense. But having worked in the public education system for going on five years now, where often you feel that you've landed in Opposite-Land, my initial reaction was skepticism, because I saw such a practical, common sense approach would meet opposition. In general, public education behaves like a really old, slow, stupid animal.

I gathered that he served as head of Chicago schools, tried some new things, such as financial incentives for successful students in the inner city, closed some failing schools, and overall did a good job, which is why he was selected for the position. There was also mention of his background and personal experience with children in poverty. (His mother has run an after school program on Chicago's South Side since before his birth.) He cited the example of childhood friends: the ones who got out of the neighborhood went on to become very successful, while the ones who did not, died. "They literally did not make it,” he explained, and added that the difference between the ones who did and the ones who did not, he realized later, was education.

Things he talked about:

We need to do "what works" for children and use "best practices" (It was not clear that he knew what these actually were.)

Good teaching matters; it is the number one factor affecting student achievement. To this end, great teachers need to be rewarded with incentives, besides induction, mentoring, and support.

The importance of early childhood education as well as making sure kids are well-fed, healthy, and safe so that they can focus on learning

Other nations value education and invest in it. U.S. should do the same. The stimulus package provides $115 billion to do so.

Keeping some parts of NCLB, changing others, and re-branding it to reflect a new approach

Growing support for a national set of standards, rather than the fifty different versions that now exist. (Most other industrialized countries i.e. “our competitors” have a single set of standards – Japan, Germany, India, for example. Our Department of Defense schools follow a single curriculum, making it easy for children to move from one school to another in any part of the world, relatively seamlessly.)

Paying math and science teachers more, because currently there is a shortage, and it is in these areas that American students are falling behind their international counterparts.

Charter schools --- good charter schools, he emphasized -- and getting the best and the brightest college graduates into the classrooms at a time when Baby Boomers will be retiring in large numbers

Re-envisioning schools, opening them up as community centers as described previously

Duncan has experience in educational policy and management, but has not himself been a teacher. I found much of his talk lacking vague, and while I don't doubt his good intentions, as an educator, when it came to details, I wondered if he really knew what he was talking about. But maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe an idea of the big picture is all that's required. If he can effect some positive changes, terrific.

What was he vague on? Assessment of both student achievement and teacher performance, specific changes to NCLB, teacher tenure standards, how performance pay might work, who might oppose his "creative innovation" plans and what they may oppose about them, how the $115 billion will be allocated, charter schools, (as mentioned above) best practices. It's easy to say "induction, mentoring, great teachers, think differently, culture of high expectations" - but what does that all mean in real terms? Maybe it's too early for him to give specifics, or maybe he's not as skilled at conveying information as his boss is. This was clear, however:

"Education is THE civil rights issue of this generation," he said early in the interview and later toward the end, "This is about more than education; this is a battle for social justice."

To that I can agree. It will be interesting to see what changes he is able to implement in the coming year and how the stimulus money is handled.

(P.S. When did "incent" start being a word? i.e. "We need to incent great teachers." Oh ... 1981. I missed that.)

PostScript: New York Times article, 1/13/09, "Few Picks from Education Pick," covers his confirmation hearing, in which many of these same ideas are aired.

Our President

2009-03-21T21:30:00.015-05:00

I saw my grandmother last week and as it often does, the talk turned to politics. She calls herself a Republican but couldn't believe that Rush Limbaugh said he wanted to see the President fail. "That's just not patriotic," she said.

I agreed and expressed confidence in the new leader to do a good job.

"Yes, I hope so .... even with his Muslim ties," she said.

"He's not Muslim," I said. "He's Christian."

"Well, he SAYS he is," she said doubtfully.

"His father may have been Muslim," I suggested. "He's from Africa."

"Well, he [the President] lived over there!"

"In Africa? He lived in Indonesia, but I don't think he ever lived in Africa," I said. "There are a lot of Muslims in Indonesia."

However, except for the part about his being Christian, I had to admit I wasn't totally sure of the facts.

This past week I had the opportunity to read his first book, originally published in 1995 and re-released in 2004 following his keynote address at that year's Democratic National Convention.

It was hard to put down. It was a great book, one of the few that I will read again sometime. He's a great writer. It's a great story. I'm ready for the sequel.

If I thought before that he was a capable and competent person for the job as our nation's leader, if before I felt that I could readily identify with him, despite his being born more than a decade before me, now I feel all the more so.

Over the years we've experienced his way with words, his ability to inspire through brilliant oratory. His written word does not disappoint. I'm sure he had good editors, but he's natural writer.

That's not only my opinion. Toni Morrison has called him "a writer in my high esteem."

In an interview with National Public Radio correspondent Neda Ulaby, Morrison said: "His ability to reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has had, some familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that the way he does, and to set up scenes in narrative structure, dialogue, conversation--all of these things that you don't often see, obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. [...] It's unique. It's his. There are no other ones like that."

Such gifted writing is a product of extensive reading, which as noted in his book, has informed his thought and development as a person. When he was trying to solve a problem or learn more about something in which he was involved, he read. This remains true today. According to a recent New York Times article, "From Books, New President Found Voice," books that have informed his decisions since taking office include Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden by Steve Coll; and The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.

He's a reader, no doubt. I found it thrilling when in his first address to Congress, he urged parents to turn off the television, put away the video games, and read to their children. (My favorite, though, was his very important message to youngsters about dropping out of high school: "It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country.")

Dreams From My Father is a memoir covering his life from childhood up until his marriage in 1992, divided into three parts: Origins; Chicago; and Kenya. From it I gained a more detailed picture of his life and experiences, though my understanding of him as a person did not change.

To set the record straight, he did live in Indonesia, from about age six to ten, but never in Africa. He went to Africa for the first time in 1988, the summer before starting law school. As for his religious views, I have to agree with my grandmother -- he SAYS he's a Christian, and as my brother pointed out, that's all you can ever really go on. He wasn't raised religiously and conveys no religious sentiment throughout the book. He relates several instances of being asked where he stood on church and religion while working as a community organizer in Chicago, and admits at least to the reader, that it is an area of uncertainty for him. "I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won," he wrote.

Inspired by a sermon given by Reverend Jeremiah Wright in 1988 called "The Audacity to Hope," recounted in Dreams For My Father, he was baptized into the Trinity United Church of Christ that same year. He was married there and his two girls baptized there, though last year the family resigned membership to much publicity in the wake of controversial statements made in past sermons by Dr. Wright.

I think he felt comfortable at Trinity with its emphasis on black liberation theology and social justice on the global level, especially with its links to Africa. Dr. Wright had also established Trinity as a center serving the various needs of the community - day care, drug counseling, legal aid, and tutoring, to name a few - very attractive to someone who had been working to such ends in that community. It was a popular church, large and growing, kind of "the place to be" for young African American professionals. And Dr. Wright, a dynamic speaker, provided a model for his development as an orator.

Jodi Kantor in a 2007 International Herald Tribune article, "Barack Obama's Search for Faith," wrote: "Services at Trinity were a weekly master class in how to move an audience. When Mr. Obama arrived at Harvard Law School later that year, where he fortified himself with recordings of Mr. Wright's sermons, he was delivering stirring speeches as a student leader in the classic oratorical style of the black church." That's very interesting.

I will look for his comments on religion and faith when reading The Audacity of Hope in the next few weeks.

Year-Round School

2009-03-12T17:48:00.006-05:00

This morning I heard on the radio that the superintendent of Columbus schools has proposed an extended school year for grades K-6 starting in August. Students would attend school from August through June, with July off. They would get all of the regular holidays - fall break, Christmas break, spring break - as well as another week off in May. Special days, termed "yellow days," thoughout the year would be used for enrichment and remediation. Teachers would sign a regular 187-day contract (the current standard) plus an "off contract" that would cover the additional work days. According to superintendent Del Phillips, the budget has been trimmed to accommodate the extra money needed to fund the longer school year.

Schools in Japan run on a nearly year-round schedule: April 1 to mid-July, with a break of about four weeks (during the heat of summer), ending with Obon; early September to late December, with a break for the new year's celebration; and early January to early March, with a few weeks spring break (typically just in time to enjoy hanami).

I researched and wrote a paper on year-round schools for a class I took the semester after I returned from Japan. I learned what Mr. Phillips says his team found after talking to the 150 or so U.S. schools that presently operate on extended-year schedules: in fact, those students don't attend school any more than the standard 180 days; the days are just spread out more through the year.

Mr. Phillips said he and his team also looked into extended day schedules, but discovered these showed little increase in student achievement. The extended year plan now in place is aimed at improving student achievement, especially for students who are behind, and helping out working families, who can send their children to a structured academic environment for another month of the year. The benefit to this extended year plan is that it is free and available to all K-6 students, unlike extended year programs typically offered, for which parents must pay. The focus is on K-6 so that students can get the help they need in the early grades.

Easy Potato Soup

2009-03-12T17:37:00.004-05:00

I just made this, it's really simple and delicious, I think I am going into a potato soup coma from eating too much of it ....

1 sm. onion
chopped 4 med. potatoes
diced 1 c. shredded carrots (or sliced celery)
1 c. water
2 c. milk
3/4 tsp. salt
Dash of pepper
1 or 2 tbsp. butter

Boil onion, potatoes, and carrots in water for 15 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Blend in butter. Stir in milk, salt, and pepper. Heat until hot but do not boil. Makes 4 servings.

Not only fast and tasty, it is also quite nutritious with its amazing potatoes (I used Russett), onion, carrots, and milk. Good for vegetarians too!

Asian Inspired Spinach Salad

2009-03-09T18:45:00.005-05:00

This was a really good salad:

Dressing: combine & refrigerate for an hour to let flavors blend.

1/4 c vegetable oil
3 T rice vinegar
1 T light soy sauce
1 t dark sesame oil
(optional i.e. didn't have on hand: 3/4 t grated gingerroot)

Salad:

1 bag (6 oz) baby spinach leaves
2 c cooked cubed chicken breast
1 can peaches, drained
1/4 c toasted slivered almonds
(optional i.e. didn't have on hand: 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions)

Gently toss all ingredients in large salad bowl. Add dressing and toss to combine.

Hippos

2009-03-09T16:02:00.005-05:00

Julie and Splish, at the Memphis Zoo, once "hippo capital of the world" (who knew?) for the most successful hippo births of any zoo

A Portrait of Mississippi: Mississippi Human Development Report 2009

2009-02-19T10:35:00.005-06:00

For Mississippians or those with an interest in the state ... Oxfam America last month released "A Portrait of Mississippi," a report on human development in the state. Fascinating statistics. You can download the report or just view a summary. More on this later.

Preparing for Spring

2009-02-13T06:41:00.002-06:00

The Zoo

2009-02-07T14:57:00.007-06:00

Snow Day

2009-01-30T11:07:00.005-06:00

It snowed the other day- relatively unusual for this region. I realized, except for liking how "pretty" it makes the world look, I am indifferent to snow. I don't especially love it or hate it. I don't get excited about it. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from the other morning:

La Paz

2009-01-14T07:22:00.010-06:00

from The New York Times: "Next Stop: LA PAZ, MEXICO" by Steven Kurutz (10/2/05)

Back in the 1960's, La Paz, which lies along the Sea of Cortez, in Baja California, seemed poised to become the next great Mexican getaway. Its white sand beaches were less crowded than those of Acapulco, while its sport fishing was as good as anything you could find at Cabo San Lucas. And it acquired a brief fame when Bing Crosby bought a home in a nearby fly-in resort, as did Desi Arnaz, who swam in a pool built in the shape of a flamenco guitar.

But the tourist boom never came. Perhaps because the topography didn't easily lend itself to the kinds of megaresorts and golf courses that are a staple of today's upscale vacation spots. Or maybe La Paz, with its workaday citizens and smoke-bellowing Pemex refinery on the edge of town, has always been too functional to be the kind of idyllic escape many travelers look for when they head off for a warm-weather vacation.

Whatever the reason, La Paz, with its fine beaches and dependably sunny weather, today remains a sleepy city of 200,000 residents largely unknown to most Americans.

(Read the full article here. Though it was written three years ago, it is for the most part accurate.)

View more photos here.

Top Ten Reasons to Try Yoga

2009-01-09T06:25:00.003-06:00

Back in August, I began regularly attending yoga and pilates classes two to three times a week. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone! I feel stronger, more balanced (both physically and psychologically), and a little better to handle the stresses of life that come my way. So as you're contemplating your resolutions for the new year, consider these ten reasons to try yoga (courtesy of Yoga Alliance). You will feel better!

1. stress relief!
2. pain relief
3. better breathing
4. flexibility
5. increased strength
6. weight management
7. improved circulation
8. cardiovascular conditioning
9. better body alignment
10. focus on the present

Though these reasons focus on the individual, yoga classes are also a great place to meet interesting people in your community.

Ma-ri-na-su

2008-12-31T09:31:00.003-06:00

A friend from Seattle (presently teaching in Guatemala) had her mom send this cap to me a few months ago. She got it at a Mariners’ game and figured I would appreciate it. So thoughtful! My son has been fighting me for it ever since, under the impression that any gift received in the mail (especially a hat!) must be for him. Turns out, this cap helps us fit right in here – it’s very common to see Washington State license plates in these parts. Folks from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California just drive right down, some seeking reprieve from harsh winter. I’ve seen two different vehicles in town with Alaska plates – obviously they drive down from there, too. Tonight we saw a Florida plate. Now that’s a long drive!

Bahía Balandra

2008-12-31T09:13:00.007-06:00

It’s a rarity indeed for me to include a photo of myself on this blog, but here you go. This picture was taken a couple of days ago at Bahía Balandra. This particular odd-shaped rock formation is a landmark of the beach. Only moments before the photo shoot, I had tumbled off to the left side as I tried to situate myself and child. Here are a couple more views of the area:

La Ballena

2008-12-26T14:46:00.004-06:00

I suppose because there’s whale-watching nearby, the whale, or ballena, seems to be the symbol of La Paz. Happy New Year, by the way.

But a ballena is also a near-liter of Pacifico beer (940 mL to be precise), our host’s cerveza of choice. Until the end of the year there’s a promotion going: bring in six ballena caps, and get one ballena free.

A bottle of Tecate of the same size is called a caguama, or sea turtle. Why don’t our beers have cute animal nicknames? (A popular Japanese beer is Kirin, which means giraffe.) Anyway, I present to you: la ballena.

El Malecón

2008-12-26T14:35:00.004-06:00

Several years ago I walked along the malecón of Guayaquil, Ecuador. I didn't have a digital camera then ....