Snow Day Crochet

We are on snow day #7, and I've been staying busy working on school stuff (of course) and sewing and crocheting.  My first afghan is finished!

It's brown and blue--I love that variegated yarn.  Those are some of my favorite color combinations.  The solid areas are a light brown.  It's very warm and cozy--perfect for cuddling up on the couch. I've been working on this since June, so I'm thrilled to have it finished.  It wasn't so much fun to do during the hot summer months!

I just started a baby blanket.  It has motifs, which I haven't worked with before, but it's pretty simple.  Little granny squares in the middle (40 of them!) and then worked together and bound with some shell stitches.  Here's the progress so far:

and here's what each motif will look like.  It's pink and brown, the baby-to-be's colors:

We are off again tomorrow, so I'll continue working and posting. And another storm is headed our way Tuesday into Wednesday, so I may be home even longer... 

Teeny Tiny Little Flakes

of snow are falling.  They've been falling for about three hours now, and nothing is sticking to the ground.  The weather forecasters are predicting 18 to 24 inches of snowfall in our region over the next two days, and because this storm started as expected during the day, schools cancelled last night for today.
It was great getting to sleep in and not having to wake up to listen for a delay or cancellation.  Cosmo and I snuggled until about 8:30 and then had a lazy morning.  K and I went out for breakfast and to do one errand, and traffic was unbelievable!  I am glad we're back in waiting for the storm to hit full-force.  Bring. It. On.
After last weekend's snow, our work day on Monday was cancelled, school was cancelled on Tuesday, and then we had more snow Tuesday night that cancelled school on Wednesday.  We had a 2-hour delay on Thursday, and now here we are.  So I taught for a total of four hours this week.  Woah...
If this storm brings us as much as is expected, I doubt we'll be having school until at last Tuesday of next week.  Good thing I brought home some work to do over the long weekend.

Snow Days, Snow Days

I love snow days.  I love snow.  I love that I live in an area that can't clear snow in a timely manner.  We got about 9-10 inches of snow on Saturday, and school was cancelled today and it has already been cancelled for tomorrow!! How exciting is that!
Today was a work day for teachers, so the only thing that changed was that we could work from home.  I went in to school from 11:30 to 4:00 today and got a bunch of things checked off the to-do list.  As I was leaving at 4 today, I was thinking that what I really needed was another snow day.  And by 4:08, I heard on the radio that my county was cancelled again.  Wishes do come true! I am so excited that I get to finish up my to-do list.  That will at least put me on track for the rest of the week (sigh).
I am so looking forward to tomorrow!! (And, as I always say, "School is so much fun without the kids!")

She Looks Like Me!

A beautiful moment in the library on Tuesday: one of our little African-American students, when she saw the picture of Jerry Pinkney at the end of Little Red Riding Hood, said, "He's Black!" and then as we were discussing the book, she pointed to Little Red Riding Hood and said, "SHE looks like me!" And it was true.  I had been hoping that someone would notice that LRRH is a character of color.  I didn't know if I should've pointed it out to the kids overtly, but if it came up in conversation, we'd talk about it.  This little girl was so excited.  She was touching her hair and look at the cover of the book. 
And then--I could not have scripted this moment any better--a little later the girl shows me the book she's checked out, and what is it? The Little Match Girl, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.  I don't even know how she found that book.  She's a first grader--certainly she did not know where to look on the shelves?!?! Maybe the book was out on display and she saw the illustrations and the name? I'm just not sure, but I loved the moment.

What If?

What if I didn't have an assistant in the library?  How would our program change? I am having a hard time even thinking about where to start--it would truly change our program for the worse, in many and every way possible.
1.  We'd have to limit open library visitation.  Students could only visit the library during their library class time.
2.  We'd limit the number of books students could check out based on how many books I could shelve in a day.
3.  Teacher services (putting in videos, pulling books, etc.) would have to stop.
4.  Reading programs would have to be reworked and scaled-down.
5.  All the "extras" I do (website manager, morning studio, newsletter editor, SCA adviser) would have to stop.

How could we make it work? Perhaps by taking the library out of the specials rotation and making it a completely flexible schedule.  I'd have time to collaborate with teachers and develop research units.

The county to the south of us has just announced plans to eliminate 131 positions for next year.  The county to the east of us is planning to eliminate library aides at the elementary level (and ALL sports!).  It's not long before this nightmare might become a reality in my district.

Tears

I was just sad today.  An underlying sadness, and the tears were right at the surface all day.  The kids were good today, my lessons went well, but I just didn't feel much joy today.
First, I overheard something this morning and when I asked about it later, I found out more of the story.  A colleague's husband is leaving her.  They have children, and he is just being stupid.  He doesn't even want to visit his children, which is the part that kicks me every time I think about it.  I get it that people fall out of love with each other, but what happens when a parent does that to his children? It is just sad.
Then, I had this class of very good students, and there's that one kid.  You know the kind I mean--the hard-to-like little bugger.  At the end of class, I asked his teacher if she loved him; I needed some words of advice to help me love him.  And she said that she was working on loving him.  And I told her that I just needed something to love about him. 
She pulled me aside and said that he was a child of divorced parents and that the principal recently called CPS because the kid came in obviously upset and roughed up.  Turns out his mom beat the crap out of him that morning, pulling him by his hair across the room.  Nice. So I am going to try to love this kid a little more.

amazon PRIME!

Thank goodness for Amazon PRIME shipping! I usually get my books the second day after ordering them, but my fabulous copy of the Caldecott Award-winning book The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney arrived today, barely 24 hours after ordering it! Thank you, UPS and Amazon-shipping gods.

Sure, call me late to the party, call me a bandwagon-jumper, it's okay.  I know. I am not usually a huge Jerry Pinkney fan (his watercolors, while beautiful, just aren't my favorite illustrative style). But this book is beautiful!  The simple and gentle way he tells the fable is just perfect. 

I think my love of it comes from two different things: first, I recently read his version of Little Red Riding Hood to our primary kids.  (I like this version, even though it's a bit gruesome.  Little Red is a character of color (!) and the story is set in winter--which makes a whole lot more sense as to why Red is trapsing through the woods to see her sick grandma.) It's classic Pinkney, and other than those two things I just mentioned, nothing about the book stands out to me. 

The second event is that I have just finished up 18 readings of Once Upon a Banana with the kids, a fabulously fun wordless book.  So I am in the mood for more good wordless books, and I love it when things just work out.  See? It looks like I planned to do a wordless book unit with the kids, or maybe a Jerry Pinkney sandwich (with a little David Small in the middle!). I'm good like that.

Day 5

Today was Day 5.  It's the fifth day I've done this set of lessons.  I am, simply, tired of saying the same things over and over.  Day 1 is always a little rough, not too bad, but it's the first time I'm teaching the lesson.  Days 2 & 3 are great--I'm in a groove.  Days 4-6 just keep going downhill.  I just get tired of saying the same exact things again and again.  It's the first time for the kids, and I try to keep that in mind, but I'm just tired today.
We've been reading Once Upon a Banana by Jennifer Armstrong and David Small in kindergarten, first, and second grades this rotation.  It's really fun, since it's a wordless book, and the students, all of those grades, love the story. To do it with the classes, I show the book using the projector.  We can see all of the details better than if I held the book in front of the kids. 
Yesterday, as I read the author's and illustrator's names to the students, the thought hit me that I wasn't exactly sure what the author did for this story.  Did she write the plot the way the students and I tell the story from looking at the pictures?  Did she go to David Small and say, "I have this idea about a rogue monkey who litters and craziness ensues, and it happens all around a city block and there are a ton of characters"? I'm just not sure how that works with a wordless book.  Maybe she outlined the story and then the illustrator sketched her ideas? I'd like to know! David, Jennifer: do you google your names? Maybe you'll get a google alert and check the blog and let me know!

Shop-PING!

So I had this third grade boy say this to me today as we were talking about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  What will you be doing to think about MLK that day?  Apparently, he'll be shop-PING! I hate to say that I probably will, too.  Kohl's sent me a 30% off coupon. I'm not proud.

In other news, my principal has added more to my jobs.  Now when we call the buses at the end of the day, I have to repeat back to the outside person what she said.  I really like sitting there in silence, so I am hoping this doesn't have to last too long.

We have a six-day specials rotation, and now I have to put which day of the rotation it is on the website calendar.  Is this not something that the teachers can be doing in their weekly/bimonthly newsletters? Seriously...I am rolling my eyes. This becomes a real pain when we have a snow day and I have to change all the future rotation days.

Just griping.

Lesson Planning

What else is new? Well, actually, I feel really guilty that my lesson plan book has been mostly blank for the last three weeks.  Don't get the wrong idea: I've had meaningful lessons for my students and I have been aligned with the state standards!  No worries there!
I have just been lax about writing down what I've been doing.  Some of the grade levels are in the middle of a several-rotation project, so it's not that I'd have written down anything except "Native American research, week 4" anyway.  Although there was one rotation of third grade that I couldn't for the life of me remember what we'd done.  I had to do some serious mental stretching to remember back to the first week of December.
I am back on track now.  Everything is at least caught up; several grade levels are planned well ahead of this rotation (which begins on Monday).
I worked at school for about 3 hours today and got a lot done.  One of the exciting things that I took off my to-do list was to copy my lessons for a fellow LMS.  Here's her email:

Hello,

I was at the [state] conference and I loved some of the ideas that you all
shared. I am brand new to the library this year, and I was wondering if
you had any other great ideas that you would be willing to share? I am
looking for as much help as I can get.
Thanks so much,
C. F.

How nice was that?!?! I emailed her back and got some more information and then just decided to copy all of my grade level lesson folders for her.  This way, she'll have all my other great ideas as well as my not-so-great ones.  (C'mon, they can't all be fabulous!)
In other news, I'm working out a new lesson for our third graders.  They have to know about Cesar Chavez this year.  (?!?!) My friend Lynne Farrell Stover developed a lesson using this book.  I am excited to read the book and do the economics lesson that goes with it, AND help out our third grade teachers at the same time.

Snow Day!

Gotta love my mid-Atlantic state.  They are just not equipped to handle snow like my home state is.  We have less than an inch of snow, and my school district has cancelled school today.  It seems crazy to me, but I'll take it.  The gift of time.  It's my favorite gift ever.
The school will open at 10 today, so I'm going to go in later today and do a little work.  I've always said that school is so much fun without the kids.  And I mean that in the nicest way.  I left a few things there that I would've brought home to do over the weekend (thinking there's no WAY we'd have the day off today), so I'll go in and do a couple of small things and then bring home stuff to do over the weekend.

I've been thinking about my pledge to blog every day, and I just don't think it's realistic.  Some days, I just have nothing interesting to say, and I don't want to post just anything on here, so I will revamp my pledge to blog more frequently, but just not every single day.
This is what I would've blogged about yesterday: we were doing our ocean research in fifth grade and as I was going through the papers at the end of the class period, I noticed one student who had nothing but his name on his paper.  When I asked him about it, he told me that it took him a while to decide on an animal, and he did the reading but didn't write anything down.  His animal? the gorilla.  :(

Well, maybe he looked at this picture on the Internet.

What do I say to that? Seriously?!?! A gorilla?!?!? I told him that that was the lamest thing a student had ever told me.  I know that might've been a little mean, but c'mon! A gorilla?!?!

Putting Off Work

I am totally procrastinating tonight. I have checked email, Facebook, my RSS feeds, and now I'm even writing on my blog before doing my actual schoolwork.  I know tomorrow will be a bit easier if I do what I need to do  tonight, but I am just not feeling up for it.
One of the "extras" I do at school is the morning announcements program.  We have a cast of 3 on-air personalities, one camera person, and a guest pledge leader.  I type the script for the kids each day and also create a PowerPoint loop of announcements and menus and birthdays that runs before the announcements start.  I usually create the loop at the beginning of the month and have everything on it for the whole month--all the lunch menus and birthdays, etc.  I am totally unmotivated to do it tonight.  Tomorrow night won't be any better, nor will Thursday.  I suppose that if I just update it each morning this week, I can do the bulk of it over the weekend.  That sounds way better to me than spending two hours tonight doing it.
I am the Queen of Procrastination.  Speaking of being a queen, I am reading The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County to our kindergarteners and first graders.  The book is really growing on me.  The story line is pretty far from what any of our students can relate to, but the illustrations are really great.  The kids have really enjoyed studying the collage techniques of Shelley Jackson.  After we read the book, the kids cut the letters of their names out of old magazines and put them on a nametag, just like on the cover.  It's  a little like a ransom note, but we don't talk about that!! I even made a label to put on the nametag that tells of the inspiration for the project.  The kids have really had fun with  it.

In fifth grade, I pulled an ocean research pocket out of my filing cabinet (and by that I mean my butt). No, really.  I had done the lesson some time ago and kind of forgotten about it, but it turns out that that's what they're studying in science right now, so it fits in perfectly. You just have to love when it works out like that.

Wet books :(

I could cry.  Over the Christmas holiday, sometime after the Blizzard of '09 as our 16+ inches of snow melted, a leak formed in two corners of our library.  One corner leaked all over the mounted TV and zapped it.  No big loss.  I can easily live without TV in the library--hardly use it at all, actually.
The leak in the second corner, was, however, much more devastating.  Two entire cases of books.  10 shelves in all, were destroyed.  Completely-waterlogged-and-molding-already-destroyed. My principal and I found it at the same time this morning, and he was even more upset than I was.  He just kept pulling books off the shelves and saying, "no more...no more damage!" as I stood there shaking my head. 
He made all the right phone calls and soon our library was swarmed with people from maintenance, central office, and the construction crews.  One man took pictures and let me know what I'd need to do next, which is to print a list of all the destroyed books and AV equipment so he could submit it to our insurance company.
Unfortunately, we have $1,000 deductible, so we won't be able to replace everything, but hopefully, I'll at least get to replace the most popular titles.
Such a sad start to 2010.

Sunday Night Dread

I have it.  I always get it, but it's not too bad tonight because part of me is actually excited to get back to work.  I love vacations, I love summer, but I love the routine of work even more. 
Bring on those kiddos in the AM!

Jannook!

That's the name of my most favorite Christmas present this year, the Barnes & Noble E-reader called the Nook.  I fell instantly in love with it the moment I turned it on and even thought of a great name for it.  The first book I read on it was South of Broad by Pat Conroy.  (I love his writing, even though I didn't love the story.)  I am now reading a Malcolm Gladwell book called What the Dog Saw.  It is enjoyable and light reading.  When my bookclub meets next week, I can download my next book, hopefully, whatever we decide on.

I wanted the Nook for two reasons: first, I absolutely hate holding books in bed.  They are heavy and clumsy and my hand usually falls asleep trying to hold them.  Second, I cannot wear my reading glasses in bed, and I have to hold the book a little too far away to comfortably read the text.  The Nook only weighs 11.2 ounces, and it has several different fonts and sizes to choose from.  Problems solved!
I think it will even get me reading more books for school!

Ambitious Resolve

I am going to blog every day in 2010. I am laughing as I type this because I don't know if it is even possible. I am trying to think if there's at least one interesting thing I do each day. This might be hard at the beginning, but hopefully it will get easier as we go. I've often said that it's laughing with (and at) the kids that keeps me in this profession, so if I can remember the funny moments long enough to blog about them at night, then that might make a good collection. It's good to make resolutions. Mine are to write everyday on my blog and to spend more time with friends. I think both are doable. Oh, here's the tree skirt I made before Christmas: Isn't it kind of cute and crazy-quilt-like? I love it, especially the trim. That was the easiest part, yet it's what I was most worried about.

Snowed In and Loving It!

A fabulous, beautiful, blizzard-ish snowstorm is still raging outside, more than 24 hours after it started on Friday evening. We have over a foot of snow, maybe close to 16 inches or so. It's hard to tell because of all the blowing and drifting. It's the most snow I've seen since I was a little kid. The dog loves it, and since our last two days of school (next week) have already been cancelled, I love it too!

We are enjoying some adult beverages and movies on TV this evening, after spending the day baking cookies and finishing up the tree skirt. I'm sure I haven't written about the tree skirt yet, but it is all because we got a second Christmas tree this year. I decided to make a tree skirt for it, and I am this close to being finished. At this point, it just needs the band around the edging and it'll be all ready to put under the tree. Phew! I wasn't exactly sure I'd have enough time to finish it, but thanks to all this snow, I do! The gift of time. It's my favorite gift of all.

Our Christmas party scheduled for tonight was wisely cancelled by us yesterday, when the snow was just starting. Certainly, we would've ended up cancelling it today if we hadn't already done it. The roads aren't passable at all. We haven't seen or heard a plow yet, although this neighborhood is, I'm sure, at the bottom rung of anyone's plowing ladder.

Not having school on Monday and Tuesday is a special treat indeed. Although it's too bad that all of our holiday festivities have been cancelled, at least we get two full weeks of Christmas vacation. Yea!

I am sure that my principal is thankful for the extra time with his family. He sure does work hard. After my observation a couple of weeks ago, he turned around a four-page evaluation of it in less than a week. And I know I wasn't the only person being observed, either. That's some serious dedication. The evaluation was very positive, and I am realizing now that it's been a long time since anyone had critiqued my teaching. It totally felt great to be told that I was doing things in a sound way.

I showed off my eval to my sisters and father, who were unimpressed and impressed, respectfully. My sisters, who are convinced that I am teaching in some second world area of our state, made fun of me for even being excited about it. Whatever...I feel like hanging it on my wall at school!

Updates

So I think my observation went really well. The principal uses this method where he writes down everything we say and then justifies (or not) why we say stuff. I think it's called the OATS method (Observing and Analyzing Teaching). I have to meet with him to go over the lesson, but he's out tomorrow, so we'll see if there's time this week. He came in during a second grade class and we had just gotten started. I read aloud a Native American legend to them, and then we all went to the tables to continue our research stations. So he saw me in whole group and then in small group settings while the kids were in their research groups. It will be interesting to talk with him about it, having not had an actual lesson observation since at least 2003! He left a note on the table that read, "You are the real deal. You are the kind of teacher I want my own kiddo to have." What more do I need to hear? I love Christmas time! Even though we try to be sensitive to all beliefs and customs (and I'll let the music teacher take the lead on that--"Hanukkah, or Hanukkah!"), I really have fun with two particular lessons this time of year. In fifth grade, I read them O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi and then we discuss and watch a dramatic retelling of the story. It's so funny to see the kids' faces when they realize what the couple has done, and it's also interesting to hear the connections they make to the story. A Korean student told me today that she has the story at home in Korean, and one of the boys remembered seeing a similar Disney version. Awesome! The other lesson I've been enjoying is sharing Robert Sabuda's holiday pop-up books with the fourth graders and then making an "evergreen" tree card (whatever...) following the instructions on his website. So so so much fun, and also so so so interesting to see which kids get the hang of the pop ups and which don't. There should totally be a state learning standard for following directions! I just love this time of year--relaxing just a bit (post-bookfair) and having fun with the kids.

Not gleeful.

Still in SUCH a bad mood! What is it? Being moved out of my library because of bookfair? Feeling worried about my upcoming observation? Managing to do 101 things simultaneously well when others can't do two? Maybe not getting a bonus this year (let alone a raise) because the superintendent doesn't think I'm a teacher? Pissed because someone decided to unlock and dismantle a computer/projector cart so they could use the laptop? A little bit of all of those, and a whole lot of the last one. This is what I hate the most. This is my biggest pet peeve: I do not like when people make my job harder. I do not like it when people's actions make my life more difficult.

Bookfair Joy

NOT. I am just so tired of bookfair. It is exhausting. I am very lucky to have our fabulous PTA and their many, many volunteers staffing the bookfair. I am more of a behind-the-scenes kind of girl, placing reorders, straightening piles, keeping the schedule running. Yesterday, I placed an order for books that were sold out. Everything sounded good on the phone, but when I got the box today, over 1/2 of the books I needed were out of stock at Scholastic. Oh, I am not happy. Not happy at all. Seriously! This is the one big reason that I left Scholastic five years ago. I am sorry that I went back. Good selection of books, bad customer service. I am wondering why the person on the phone at the warehouse didn't tell me the books wouldn't ship? Are there really no more of those books in all of Scholastic warehouses country-wide? I just don't get it. OK, time for Glee. I am going to get into a gleeful mood now.