Southern comfort

No, not the kind you drink!  

My mother was born and raised in Arkansas and came to California with the other Grapes of Wrath refugees, bringing along with her all of her southern cooking.  Or hillbilly cooking.  I grew up on fried foods, and I’m sure you can tell by looking at any pictures of me, I still love that kind of cooking.  There is also the fact that all my recipes that aren’t fried start with a cube of butter.  

During summer months when I was growing up, my mother would fry okra, and it seemed like she usually had it for Sunday suppers.  Or, that’s what I remember.  This week we got a bag of okra in our produce box so I breaded it and fried it today.  Mmmm, tasted like a summer Sunday to me.  For my husband, born and raised in California by a health freak mother, not so good.  He is not fond of my fried food diet, thereby keeping his slender, youthful figure.  Although there was no fried chicken, we did have watermelon for dessert.  More southern deliciousness.

I figured it out

The first two weeks of school have been great.  I have great kids in great classes.  Oh, yeah, there are a couple who are giving me some grief, but it’s ok, it’s manageable.  On Wednesday, it hit me as to why this was such a great beginning of the year and I was feeling terrific.  For the first time in 18 years, I do not have the sophomore Academy class.  I do not have to be the drill sargent, I do not have to teach like it’s bootcamp.  I have the kids who I put all that effort into two years ago, and now I am reaping the benefits.  It is bliss.

I knew I wasn’t happy having to be so hard on kids to retrain them to do what they were supposed to do in the first place.  The results, down the line, were exemplary, but getting there was killing me.  Each year got harder as I found kids had fewer classroom management skills.  I have some of my Academy kids in multimedia, and oh, what a difference.  They know how to behave, they know what’s expected, they know to listen to ME when I give directions, they know to do the work the way I want it.  Again, bliss.

Teaching is fun again.

more flash

A couple of days ago I was grousing about my students not buying a flash drive when they had the funds to purchase an abundance of other electronic rigamarole.  After reading teachj’s entry about school supplies, I felt I should offer some clarification.  I don’t want to be seen as some heartless teacher who is not concerned about her student’s finances.  

I’ve written over and over that my school is located in the poorest neighborhood in the United States.  That’s pretty major.  I provide a lot for my students–notebooks, binders, pens, pencils, kleenix, tape–are just the basic stuff I keep in the classrooms for the kids to use.  I also have cameras (both still and video) for checkout.  I occasionally buy lunch for my yearbook students.  And there are all those fieldtrips we take at no charge to the students.  I just think a flash drive is not a lot to ask, especially since they will use them all over campus.

taking out the trash

Our city has once-a-year large garbage pickups where they come and take things like old refrigerators or broken toilets or the fence you tore down after the big storm.  The city is divided into sectors and the trucks rumble through our sector the next two days, picking up all the debris and detritus from our lives.  I am so pleased to have this once-a- year opportunity to take out the trash.

After work today my husband and I headed over to the storage unit we have and got the chair we took out of our living room when we bought the new one.  There were also some crates in there from our daughter’s college days (she graduated in 2000) filled with miscellaneous debris.  I hauled those out.  I HAD a nice pot with silk flowers in it that I use on my porch during the spring, but my husband broke it as he was moving other boxes so it too went to the big trash dump.  I found more flower pots at home that I no longer use so I put them at the curb.  We replaced our vacuum cleaner this year so the old one has sat in the computer room until today when it was hauled out.  I found some giant Goofy slippers in one of the storage unit boxes and decided they too could go.  

Much of this detritus is still useable, and there is a parade of pickups on our street looking to glean what they can from other’s trash.  Sure enough, we no more than pull the stuff from the back of the car when a guy pulls up and takes the chair, the vacuum cleaner and those flower pots.  In a little while I noticed a neighbor taking a box with inline skates and the goofy slippers.  A little boy came by and took a book and an old softball.  The crates are still out there but I bet they will be gone by morning.  Less for the landfill.

thank god for my husband

I am teaching in a different room this year.  It’s been about 7 years since I taught a class in this particular room and it has had some changes.  For one thing, the teacher who originally had the room for about 20 years has retired and the room has had two other teachers come in, the last of whom does not keep up the equipment as I am accustomed.  Also, I guess I should back up and say this is a PC lab, not a MAC lab, but I had taught for 18 years in a room with PCs and managed to keep them functioning so I SHOULD be ok in this room.  

The room has a projector attached to a computer for demonstration purposes and today I realized it only showed the monitor through the projector and no longer on the actual monitor.  Does that make sense?  My husband was at school, updating some of my MACs in my other classroom so I had him check out this problem.  He fixed it.  Now I have the picture on the computer monitor and the one projected onto the screen.  Works like it did when the experienced teacher was in the room.   Thank god for my husband who keeps my equipment in teachable condition.

As an aside, I teach in two classrooms, have for years.  Yearbook and marketing 3 are taught in a MAC setting (G5s) and now I am teaching multimedia in a PC room (dying dells).  Don’t buy dell computers.

My own wayback machine

Every Sunday, In the San Francisco Chronicle, there is a column made up of news articles from the last 100 years, in 25 year increments.  I love this piece and always look forward to what they chose.  The news pieces are usually pretty much tied to San Franciscan events and some are pretty funny.  Some make me shudder, especially those that lead up to World War II.  

I have decided to do my own Wayback Machine, but in 10 year increments, and just like the Chronicle, the events are specific to my life, not necessarily to history.  Please feel free to steal this idea and do your own.  Just let me know if you do so I can come by and enjoy your look at history.

50 years ago (1958)–I was starting first grade with one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Harvey, who had beautiful white hair.  We would practice nuclear attack alarms, hiding under our desks.  It worked, we are still here.

40 years ago (1968)–my dad died that summer and I had gotten my driver’s license.  Even though I wanted to drive to school, my mother said I would take the school bus like I always had.  I also wanted Capezio shoes like all the popular girls wore, but no, I would wear my usual thick soled shoes.  Moms can be such a drag.

30 years ago (1978)–I was very pregnant with our daughter.  It was at this time that I met a dear friend who I still have as she came to fill in for me while I took maternity leave.  I hated being pregnant and had morning sickness for 9 months.

20 years ago (1988)–I was starting my final student teaching at one of the toughest schools in town (no, not the one where I am currently).

10 years ago (1998)–we were taking our daughter to Oregon for her third year of college.  She now had a car to drive up there so we followed in our car rather than renting a van.  Because she was working as a resident adviser and getting an apartment in the deal, I no longer had to pay for her housing and could afford an extra $10,000 for a car.  

2008–just started my 20th year of teaching at an inner city school; my mother has been gone for 8 years; our daughter finished college, graduate school, and is now a minister, and she still has that car we bought her 10 years ago.

In a flash

I’ve been using computers for so long that I can remember when we used 5 1/2 inch floppies to store our files.  My first teaching assignment at a middle school required those.  Then we went to 3 1/4 inch floppies, then zip disks, and now, we have flash drives.  Or USB drives.  Or thumb drives.  Whatever you call them.  They are tiny and they can store big amounts.  Here is my supply at home:

They sit in a bowl, on my desk, next to my laptop.  The bowl is also home to some PEZ dispensers but I took those out so you can more clearly see the flash drives.  I use these all the time to take work back and forth to school.  There is usually one sitting in my purse or tote bag.  I have another collection like this at school.  Because I do so much with photos, I need different drives for different projects.

I am requiring my students to have ONE flash drive this year.  Actually, I think most teachers want the kids to have them because of all the places they can go on campus to work on computers.  Plus, the new laptops that have been acquired have no other way to store files but through USB connections.  You would think I have asked the kids to buy a Cadillac.  Target, Office Max, they all have these gadgets on sale right now, some as low at 8.99.  I will even sell some I picked up over the summer to the kids for $12.   I know times are tough, but is it really that bad out there that kids with iPods, cell phones, designer clothes, cable TV at home, can’t afford a flash drive?

The pace is quickening

All summer the traffic has been light around town.  Perhaps it’s the high gas prices, perhaps it’s the heat, or perhaps it’s because everyone left town.  I’ve also not had to deal with crowds in the stores the few times I’ve been out shopping, usually early in the morning so as to be home by the time the temperature reaches 100.  Every Saturday morning I head to Whole Foods very early to grocery shop for the week, and it’s been quiet and relaxed on these summer Saturdays.

Today, it all changed.  The traffic was heavier, the stores I visited had PEOPLE in them, and Whole Foods?  Whole Foods was, as my mother would say, working alive.  I had to say “excuse me” a couple of times to get past people blocking aisles.  I couldn’t get help at the fish counter because there were people ahead of me.  I gave up at the prepared foods area too because I really didn’t want to wait.  I maneuvered my way into the baked goods so I could buy bagels, but then I had to carefully navigate the checkout lines as they were stacked up.  And this was all before 11 a.m.

Everyone is getting back into the routine.  By Monday all the schools, including the colleges, will be back in session.  Some schools have been back for two weeks now.  Everyone who went away for the summer is back; they are on the streets and in the stores, and I am just going to have to get used to it.

The grass IS greener on my side

It’s Friday, and I can breathe a sigh of relief.  All went very well; I have really good classes, but I am tired because the first week is filled with so much talking and getting to know so many new names and faces.  I’m doing the work right now, getting the kids ready to do the hard work of learning.   You don’t just bring them in and throw work at them; it’s all prep work right now.

When we returned to campus on Monday, we were greeted with beautiful lawns on our side of the campus.  Over the weekend the district had rolled out turf to cover what had been hot, hard dirt.  In 20 years of teaching at this school, this is the first year that I felt the district had really put some effort into getting the place ready for kids and staff.

Rolling out the turf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lawn between my building and the freshmen bungalows.

Choose your shoes

Back in the summer I wrote about the new rules for shoes at our school–no flip flops.  Even though some of the kids showed up to get their schedules wearing those dratted shoes, many wore some very fashionable footwear.  Here are some examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m looking forward to what the kids will wear the first day of school.  Unfortunately, our temperatures are way over 100 (107 today) so they will probably want to wear shorts and skimpy tops.