Can O’ Worms

20 March 2007, 4:31 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Venting, Work

What follows are some of my thoughts on recent meetings and decisions and such and whatnot that have been occurring.

Holy Crap!!!

I can’t do this any more. There is so much icky negativity in this room that it’s making me ill.

This is not a pleasant meeting. In trying to close one can of worms, an even bigger one has been opened. It’s going to result in complete inconsistency and they’ve basically washed their hands of all of it.

We’ve been hung out to dry, and in the process, are shooting each other. So do we die from the hanging or do we die from the gunshot wounds? Either way, we’re all dead.

Who knew math could be such a passionate subject for everyone? I have very strong opinions on the matter, but for the sake of not contributing to even more negativity I’m wisely keeping them as much to myself as I can, or only sharing them with a select few.

This is good in a way though, it’s a strong reminder of why I need to change.

Let’s just do a re-vote until everyone is sick of it and we just end up with something.

Don’t anyone talk to me about math right now.

Math is just too stressful a subject right now for me.

Stupid can of tape worms.

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How off is my morning?

13 March 2007, 9:55 am by Giggles
Categories: Random

This morning is just off.

I woke up at 3am because I needed a drink of water. Half a water bottle later I was able to go back to sleep. Weird.

When it was actually time to get up, I woke up to a sweet simple dream like ones that I haven’t had in a long time. It was so real, it felt real good. But it was out of the norm for me.

I made it to work a few minutes early. Strange. Normally I’m a minute or two late.

The district server is going very slow today, a day when I’m planning to use the internet for sixth grade. I hope it picks up some speed in the next hour. The bell system still hasn’t figured out the time change, so the bells are an hour late still, which makes the whole morning feel weird.

This morning is just off some how.

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Road trip excitement

9 March 2007, 9:45 am by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Life, Random

I have come to the sad conclusion that I am a little too excited for this weekend’s road trip. I am going all the way to Salt Lake for a night. I will be gone for about 24 hours is all. Salt Lake is 45 minutes away. I drive to Salt Lake at least three times a week right now. Not only that, but I love sleeping in my bed. I have the best bed in the world. And I’ll be sleeping in a hotel (never a motel) while I’m in Salt Lake.

But it is something different than what I do every day. So maybe just that little difference is enough to make me excited.

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Belly Dancing

3 March 2007, 5:24 pm by Giggles
Categories: Exercise, Happy Things

After leaving an educational technology conference, I went to a belly dancing Spring festival. In 2003 I set five goals for myself. For one of the goals I tried to think of what would be the most random thing I could learn to do, and of course the answer was belly dancing. It took me till 2005 to actually take a class, but I had so much fun with it. I’m taking my second class right now. Our teacher suggested we attend the Spring Fest where troupes and individuals would be performing all day long. It was great. There are several things that stood out to me while I watched the performances. I love how comfortable people are with their bodies when they belly dance. When you look at costumes, they list the sizes as petite to goddess. I like that. There are all shapes and sizes that belly dance. It can be a celebration of women and of how amazing these bodies we have are. My favorite performers weren’t the ones who seemed to be saying “let me turn you on” but rather those who were amazed and thrilled with what their bodies could do. Off to the side I saw a woman with a hip scarf on and she was holding her baby and feeding her a bottle. It was great. I don’t know if I will ever do this seriously, but it is a lot of fun to play around with.

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UCET 2007

3 March 2007, 1:15 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Science & Tech, Venting, Work

In 2002 I was hired as the computer specialist in an elementary school. I had very little idea what I was doing and just started making it up as I went. I was pretty successful at that. But it is always nice to get new ideas. That first year someone told me about the UCET (Utah Coalition for Educational Technology) Conference held in Salt Lake some time around March every year. I went that first year and came away with so many ideas from other teachers in the state that I could use in my classroom. My teaching changed for the better.

So I attended the following two years as well. Last year my sister decided to get married that weekend, so I did not attend. But I have done very well with my annual fundraiser the last few years, so I was able to pay the registration fees and cover the substitutes for three teachers at my school so they could go. They loved it. And I was glad that now I wasn’t the only teacher in the school who had gone and gotten ideas about how to use technology in so many ways in the classroom.

This year, we again did well with the fundraiser. So this year I attended, and the lab covered the costs for five other teachers to attend as well. What a great group! I was excited.

And then the majority of the conference was a disappointment, at least for me. In the past there have been a lot of presenters that were actual classroom teachers who shared actual projects they did in their classroom that could easily and quickly be adapted to any number of classrooms on any number of subjects. They had presentations for beginning level technology people, and specific presentations for advanced level technology people. Very few of the projects presented were going to require the purchase of a specific type of software to use them.

Such has not been the case this year. So many of the presentations were done by vendors, selling their wares as absolutely necessary to do anything in the classroom. I have tried to avoid those. But it has been hard. One vendor booth I talked with spent half the time telling me how good their product is, and the other half mudslinging at a competitor. I don’t need that negativity in my life. It’s why I change the channel every time a Mac commercial comes on. Those commercials never say anything good about a Mac, instead they mudsling at PCs. How sad that the worst parts of our political system have seeped into the commercial world.

So I really don’t know how useful UCET 2007 has been for the other teachers from my school. I hope they’ve gotten something out of it. I hope it’s been useful for them. I hope they are excited about pulling technology into their classroom, but I really am having a hard time seeing how that will be possible.

But the bagels they provided for breakfast were very fresh. So that was nice.

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Debt

3 March 2007, 10:29 am by Giggles
Categories: Questions

A radio station the other night was asking a question and the first person to get it right would win a prize. The question was that by age 17, something like 70% of all teens have done this. The answer was a complete shock to me. By that age, that many teens have gone into debt! What are they going into debt for? Who is giving them credit that they can get into debt? What in the world is happening to people these days? I’m a little smug that I did not have any debt until I bought a car last April, at age 27. I have had credit cards since the college, but I have never carried a balance on it. I know that not everyone can do that. I’ve been very lucky in paying for my education. But what are teenagers buying that they now have debt? I’m confused.

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The television

2 March 2007, 10:25 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Happy Things, Health, Science & Tech

This week I decided I was really going to limit how much I watched television. The idea was to get more homework done instead of coming home and turning on the tv and “relaxing” until bed. I still got the same amount of homework done, but other differences were real nice.

I watched “Heroes” on Monday. Technically I’m not supposed to be home in time to watch that, but class got out very early and my other plans for that night had to take a rain check. I also watched some parts of the extras on my Wallace and Gromit DVDs trying to find appropriate clips to show fourth grade as examples of stop motion films. But it was nice to turn it off after and have that time of quiet to get ready for bed.

Tuesday and Wednesday I didn’t turn on the TV at all. I was amazed at how much calmer I was in the evening, how much easier I went to bed, how less rushed I felt getting ready for bed. I loved it. Okay, so Tuesday wasn’t that quiet because grades for the second term were due by 2:30 on Wednesday and I still had quite the stack to record. My arm felt like it was going to fall of Wednesday afternoon and my right shoulder still hasn’t gotten back to normal completely, well, a normal level of pain that is. But I was still much less frantic than I think I would’ve been if I would have had the tv on. And Wednesday I was able to quietly drift off to sleep.

Thursday I watched the last half of a show after I got home from belly dancing. It really made a difference in the evening. The same thing again this evening.

I think I like it off. I’m not going to get rid of it. But I’m not going to turn it on just because I’m home.

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