Credit Union Day

Every year at Lincoln five hundred little miracles happen. A local credit union takes the names and wishes of every one of our students. They fill a tree with ornaments listing what the children want, then they and their customers adopt each child and buy gifts from their wish lists. On the day before we leave for Christmas break they bring all the gifts over to the school and we have a giant opening party. Each grade goes into the gym where presents are passed out and opened. There's lots of squealing, lots of paper tearing, lots of mess, and lots of joy. I've had children ask for everything from roller blades to baby dolls. The ones that break your heart are the kids who ask for blankets, or coats, shoes and socks. Sometimes they will ask for something to share with a baby brother or sister. One child in my friend's class asked for a bed. Really. The family had no furniture. They were literally sleeping on the hard floor with just a blanket. We found a bed for them and realized when it was delivered just how incredibly poor they were. For some of these kids the things they got today will be the only things they get. Well, excuse me now, I feel like adding to my "I'm Thankful" list. At least I have a bed, a blanket, and food on the table.

Merry Christmas, Friends.

The Briny Deep

Jumping right in and making a brine for our turkey this year. We tried it last year and it made the bird very moist. We want to see if it really was the brine or just a very good turkey. I'll keep you posted. Check out the recipe I'm using:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-roast-turkey-recipe/index.html
Thanks Alton.

Grades the New Fashioned Way

Add this to your acronym list: ESIS

I have no idea what it stands for. It is, however, the way I'm required to fill in report card grades now. Last spring I participated in a study testing the system that has you fill in the grades for all students online, then sends them off to the district office where they are mysteriously printed, then returned to the school looking like a report card. It worked moderately well, with a few glitches. So this fall everyone in the district is required to do it that way. Unfortunately they didn't work out the glitches yet and the training was practically nonexistent. Guess we'll see how things work out on a large scale.

One way or another my grades are finished for fall trimester - Woo Hoo.

Goodbye Old Friend

We had to say goodbye to Heidi this week. She was 16 which in dog years made her just a little older than Whistler's Mother. When her muzzle started showing gray a few years back I warned the kids she was getting old, but I didn't believe it. She still took the stairs in one long leap and tore through the backyard to bark at the fence. When her eyesight began to get bad I warned Mike she wasn't going to last forever, but I hoped I was wrong. She still got around just fine, and she still chased the little dog away from her food at night. She would skip around under foot as you tried to feed her. When we had to start hollering so she could hear us at all I mentioned that she couldn't be that far from gone, but I prayed she would last just a while longer. She got so it was hard to go down the cement stairs into the yard, though she still climbed the entire flight to sleep with Mike and me in our bedroom each night, then down once or twice in the night for potty and a drink. Back up again, she could still make it. Mike built a ramp for her last spring to make the cement stairs more manageable. She learned to use it so well I kidded myself into believing it would buy her another couple of years. We took to leaving a lamp on downstairs so she would think someone was still up. That way she wouldn't try to come up to our room anymore. She was sleeping 20 or 22 hours a day. When she couldn't keep from having accidents in her sleep we decided it couldn't be much of a life. No eyesight, no hearing, can't control your bodily functions. When I'm that old I hope someone takes me to the vet.

I miss her terribly. She was a good old dog. Mike hasn't broken down yet, but it's just a matter of time. She was his dog, really. No, we're not planning on replacing her. Couldn't imagine getting a dog any better, and we're worn out from the constant care she required at the end. I'm not sorry we got her and I'm not sorry we helped her go - just sad she couldn't have lived longer and better at the end.

Social Studies Coordinator - the Maytag Repairman of the School District

Someone finally came out and said it. It was a school district coordinator, so I guess it counts for more. I was at a training and he said, "There's not enough time in your school day to teach the entire core. So social studies is pretty much relegated to whatever a teacher can get around to." The legislature in Utah along with the federal government has mandated this and mandated that to the point where teachers have little say in how their day is organized. Reading - important. Math - really important. Science - sort of important. Social studies - way down there. (Don't ask about the arts.) This is a sad state of affairs as we are supposed to be raising the next generation of citizens. With the push to pass reading and math tests no teacher has the time luxury to present social studies (or any other topic, for that matter) in any depth. Sure, we try to integrate history and civics into our reading lessons. But we no longer have a learning environment in which children can explore the richness of American culture, or the importance of its history. We say the pledge (mandated), but we can't take time to explain what it means. We post a sign in our hallway saying, "In God we trust," (mandated) while not trusting teachers to do their jobs. We'll celebrate Lincoln's Bicentennial (mandated), but without the requisite understanding of why his life and death were important. It's kind of social studies fast food. Spit out the salient points and dump the rest.

It may sound like I'm disheartened by what the man told us today. I'm not. It was the first time someone spoke the truth about this issue. Doing so put this district specialist on our side. He is willing to help find resources and help us carve out a little time to take back a subject that is incredibly important. No one should dumb down history.

Hooray for UEA

It's so nice to have a couple of days off. The convention coincides with fall break at the U so Sean and Kimmi are on break as well. I'm going to see a speaker tomorrow - Alfie Kohn - who writes books on how teachers screw up their students. Well, not really. But he does have some pretty wide reaching criticism of everyday practices. His book, Punished By Rewards, talks about how making rewards extrinsic doesn't allow students to develop their own reasons for working hard. The latest installment is a book about how homework doesn't work. I'm curious because I see homework as a necessary part of education, particularly for students like mine who need to catch up. We have so little time and so much for them to learn. Practice becomes something they must do at home if they hope to compete with students raised in better circumstances. I wonder if Mr. Kohn can tell me what I should do about that if, indeed, homework isn't effective. And, of course, I want to wander through the vendor area where you can buy stuff for your classroom. Not that I need anything else, but it's lots of fun and I always seem to find something to buy.

My kids having fun in the rain

Sean, Taylor and their friend Mike decided to go to the "lake" Saturday. The news crew was coming back from covering some flooding west of us. We stopped by in time to see them videotaping the boys trying to navigate Lake Constitution.