disapproving kitty
Thursday, December 8, 2016
A Sense of Wander
I recently stumbled across an article about how pushing kids to find their passion and pursue it relentlessly is harmful to kids. I don't know if it's harmful so much as, well, let's just say "not all that useful."
In our own school district, the 5th graders do a "Capstone" project as part of crowning their achievement at the end of their elementary school idea. This is a fine idea. It's a nice way to celebrate and commemorate the end of this particular little era in their lives. What the pilot teachers discovered, though, was that the "Passion" projects students choose in September (at the ripe old age of 10) were of little interest come January* and by April, forcing students to grind out this glorious Capstone project was, for most of them, an exercise in educational flogging. This isn't to say that Capstone is a bad idea. It isn't. But forcing most kids in September to choose what they're going to love for an entire school year is...not practical.
In my own classroom, finding passions is easy. We've started a unit on paleontology and the kids are so excited. Today, A. loves rocks. Flint is awesome. So are geodes and diamonds and minerals and everything igneous. Next week? It'll be plants of the Cretaceous. Or Ice Age Mammals. Or wolves....
We spent today "Wondering and Wandering." It's an old phrase, and sometimes I can't stand it, but when the "What do I already know about Paleontology" part of the chart is blank except for a sticky note that reads "I thik it has to do with dinosurs," then asking the kids to pick what they are passionate about studying is a fool's errand. How could they possibly know?
On a related note, there are many times when I work with students who I know are gifted, but damned if I can find the gift. I poke and prod and throw all kinds of different challenges at them to see what might stick, and sometimes it's just....nothing. Can't find it. It's immensely frustrating for me, and, I presume, for the kid. "Here's this adult who is supposed to know things, and she never, ever once gives me anything actually worth doing, much less doing well" he thinks. Or, I think he thinks that because I honestly have no freaking clue what he's thinking.
And then, after two years of me fruitlessly attempting to get him to show a spark of anything, we start a unit on Chemistry. It's April. For two years, this boy has done...nothing. Five minutes into "100 greatest discoveries in Chemistry"**this kid comes up to me, eyes wide, and asks if he can borrow the copy of the periodic table I have taped up. He wants to find every element Bill Nye mentions and see what it is. See what it's next to. He want's to press this table into his brain and learn this. This. Chemistry. He is sitting up, close to the screen. He cannot wait to see what comes next. It takes my breath away.
Maybe this will be his passion forever. Likely not. But with luck it will lead him to the next thing he has to learn. I can only hope.
We spend so much time preparing our kids to be career and college ready. Ready to take on a major and then a career that will keep them productive, taxpaying citizens for life. Maybe, though, we ought to spend a little more time teaching them how to wonder and wander. How to appreciate the vast breadth of things there are out there to know. How to find what is true, and what is simply, still, just unknown.
With any luck, I can get it to take their breath away, too.
*Or October, for some kids.
**featuring Bill Nye. Not the "science guy" though. Aimed more at highschoolers or adults who are just interested in things. I recommend it.
Saturday, December 3, 2016
Cookie Notice: There's likely some in the freezer if you dig around a little
I haven't been here in awhile. I could say it's because I don't have time, but that isn't really true. If I would cut my time on facebook in half, I'd not only have time to blog regularly, I'd also be able to exercise daily, keep my house clean and discover the cure for cancer. I did take the facebook app off of my phone recently in a futile effort to keep me from checking it compulsively, but mostly all it's done is reduce the amount of posting I do to my classroom page to nearly zero. There's a big push now to post about our classrooms on Twitter, which I suppose I could do, especially since Twitter has never been particularly appealing for me and isn't a time suck at all. However, since I just don't quite get the fascination of Twitter, this also means I rarely post to my classroom Twitter account, because I never think of it. So much for coming into the digital age with grace.
So now that I'm back for my standard effort to post more during the Holidailies challenge, I discovered that there's a new (to me) little notice at the top of my page telling me that "European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies" This is as far as I skimmed, initially, before I stopped reading and began to think "cookies?" I have to tell Europeans on my blog (all 2 of them) about American cookies? Is this a tourism thing? Hospitality issue?
Then, of course, the more reasonable parts of my frontal lobe wrested the controls away from the part of my brain that always bounds off the path like a cocker spaniel who's spotted a squirrel and I read a little further. They're talking about electronic cookies, of course, and apparently Blogger is just telling me that there's this issue and they've taken care of it, or something*. I'm supposed to check if it works or somesuch, which is too bad because it's really unlikely I will and then I'll wind up banned from going to Germany for my failure to inform people about my cookies.
So, just in case, for chocolate chip, you can't go wrong with the Tollhouse recipe. Just switch the amount on the brown sugar and white sugar. Also, quadruple the recipe. Because you can never have too many chocolate chip cookies. Especially if you have a fondness for raw cookie dough**
There. Done.
Happy Holidays.
*I didn't read it carefully all the way through. I got the idea to write about it and wanted to do that before I forgot what I was going to write about. I'm serious about that cocker spaniel thing, and my brain is sometimes completely filled with nothing but squirrels.
**Yes, I KNOW about the dangers of raw flour and eggs. I'm livin' on the edge.
So now that I'm back for my standard effort to post more during the Holidailies challenge, I discovered that there's a new (to me) little notice at the top of my page telling me that "European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies" This is as far as I skimmed, initially, before I stopped reading and began to think "cookies?" I have to tell Europeans on my blog (all 2 of them) about American cookies? Is this a tourism thing? Hospitality issue?
Then, of course, the more reasonable parts of my frontal lobe wrested the controls away from the part of my brain that always bounds off the path like a cocker spaniel who's spotted a squirrel and I read a little further. They're talking about electronic cookies, of course, and apparently Blogger is just telling me that there's this issue and they've taken care of it, or something*. I'm supposed to check if it works or somesuch, which is too bad because it's really unlikely I will and then I'll wind up banned from going to Germany for my failure to inform people about my cookies.
So, just in case, for chocolate chip, you can't go wrong with the Tollhouse recipe. Just switch the amount on the brown sugar and white sugar. Also, quadruple the recipe. Because you can never have too many chocolate chip cookies. Especially if you have a fondness for raw cookie dough**
There. Done.
Happy Holidays.
*I didn't read it carefully all the way through. I got the idea to write about it and wanted to do that before I forgot what I was going to write about. I'm serious about that cocker spaniel thing, and my brain is sometimes completely filled with nothing but squirrels.
**Yes, I KNOW about the dangers of raw flour and eggs. I'm livin' on the edge.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
It's More Productive than Arguing on Facebook
I started this a couple weeks ago, but couldn't get past #2. I finally finished it.
After wading through some fairly repulsive vitriol on Facebook tonight, which required the hiding of yet another person on my feed, I got kind of nostalgic for the early days, when we all posted things about ourselves that began with "H" or ten movies that described our lives and whatnot.
So here's ten things you didn't know about me, in lieu of more banging my head up against the latest wall of ignorant bigotry flying around.
1. I always have to shower after scooping out the catboxes because I can't stand all the dust from the litter in my hair and on my skin and all, or the smell of it in my nose. I have a weird thing about personal cleanliness that used to be even stronger than it is now.*
2. My childhood cats were named after Rudyard Kipling characters, Shere Khan and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
3. I can't think of a third one.
4. I enjoy vacuuming and mowing the lawn because you can see the difference when you are finished. This speaks to frequency with which I do these chores, so it's apparent that saying I enjoy them doesn't actually get me to do them that often.
5. I have, somewhat by accident, come to have a collection of nesting dolls. I didn't really intend to collect them, but occasionally people find cool ones and give them to me. My favorite is a round one that starts with constellations and ends with the moon.
6. I used to tap dance when I was little. This skill once helped me land a part in a play about women who tap danced rather badly, which is my exact level of ability -- rather bad. I am okay with this.
7. In college I had a paid gig as a writer for a theater troupe. I also got college credit for it, which I found exceptionally gratifying. It's the only time I've ever been paid for writing. There's one piece from it I'm still proud of.
8. The first movie in the theater I can recall my father taking me to see is Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I fell asleep.
9. When I was little, I had a fascination with cutaway drawings, where you got to see the insides of a structure. I still do enjoy looking at such drawings (Stephen Biesty's books are terrific!) and I occasionally peruse catalogs of home plans, even though I have no intention of moving.**
10. Every time I go to IKEA I imagine that it will fill me with all the joy it does everybody else. Except it never does. I find it oddly overwhelming and filled with things that I mostly don't like but feel like I should but couldn't afford even if I did. Everything there falls into the "That's maybe cool, but I don't really need to spend money on it" category. As far as I know, I'm the only American to feel this way.
*this, sadly, does not mean that I keep my house spotlessly clean. Also, this cleanliness thing is probably exacerbated by my bizarrely strong sense of smell. (Most useless superpower ever.)
**I detest moving. At most points during the moving process I would rather set all my belongings on fire and start fresh at the new place.
After wading through some fairly repulsive vitriol on Facebook tonight, which required the hiding of yet another person on my feed, I got kind of nostalgic for the early days, when we all posted things about ourselves that began with "H" or ten movies that described our lives and whatnot.
So here's ten things you didn't know about me, in lieu of more banging my head up against the latest wall of ignorant bigotry flying around.
1. I always have to shower after scooping out the catboxes because I can't stand all the dust from the litter in my hair and on my skin and all, or the smell of it in my nose. I have a weird thing about personal cleanliness that used to be even stronger than it is now.*
2. My childhood cats were named after Rudyard Kipling characters, Shere Khan and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.
3. I can't think of a third one.
4. I enjoy vacuuming and mowing the lawn because you can see the difference when you are finished. This speaks to frequency with which I do these chores, so it's apparent that saying I enjoy them doesn't actually get me to do them that often.
5. I have, somewhat by accident, come to have a collection of nesting dolls. I didn't really intend to collect them, but occasionally people find cool ones and give them to me. My favorite is a round one that starts with constellations and ends with the moon.
6. I used to tap dance when I was little. This skill once helped me land a part in a play about women who tap danced rather badly, which is my exact level of ability -- rather bad. I am okay with this.
7. In college I had a paid gig as a writer for a theater troupe. I also got college credit for it, which I found exceptionally gratifying. It's the only time I've ever been paid for writing. There's one piece from it I'm still proud of.
8. The first movie in the theater I can recall my father taking me to see is Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I fell asleep.
9. When I was little, I had a fascination with cutaway drawings, where you got to see the insides of a structure. I still do enjoy looking at such drawings (Stephen Biesty's books are terrific!) and I occasionally peruse catalogs of home plans, even though I have no intention of moving.**
10. Every time I go to IKEA I imagine that it will fill me with all the joy it does everybody else. Except it never does. I find it oddly overwhelming and filled with things that I mostly don't like but feel like I should but couldn't afford even if I did. Everything there falls into the "That's maybe cool, but I don't really need to spend money on it" category. As far as I know, I'm the only American to feel this way.
*this, sadly, does not mean that I keep my house spotlessly clean. Also, this cleanliness thing is probably exacerbated by my bizarrely strong sense of smell. (Most useless superpower ever.)
**I detest moving. At most points during the moving process I would rather set all my belongings on fire and start fresh at the new place.
Party Fatigue
A friend of mine posted today about how he'd never host a party for his kids at one of those mega-kiddie-themed-complexes. It reminded me that a while back I wrote about how much eye-rolling I had for people who threw birthday parties for their kids at such places and I have to say now that I take it back. Not because they aren't headache-inducing, ear-splitting germ-fests (they are) but because I get now that sometimes it's just a helluva lot easier to fork out money to have someone else run and clean up the birthday mess. Also, you don't have to clean your house before taking your kid to SuperHappyFunPalaceofBouncingandVideoGames. Though in all honesty, I have to admit that cleaning the house beforehand was a lot more for me than for the boys who came to the party. Given what I know about 10 year old boys, I think they would not have noticed any amount of dirt or clutter if we'd just left it where it was.
We just finished the Month of All Things Celebratory at our house, which begins with DD's birthday, rolls through Christmas and New Year's, and finally concludes with DS's birthday so the grownups around here are feeling a little bit ragged around the edges. Party fatigue.
The kids are happy, though, and DS even said that this last birthday, which involved ten little boys, pizza and Ant Man* was more fun than one he had once at the local SHFPBVG.
So that's something.
*Have you ever watched an action-hero movie with 10 4th grade boys? It's an experience.
We just finished the Month of All Things Celebratory at our house, which begins with DD's birthday, rolls through Christmas and New Year's, and finally concludes with DS's birthday so the grownups around here are feeling a little bit ragged around the edges. Party fatigue.
The kids are happy, though, and DS even said that this last birthday, which involved ten little boys, pizza and Ant Man* was more fun than one he had once at the local SHFPBVG.
So that's something.
*Have you ever watched an action-hero movie with 10 4th grade boys? It's an experience.
Friday, December 4, 2015
Also, Z packs Are the Bomb
After spending three days home sick, I can definitively say that there is nothing so content in this world than a cat sleeping on the heating blanket turned up high.
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
So, Here's the Thing
So, here's the thing.
I don't own a gun. Never have. Likely never will. If you've looked at previous postings about me and guns you'll understand why, and likely agree with me that it's best for all involved that I not be in possession of a lethal weapon. I think I've gone target shooting before, though, and enjoyed it, so there's that.
But I know people who own guns, and love them, care for them, know everything there is to know about how they are crafted, designed, maintained, modified (or are modifiable), sold, registered, licensed, and regulated. They know all the ins and outs and I'm glad that they know these things because I certainly don't and honestly don't want to. There are other things that I need and want to know instead, and there's only so much time and room in my brain.
So, here's the thing.
Every time a shooting happens, people tend to line up on two sides. One side tends to be filled with people who don't like guns, and don't know a whole lot about them and shout about "common sense measures." Except, I don't think they necessarily are "common sense measures." Or they are, like "quit selling guns to people with homicidal rage issues" but those measures don't come with any practical way to DO it. I think that gun owners who are actually smart, safe and knowledgable about guns feel the same way about people hollering about these kinds of ideas as I felt when gun-rights folks called for laws demanding that every teacher open carry in the classroom to deter school shootings.
Then there's the other side. The other side lines up and yells about how stupid the first side is, how their ideas are dumb, and ignorant and won't work, and 2nd Amendment! and the real problem is mental illness or what about alcohol? - that kills WAY more people and so on and so on.
Ignorance and arrogance scream at each other on both sides. We become convinced that the enemy is the American on the other side of the divide and do our best to vilify him. We fall down the rabbit hole of social media memes, and more vitriol, ad hominem attacks, hate mongering and blaming while politicians grandstand and count your votes.
And the problem never gets solved. Hell, the problem is never actually identified properly.
So, here's the thing.
There are smart people on both sides of this debate. I know because I know them personally. Some of them are related to me, even.
Let's take two extremes off the table and agree that they're never going to happen. Anybody who mentions either as solutions gets summarily booted from the conversation. Extreme one: no guns for anybody. Laws like England or Australia (or any other first world country where the vast majority of people aren't allowed to own firearms). Sorry, it just isn't going to happen here.
Extreme two: everybody must have a gun. Arm everyone, all the time. Nope. This isn't going to happen either, so let it go.
Now then.
There's some middle ground. See it? It's over there. It's all muddy, though, so watch your step.
And here's the problem:
Some people should not have access to guns†.
How do we figure out which people those are, and how do we keep them from having access to guns?
That's it. That's the thing.
Unless you have a concrete, plausible, practical, usable, legal, implementable solution, then you need to hush. Solutions proposed without supporting evidence will be returned for revision. Solutions containing logical fallacies will be fed to the dog.
You have your assignment, folks. Due date: yesterday.
*Or maybe they do. Maybe they've spent passionate hours learning everything about something they detest. I don't function that way, but some people probably do.
†If you disagree with this, then you don't need to be part of the conversation.
I don't own a gun. Never have. Likely never will. If you've looked at previous postings about me and guns you'll understand why, and likely agree with me that it's best for all involved that I not be in possession of a lethal weapon. I think I've gone target shooting before, though, and enjoyed it, so there's that.
But I know people who own guns, and love them, care for them, know everything there is to know about how they are crafted, designed, maintained, modified (or are modifiable), sold, registered, licensed, and regulated. They know all the ins and outs and I'm glad that they know these things because I certainly don't and honestly don't want to. There are other things that I need and want to know instead, and there's only so much time and room in my brain.
So, here's the thing.
Every time a shooting happens, people tend to line up on two sides. One side tends to be filled with people who don't like guns, and don't know a whole lot about them and shout about "common sense measures." Except, I don't think they necessarily are "common sense measures." Or they are, like "quit selling guns to people with homicidal rage issues" but those measures don't come with any practical way to DO it. I think that gun owners who are actually smart, safe and knowledgable about guns feel the same way about people hollering about these kinds of ideas as I felt when gun-rights folks called for laws demanding that every teacher open carry in the classroom to deter school shootings.
Then there's the other side. The other side lines up and yells about how stupid the first side is, how their ideas are dumb, and ignorant and won't work, and 2nd Amendment! and the real problem is mental illness or what about alcohol? - that kills WAY more people and so on and so on.
Ignorance and arrogance scream at each other on both sides. We become convinced that the enemy is the American on the other side of the divide and do our best to vilify him. We fall down the rabbit hole of social media memes, and more vitriol, ad hominem attacks, hate mongering and blaming while politicians grandstand and count your votes.
So, here's the thing.
There are smart people on both sides of this debate. I know because I know them personally. Some of them are related to me, even.
Let's take two extremes off the table and agree that they're never going to happen. Anybody who mentions either as solutions gets summarily booted from the conversation. Extreme one: no guns for anybody. Laws like England or Australia (or any other first world country where the vast majority of people aren't allowed to own firearms). Sorry, it just isn't going to happen here.
Extreme two: everybody must have a gun. Arm everyone, all the time. Nope. This isn't going to happen either, so let it go.
Now then.
There's some middle ground. See it? It's over there. It's all muddy, though, so watch your step.
And here's the problem:
Some people should not have access to guns†.
How do we figure out which people those are, and how do we keep them from having access to guns?
That's it. That's the thing.
Unless you have a concrete, plausible, practical, usable, legal, implementable solution, then you need to hush. Solutions proposed without supporting evidence will be returned for revision. Solutions containing logical fallacies will be fed to the dog.
You have your assignment, folks. Due date: yesterday.
*Or maybe they do. Maybe they've spent passionate hours learning everything about something they detest. I don't function that way, but some people probably do.
†If you disagree with this, then you don't need to be part of the conversation.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Welcome Back?
I was going to call this post "Taking Another Stab at Things" but when I looked at it, I realized that it was a pretty bleak looking title, and might give folks the wrong impression. I mean, I saw when logging in that the last time I wrote was about this time last year, probably in an attempt to stave off writing my holiday newsletter, which is what I'm doing right now. I really need to write more often.
I've sat here thinking a bit, writing and deleting multiple times, about what to write. I've been home, sick, for two days with far too much time to ponder the inadequacies of my navel, and this is not the best for writing chipper Holidailies entries. The prompt for today was something about which Christmas song do I love to hate or hate that I love. The one that comes to mind is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" which I think most of my friends detest either because they just do*, or because they've decided to go with the modern re-interpretation that the guy in it is pressuring the woman and not taking no for an answer, and possibly roofie-ing her drink. (I just had to go look up the spelling of "roofie." This is how not-in-touch with urban slang I am.) I know that when the song was created, it did not have this meaning, and, in fact, the drink in question was not even alcoholic, much less roofied, thus the joke in the song. Mostly, I like songs with counterpoint and good harmony, and I think the scene where Zoe Deschanel and Will Farrell sing it in Elf is adorable.
I like "Elf," too. Sue me.
So that's the song that I not very secretly like that lots of people hate.
I rather feel the same way about "Love, Actually." There is an annual tug of war about this movie, and people I love and respect would like to see all copies of that movie shredded, burned, buried, dug up and set on fire again. I find that several of the storylines are completely implausible, kitschy, and have anti-feminist elements**. However, if that were the standard for all romantic movies, there would be none. (Which I'm sure would be fine with many people.)
Maybe tomorrow I'll try for a post about my life, or a rough draft of the annual newsletter. I'm planning to go back to work tomorrow, though, so it's more likely to be a one-sentence update on the state of my cats.
Happy Holidays.
*Which is completely legit. It's okay to just not like things.
**And why they cut the same-sex storyline defies understanding. It was brilliant.
I've sat here thinking a bit, writing and deleting multiple times, about what to write. I've been home, sick, for two days with far too much time to ponder the inadequacies of my navel, and this is not the best for writing chipper Holidailies entries. The prompt for today was something about which Christmas song do I love to hate or hate that I love. The one that comes to mind is "Baby, It's Cold Outside" which I think most of my friends detest either because they just do*, or because they've decided to go with the modern re-interpretation that the guy in it is pressuring the woman and not taking no for an answer, and possibly roofie-ing her drink. (I just had to go look up the spelling of "roofie." This is how not-in-touch with urban slang I am.) I know that when the song was created, it did not have this meaning, and, in fact, the drink in question was not even alcoholic, much less roofied, thus the joke in the song. Mostly, I like songs with counterpoint and good harmony, and I think the scene where Zoe Deschanel and Will Farrell sing it in Elf is adorable.
I like "Elf," too. Sue me.
So that's the song that I not very secretly like that lots of people hate.
I rather feel the same way about "Love, Actually." There is an annual tug of war about this movie, and people I love and respect would like to see all copies of that movie shredded, burned, buried, dug up and set on fire again. I find that several of the storylines are completely implausible, kitschy, and have anti-feminist elements**. However, if that were the standard for all romantic movies, there would be none. (Which I'm sure would be fine with many people.)
Maybe tomorrow I'll try for a post about my life, or a rough draft of the annual newsletter. I'm planning to go back to work tomorrow, though, so it's more likely to be a one-sentence update on the state of my cats.
Happy Holidays.
*Which is completely legit. It's okay to just not like things.
**And why they cut the same-sex storyline defies understanding. It was brilliant.
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