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| This one's for you, Terry |
| 06.26.04 (4:11 pm) [edit] |
One of the great things about edublogging is getting to know more about the lives of other teachers that you wouldn't otherwise get to meet. Yes, it's true--teachers actually do have lives outside of school!
A few days ago I was sharing with Terry Elliot, (an edblogger I've never met but whom I always read) about how stressful it is to work in year round schools.
I shared that since I don't have much vacation time, I've been enjoying snippets of time in my backyard. One fun thing we've been doing lately is showing movies using an LCD projector and a dvd/vcr, on a big screen we rigged up. We invite people over, lay blankets out on the grass, set up tikki torches, barbeque--we even roast marshmellows--while enjoying cool movies with friends and family. (I'll post a picture soon.)
Terry says he's got several types of berries on his land, and he just walks along, picking them off the vine and enjoying them!  
I told him about my first first good crop of apricots and braeburn apples, my grape vines and a pair of birds with their baby that live in the vines, and that I'm learning to use a serious slingshot to protect my beloved 20 year old cat from the hawks that have nested in a tree behind my house.
The next day I look out my window and there's a hawk, sitting on my porch!
I took this picture of it through my screen door--it's fuzzy but it was so awe-inspiring I just had to post it in honor of Terry! I think it's a red-shouldered hawk, common to southern California and seen often in the sycamore trees around the arroyo.
All this blogsharing got me investigating birding in my community, and low and behold, I discovered that we have an Audubon Center, just miles from my home and my school!
Now wouldn't that be a fabulous blog project--learning about habitats through birding--posting pictures, information, maps, and graphs representing sitings of specific birds.
Yep, we teachers have lives outside of school--and if we're open to it, our lives can inspire us to remain fresh and new as educators. Because blogs make it easy to share information, blogging can help us make the connections...
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| Iraqi Schools |
| 06.24.04 (9:04 am) [edit] |
 Here's a picture of the second box of supplies out sent out to support IraqiSchools. If you read my post around Christmastime, you know that I first read about the IraqiSchools program on Mike Arnzen's Pedablogue. He wrote about how the bombings in Iraq had resulted in many schools sustaining substantial damage. To make things worse, roads were so badly hit that they were impassable, so supplies could not get into many cities. As a result, many students had no books, pencils, crayons, rulers... you name it. And teachers had no chalk, markers, paper, etc.
IraqiSchools is a project run by some of our soldiers stationed in Iraqi. It is not a government run program, rather it is a grassroots effort begun when a solider wrote home telling his family and friends about the terrible conditions of the schools in the village where he was stationed. Family, friends, and church groups began sending materials, and a project was born.
As a teacher, I can only imagine what it must be like to know that the future of your village--city, state, country--depends on your ability to carry on educating the youth in the middle of a war. I hope that any boxes of supplies I send will help a fellow teacher carry on during difficult times.
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| PowerPoint blog |
| 06.20.04 (10:48 am) [edit] |
 via Scobleizer: I just found beyond bullets a blog about using powerpoint to communicate ideas. Though it's geared more toward corporate use, it contains useful ideas for education like using ppt for storyboarding:
"When you look at a storyboard, it presents some built-in questions: What do I want to say? In what sequence? How do I start, what happens next, and how will it end? What techniques will I use to make this relevant to my audience?"
As a Literacy Coach, I'm always looking for ways to teach students plot development--the all important sequence of events--and awareness of audience. Storyboarding with powerpoint is a great way to achieve both.
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| Georgia on my mind |
| 06.18.04 (6:24 am) [edit] |
Goodbyes have been on my mind lately. I had a fabulous experience blogging with Anne's 5th grade ESL students at Thinking and Writing Wrinkles. She set the bar high and it was inspiring to see their writing skills develop over a few short months. They've graduated and now their blogs lay silent. I hope some of them will continue to blog in the future. I know that I'll continue to blog with Anne and learn lots more from her. (Best of luck at NECC!)
With the passing of Ray Charles I've been listening Georgia on my mind over the last several days. It seems so appropriate now -- Goodbye Wrinkles bloggers and goodbye Ray Charles. I thank you both:
Georgia, Georgia, the whole day through
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
Georgia, Georgia, a song of you
Comes as sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines.
Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.
Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.
Melodies bring memories
That linger in my heart
Make me think of Georgia
Why did we ever part?
Some sweet day when blossoms fall
And all the world's a song
I'll go back to Georgia
'Cause that's where I belong.
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| Blogging and health concerns |
| 06.17.04 (2:22 pm) [edit] |
Let me start by stating, once again, that I absolutely love blogging! I think that's my problem--that I love it so much I've jumped right in with reckless abandon. And now I'm paying the price for it--I've developed a pinched nerve running down my left leg from prolonged sitting!!! My reason for sharing this information is not to scare anyone away from blogging but to remind everyone to work ergonomically.
The facts are that blogging is addicting and time consuming. The more you blog the more blogs you read. The more blogs you read the more you blog. The more you blog the more you are drawn to html coding/webdesign, even if just a little bit to get a few little things looking good on your place in the blogosphere. And all of this activity takes time--time sitting at your computer.
I've been blogging for 9 months and have spent countless hours blogging during the first 7 months. Often, I sat on my sofa or an oversized chair, with my laptop on a folding table. It was heavenly----until, I started noticing that when I'd get up from the chair my left leg would get a sharp radiating pain and I couldn't put weight on it for several minutes until it kind of "warmed up." Turns out, all the seemingly comfortable sitting was messing with my alignment, leading to nerve impingement! And, don't even get me started on my carpel tunnel and neck/shoulder pain from years of computer use.
So, here are a few friendly tip from your Blog Aunt Nancy:
1. Limit your time sitting at your computer by taking a 15 minute break each hour that you blog.
2. Make sure your computing environment is ergonomically correct by visiting a website to get information about ergonomics. Try HealthyComputing.
3. Incorporate healthy stretching into your computing regimine. Check out a website that has information on exercises for computer users like Ergocise.
4. Walk, stretch, stop and smell the roses.
5. Everything in moderation.
Hmmm... I hope I learn this lesson and learn it well or I may end up a cyborg in my senior years because I'll need to be implanted with whatever computer chips, nanotechnology, or stem cell therapy we develop so that my body will continue to work. I've already instructed my family members that if anything happens to me (accident/illness) they should not hesitate in having me implanted with some device if it will get me moving and thinking. Hey, don't laugh--Parkinsons runs in both sides of my family, as does neuropathy, so finding my gait unstable for the first time in my life can be a sign of things to come. Life is fragile, as is quality of life, and we humans aren't invincible.
Technology has its benefits--but everything in moderation!
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| Teachers' medical insurance |
| 06.06.04 (2:08 pm) [edit] |
With the budget crisis in California, and school districts looking for places in the budget to chop, teacher health insurance benefits are coming under fire. In my district, we are being asked to chop $60million from our health benefits package, meaning that we will have less choice and larger copays. I find this totally unacceptable.
During my 15 year teaching career (all in the same district) my health insurance plan has placed more and more restrictions on my access to care while my copays have increased and my employers premiums have sky-rocketed! I've been fighting over a month now to get authorization for my daughter's follow appointment for a neurologist! Last year my doctor requested authorization two separate times for me to see a podiatrist, and frankly I just gave up. They never came through. They got lost. They were never received...blah, blah, blah... excuses.
At a time when we teachers are being pushed more than ever to test, test, test, complete mountains of paperwork, and become "highly qualified" so we "leave no chid behind," and in the midst of massive lay-offs of school support personnel, and possible reorganization of our mini-districts, we are being asked to bear the brunt of insurance company's ever-increasing costs. Our union polled the membership about the issue and the outcome was---teachers would rather strike than have any change to health insurance benefits!
Personally, I'm looking into California State Senator Sheila Kuehl's universal health care bill SB921. This bill proposes that California institute a:
single-payer health care system where all public monies currently spent on health care are rolled into a single health care fund, and premiums, copayments, and deductible payments are replaced by a low percentage payroll and income tax. Under single-payer, eligibility is based on residency rather than employment status. Health care decisionmaking is put back in the hands of patients and physicians, and no one will lose their benefits because they turn 18 or lose their job.
I'm really going to research this but in detail, but in essence, it sounds good to me. We must do something. Look what happened with the grocery store workers. They were on strike for 4 months, trying to protect their health care benefits! (BTW, some people got upset because when they tried to cross the picket lines to get groceries they were treated unkindly by some strikers. Boo-hoo. Give me a break! How would you feel if you spent Thanksgiving and Christmas freezing your butt off, no money for family celebrations, striking in front of your place of business, and people keep crossing the picket line instead of supporting your efforts by bucking up and going to Trader Joes a mile away?) Though the media did not report details of the agreement, the fact is that the strikers lost. They will be paying the increased health insurance, just as Vons and Ralphs had wanted. I now rarely step foot into my local Vons because of the terrible way the company treated their employees and because many of the strikers were transfered to other locations for their troubles! (Most of the familiar faces at my local Vons, that I had gotten to know over years, are gone. Transfered to far off locations--punishment for exercising their rights! Trader Joes now has my business!)
Anyway, I hope any of you Californians will take the time to check out universal health care bill SB921.
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