so not ready for school to start. i'm loving being in my classroom and finally being able to get that set up. i'm excited for my room - it's coming together fairly well. i still have some problems to solve which are keeping my mind plenty busy, but the major things are essentially taken care of.
the only problem is that taking care of my room is doing an excellent job of distracting me from the much more important questions about how i want things to run once the children are in it. i'm doing an excellent job of not thinking about the rules and procedures and behavior management plans that i need to be putting into place. i'm not thinking about what we are going to do the first week to ensure that we have a successful year full of learning. which seems to me to be kind of bad in that these things seem a bit more important in the grand scheme of things than the classroom. in all fairness, though, all i have done thus far is unpack and organize, which does seem inherently important in having a classroom that runs smoothly.
we'll have to see how the week plays out. i'm not sure if having such a short period of time to get ready will help the procrastinator in me kick it into high gear or if it will mean being less ready than i should be. sadly, given past experience, it probably means some mix of the two with at least a bit of the latter. but i can dream, can't i?
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
letters to intangibles
dear English,
please be more confusing and arbitrary. that would make my job much easier. thank you.
kim
dear houston,
please help me make some friends. i don't mind getting lost if i end up where the cool people are. thanks.
kim
p.s. i have cookies.
dear public education,
food for thought: more does not necessarily equal better. discuss.
kim
dear computer,
please stop sucking. i'm tired of fixing you. and i don't want to call india anymore.
kim
dear TED,
thank you for taking a vacation from posting talks. i appreciate being able to catch up.
kim
dear kersten,
we need to find an outlet for our baking habit that is not my stomach. pretty pretty please? i'll put a cherry on top.
kim
please be more confusing and arbitrary. that would make my job much easier. thank you.
kim
dear houston,
please help me make some friends. i don't mind getting lost if i end up where the cool people are. thanks.
kim
p.s. i have cookies.
dear public education,
food for thought: more does not necessarily equal better. discuss.
kim
dear computer,
please stop sucking. i'm tired of fixing you. and i don't want to call india anymore.
kim
dear TED,
thank you for taking a vacation from posting talks. i appreciate being able to catch up.
kim
dear kersten,
we need to find an outlet for our baking habit that is not my stomach. pretty pretty please? i'll put a cherry on top.
kim
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
stolen lyric poetry
i sometimes collect song lyrics that i enjoy. bits of text and phrases that resonate with me for whatever reason. for some it's the meaning, for others i just like the way they sound. i've taken some of these lyrics and turned them into poems. i think the first one came out alright. the second one requires a little more mining for the meaning.
Let It Out
If you've got an impulse let it out
(With a smile)
Hear the bells are
Ringing joyful and triumphant
Be good to yourself today
Have no fear
Gamble everything
Go make out
Up in the balcony
The band's leaving
Old age is just around the bend
The Sound of Settling
Distance lends enchantment to the future;
but my bed's too big for just me.
So I hold you closer,
fumbling to make contact.
But when I'm leanin',
you just turn your head away.
We'd learn how our bodies worked;
think without boundaries;
be good to ourselves today.
But I always have to steal my kisses from you.
Can you tell I'm losing sleep?
Yeah, you make me merry,
but you just turn your head away.
So I learnt from you.
Goddamn the black night,
with all it's foul temptations.
When you turn your eyes,
I promise I won't care,
but my bed's too big for just me.
special thanks to the following artists for the use of their words:
Ra Ra Riot
random Indian man
Dove Chocolate wrapper
Ben Harper
Death Cab for Cutie
Kate Nash
Bright Eyes
Mike Doughty
Ben Lee
Let It Out
If you've got an impulse let it out
(With a smile)
Hear the bells are
Ringing joyful and triumphant
Be good to yourself today
Have no fear
Gamble everything
Go make out
Up in the balcony
The band's leaving
Old age is just around the bend
The Sound of Settling
Distance lends enchantment to the future;
but my bed's too big for just me.
So I hold you closer,
fumbling to make contact.
But when I'm leanin',
you just turn your head away.
We'd learn how our bodies worked;
think without boundaries;
be good to ourselves today.
But I always have to steal my kisses from you.
Can you tell I'm losing sleep?
Yeah, you make me merry,
but you just turn your head away.
So I learnt from you.
Goddamn the black night,
with all it's foul temptations.
When you turn your eyes,
I promise I won't care,
but my bed's too big for just me.
special thanks to the following artists for the use of their words:
Ra Ra Riot
random Indian man
Dove Chocolate wrapper
Ben Harper
Death Cab for Cutie
Kate Nash
Bright Eyes
Mike Doughty
Ben Lee
Saturday, July 31, 2010
adventures in moving
i got to be a grown-up today. kersten and i are moving and this time we decided to do it with a truck. you know, one of those u-hauls. we settled on one that was 10 feet long. in classic kim style, i thought very little of our decision. we'll figure it out, right?
and then my mom looked at me and asked, "it's an automatic, right?"
"of course, i'm sure, it has to be," i replied and tried not to give it much thought.
then today we were sitting at lunch and kersten goes, "what are we going to do if it's a manual?" and again, in my classic i-can-do-anything,-no-problem sort of way i answered, "we'll take it and hope ben peetz really did teach me something on the farm this summer. it'll be fine, we'll figure it out." kersten did not looked convinced.
a little while later, as i was sitting at barnes & noble waiting for kersten to finish stealing the internet, i gave this last exchange some thought. neither one of us really knows how to drive a stick. sure, we know how, but we don't really know how. nor has either one of us ever driven a giant truck before. and it's houston. there's traffic. i started imagining kersten and i in this truck and i laughed so hard i cried. right there in the barnes. we'd be going approximately 10 miles an hour and trying to avoid every major street we can, probably killing the engine at every other corner while screaming and flailing at each other in the cab. then i imagined the truck full and realized that there is no way to get from our old house to our new house without taking some major streets. i have no idea what gear i need to go 40 miles an hour! i think i'm going to start cracking up again, sitting here by myself...
at any rate, the truck did indeed turn out to be an automatic which i thought took some of the adventure out of things but was probably safer. little did i know what adventure would be in store for us...we had to wait a bit for our truck to come and they offered us the 17 foot truck that had already come back. we said we would wait. then, as we were filling out the paperwork to take it, kersten asked if it had a ramp, thinking that of course it would. of course it didn't. realizing that there was no way the 2 of us could get a washing machine into a truck without a ramp, we said, "what were you saying about that 17 foot truck? it has a ramp, right?" of course it does. and thus, kersten got to drive down the streets of houston in a 17 food u-haul truck. adventure was restored.
luckily, no accidents occurred, but it was fun watching her drive it. such good expressions...
it was also kind of fun loading it. i've never gotten to get in the truck before. i felt very grown up.
that said, growing up is kind of annoying. moving sucks. especially moving into a second floor apartment. and we don't really even have any furniture yet. good thing we like the place lots.
and then my mom looked at me and asked, "it's an automatic, right?"
"of course, i'm sure, it has to be," i replied and tried not to give it much thought.
then today we were sitting at lunch and kersten goes, "what are we going to do if it's a manual?" and again, in my classic i-can-do-anything,-no-problem sort of way i answered, "we'll take it and hope ben peetz really did teach me something on the farm this summer. it'll be fine, we'll figure it out." kersten did not looked convinced.
a little while later, as i was sitting at barnes & noble waiting for kersten to finish stealing the internet, i gave this last exchange some thought. neither one of us really knows how to drive a stick. sure, we know how, but we don't really know how. nor has either one of us ever driven a giant truck before. and it's houston. there's traffic. i started imagining kersten and i in this truck and i laughed so hard i cried. right there in the barnes. we'd be going approximately 10 miles an hour and trying to avoid every major street we can, probably killing the engine at every other corner while screaming and flailing at each other in the cab. then i imagined the truck full and realized that there is no way to get from our old house to our new house without taking some major streets. i have no idea what gear i need to go 40 miles an hour! i think i'm going to start cracking up again, sitting here by myself...
at any rate, the truck did indeed turn out to be an automatic which i thought took some of the adventure out of things but was probably safer. little did i know what adventure would be in store for us...we had to wait a bit for our truck to come and they offered us the 17 foot truck that had already come back. we said we would wait. then, as we were filling out the paperwork to take it, kersten asked if it had a ramp, thinking that of course it would. of course it didn't. realizing that there was no way the 2 of us could get a washing machine into a truck without a ramp, we said, "what were you saying about that 17 foot truck? it has a ramp, right?" of course it does. and thus, kersten got to drive down the streets of houston in a 17 food u-haul truck. adventure was restored.
luckily, no accidents occurred, but it was fun watching her drive it. such good expressions...
it was also kind of fun loading it. i've never gotten to get in the truck before. i felt very grown up.
that said, growing up is kind of annoying. moving sucks. especially moving into a second floor apartment. and we don't really even have any furniture yet. good thing we like the place lots.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
the spirit of the sea
i am a teacher. and as you can probably imagine, friday afternoons are the worst part of any week. worse than mondays. no one wants to be working anymore, myself included. especially right after recess. especially 3 weeks before the end of the year. unfortunately, nobody asks us about these things and thus we are forced to continue on, slugging our way to the end of the week, attempting to learn...something.
the kids' response to such moments is to play. in all the ways they aren't supposed to. as the teacher, my response is to devise new and interesting punishments that will not only reinforce good behavior, but also keep them busy for as long as possible. this past friday, my brilliant solution was Definitions. and not from the watered-down textbook glossary. no, no. from the intimidatingly large and decrepit dictionaries that have dutifully sat in the classroom library all year long.
oh yes, it's pretty much as wonderful as it sounds. the students are given an organizer usually used for learning new vocabulary and are required to copy words, definitions and pictures from the aforementioned dictionaries. silently. those of us who don't understand silence get extra practice in the form of extra organizers. those of us who do essentially get "time off for good behavior" in the form of reward tickets. justice is served, definitions are (hopefully) learned and silence reigns in the classroom. everyone wins. almost.
the downfall of this punishment is that it creates extra work for me to grade. at least, i thought that would be the downfall. turns out i seriously underestimated the joy that could be gleaned from the 9-year-old mind (relatively) freely splattered on a page.
seriously, these kids come up with some amazing things. the kick i got out of some of the pictures alone was worth the time spent grading the extra work. equally wonderful were some of the words that the kids chose. most were pretty run of the mill - strawberry, flower, fruit. some wanted to be rebels - missile, rifle, pistol. and some made mildly interesting choices - become, broil, wednesday. but you have to wonder about the kid who goes home saying, "mom, today ms. wood made us do definitions and guess what i learned about!" but you can't guess. because you didn't even know it was in the dictionary.
davy jones' locker. defined, illustrated and exemplified correctly. followed by davy jones. also defined, illustrated and exemplified correctly. did i mention that i derive great amusement from piratey things? this may be the best assignment i have received all year.
so i thank you, darling, for bringing me this joy. because i should have seen it coming when you raised your hand in class and asked, "ms. wood, how am i supposed to draw the spirit of the sea?" and yet, i didn't. somehow, i just didn't.
sadly, your classmates may have different words for you. for you have sealed the fate of this particular punishment. it is here to stay, my friends. so get your pencils ready. especially on friday afternoons.
update: we, sadly, were forced to repeat this punishment the next week. this time the same student chose ginger beer and gin as two of her words. i'm beginning to have some real concerns about sending her home with this knowledge...
the kids' response to such moments is to play. in all the ways they aren't supposed to. as the teacher, my response is to devise new and interesting punishments that will not only reinforce good behavior, but also keep them busy for as long as possible. this past friday, my brilliant solution was Definitions. and not from the watered-down textbook glossary. no, no. from the intimidatingly large and decrepit dictionaries that have dutifully sat in the classroom library all year long.
oh yes, it's pretty much as wonderful as it sounds. the students are given an organizer usually used for learning new vocabulary and are required to copy words, definitions and pictures from the aforementioned dictionaries. silently. those of us who don't understand silence get extra practice in the form of extra organizers. those of us who do essentially get "time off for good behavior" in the form of reward tickets. justice is served, definitions are (hopefully) learned and silence reigns in the classroom. everyone wins. almost.
the downfall of this punishment is that it creates extra work for me to grade. at least, i thought that would be the downfall. turns out i seriously underestimated the joy that could be gleaned from the 9-year-old mind (relatively) freely splattered on a page.
seriously, these kids come up with some amazing things. the kick i got out of some of the pictures alone was worth the time spent grading the extra work. equally wonderful were some of the words that the kids chose. most were pretty run of the mill - strawberry, flower, fruit. some wanted to be rebels - missile, rifle, pistol. and some made mildly interesting choices - become, broil, wednesday. but you have to wonder about the kid who goes home saying, "mom, today ms. wood made us do definitions and guess what i learned about!" but you can't guess. because you didn't even know it was in the dictionary.
davy jones' locker. defined, illustrated and exemplified correctly. followed by davy jones. also defined, illustrated and exemplified correctly. did i mention that i derive great amusement from piratey things? this may be the best assignment i have received all year.
so i thank you, darling, for bringing me this joy. because i should have seen it coming when you raised your hand in class and asked, "ms. wood, how am i supposed to draw the spirit of the sea?" and yet, i didn't. somehow, i just didn't.
sadly, your classmates may have different words for you. for you have sealed the fate of this particular punishment. it is here to stay, my friends. so get your pencils ready. especially on friday afternoons.
update: we, sadly, were forced to repeat this punishment the next week. this time the same student chose ginger beer and gin as two of her words. i'm beginning to have some real concerns about sending her home with this knowledge...
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