On My Mind Today

I like Thanksgiving. It's such a sweet, unassuming holiday. It's so much less commercial and more meaningful. It's all about spending time with those you love and showing gratitude for all that we have. I know I often get caught up in the negative things that happen in life, but looking at the things we're grateful for is so much more enjoyable.

I'm very grateful for...

• Mike! He's amazing, and he makes me happy every single day.
  
• My family- my immediate family, my in-laws, and especially my little family with Mike.
• For the steal of a deal we're getting on our apartment. Life would be hard if we had to pay exorbitant rent like some of my friends do.
• That my job is no longer miserable. Things have gotten much better.
• That I got to meet (and talk to!) Jeff Wilhelm. He has really inspired me and given me a lot of direction in my career.
• That Martina won Miss Rodeo Utah. It was amazing to watch someone I care about so much achieve something that meant so much to them.
• For my book club. I've made some wonderful friends, and I feel like it's been a good source of personal growth.
• That I've been able to travel so much in the last year: Alaska, San Francisco, L.A., and Park City (less glamorous, I know) a few times.
• For old friends who I know will always be around. I realized when I saw a friend today just how many times I run into someone and introduce them to Mike as someone I've been friends with forever. Thanks for sticking around.
  
• That Mike agrees that watching Jurassic Park at Thanksgiving should be a family tradition.
  

Quote of the Week

Student: If I pee my pants during my presentation, will you give me a good grade because you feel bad for me?

Things Have Been...

... a little scary around here.

If you haven't seen or heard much of us lately, it's because we're both swamped.
Mike is busy, busy, busy with school. He's doing really great with it though, and is being a very dedicated student.

As for me. Well, so far this year I've had:

• kids chewing tobacco in class
• a student so incensed that I would have the audacity to take her phone away (after 2 warnings to put it away) that she walked out
• a student who, when I asked him why he wasn't doing his work, told me he would do enough assignments/activities to get by, just not any of the "stupid" ones
• a mouthy Justin Bieber look alike
• an excellent view of the shed where kids go to smoke while they skip class
  
• a major curriculum change, oh, 2 days before school started.

Which really all means that it has been a hectic beginning. I'm trying to remember a chart my mentor teacher once showed me about the emotional patterns of teaching. I think it looked something like this:

So, there's definitely a low to be expected. But, I'm a bit concerned, because my year started out more like this:

I guess the good thing is that there's an upward trend. I think the 12th graders are just being too cool for school. Things seem to be getting better. I just keep reminding myself to embrace the chaos and just do my best to be happy. Things may be kind of scary and hard, but that's no reason not to be happy.

Splurge

I found this in a catalog a few weeks ago. I think it's adorable, so I decided to order the pattern.

I don't know when it will happen, but I am very excited to make it!

Currently Reading...

Poor abandoned blog... I haven't had much to say lately. I caught a cold more or less on the first day of school and have been just trying to get by since then. Luckily, I'm feeling better, and since my mom requested a blog post to entertain her, I thought I would share some neat facts from (one of) the book(s) I'm currently reading, The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

The Mother Tongue is all about the English language, but also talks about the linguistic characteristics of other languages too. It's super interesting. I've been reading it for awhile (non-fiction always seems to take longer), and I am constantly telling Mike about all the things I'm learning from it. And now, I present them to you.

• English is the only language that has (or needs) a thesaurus (14).
• There are more people studying English in China than there are people in the United States (13).
  
• There are approximately 2,700 languages in the world... but that is only a best guess (37).
• All languages evolve, but Icelandic, for some reason hasn't really evolved much. Bryson claims that if Leif Ericson reappeared, he could communicate without too many problems (37).
• Spelling was pretty much anyone's best guess, until the printing press was invented. Perhaps unfortunately, the printing press was invented during a pretty tumultuous time for the English language. That's partially why there are some unusual spellings- a lot of our spellings reflect pronunciation of the 1400s (126).
• Relatedly, silent letters (like the "k" in knight and knees or "g" in gnat) were once pronounced (128).
  
• If you think texting abbreviations are irritating, you might be surprised to find that in the early 1900s the Simplified Spelling Board (supported by Andrew Carnegie and Theodore Roosevelt, among others) lobbied for the simplified spellings of certain words. They won a few battles, giving dignity to the shorter version of words that have two spellings (ax/axe, judgment/judgement, catalog/catalogue, program/programme, etc.). They also had a lot of support behind words like live, tho, thru, wisht, gard, giv, hav, and ar. But, they pushed their luck on words like tuf, def, yu, and filosophy. That, and the advent of World War I stopped their efforts (130).

I'm about half way done. It's totally nerdy, but I love reading things like this. Thanks for humoring me.

Practically a Professional

People like me generally have two secret goals.

1. Publish a hit novel.
2. Be a professional blogger.

I got a tiny bit closer to the second of those goals this week. I was invited to attend a webinar based on Troy Hicks' book, The Digital Writing Workshop. The district content leader invited me because I'm working on a research project for the last conference I went to about blogs in the classroom. For the final product, I wrote a rationale and a basic outline of implementing blogs as a tool for helping students internalize the writing process and improve their writing. And, in a few weeks, I'll be getting a check for that.

Getting paid to write about blogging is almost like getting paid to blog, right?

Also... I got two free books, and a huge vote of confidence from my district content leaders. So, even though my heart is somewhat dismayed about school starting again, I feel like I can do it. :)

Overshare

The first time I saw this commercial...



I was eating oatmeal.


You're welcome.