it's all over

This is the end of NaBloPoMo, and as such, this will probably be my last post for a while. It’s kind of hard to keep up while working at the most time consuming job I’ve ever had. NaBloPoMo informed me this morning that I could participate in a new kind of monthly challenge in December—giving a gift every day and posting about it. That seems hard, unless the gift of knowledge counts, in which case this would turn into a teaching tales blog, which is pretty boring. (“Today the children learned about topographic maps and couldn’t find the country of Senegal on their globes.”*).

I might try to do it every other day or something, as I do like to give gifts, and I also happen to have the best sticker collection EVER at school, which is handy for making cards and coupons for things like free babysitting or a hug. One year, for my bday, my companion literally gave me only handmade coupons for things like, “going to a movie of your choice” and “cleaning the bathroom”. One could argue that those should not be gifts, but rather expectations, but alas, we make do with what we can get.

*True story from today.

Charles Smith

So I’ve discovered a redeeming, or at least slightly amusing character, on The Hills (my secret reality show obsession. I’ve seen every episode, sadly). His name is Charlie, and he has a greasy mustache and dishes out awe-inspiring advice. On last night’s episode, after the evil character Spencer spoke openly of his fear that his children will want to kill him, Charlie responded with, “Oedipal complex. Lots of kids have that”. (!)

He also gifted Spencer with a plan to test out whether or not his wife was secretly pregnant that included taking her to a sushi restaurant and ordering lots of shellfish. Needless to say, the man is a minor genius, and I went a little crazy with the google-stalking last night. I found his twitter page, and he’s a huge fan of Tina Fey. He can’t be that bad, right?

homeward

We have returned from the overcast lands of the northwestern states, and CA is so much warmer. I think that, much like my parents, I no longer have the ability to tolerate cold climates. At one point, I needed to abruptly leave the house I was visiting, and so I walked outside with no shoes or coat and realized that the tactics that work in CA just don't in cold places.

Also, the pet nanny worked out pretty well, and seemed to have a preference for pumpkin.

W-E

I'm in a far away land, with little ability to properly blog--you know, with pictures and stuff. My plan is to get caught up when I have my blogging essentials (no screaming baby, fewer than 10 people in a very small house, sweet dog). But I had an idea, dear readers (mom!) that's been bothering me. I wanted to buy a Wall-E pot for my nephew. I just assumed that since Wall-E's action was focused on the discovery and transport of a single plant for the sake of humanity, that there must be some sort of Wall-E themed potting mechanism that would allow kids to get excited about gardening and the earth. There is, sadly, not (at least not mass produced and easily google-able). Ironically, there are many Wall-E themed plastic trinkets, but nothing with utility. Is it time for me to contact yet another huge corporation with my brilliant idea (which then might be promptly rejected, ala Crayola)?

In other (breaking) news, the PNW is bleak and dreary.

scenes from fort worden

Old Navy station that is now a local teen hangout and bonfire site.


They used to have some sort of large weapon chained here.


Creepy Navy ghost town.




Beach, driftwood and lighthouse.


Totally Twilight country. Is this the LaPush beach or what?

plane to a bus to a ferry to a car

On the ferry from Seattle


From the city to the woods.


Port Townsend is insanely cute.

educational delight

I saw “An Education” today, which was a little depressing (everyone is average!), but good (everyone is average and that’s OK! Plus, the life of the mind is better than nice furs). I liked seeing Olivia Williams (from The 6th Sense and my personal favorite, Rushmore) as a Cambridge-educated English teacher. It reminded me of the excitement and hope that’s present when we’re young. Not to say that it’s not there in adulthood, but by that point, it’s mitigated by a bit more reality and resignation, making it not as all-encompassing as when in childhood.

After the movie, I got a good coffee and ran into one of my coworkers walking her dog, which felt very homey.

glitter is only awesome on art projects and clothing

New Moon is a truly awful movie—boring and trite. Yet, I felt compelled to see it, which is the problem with me and pop culture. I tend to do things that I KNOW will be bad, simply because to not have experienced it seems terribly uncivilized. For this reason, I have purchased the final two books in the twilight series, and will continue reading about glittery vampires and teen girls who believe themselves to be boring, plain and undeserving of glittery vampires. I will probably throw the book across the room, as I did when I finished new moon last year.

GMB

One of Peng’s students stays after school everyday and hangs out with us. Peng and I grade and gossip and the student does his homework and plays with science equipment. I had him do a lab the other day to see if it worked and he got preoccupied with looking at sweater lint in the microscope. He completely reminds me of a young Michael Cera (aka George Michael Bluth). He’s a sophomore, a lot on the dorky side, but smart and game for jokes, with a tender and sweet core. Today we talked about texting, bad parenting and being on the summer swim team (they sell tri-tip now. Back in my swim team days, they sold kool-aid). His ringtone is a doorbell, which for some reason is super endearing.

code rojo

Today we had a code red drill, aka the columbine drill. It’s the one where you have to barricade the doors, lay down on the floor in a fort and pretend you aren’t there. Our school did it during my freshman biology class, which was more difficult than I expected. They have a lot of energy and are capable of high levels of excitement. It’s interesting, because next year they will be surly (natural teenage progression!).

I totally generated a fake competition between our class and the physics class (juniors and seniors) next door. I told them the physics class would buy us donuts if our class won the school-wide code red competition. The physics class was then under the impression that we were going to buy them donuts if they won (not true). We lost, unfortunately, and then decided to invite them over not for donuts, but our lab pickles. I thought it would be funny if we asked them to bring something as a gift, you know, like donuts. Some of the kids wrote invitations that said, “congratulations on winning, we might give you some of our pickles if you bring us some donuts” and “please join us for pickles on Monday (donuts required for entry)”. Hi-freaking-larious, I tell you. Tomorrow we’re looking at plants with the microscopes.

So I’m not very inspired to write anything nearly as interesting as a glitter buying analysis tonight. We did the pickling lab and it was a success, though a huge pain to implement given the moving classroom situation. I have to set all labs up twice because I teach bio in two different rooms. It’s a complete waste of my already limited time. I literally have to give myself a pep talk every day that goes something like this, “You should not stop doing labs. These kids are not to blame for the lack of forethought on the science room-jam situation that you find yourself in yet again. Do not deprive them of awesome labs and an interest in science.” It’s really hard, and some days I simply don’t know if I can do it the rest of the year.

Furthermore, listening to Arne Duncan while having a shitty teaching situation makes me want to puke. I can’t listen to a thing a person says about teaching when they’ve never taught in a public school. It’s a different world, and I know from experience that you have no idea what it’s like until you do it. Pay for performance is ridiculous. Everything affects how kids do on standardized tests, among them class size, family life, school funding. How in the world can you compare one kid to another given those issues? My classes have 34 students in them—of course they aren’t learning as much as their peers in classes that have 30. And this is just one of the many problems with “holding teachers accountable” as Arne is fond of articulating.

Well, I guess I did have something to say. But to end on a positive note, I convinced a colleague of mine to start putting stickers on papers with good grades. She tried it and said it worked really well! Teenagers are just kids, after all, and a unicorn sticker can go a long way (though I have found that frog stickers go further).

Glittery Revelations

I have a strong penchant for doing arts and crafts projects in my science classes. Tomorrow, we’re doing a project that involves stickers and glitter—we’re reconstructing the H-R diagram, but making it pretty and fun! Unfortunately, over the past few years, I’ve made the observation that orange glitter is really hard to find. Blue, red, yellow and silver are standard. But just try to find orange—you’ll be left with the mediocre glitter pen option. Glitter pens, while containing glitter, do not in fact, glisten. For a sparkly effect, you really have to stick to the standard practice of coupling Elmer’s glue with loose glitter.

Flu Shot Denied

After my brush with illness last week, and my bout of the flu last year, I decided to try to get my flu shots today. Unfortunately, Kaiser (money-making medical juggernaut—a concept that will never stop blowing my mind. Is our country really this mad?) is fresh out of any sort of flu shot. Oh well, I only work in a school, which, behind hospitals, is one of the biggest vector-houses for disease. Hopefully I’ll just manage to dodge it. I mean, really, I’ve only had about 6 students with the swine flu who have missed weeks of school—those are pretty good odds—6/180. Plus, due to the fact that everyone needs public education, but doesn’t want to pay for it, (and thus the public schools are rapidly descending into a post-apocalyptic nightmare) we get our rooms swept once a month. That seems reasonable and appropriate for flu season.

What? Wall Street got an extra shipment or two? They totally deserve it—I mean I hear they have janitors that only clean once a day! Those offices must feel like under-funded filth houses. I mean, they do hold THE most important jobs for the good of our society, and the world really. Without the stock market and wild corporate speculation, where would we be? I wouldn’t be on the verge of buying a t-mobile G1, I’ll tell you that much. And I probably wouldn’t have close to 600 glorious channels of television. But I joke, of course, because without capitalism, we might not have awesome new drugs, like the flu shot! Which benefit our society! Doh!

There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Last night, I moseyed on down to the HP Pavilion to take in a little Leonard Cohen, melancholy king. It was absolutely amazing. He performed for four hours, singing his more popular songs, punctuated by spoken word poetry and several re-introductions of his band.

That man lives in a world of high emotion and drama and for that reason, he is infinitely appealing. He has ridden the crazy-train of love and manages to write about it in the most insightful and beautiful (and often humorous) ways. Though he is not the most charismatic of stage presences, it was so revealing to hear him sing live. All of his songs took on layers of depth that I either didn’t know were there or I had forgotten about due to the repetitive nature of recorded music. Live music is so much better.

The dude is also 75 and I feel like I can cross of another item on my life satisfaction list. Also, I’m not sure when or how I started listening to L. Cohen. It seems like it must have been late high school/early college, but my initiation into his genius is fuzzy.

The only thing that could have made it better is lasers. If there were some fog machines and the gentle stylings of some laser-light, then the night would have been perfect.

LTCG

Guess what!? Larry the cable guy is coming to town! He’ll be performing down the block from us at the HP Pavilion in a few weeks! I didn’t exactly know who Larry the cable guy was, but I like to laugh, so it’s super convenient that comedy central was playing reruns of his “comedy” so I could do a taste test.

First of all, his southern accent is clearly fake. Having grown up around southern accents, it’s pretty easy to affect one, and therefore tell when others are doing the same. A quick perusal of wikipedia confirms as much.

Secondly, this is the guy responsible for the phrase, “git er done”? What does that even mean? In the LTCG special, he just says it at the beginning, obviously knowing that that’s what his audience wants. It manages to sound sort of dangerous to me, but maybe I’ve been reading too much Jezebel.

And finally, his jokes are rapidly dispensed, baring no coherent line of thought or subject. They are awful and seem to focus on a few main hateful themes: liberals are dumb, retards are funny, women aren’t people, urban culture (ie black people) is retarded (actual joke!), emotional relationships are unimportant, shooting animals is fun.

This is what America wants? I realize that I isolate myself in a den of intellectualism (or at least think I do and/or would like to), but this guy makes me feel so incredibly different from those who pay actual money to see him--like maybe we aren't descended from the same primate ancestors after all.

Still Sick

The thing about teaching is that if you’re not 100%, you really just need to take the day off or if you go in, play a video. Handling 34 teenagers will not happen unless you have an iron will and the full use of all of your senses (sometimes they have pot in class—sense of smell is crucial). I decided to take today off as well in order to regain my strength and get sort of caught up on life. I talked for nearly 5 hours total on the phone, which felt so good and I bought some glitter, which felt awesome!

I realized today that I don’t have any crafty projects underway, and I seriously need to fix that. My plan is to find some awesome fabric and make some new pillow cases. While in Ashland this summer, I found some robot fabric that I’m hoping to track down. I’d also like to make some sort of astronomically themed pillowcases, but with real hubble images, rather than the kiddie-style astronomy fabric that’s available. I’ve got nothing on that so far.*

* Good invention idea for NASA! Have I mentioned that I contacted Crayola about my other invention—astronomically themed color box (Doppler Blue, Supernova Red, Space-Time Black, White Dwarf, etc.) to go along with an astronomy “teaching” coloring book similar to the ones that already exist for biology. They do not solicit ideas, I was informed—total letdown.

VD Day

Acronymizing Veteran’s Day is funny and sad at the same time. San Jose had their annual Veteran’s Day parade, filled with lots of older people ravaged by the tragedy that is war, and Boy Scout troops. I spent the day mostly trying to perfect the “parade heckler” persona that seems to come somewhat naturally to me, especially when the paraders are boy scouts, girl scouts, or marching bands.

I nearly lost it when the first girl scout troop came by, and felt compelled to yell, in quick succession, “girl scouts!”, “cookies!”, and “thin mints!”. When Boy Scout troop 32 walked by, I (helpfully) informed them that that was also my age! Marching bands seem to be my true weakness, however, as I LOVE band and all of its incarnations (concert band, drum corps and orchestra). I couldn’t resist the urge to yell, “I love French horn!” and if none was present, “I love mellophone!”. Another successful parade (and some weirded out troop leaders)!

It's that time of year again--sick time

Though I have conveniently avoided the swine flu thus far, my weak immune system finally caved in to a moderately severe head cold. I took the day off to sleep, watch TV and buy cat litter. I caught the ending of Thelma and Louise, the Fifth Element, the Obama documentary on HBO, Wheel of Fortune and the new V series. I’d say that’s a pretty successful day of TV. I had a bit of a mind jolt when I went to Petsmart, only to stand in line behind a strange woman and three kids that should have been in school. They were shopping for supplies for a “new puppy” that was a 9 month old un-neutered rottweiler. First of all, who in this country adopts a baby rottweiler (well, besides Michael Vick)? Having adopted a lovable ball of fur from the Humane Society, I can tell you that shelters are full of rottweilers (and chihuahuas) that need good homes. I wholeheartedly support bringing a new animal into your life, but seriously? It seems inhumane (and ironic) to not adopt an animal since you are, supposedly, an animal lover. I get that people don’t want a rottweiler for obvious reasons, and so they are disappointed by the options in the shelters, but if you want one…? Totally sketch in my mind to not adopt.

Furthermore, shouldn’t those kids be in school? Whenever I’m home sick or otherwise not at my job, I become very sensitive to the presence of people under the age of 16 out and about in the world. They need to be with their peers—in a classroom--where they text when they should be listening to their teachers!

Solar Ovens

This year, my choice of lab activities has expanded to include the genre I like to call, “applied science”. I really like to do things that, while having scientific value, also have real world applications. Along these lines, we made solar ovens in my geology classes (solar energy is not utilized enough, and the sun converts 1 million tons of H to He every second!) and we’re going to make pickles in my biology class (osmosis and diffusion across a semi-permeable plasma membrane).

Serendipitously, National Geographic ran the story of the guy who is bringing solar ovens to third world countries in an effort to stop the back (and climate) breaking use of firewood the day after we tried cooking apples in our ovens! Yay—solar ovens and my up-on-current-events 16-year-old geology students!

Next week is pickling week, during which my freshman biology students officially become 20-something hipsters (pickling is sooo in right now among the educated young urban (and farmers))!

Adobe Abode

Would you like to see pictures of our new abode, conveniently located one block from Adobe? We have the downstairs part of an old Victorian house. It’s in the worst location possible (literally right in the middle of downtown San Jose, at the convergence of the flight path, a freeway and the public train line—not a peaceful vacation home), making our long-term prospects here slim, but it’s big and has a nice, open layout.

From the front door to the back porch (and computer room)


The dining room, like a real adult!


The living room, which was designed around the concept of projecting our tv entertainment onto a wall.


The kitchen and cat bedroom. (true American patriots, as well)

Mt. Diablo

I participated in some professional development at the old Chevron corporation today. I received a hand lens with the Chevron logo and a hat that says, “Chevron Geology School”, which for some reason is hi-larious to me. (The name implies an interest in the Earth for the Earth’s sake, which is for the most part, not Chevron’s agenda). I learned a little about the cost of drilling oil (tens of millions just to make the seismic maps!), and then we took a field trip to Mt. Diablo. I conveniently left my camera at home, but I had a good time looking at eroded sandstone. There’s an area towards the top that has a bunch of wind caves and little rock climbing areas for kids.

Book learnin’ is for suckers

In the education community, there is a common belief that students need hands on experiences in order to learn. Simply taking notes and studying aren’t enough to really solidify knowledge—they need to kinesthetically interact with something or have a group (and therefore emotional) experience. I wholeheartedly agree with this, as the only concepts I can even vaguely remember from high school are associated with lab activities—dissecting a fetal pig in bio, or doing an egg drop in physics. Given that the current popular opinion is in my favor, I’ve sort of taken a strong stance on the issue. I don’t do a lot of book work or lecturing, only labs and activities that get students working on something. Interestingly enough, this is in line with Richard Feynman’s (new inspirational guru for me) thinking on the learning of science.

Last week, a student walked into class and began complaining about doing another lab, to which I replied “We have to do labs, you’ll never learn anything from a book.” A rather sharp and witty student replied, “Can you please tell that to my English teacher”.

Needless to say, I felt like a pretty bad teacher with my cynical, exaggerated and off-the-cuff attempt at humor.

nutrition and culture

I ran out of lunch food from home, and since my job allows exactly 30 minutes for lunch, 15 of which are spent moving my stuff out of one classroom onto a cart to be transported to another (this is a really bad and super bitter year for me), running out of food pretty much means no lunch. Unless of course, your classroom mate happened to confiscate a full-sized bag of Doritos from a student and cleverly hide them in a drawer, just waiting to be discovered! I was a little bummed about the no lunch thing until I discovered the contraband and partook in the neon cheesy chips that had undoubtedly had the saliva-rich paws of a teenager all over them. At that point, however, it really didn’t matter.

Another surprise discovery today came in the form of the entertainment preferences of teenage girls. Whilst talking about twilight, they were swooning over Taylor Lautner. This is a total shock to me, as I assumed most teenage girls would be pro-Pattinson. I guess Pattinson (team Edward) might be a bit too mature looking and therefore frightening. That Jacob guy is like a Disney idol, devoid of sexuality and full of smiles.

robotic dinosaurs

Palm Springs happens to be very close to the robotic dinosaur park that’s depicted in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. About five years ago, it was turned into a creationist museum! They kept the dinosaur motif, but only as an example of the evils of conventional science. Pretty weird, but I couldn’t resist navigating our large 7 passenger van into the parking lot for a little peek…followed by a delicious date shake.

We took a group photo.

fault lines

When we went to Palm Springs for the teacher’s conference, we decided to do a field trip to visit the San Andreas fault. This involved some off-roading, with me as captain! We saw many tarantulas and visited the Carrizo plain, which lies on the Pacific plate side of the fault. An aerial photo of the fault is below.


We drove along tiny dirt roads in the middle of Steinbeck country. It was pretty awesome and now I can say that I’ve been to both the place where the North American plate diverges (in Iceland) and the place where it meets its end at the Pacific plate. I also learned a new rhyme to help remember the convection process in plate tectonics: “the older, the colder and hence, more dense”. (ie, the plates cool off and sink the further away from their diverging origins).

An average, run of the mill day

Since I spend most waking hours working with children in science classrooms, I thought my second post could be about what happened during the day today (you know, just a random day that could be during any school year at any school district in the public education system of CA).

1. My TA, whom I have known for three years, (1st as a chemistry student, 2nd as a geology student, and now as a senior who is my TA) brought me a marshmallow, chocolate and caramel covered apple before school. It was huge and delicious. I thought the day was off to a pretty good start.

2. My second period biology class is filled with mostly freshman, who are incredibly young and sweet. They kindly pointed out that I’d forgotten to grade the back side of their test. This realization was devastating to me as a person who takes great pride in my ability to be on top of things and organized (well, at least at my job).

3. My 3rd period class is very loud and crude. I had to fight the following battles for appropriate behavior—the singing of “sexual healing”, the raucous laughter when I mentioned coronal mass ejections in my review of the sun, students sitting on each other’s laps and the constant use of the phrase “that’s what she said” (didn’t this die 10 years ago?). I would consider this a mild day.

4. My 6th period class officially became dysfunctional today, with a serious near fight over the use of the word ghetto and the stealing of lab equipment. After things unraveled, there was talk of how the aggressor in the near-fight (who I sent outside) was “on something” and therefore seriously (like knife-wielding) a threat to the other student. Then, when I mentioned doing bag checks for the missing equipment (which was recovered), another student said there’s no way his bag could be checked because he had “stuff” that he wasn’t going to let anyone see. Now, there are about a ten referrals that could have been written, but what is one to do with so many serious issues (theft, threats, drugs—both using and selling, insubordination)? I was just proud of myself for not crying.

And that was my day! It was just a good ‘ole average day at a huge comprehensive high school.

Look! A tarantula!

NaBloPoMo

Yesterday, when I was perusing facebook, a status update from a friend reminded me of National Blog Posting Month (the light (or is it lite?) version of National Novel Writing Month). I totally did this thing a few years ago, and I liked it! This year of teaching has completely taken over my brain capacity and time, leaving me with a strong sense of unbalance. As such, I think it’s a good idea to reclaim some of my former; more relaxed self by doing things that I like—blog posting for example. In honor of NaBloPoMo, I will post everyday.

To kick things off, I recently went to a science teacher’s convention in Palm Springs (which I was helpfully informed is known as the “gays and the greys”). While I was there, I picked up not one, but two awesome outfits for Albert. His new tie is my absolute favorite. Send this guy to the office!