Thursday, July 23, 2009

Revelations at 4:40 in the Morning




































My sister, April, said that this early in the morning wasn't morning, but night. Therefore, last night I had a weird dream. I dreamt that they moved me from my fifth grade teaching position to a high school class. The high school students were obnoxious and reminded me of the kids on that Antonio Banderas dance move. The ones who just needed to be reached by something outside of the normal realms of education. Apparently, they thought that me teaching cooking would be a good idea.

So, where better to do this than a room covered in straw and candles. I had to put out a couple of student started fires at the beginning...."Freudian for smashing dreams maybe?" But then my next hour began and three middle aged women came in with recipes something they had made the night before. Homework maybe? We tasted each one of them, the worst being split pea soup that had turned into paste, and I woke up before talking about it all.

I couldn't get back to sleep! Too many ideas for the classroom and this blog are floating around my head. Believe me, I want to turn off my mind, but for some reason it is running too fast, so I thought I would get on and share what I "learned" from the dreams.

School wise, I think I'm going to form a book club with my students. We'll all read the same book, as homework, and the next day we can come back and as questions about the book. I don't want to overload them, so the assignment would only be a couple pages at a time, maybe a chapter if I can find the right book. We might make it a classroom assignment so that they can have help as well...who knows.

When presenting a "dish" of information or a project, other students are going to have two choices on how to respond. They can provide two compliments and a suggestion, or ask a question about how or why something was done a certain way. With both of these the goal is to help students increase the "Miles on Their Tongue", a phrase started around my school last year.

Finally, and most importantly, I don't think people are actually going to do, read, or listen to anything that is not important or that doesn't have vital information in it. I don't like pea soup, so the lady who brought pea soup didn't have my attention.

Therefore, I think I am going to change the idea of this blog. No body is going to care about my day to day life, and lets face it, why should they. I live in Sleepy Holbrook, I'm a school teacher off for the summer, and I don't blog enough as is. So, if I'm honest with myself, I'm just putting down things that I think are interesting, and I believe that nobody else does. (It's 4:54 in the morning, please don't take offense to any of this). So, I think I'm going to do a couple of different things. Inspired by "The Julie/Julia Project" coming to theatres, I'm going to start blogging about the recipes I try at home. Amy is going back to school, so I should have plenty of practice. Also, I'm going to try a book study, starting with the Harry Potter books.....maybe. After all, I was the one who supported Snape even after he killed Dumbledore.

My goal is to provide something that you would like to read, not something that you can get through a phone call. With any luck, I will have a blog that you will want to visit.

So, at 4:57 in the morning, and barely lucid, I will leave it at that. I'm going to post later about something I made for lunch, picture to be included.

Sorry for any offense given! It is way too early to be honest with myself...own worst critic and all!!!

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