It’s amazing I’m not dead

13 September 2006, 9:21 pm by Giggles
Categories: Health, Random

It’s not that I don’t know how to cook, it’s just that it isn’t a whole lot of fun when it’s just me and my kitchen is a small cave.

I just got back from the grocery store, and looking at what I bought, I just had to share.

  • 1 loaf whole wheat bread. And yes, I check the ingredients. Most breads that say they are whole wheat in the name, are really just colored brown flour. I won’t buy bread if the first ingredient is enriched white flour.
  • 3 bananas
  • 3 roma tomatoes
  • 1 bunch radishes
  • 3 nectarines, or as my family calls them, Shirleys
  • 3 ears of corn
  • 1 package cut up romaine lettuce mix. Iceberg lettuce has about as much nutritional value as water.
  • and some mint brownies

I’m craving brownies and fruits and veggies. Strange, but true.

Tomorrow when I go to a different store I’m going to need another gallon of milk and another box of Cheerios.

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Fifth Graders – a never ending source of questions

13 September 2006, 1:50 pm by Giggles
Categories: Questions, Random, Work

Generally I wear a pair of slacks and a shirt (generally not one with buttons because those generally need to be ironed) to work. Today I am wearing a green shirt and a denim skirt.

So what is it about what I am wearing that would make fifth graders tell me I’m beautiful, “foxy,” and get a second grader to tell me I have nice shoes?

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September 11th

11 September 2006, 8:20 pm by Giggles
Categories: Musings, Questions

What is it about this day that makes it unique from all the other days of the year? Why would this one day change our lives so much? Americans had been attacked before. Americans continue to die today. There is always a war somewhere, always someone with something to prove by killing someone else. So why was this person, on this day, so much different? And why does this day still bring tears to our eyes?

I don’t know if I have the answers to those questions. But that day did change our lives, some good changes and some bad. Never before had destruction come so close to America and American soil. Pearl Harbor in 1941, was an attack on a military base. And Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico in 1916, is barely a blip on the time line of the United States. There have been other terrorist attacks against the US, both abroad by foreigners and at home by radicals. But there was something about this one that made it different.

I was in a small town in Mexico. My brother was in Houston. My sister was in Waco. My parents were in Pikeville, Kentucky (population just over 6,000). Pikeville thought their coal might be in danger and had guards outside their post office. We think they were a bit disappointed they weren’t attacked. I had travel plans for the next month. I still went. I have not stopped traveling.

I faced a similar choice to one that President Bush has been criticized for. He was in a room of second graders, seven year-olds, when he found out. People have criticized him for not leaving the room, for staying where he was at. That day was already going to be hard enough for those children, if he had left, he would’ve panicked them more. I was in a class of fourth graders. I remember struggling with how much to tell them, and what to tell them, so that they would know something was going on, most of them had family in the States, but not so much that they would panic, and not so much that I would panic before I knew more.

Whatever the reason, this day has changed. We have changed. I have changed.

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A Question about Knowledge

3 September 2006, 4:10 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Learn Something, Questions

Three questions were posed in a class last week that started a very interesting discussion as we tried to determine the answers to them. They are questions that learning theorists have been trying to answer since before Plato. Books upon books have been written about the topic. I know I’m a geek when I realize that I’m really enjoying reading all of that research about their theories in my spare time. But I’m interested in how someone who isn’t specifically studying these topics would answer those questions.

So now I’m asking the world. How would you define knowledge? What is learning to you? Is information different from knowledge? If so, how is it different?

2 Shared thoughts

Learning between the lines

31 August 2006, 10:19 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Learn Something, Venting

There is much to be learned from every situation. Even when I was in elementary school and dreamed of being a teacher, I was learning more than just the curriculum from my teachers. I watched them and saw what made a good teacher and what made a bad teacher. I knew which teachers I wanted to be like, and which teachers had been good examples of what not to do. I doubt they even knew what they were doing at the time.

This continued through my undergraduate studies. More often than not, it was the quality of the teacher that determined what I thought of the class and the subject. I could readily identify those that knew more than just the subject matter, but also knew what they were doing with it. Not all teachers who are experts in their respective fields know how to then turn around and share that knowledge.

And of course there is the saying that “the only stupid question is the one that isn’t asked.” So it was an interesting experience for me recently when I asked a simple question, one that several people were wondering, and within five seconds was made to feel like an idiot by a teacher. I think I was more amazed at how fast it happened than anything else. And having witnessed it, I hope to be able to avoid doing the same to my students.

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More dating advice

30 August 2006, 9:17 pm by Giggles
Categories: Learn Something, Random, Relationships

Tonight’s advice comes from a web page about different kinds of dates. They suggest a picnic at a zoo because:

Nothing bonds two people like happy monkeys.

And what about the giraffes? Can they not bond people as well? And the camels? (Did you know that there are camels living in the cold deserts of Russia? I didn’t either.) Are they not good for anything? I like the elephants myself.

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My friend, Stress

29 August 2006, 8:43 pm by Giggles
Categories: Life

Stress and I spend a lot of time together. We are pretty close actually. So you’d think with all of that together time, we’d be better friends. But no.

A friend of mine put it this way: Stress and I are close, but Stress never brings me presents. Jerk.

That seems about right to me.

This is why I am also friends with Yoga and Meditation and Chocolate.

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