Mahna Mahna

With the weather outside below freezing for the past two days, the human form developed a large amount of ptential energy as we sit inside thinking of all the "work" we could get done if we could just.....go.  A lot of times we don't know where to go, or how to go, or where we'll go after we get to where we are going, or how we'll get back, move on, or even stay there.....but we know we just want to go.  With that in mind, Let's blog!!

Four Things I've learned since being stuck here in my tiny house:

1)  10 years ago I used to sigh, shrug my shoulders and say to myself Hakuna Matata (which means no worries for the rest of our days.  It's our problem free philosophy), but I have since been reintroduced to a song and phrase we have all heard, but didn't really understand.  I still don't understand what in the world someone was thinking, but it sure is catchy...and it sure does make you feel good.  The next time you feel like you are stuck, and you want to say "What are you going to do?", just sing Mahna Mahna:

Thanks Muppets, and that English band that came up with it but didn't have little puppets to make it popular!!

2)  There are lesson plans for everything online.  Teaching communities are a wonderful place to share ideas....and in my case homework!!!  (Professors, my lawyer says that there is no copyright infringement on blogs.  Well, at least none that my daughter, I mean my lawyer, knows of).  Check out the blogs that I follow on the right side of the screen and you will see just a snippet of shared creativity in the classroom.  The web is a wonderful place for transfer of information, and a wonderful place for my optometrist's balance sheet:(

3)  Photo Story 3 for Windows.  A great piece of software for someone new to the digital world.  It allows you to record a story you tell onto your computer and then add pictures and music.  A great idea, but this software limits creativity in what it doesn't allow.  As someone who works with video editing software I was a little miffed at some of the limitations.  It seems to force you to match a line in your story with one and only one picture.  If I have a line such as "The many faces of the children in my classroom provided inspiration for me to go home, grab Doritos, and watch the grass grow."  I would want to put several pictures of my students sullen faces and then end with a quick shot of my sitting on my front lawn eating Doritos.....but I can only use one picture.  Yes, I would need to be creative in how I go about this, but I know how I want it to be shown and this software limits what I can do.  Wow, I'm being way too harsh and serious here....it is free after all!!

On the positive side, it is so intuitive and easy to use that I am truly excited to see what awesome stories my classmates produce. 

4)  Bicycle breaks tend to freeze when it is under 20°.  It was about 8:30pm and I had just finished watching "Grown Ups".  The adventure of riding my bike up to Blockbuster to return the movie (yes you can return the online movies there) was just too much to pass up.  I prepped myself in my snow gear then hopped on the bike.  I made sure not to change gears in the case they had already frozen, but I never even thought of testing the breaks...oops.  I had unusually good traction for the amount of ice that was out there, which allowed me to quickly accelerate to about 20 mph...that's where the fun began.  You know when you are up skiing and you have a big time fall (aka Yard sale) and it always just happens to by right under the chair lift?  Well I hadn't seen a car on the road for 20 minutes when the moment came when I realized my break pads on the bike were frozen solid and unable to provide the friction required to slow me down.  When I looked back up to see what options I had available, there were FIVE cars converging on the intersection that stood about 50 feet in front of me.  Knowing I couldn't stop, and assuming none of them could either, I had to try a move I'd only seen attempted once before in my life:

You can tell I'm still here writing, and you can see why this was only attempted once before.  But now I can say I've ridden my bike in a rain storm, wind storm, snow storm, and now sub 20° temps.  Yes, I did get the movie returned!!

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all



P.S. Today is the one year anniversary of you know who running into a you know what and unleashing the largest fall from grace ever witnessed by humanity.  Epic Oops!

Cheerio

Literacy Blog #5

So to my die hard readers - yes all five of you -  who are wondering why I break from the normal structure to offer up these little tidbits of information about this thing called "Literacy", it is because I think it is hugely important!!  Others might lead you on to think it is because I'm "graded" on what I write in this blog, or that the words written before you here have an "impact" on where I rank in comparison to other people that might be taking the same classes, at the same school, at the same time....as I.  Bottom line, if literacy wasn't important then how are you able to read this blog?  BOOM.  That is correct.  I have just blown your mind.

On to what is important here...SNOW.  It has snowed a total of one and a half inches today in my neck of the woods, and believe you me this was more than enough to shut down the entire city of Seattle.  It's like Armageddon out there!

    

Understanding that Armageddon is going on outside my house, you can see how easy it is to grab me a cup of hot cocoa and sit down on my plaid beanbag and finish a letter to my child, which will double as an assignment for one of my classes.  Why am I writing a letter to my child as an assignment for class you ask?  Because Anne Lamott told me to in chapter "Letters" from her book Bird By Bird.  It was as if she was talking directly to me, "When you don't know what else to do, when you're really stuck and filled with despair and self loathing and boredom, but you can't just leave your work alone for a while and wait, you might try telling part of a characters history in the form of a letter."  Minus the despair and the self loathing part, I did just that!!  Lamott describes the letter writing process as you entrusting (the person to whom the letter is written) with your thoughts, emotions, and memories.  You begin to open up...and open up I did!  This is a great way to work through writer's block.

The assignment itself is to produce a digital story.  For all you Baby boomers out there, a digital story differs from a regular story in that is it totally awesome!!  You record your voice onto a computer and then incorporate music and pictures to your profound words to complete the sense trifecta:  Sight, sound, and ......well more sound.

The history of this assignment goes back an entire month, when I wrote what I thought was the most compelling personal story I had ever written about myself, and it was totally true!!  I read it over and over to myself, then to my reading group, then to my daughter who said "that's boring dad".  And the truth shall set me free!  So I wrote another masterpiece that captured in precise detail the ten seconds it took me to swing a golf club, hit a ball, and come oh so close to a hole in one.   My writing group informed me this lacked a rather important piece of the assignment...a literacy component.  Oops.  This is how I ended up here, sitting at my desk with the "Lost Season 5" DVD to my left, and the final copy of my letter to my daughter to my right.  I have cleaned it up of grammatical, semantic, syntactic, punctuation, and just plain silly mistakes.  I have read and reread it so that it flows off my tongue.  I have searched the database of pictures to go along with my voice over and now I have to come up with the musical number that is going to tie it all together.

This is something I cannot do alone followers!  I need your help choosing music to a vignette of which you know no specific detail except for that it is a letter written to my daughter.  You don't know what it is about, where it takes place, or even the tone in which I write to her.  But yet I ask this of you anyway.  No, I CHALLENGE you to come up with a song that will bring out every emotion of the human condition (No Double Rainbow Song is not eligible).  Leave me your votes in the comments section and we'll see if you are the chosen one.  At this point you have a 20% chance of having your song be picked so don't delay. 

I appreciate your efforts followers.  Now I'm going to go relive the college dorm days and find myself a plastic lunch tray and go sled down the hill!! 

Cheerio

Pumpkin Head?

After getting a couple days rest and five, yes, FIVE papers written for my classes, two lesson plans written for my student teaching, and seven 32 gallon garbage cans of leaves raked up, I have returned.  Ladies and gentleman...let's blog!!

Three things that will help in the classroom:

1)  A 20 minute movie called "Sticks and Stones".  It is a very cheaply done, pitifully acted movie that really does a great job of addressing name calling in the classroom and how to deal with it before it explodes into physical harm or worse.  It uses sock puppets for its characters and had a real life person as the principal.  Somehow the movie turns children against the term "pumpkin head".  Again the point was well made in the movie, but the question remains...what do you call a child who dresses up like a jack-o-lantern for Halloween...and he has a pumpkin on his head???  The movie gets 4 stars from me, although it was like watching John Denver on the Muppets!!

2)  A Weebly.  http://www.weebly.com/ allows you to have your own web page for FREE, as long as you use their domain names.  This is a great way to gather information from many sources and put it all in one place for you, the parents of your students, the board members of your district, and even the students themselves to see what you are up to 24 hours a day seven days a week.......wait a second. 

3)  JOBS!!!  Assign your students jobs.  If you have 30 students like most of us do, then you can have Sanitary Engineer 1, Sanitary Engineer 2........all the way to Sanitary Engineer 29.  Then one Foreman who just watches the others work.  Reserve the last 5 minutes of each day for their jobs!  You will have the cleanest room in the school, and you will have learned the valuable skill of delegation.  Your Welcome!

Three Things that will move you one notch higher in your students eyes:

4)  Dancing with the Stars!!  Can you believe people are still watching this?  I don't, but they are.  21 million Americans watch per week, and about 30% of those are suspected to be under the favored 18-49 age group.  That's our students people.  You better get your DWTS knowledge on.  Bristol Palin is on this year, and her mom just set a TLC record for ratings for her new show!  Although that could mean about 200 people watched.  Plus I hear Bristol is in the finals.  Hmmm, let me check...nope, the Mariners are not in the World Series!
 http://www.komonews.com/news/entertainment/108224434.html?ref=guiltypleasures

5)  If you hadn't heard, that little cute kid Harry Potter begins his run to the HUGE finale on Friday the 19th of November when the Deathly Hollows open in theatres.  Alright, now you know.  I will never write about Mr. Potter again....or will I?  I predict 61 Million on the first day.

6)  Basketball Statistics!!!  I used the (+/-) stat to help teach the kids about how to work with negative numbers and they couldn't get enough of it.  The box score that I brought in was missing by the end of 2nd period...then it turned up the next morning when my master teacher brought it to me saying "Your stats were the talk of the town yesterday.  They were confiscated after the boys were passing it around and not paying attention in their other classes".  When asked if the students could figure out how the statistic was calculated, the teacher responded "Yeah, and they couldn't stop talking about the other stats too."  Yup, Your Welcome!

Three things that you can do to get that "I'm alive" feeling:

7)  Ride your bicycle down a dark road covered in wet leaves during a wind storm.  Find a hill that sits on about a 25 - 30 degree slope, make sure there are no street lights so that the ride is completely dark.  The feeling is exhilarating with just those parameters, but add the wet leaves that leave you with no ability to brake and then gusts of wind topping 40mph that take you from 25mph to 10 in the blink of an eye...WHILE lifting your front wheel off the ground.  My heart was racing by the time I reached the bottom of the hill, which was about 3 seconds later. 

8)  Riding your bike when it is 32° outside.  Even when you are fully covered, you lose total feeling of your appendages when you ride downhill.  Then while traveling uphill you have to stop to remove layers before you get too warm...then going back down hill starts the first layer of ice forming...then back up hill...then back down.  When you finish your ride you are ready for a nice warm shower...and an ice pick!

Extra 8)  FYI, if you hold down the "alt" key and type in 0176 on the 10key pad Windows will automaticaly put in the "degree" symbol°...just like that!

9)  Finishing a project!  Doesn't matter what it is, but when you reach a goal it is one of the best feelings a human can experience (minus of course Prom night....Wedding night....and most Tuesdays).  Just today I finished three projects for school that have taken three weeks to complete, and I celebrate by sitting down to write this blog and prepare for the final four projects of the quarter.  Go find yourselves a project people.  Heck, it is almost midnight, the thermometer says it is 29° outside...I think it is time for project "midnight bike ride".  

Shout out to Felix Hernandez for winning the 2010 American League Cy Young award!!  This is huge and incredibly rare for a Mariner player.  In fact it is the first time a pitcher has won this award with 13 wins or less since 1981 when Fernando Venezuela pull off the feat.  I truly wish Mr. Dave Niehaus was around two more weeks to be able to see this.  It would have made him so proud!  Congrats Felix!!

Funny for the day:

Cheerio

R.I.P. Dave Niehaus

You were the best and you will be missed

The momemt that will forever be cemented in Seattle sports history:

Cheerio Mr. Niehaus!!

Literacy Blog #4

So part of our graduation requirement is that we write about our reading.  I have truly come down hard on reading the past 6 months to the point that I would tell you I detest the thought of sitting down and preparing to read one more article about "pedagogy".  What I do love to do though is write about it.  Which ironically has me feeling a little out of place when reading Bird By Bird because I am reading about writing...and now I am writing about reading. 

I just finished a chapter which led off with the line "A writer is someone with whom nothing is lost, (he says) while looking for his glasses as they sit upon his head".  I took it as never take yourself too seriously.  My thought was somewhat validated when the main idea of the chapter was to help organize your thoughts using something as simple as a note card.  The author, Anne Lamott, makes it clear she likes them because they make her look less "bulky".  Either way you look at it, writing thoughts down as you have them is a great way to remember them later on when you have a chance to decompress, exhale from the day, and let your brain catch up with the rest of you.  This made a connection with me in that I used index cards for a couple years in High School to help study.  I forced myself to write down main points as I heard them in class and then went home and rewrote everything in detail that I had scribbled onto my card.  Amazingly I don't remember having to ever study for tests during this period because I was so well prepared. 

Our current assignment has us writing drafts that we will turn into digital story vignettes.  We have written two drafts in which we have a writing group offer feedback to us once a week.  After receiving the feedback we move forward with the upgrading process until we can take the final product to the big screen.  Lamott touches on this topic as well in her book.  Writers are emotional beings, where all of them get something out of feedback;  be it validation their ideas make sense, or critical praise, critical analysis, or just needing someone else to read it aloud.  Having someone else look at your work allows the emotions begin to show and help the writing solidify itself in the goal it is attempting to accomplish.  The writing groups act as this crutch for us on the small scale vignettes.  So far so good.  I'm looking forward to adding some music and voice overs to my story. 

Double Rainbow Day

Being Monday, I had the pleasure of enduring just under seven hours of class time.  One of my classmates informed me this morning of a video on YouTube that involved my favorite National Park, Yosemite, and a Double Rainbow.  Oddly enough, as we walked out of class that afternoon we stared directly into the colorful glare of you guess it...a HUGE double rainbow.  Now had I only known about a certain phenomenon I would have known how to better respond.  Ladies and gentleman, let's blog!

Three Things from the "how did I miss that" camp:

1)  Paul "Bear" Vasquez, a man who lives on the outskirts of Yosemite was mesmerized by a rainbow, no...a double rainbow, last January while sitting in his backyard.  He pulled out his video camera and spent the next 3 minutes and 30 seconds filming what Jimmy Kimmel has argued to be the funniest three minutes on tape.  See for yourself, it is quite an experience.

As you saw, Mr. Vasquez's reaction was a bit over the top.  His video was mentioned by Jimmy Kimmel and produced 3 million hits in Eight days.  Then Mr. Vasquez was invited to be a guest on Kimmel's show and this expanded his popularity.  Now there is a techno mix song put to the words he uttered on that fateful afternoon.  Plus I found a truly incredible reenactment by an actress simply using the video as an audition for an acting gig.  The viral video has now over 19 million hits!!  Check them out, your students will already know about all of this.  I apologize in advance as even I missed this one.

To top it all off, he BLOGS about his fame using the same medium as I, http://www.yosemitebear.net/.  I think I will have to meet the guy when I am down there in the spring. 

2)  Ask Google Maps to give you directions from Japan to China.  It actually tells you to "jet ski" part of the way to get to your destination.  Don't believe me?  I don't blame you.  But you should as I don't tend to lie when I write.  Talking to me is an entirely different story.  (Check out step #43).  How did I not know about this?  Good question. 

3)  Peanut Butter and Bacon Sandwiches.  A couple of immensely powerful taste bud delicacies that stand alone as two of the best tastes in the known universe.  Could you believe what they would taste like together on one sandwich?  Taste Chaos is what it would taste like!  Guess what...it is real!!  People actually have attempted putting these two taste explosions together.  In the science world this is like splitting the atom, no one knew what would happen but the results would be out of this world.  Tonight I had to try it for myself.  I cooked up 5 pieces of bacon, spread copious amounts of crunchy peanut butter onto some whole wheat bread and had me a meal I had been waiting for my entire life.....ehh it was alright.

Things that were simply cool today:

4)  I learned that Abner Doubleday was a civil war hero who is also credited with inventing baseball.  This is mainly rumor and there is plenty of evidence against the claim, but nonetheless it is still popular folklore he is the guy.  He's got to be rolling in his grave every time the Mariners take the field.

5)  Our class studied a type of lesson plan today called "Concept Attainment".  Think of the name and...well....you pretty much get the idea.  In our example of the concept we all took on a character that came over on the Mayflower back in the long time ago days.  I got to play a Military Mastermind named Myles Standish.  He led the army defending the Plymouth Colony against, of all people, Native Americans.  I got to play a character today that is well known for the slaughter of Native Americans on their own soil.....yup if there was egg in the room it was all over my face.  To make it more fun for me, his nickname was "Captain Shrimpe". 

6)  Maps!!!  Physical Maps, Political maps, climate maps, Google maps, road maps, topographic maps, and even economic maps.  We all have seen them, but do we know to what we are even looking?  I've been into cartography most of my adult life and was astonished about how little I knew about he different types out there.  Check out how the Army explains maps.  Yeah...you were suppose to click on the word "maps" back there in the previous sentence.  There you go.
  

Three things that made be smile today:

7)  I came back into the house this evening after saving 3 cats from trees, helping an elderly woman across the road, and doing my daily walk to Safeway to see if they are throwing any of their rotisserie chickens away when I see my daughter greet me with the Spaceballs DVD in hand saying "Daddy, can we watch this tonight".  Clearly not a movie produced for a small child, I was forced to tell her "What you just did has got to be in my top five for greatest moments ever.  Of course we can watch it!!"  She sat in my arms watching Spaceballs for the first time.  I sat with her in one arm and the remote in the other as I watched it for the 143rd time.  I was able to mute the TV every time something came up that I didn't want her to hear.  Yes I have the entire movie memorized...and no I will not post anymore Spaceballs clips.

8)  The Nazca Booby!! These seabirds are mainly seen off coasts and on islands.  There are soooo many types of Boobys, including the extra cool blue footed Booby pictured below.  They are almost as cute as penguins, a character in which Disney has produced several movies...although I don't see Disney making any kind of movie called "Boobys Everywhere"???

9)  My Cohort!!!!  We heard some great news about one of our members today.  We banded together to come up with a way to celebrate and raised over $100 to do something memorable tomorrow in class.  Surround yourself with great people and you can truly do anything you want.  Our Cohort rocks!!  The problem is no one outside our cohort sees it that way.  Bravo class.

Funny for the day:

Challenge #1:  Make it through his clip without cracking a smile.....impossible!!

Cheerio!!

Read Me!!

To feel the emotion of this blog you must click on the soundtrack below.  If you do not, then there is a good chance you will feel the way you did when you walked out of Ishtar.  We all know you don't want to go through that again.  For the sake of Pete, just click below.

The Top Ten Reasons you should read my blog everyday (even if I don't write one):

10)  I cry every time I hear this song.  The little man rising up through adversity to achieve a personal goal.  The next time one of my Cohort members is being ignored by a teacher, I will pull out my ghetto blaster, play the song you are listening to now, and start chanting "Rudy!  Rudy! Rudy!....."  Hopefully the rest of the Cohort joins in otherwise that could be counterproductive.

9)  You will learn something about someone in a place you have never heard of doing something you have never dreamed of...plus you can read sentences that end in prepositions.  I write of Mythbusters, music lore, sports memories, and national parks.  I bring to the table things that should never be on the table.  Biodome?  People singing in the bathroom?  Oprah?  Most bloggers wouldn't touch these topics with a 7 foot won ton, but I do!!  My blog relates the "unrelatable" to your life.  Your welcome!

8)  Where else could you read a school blog where nothing discussed in the blog has anything to do with school?  I have become "learned" in my studies through my experiences in the classroom, but have you read about these incredible experiences here?  No you certainly have not!!  Although upon reflection this might be something I should consider changing.

7)  Movie commentary!!  Ever since I started Blockbuster Online last week I have seen one of the best movies of my life and one of the worst.  I shared my devotion for "Up" last week, and I have yet to talk down on the mega bomb "2012".  Yes, they thought building an Arc would save humanity in the event the earth's crust destabilizes.  It did, they did, and Woody Harrleson was blown up.  Yeehaw!!  I am watching Toy Story 3 as I write this blog.  Should anything animated be this emotional?  What a final scene!!

6)  Because I loved Everwood!  Treat Williams and his beard made for a dad we all would have wanted (if we happened to be a piano prodigy stuck in a small town in the middle of CO).  A show that was filmed on the famed 35th Street in Ogden Utah had catapulted its cast into stardom.  A majority of the characters have moved from UPN dramas to FOX dramas.  Can you believe 7th Heaven beat Everwood out for ratings?   Turns out all those teenagers in America like the show with all the beautiful people (ughh).  Since teenagers watch LOTS more TV than us educated adults, the UPN execs in 2006 said Buh Bye to Everwood.

5)  Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm:  Their existence proves that you should read my blog:

4)  Because more readers mean more comments.  More comments mean more dialog.  More dialog means more writing.  More writing means even more comments.  More comments about more writing means more reading.  More reading and writing means more brain cell function.  More brain cell function means smarter brains.  Whoa, reading my blog will in fact make you smarter!!!

3)  Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop to look around every once in a while, you could miss it.  We are all busy in our lives but there is a depth of understanding we all have about life itself.  My perspective on things seems to be a little more humorous than the average person.  You could call it the Patch Adams effect, but I truly believe laughing is the fountain of youth after which humankind has sought.  Want to enjoy the ride?  Look around you and find somethings that make you laugh.  Then make sure those things are a part of your life forever.  For me, I just thank Mel Brooks for Spaceballs!!

2)  There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.  A line from one of my favorite movies of all time.  I am a softy for a good love story intertwined in a random conglomeration of humorous scenes and a great musical ballad.  You'll find plenty of tidbits about life in my blogs. 

1)  The number one reason why people should read my blog is that I challenge my readers; I challenge my readers to think outside the box, to see things, hear things, or feel things their senses have never experienced.  I challenge my readers to read through my blog with a frown on their faces.  If someone can pull it off then they must be hanging upside down.  I am a human being following my heart into the teaching profession.  My blogs express my feelings as I make my way through some increasingly stressful times.  My blogs gives me the medium in which to find others taking the same journey.  This blog will save our lives...the lives we don't yet recognize we are living.  

If you haven't smiled yet, then I turn to an oldie, but surefire way to put a smile on your face to finish the day:

Cheerio!!