Things you don’t see everday

A large box of packing peanuts open up in the middle of a highway. Even though I cried for the environment, it was pretty stellar to drive through.

Who says- John Mayer

I’ll forgive you for your tom petty cover, john.

Things you don’t hear everyday

Gun shots while watching Lost. Oh wait, it’s oakland…..

Bumped!

If there is one thing being a teacher has taught me, it’s how to continually bump into cabinets, tables, chairs, etc. and maintain my composure as if nothing just happened while i internally ignore the pain shooting through my limbs.

That’s a life skill I can take right to the bank.

21 Guns- Green Day with American Idiot cast

Here is the grammy performance of 21 guns by Green Day and the American Idiot cast. American Idiot will be opening on Broadway later this spring and I think its really cool that I got to see the show before it made it big.

Niche

Tonight has probably been the biggest struggle that I’ve had since being back from winter break. Gosh, I miss my friends. I feel like my life is so incomplete without them. Each person I have met has carved out their own unique part of my life. Some have barely scratched the surface, while others bored right into the center of my being. These are the people that I miss. I’m being optimistic and thinking about the next time that I will see them but I really wonder if I’m seeing them enough for how much they mean to me. In many ways technology is amazing and incredibly frustrating. It’s great to talk and interact with them virtually, but it’s almost just a tease because its never quit satisfying as being with them in person.

Thinking about my plans this summer, its slowly hitting me that this isn’t just some crazy social experiment where it feels like I’m just visiting California for an extended period, but rather that I live here. its looking like at most I will only be spending about three weeks in Minnesota between now and October. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not.  This month marks the first time that I will have a major break from school (a week) and not spend that time in Minnesota. I think its both good and bad for me.

I’m still adjusting, and I can see that. There are people who are starting to carve their way into my life for which I am excited but I’m not sure what to do about the niches that have already been created.

Cab- Train

the days are better, the nights are still so lonely.

Red pen.

Today I got to take part in an opportunity that few teachers get to play a role in, much less first year teachers.

I found out about a month ago that I would have to spend about 6 hours of today at a textbook publishing company in Palo Alto. Not particularily thrilled to give up my Saturday, I consented because the school offered to pay for our work. So I grudingly got myself up at 7:30, which is the earliest I have been up on Saturday since I’ve started teaching, and drove the 50 minute drive to Palo Alto.

I was not ready for what lay ahead of me.

Essentially our charter network is partnering with this company to offer a flexbook for our students. This flexbook (replacing our traditional textbook) lives online and we as teachers have the power to edit it. In fact, the backside of the textbook is a wiki (as a wikipedia editor, i loved this!). Then we have the power to turn it into a webpage, print it out as a pdf or bind it into a textbook. Not only is this a textbook, but it is filled with additional content for labs, workbooks, resouces and videos. FURTHER, this textbook will have additional resources for SPED and ELL students with the possibility of having sections further broken down and VOICE-OVER text! I am so pumped to use this.

We are running a pilot with our students and today we were handed the evolution chunk for our pilot. Being a small charter netowrk, there are only four schools. The four biology teachers each got to go through the entire evolution chapter and say what we wanted to be put in the charter textbook and what we wanted out to be taken out. It’s an incredibly powerful experience to take a pencil or pen and cross out entire sections and say that I don’t want this in the charter textbook and it’s done. Further since it’s a living document, we as individual teachers can add/substract things to further fit our individual classrooms, such as where we are focusing indvidiually, do we need to change individual words/phrases, etc. It was definitely a powerful experience and I cannot wait to begin.

I think that many times i have won the “tfa lottery”. As far as compared with some of my colleagues, my school is amazing, my kids are great, I’ve gotten to take part in a lot of pilot programs for both TFA and my charter and generally I’m doing very well. It’s still incredibly tough, incredibly. But I know things could be a lot worse and today really proved that.

Shipped.

The problem with ordering books off of Amazon instead of from a traditional bookstore is that I want to read those books now. I don’t want to have to wait

Flightless bird, American Mouth- Iron & Wine

I really like this song though the fact that its in twilight kind of makes me hate it.