was my 2nd anniversary of blogging here on WordPress. It’s funny, when I ‘got’ my blog, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with it… maybe I do. It’s my quiet place, it’s the place where The Ugliness hasn’t invaded, and trust me I’ll kick an ass if it tries to invade. But…
Guylty was gifted with a gorgeous quilt last week and I thought – you know, that’s some love for a person and she so deserves it. Over the past 6 or 7 months, I’ve experienced that sort of love from my friends I’ve met through Richard. I wonder if he knows or even has an inkling.
Dear Richard. You don’t know me from Adam and according to some you don’t want to know me and if you did know me you’d hate me for reasons we won’t discuss here, but either way, you’re an awesome person and I’ve met more awesome people through your fandom. I’ve met some shits… I take that back, I don’t think the shits are members of your fandom. I don’t even think they’re members of the human race, but way-hey… let’s just not go there and instead just love on those we love in your fandom and thank you so much for being you so we could do this.
coughs.
Late last week, I received a package from one of those friends I’ve met through the fandom. IT was an awesome package. Took me several days to actually breach the tape on the box.
Trust me. That thing was sealed up tight. I had to take it to school and borrow the art teacher’s special scissors she keeps locked away.
I had hoped to find HIM…
Alas, my heart’s desire was not there, however, my teacher’s heart was ecstatic…
Almost my heart desire. The voice recorded melts my chocolate!
Innit cute???? Lots of pink and purple stuff!!! I’m in girly heaven…
pens and rubber bands and sparkly things and erasers and crayons and lovely stuff…
and…
What all of this is is graphic novels or in my words…. COMIC BOOKS!!!! Specifically Comic books geared to young readers. The Avengers, Star Wars, a way cool dark version of Alice in Wonderland – Archie, plus more… all geared to younger readers. My media specialist is like drooling on himself.
This is a beloved gift. I will share it with my students, my babies.
My babies can’t read. They struggle. It’s a school-wide epidemic. We don’t know why. We blame the new standardized test, but more than 2% should have passed it. This is what happens when you work in an Impact School. We’re jumping the hoops, we’re doing the work, and yet, our babies can’t read. Things my 3rd graders had no problems with at my first school, my 5th graders stop and struggle with. I’m torn between teaching what I love, complete with singing and playing instruments, to giving reading and writing assignments. About music. It’s not the same thing, but my babies can’t read and i’m responsible to help them learn to read. I have yet to unpack my Kodaly notebook with songs and games and rhythm charts. That has been proven to help reading scores, but I’ve not found it yet. But until then…
This will help. Really. This is help. So, thank you NFC Comics for this beautiful gift. Thank you thank you thank you!!!
And just ‘cuz… my contribution to the Ogle Society…
zee's muse 
What a lovely package! (I meant the care package… not the other… honestly! But whew, that is ogle-worthy! *Snaffles pic* )
But that’s worrisome, children struggling with reading as a school-wide epidemic.
I’ve never seen anything like this. Really. We have them reading 24/7. They carry books with them. teachers carry books. I carry books. Shoot, I carry my kindle! My 4th adn 5th grade ARE doing reading assignments. We don’t get it.
And yes, the package(s) are WONDERFUL!
The school-wide illiteracy epidemic is nationwide. I had no concept of this problem until I started working in retail back in 1987. Sadly, it has gotten progressively worse since then. I am not convinced it is a specific school district, county or state either as I’ve worked with educators and librarians all over this country. I don’t have a handle on how things are in Canada or the UK, but I’ve worked with educators and librarians from those countries as well. If you don’t mind my indulgence here, I would like to relate one of the thousands of examples I’ve experienced first hand. In 2004 I met and started to work with The Looking Glass Wars author, Frank Beddor. One of the things we can do at school presentations is conduct auditions. Frank is also a film producer in Hollywood, director and actor, so (I always forget that other job he does and tend to boss him around when we are setting up presentations. But the Hubs noticed me doing that once and quietly pointed out Frank didn’t need my direction cause he does that for a living. Sigh, yeah I can be a jackass.) it is a good opportunity to build interest in his books by having students audition/read for roles from The Looking Glass Wars. We were at a high school and the excitement was intense, Frank choose two 16-year-olds to read the parts of Alyss and Dodge from the audience in the auditorium. There we a lot of kids there; this high school has over 3000 students. The two students got their script sheets to read from and were given a few minutes to familiarize themselves with the script. Probably less than 30 or 40 words in all. Frank preps them, (as directors do) and then has them start. Alyss reads first and the next line is from Dodge. Nothing happens, the young man just stands on the stage holding and looking down at his script page. The whole auditorium is silent. No one understood what was wrong, why he didn’t speak. After a few painfully long minutes, Frank and I step closer, the young man very quietly says he can not read the script, at all. Frank got it all back on track (he is quick on his feet) and grabbed another student to read, moving forward with the audition. These events are designed to be fun, uplifting and encouraging students to read, create and participate. It is a terribly sad memory, but reminds me why we do what we do.
Aww, what a great present! 😃 And is that CD what I think it is? A certain unavailable recording? Drool…….
yep yep yes it is!!!
I’m green with envy 😍
I loves it!!!
I’m so glad you could listen to that audiobook Zeesmuse. I had made it for a girlfriend here, but she couldn’t get it to work on her computer, so I tried it a couple of different ways so there were a few discs on my desk. Glad I didn’t have to chuck it in the waste bin. Not that I am a hippie or anything, but I do try to recycle. Hence, me burdening you with some of my office supplies from our library store location after closing it. (sob) Still sad about that, but some good has come from it.
Happy blog anniversary! And wow, yes, what generous gifts you have received!
Belated congrats on your blogiversary!!! And what a fantastic parcel you got there. Isn’t Mimi the best? She packs wonderful surprises. What a great idea to motivate your pupils with some edgy comic novels. And all those other goodies. Fantastic stuff.
(Oh, and thanks for the lovely mention in there 😊)
Happy blogiversary! Nice surprise gift too!! Thanks for sharing the good with us 😉
Ta, ta, tee-tee, tiri tiri. Happy blogiversary!
Happy blogiversary Zee! Thank you for sharing your goodies with us. 🙂
Happy blogiversary! This is a very creative present, lucky girl! 🙂
Happy blogivesrary and so nice you had that surprise for you and the kiddies! loads of sweet stuff in there! Really sad they can’t read :-((( i remember how much i loved reading fairy tales when their age.. sigh, but the comic books should work wonders! Hey, even i’d love to read some of those. Fingers crossed all your efforts will help them and improve things 🙂
And so glad you’re around blogging, honestly it wouldn’t be the same without you 🙂 xxx
I can’t remember NOT reading. Spawn taught himself to read. They love to read, but they struggle with it. 😦
sigh, what a shame i wonder what happens.. could be that these days at young age they are less and less in situations where they just read, it is all TV or some screen and such, so it must be a much harder and stranger exercise to just read from a page..
I don’t know. I remember when I was in school, they taught us to read. I was bored because I already knew how. When Spawn started school – same thing. He was in Kinder and according to them, he read at the 4th grade level already. Now, if they aren’t reading by the time they enter KK, they’re considered behind. Go figure. I know they get frustrated really fast and when they get frustrated, they shut down and want to quit. That’s where I think the problem is. I can’t do this, so I’m going to quit trying. We have to curb that. Have to.
And I know it’s easy for me to say – with me writing in another language many times, I have no idea how it really sounds, except how it sounds in my head.
And i suspect I have a rather strange blog. Not deep discussions here.
Well, there HAVE been deep discussions, but it’s not something I like to do alot.
and that’s just fine , just follows life i guess, sometimes deep, sometimes busy, sometimes fun and it is very personal which i love 🙂 It matters that you enjoy doing it and we reading and interacting 🙂
Oh my goodness, I am such a Dick-head! 😦 I know you got that package because you told me, but I never saw this post until today. You should have another package stuffed full of all-age appropriate, kids comics arriving tomorrow or Saturday, I think. I tried to find a comic book holder and finally did, but hope it survives the trip to you. I was also able to squeeze in a few pins and bookmarks. If you peek at the Archie comic, don’t know if I told you, it has a short story with your evil friend, the comic store manager inside, a first and probably last, for Archie Comics. There is so much more I can give you to help your babies learn how to read. I have some PDFs I can give you to use as story starters for all students. Maybe I could figure out how to post those in WordPress for people to download? After introducing students to comics, (the younger the student the easier they grasp this too) so they at the very least visually see the panels, you can give them one of the story starter worksheets we provide for free to all educators, only ask that no one sells them. (Sorry, I have to say that, there is always someone who wants to ruin it for everyone.) What has worked for thousands of educators is getting a student past the hurdle of ‘reading’ by introducing them to the idea of creating their own story, and showing them how easy it is to do. The reading hurdle can be completely eliminated this way. Students can move on to (will not work for everyone of course) the struggle of story concepts and character development. Then it is up to the educator, situations differ obviously, to encourage correct spelling, grammar, research for their story, etc. (Yeah, I know, if anyone reads my posts, they will notice I could use some extra study time in the spelling/grammar department myself.) The bottom line, they will be reading without having realized you tricked them into it. Why? Because the motivation to create becomes the primary focus. And now you know my secret evil plan to get everyone reading. Please take it as your own and spread the evil. Bwahahahahaha