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(One of my pictures. Not as good as the Dude's)In this busy, crazy life of mine, it is a relief to sit down and watch a documentary on PBS. It's like yoga for my brain. The mellow voices. The long camera shots. The beautiful history. Such a relief from modern, jerky, witty, speedy, extreme TV. It inspires me to look into history, to start reading good, rich literature again. It reminds me of the richness possible when we take time to enjoy the world around us, to study it, to fight for it. At this moment, I am laying down on my couch, looking at my beautiful story-filled piano, listening to words that inspire me.
We live on such a beautiful earth. What am I doing to improve it, to document it?
Tonight I pick up my Wallace Stegner again, hoping for dreams about the land.
(or was it just because I forgot to add this part, and was too lazy to go back)
I fake screamed no less than 3 times today because I am reaching the end of being nice and patient about my room not being done. We are a month into school people! Can't you hurry up and finish already!?!?!
Sigh. I guess I need to rearrange my priorities. It must not be important for a teacher to have a classroom to teach in and be organized in. Silly me.
I realize that the "trend" in education now is for everything to be research based. I whole heartedly support that. Go for it. But is it really necessary to list every single researched source in the middle of your thought. I find your thoughts hard enough to understand what with your posturing vocabulary and your abundance of acronyms, and then you break it up with a set of parenthesis with strange names and dates sandwiched in between. My brain is tired enough from trying to keep up with differentiated instruction and classroom management techniques during the day to try and really understand your over abundance of references in the evening.
And while I'm on the complaining train, what's with telling me "In chapter 3 you will learn about (insert something mildly interesting here).....In chapter 5 you will learn about...." ETC, ETC, ETC! Just teach me in Chapter 1 what you want to teach me in chapter 1. Wait until chapter 3 to talk about chapter 3, and please, PLEASE leave chapter 5 in it's place. Don't waste my time and yours by adding all these hints of what is to come.
Sincerely yours,
A surprisingly informed reader
1st Graders: Are you married?
Mrs. The Dude: Yes, I am.
1st Graders: Do you have children?
Mrs. The Dude: No, not yet.
1st Graders: You should have children
Sigh. From your mouth to God's ears, my darling children. I know He is listening to our prayers, and I know we will have children some day. I'm just getting a little (O.K. A LOT) impatient to know when exactly those sweet spirits will join us.
Today with the 6th grade class we discussed the Mr. Bean episode where he uses dynamite to paint his room. The silhouette of the person left was what started the discussion.
And the best thing that happened today? The Dude decided to cut out a time sucker that he's been involved in lately. Hurray for him, and hurray for us being able to spend time together without him having to check his email every 5 seconds!
Mrs. The Dude: Why is it important that we clean up our mess?
Kindergartner: Because Jesus wants us to keep the earth clean.
Mrs. The Dude: What is different about drawing this way? (blind contour)
5th Grader: I don't have to care if it looks weird. It's fun when it looks weird!
(There was much giggling as we looked at our blind contour drawings of the person across from us.)
This is why I teach.
(The Dude took this picture, just had to show his skills off a little:)Like I promised, I am writing in spite of being back in the swing of things at school. I started teaching this week, and so far it's been a mixed bag. The 1st grade class was VERY wiggly. The room was hot, hot, HOT. And to top that off, during the lesson, one of the kids took off his shoe and said semi-frantically, "There's a spider in my shoe!!!" Anyone who has ever worked with kids that age knows, I lost. That was the end of any sort of semblance of order that hadn't been destroyed by the heat in the room already. 1st graders=1pt. Art Teacher=0pts. I should have just declared a spontaneous recess. But, no! I decided to keep going.... Stupid, stupid, stupid....
It ended up O.K. and not a total loss, because I felt like I needed to try my hand at story telling. I told. They drew. I reached into my bag of tricks given to me by my genetics, and started a new saga in the Mr. Bear story. Thank you, Dad! It was a little shaky, but if I keep working on my storytelling skills, and work out some story lines ahead of time, maybe it will go over. Maybe. I think next week, Mr. Bear and his friends (I had to make up some new ones, Dad, I couldn't remember yours and I figured I'd leave the witch out until Halloween,and even then I'll have to be careful, because we live in a sad, sad world that doesn't take things lightly) ANYway Mr. Bear and his friends are going to meet an artist wandering the forest. Maybe Kandinsky, maybe Klee, maybe Sol Lewitt. Nah, they wouldn't get him. Sol is a might bit over their heads right now. They might try and give each other instructions to create artwork on the wall with. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely adore Sol Lewitt's artwork. I just don't think 1st graders would fully appreciate Mr. Bear meeting good ol' Sol in the forest. To bad Mr. Bear isn't carnivorous, then he could meet J.K. You know who I mean, Marge. I just don't want my blog in anyway attached to his name. Yuck.
Maybe I should draw some pictures too.... Wow. Yeah, that would be a good thing. Am I going to be able to do it? Oh, I hope so, because that would be so cool. That is if it turns out as cool as it is in my head. Hmm... Maybe I should get to work.
See you all in the forest! (Maybe, I'll hide Sol in the trees)
Consider yourself evicted, Dear Monkey. I am done with you. It has taken a long a gruling process to get us to this point, but the time has finally come for you to leave now. Please don't ever come back.
Love,
One who is finally done with her project.
