One more teeny post

NaBloWriMo ends today. This is my 30th post, so I made my goal to post 30 times in 30 days. It would have been better to blog daily, but November is a month filled with no-school days and sometimes the well ran dry. As I continue this blog, I'm going to try to write more about the joys of teaching instead of bellyaching about things out of my control. I'm going to be positive, positive I tell you! At least, I'm going to try.

A Good Monday (and that's rather surprising)

I'm not a big fan of Mondays. I hate having my weekend end. It's so hard for me to get up, get the boy up, and pull it all together to get out of the house in a timely manner. But I do, week after week, because preparing for a sub is worse than facing any Monday! However, I rather enjoyed today.

It was November walk-about day--nice timing, princiPal--waiting to the last day of the month! (I guess it snuck up on her.) My princiPal, academic coach, fellow 4th grade teacher, and I visited 3 classrooms during our reading block. As much as I hate the game of trying to decide which quadrant each teacher was teaching in (if you don't understand "quadrant" then, please, go and kiss your princiPal tomorrow for not rushing headlong into the whole Rigor and Relevance rigamarole the way our district has)--long parenthetical pause there!--as I was saying, as much as I hate determining the quadrant, that's how much I love observing fellow teachers. I always learn something or find something that provokes admiration or horrorification. Today I admired the way one teacher was using a picture book to enhance student knowledge of hurricanes and tornadoes. She did a bang up job and landed in quadrant D! (Um, that's good, in fact, the best quadrant, for all that it sounds like an admirable bra cup size.) The other 2 teachers weren't quite up to a D level, but they weren't bad. Except one had a handmade division chart on the wall. She had labeled "divisor" and "dividend" incorrectly! (Shock! Gasp! Oooh!) Not good. And in a school where math practices are suddenly under intense scrutiny because of lousy scores, extremely NOT GOOD.

Okay, back to the day. I did a good job with the science lesson. Students were active and engaged and excited to learn about static electricity. Then my math lesson went even better. I wish I taught everything as well as I taught that lesson. I had energy (don't know from where!) and enthusiasm and perfect examples and they learned, finally, how to do a simple division problem. They finally saw the value of the Teacher-Approved Handy Dandy Division Device and used it! (You don't know about Teacher-Approved Handy Dandy Division Devices? Cut an index card to make two almost-squares. Give one almost-square to each student. Keep one for yourself and model using it. When beginning the division problem, cover up all of the dividend except the greatest digit with the T-A HDDD. Look at that first digit. Can you get a group of the divisor from that digit? How many groups of 3 can you get from 8? Using the T-A HDDD helps students keep their problem lined up and makes certain they put digit in the right place in the quotient. Try it--it works!)

Okay, that was my terrific day. Got to be nosy in others' classrooms-check! Got to teach a good science lesson-check! Got to teach a fantastic math lesson-check! Enjoyed myself and my students-check! Check! Check!

All days should be so good.

Not my favorites!

Everyone does a list of favorites. I've decided to be different.

Least Favorites:

• Book: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne--I would rather be beaten with it than ever read it again.
• Movie: Sorcerer. My husband and I saw this when we were dating (1977). Trucks, mountainous terrain, and nitroglycerin. I kept hoping everything would blow up.
  
• Food: fish or liver, take your pick. Both make me want to hurl.
• Color: Aqua, the predominant color of my childhood, in the 60s. Everything in the kitchen was aqua, even our counter top. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
• Thing to do: Clean. I'm defeated by a mess. Overwhelmed doesn't begin to describe how I feel about my house.
• Gift: Anything from a particular sister-in-law. We draw names and the number of times she's gotten my name is uncanny. She has a knack for slights and insults, even through the guise of a gift.
• Genre: For books, romance. For movies, horror flicks.
• Dessert: Pumpkin pie. It just tastes bad and no amount of whipped cream can save it.
• Candy: Licorice--so vile it's hard to believe it's a candy.
• Soda: Root beer or Dr. Pepper. They taste the same to me. Bad.
  
• Magazine: Consumer Reports. Geez, how boring can you get?
• Thing about myself: My weight. Or my big feet.
• Favorite child: I'm not that mean. I don't have a favorite, either. I love them all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've only cooked one Thanksgiving turkey and that was more than 25 years ago. For every other Thanksgiving since I've been married, we've gone to my in-laws to enjoy the day with them. To my children, this IS Thanksgiving--playing with cousins, eating the bountiful meal cooked by their mammaw, and playing with cousins some more. Even though the cousins' ages range from 14 to 29, they all still play together. Today they had us in stitches as we watched a covey of them play Curses. Hilarious!

So today, I'm thankful for the 19 family members and 1 boyfriend (not mine--husband definitely wouldn't approve--the boyfriend was my niece's!) I spent today with. I'm thankful for my nearly 73 year-old mother-in-law who can't imagine not hosting Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) dinners at her home. I'm thankful my mom is here, because I don't think she will be for many more years. Mostly, I'm thankful that my husband (53 years old today!), kids, and I celebrated another holiday together. It's a rum old world and I treasure every moment I enjoy with my family.

Finished!

I've finished reading First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher. I greatly enjoyed it and am now saddened because it's over. Of course, the fact that I read it in about 15 hours means that my eyes hurt and I need to reread it to answer some questions about some of the stuff that happened.

That's okay--I'm a great rereader. There wasn't a lot of money in my family when I was growing up, and the few books I owned I read and reread to pieces. I enjoy a book nearly as much during a rereading as when I first read it--the experience isn't at all spoiled because I know the outcome. In fact, I find that I really enjoy knowing what is to come; I'm able to see the author lay out the groundwork for character and plot development.

When it comes to reading Jim Butcher's books, rereading is a joy and a necessity. His books are always page-turners. In fact, I stopped today and marveled at how he was able to make me want the book to shift the scene back to the previous one while simultaneously not wanting the present scene to end. I didn't know if I should slow down and savor or speed up and satisfy my curiosity. That, friends, is a good book!

Today

I've been working on math ideas for my princiPal. This isn't at her behest; it's because our lousy scores have to change and I know she expects me to be helpful. I've been interneting, looking for ideas to improve elementary math instruction. I ordered Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma and received it today. A cursory look makes me think I'll never get the other 4th grade teachers to want to read it--they are all non-readers and there ain't no pictures. That boggles my mind--how can you not be a reader if you're a teacher? I'm excited about this book. It looks at the differences between US and Chinese math instruction and focuses on depth of understanding by the teachers as the reason for the disparity in scores between our 2 countries. I'll try to blog later about how it goes.

As I continue to blog over the next few days, it likely will be more about family and less about school because it's Thanksgiving break. I'm beyond happy that I'll get to see all of my children on Thursday. It has become a too-rare occurrance.

Monday's post

Moses came bounding into my classroom on Monday morning. "Mrs. Matters! Mrs. Matters! Mrs. Matters!" he said, "I fell ten feet and landed on my back yesterday!"

"Oh, Moses! Were you hurt? Did it knock the wind out of you?"

"Yeah, it did, but what I really want to know is why did it take so long to fall? I mean, I know it didn't take very long but it seemed to take forever! I just fell and fell and fell! Why did it feel like it took a long time?"

"I don't know, Moses. I'll have to think about that one."

Three hours later. . .

"Mrs. Matters! Mrs. Matters! Mrs. Matters! Did you think about it? About why it took so long to fall?"

See why I like him so much? Never dull, always excited. He fell ten feet, knocked his breath out, and he's wondering why it felt like it took so long. That's Moses. And I actually did think about it. I told him about my car wreck last spring. It, too, felt like it took forever. I think that happens when we're in danger--our brain speeds up and the world feels like it has slowed down. I explained this to Moses (and the rest of the class) and Moses was so excited about the idea of having a "speeded-up brain".

Moses and a speeded-up brain. That would be interesting!