Are you ready for it??? I’m not.
First, as many of you know, the Eastern portion of the United States is socked in tight with cold cold snow snow ice ice baby and it’s a good weekend to snuggle in with books and/or wine.
Except we just have COLD and slightly wet weather… it’s icky outside.
This weekend, we are cleaning house. Really. I don’t care. Boxes are going out to the garage and I’m cleaning! And hanging pictures. And vacuuming. My son has been doing the cooking thing, God love him….
That was dinner last night. Those green things are deseeded and deribbed jalapeno peppers. It’s Cajun Pot Roast Magnifique – Justin Wilson’s recipe – and it was Spawn’s first attempt at it.
He did good.
Either way, I’m heading out for a Music Teacher workshop – yes on a Saturday. I could have gone during the week and gotten a substitute, but my kids see enough subs with their regular teachers! Either way…
I’m doing the cleaning and I’m going to paint the bookcase…
And we have laundry to do this weekend. Don’t ask. On top of our regular laundry, I have a pile of at least 397 loads of things that have been in storage forever and a day.
I’m hoping to take time tonight and sit in my corner and read or knit. Or possibly tomorrow night.
Really, I want to get everything CLEAN and pictures hung so I can take pictures. I’m so proud of my little place. Really and I’m not making the progress I’d like to be making.
And it’s cold. Windchill 27. Yes, warmer than many of my friends and relatives, but it’s still cold. I mean, you can look at the window and you can see how cold it is.
Oh. The next chapter of Gary is up at all the usual places. Will be sent to RASF tonight.
OH! Conversation at my desk yesterday.
2nd grader looks at my computer wallpaper.
“That’s your future husband?”
Yes.
He has pretty eyes!
Yes, he does.
He’s nice-looking!
I think so.
Does he like music?
Yes.
Does he like to read?
Yes.
Then he’s perfect for you!
Ogle this!
zee's muse 
Love the perceptive 2nd grader!!
I do too!
They’re so funny. And they see things we’ve forgotten how to look for.
Don’t tell me you haven’t unpacked the cutlery yet…
And congrats on the future husband 😀 – I’d show him off, too 😉
Off to read Gary now.
Actually, NO! I”ve not unpacked the silverware or the cooking utensils! We’re eating off my good dishes (55.00 a place setting) and plastic utensils! At least I’ve got a few of my pots and pans unpacked. Right now, the living room looks REALLY good! My piano is in worse shape than originally anticipated and it didn’t get moved as far as I wanted. The curtains and sheers are up in the living room, I’m thinking of getting an area rug and MOST pictures are hung. IT gook MUCH longer than I expected. Several pictures are going to have to be reframed.. I should take pictures…In fact I will when I find what I did with my 2 blue piano ladies and get them in place.
I thought the whole convo was cute. They’re so serious about my little joke.
Hehe, I noticed the plastic cutlery 🙂
Sounds as if you are really making progress now. Getting curtains up and hanging pictures makes the place really a home, doesn’t it?
What are the blue piano ladies? Pictures, too?
And yes, the conversation is really cute.
Well, the living room looks better. SPawn and I spent 2 hours in there today, trying to move the piano (we got it almost a foot down the wall and it’s not going any further. One of the rollers in front is gone and the other leg’s screw is stripped, so moving it wasn’t pretty. But yeah, curtains and shears are up and most pictures are up.
The blue piano ladies – I have 2 pictures of 2 different women, painted about 100 years apart, playing the same, or similar piano. Both are dressed in blue. They’re out in the garage somewhere. I need to find them and bring them in so I can hang them.
And the picture I was going to put on the wall next to my coat closet needs to have the hanging wire fixed. Little things.
Your child’s observations are awesome! 🌞
My kids are smart. I just don’t think they test well… or the test freaks them out. We need to figure out how to get them past that.
When I taught at the middle school level, I watched an honor roll, straight A student vomit her guts over the math portion of the test because she froze. There has to be a better way to show that these kids know their stuff.
When I was a kid, I froze up over math and that was in 3rd grade. Luckily, there were a few teachers that took time with me and wanted to help. It took only one afternoon where I skipped recess and stayed in the classroom with one of the nuns to slowly walk me through multiplications and how it all worked. After that, I never had problems with math, until I hit geometry. Ugh. I was at Marycliff in Spokane by then, but again, one of the nuns took time with me after class to help me through it. I don’t know for sure if it was the one on one time the teacher took, or the repetitive part of going over the same problems until it finally clicked? I don’t know that that sort of thing is possible anymore, but it sure helped. Our society has not learned to appreciate the value of education, nor the value of good people needed to make it happen for students. Regarding, testing, not everyone can perform well under the same parameters, sadly, I don’t have any solutions to offer here. 😦
I hated math – still do – and struggled always. It reached a head in the 11th grade when I was taking geometry. I was doing okay, but then I missed 6 weeks due to a seriously bad upper respitory infection and NONE of my teachers offered to help me catch up. I asked 3 of them and they were all, well, you just need to go back in the book. Here are your missing assignments. … I wasn’t a particularly social high school and I got dropped between the cracks. My only saving grace was I had already met my math credits quota and failing the class didn’t hurt my chances at graduating. Go figure that.
I think that is more how it is in schools now, no time for one on one with students. We were very poor, but being a Catholic family in Seattle at the time where there just were not many, we enjoyed (or at least I did, my brother was a different story) smaller class sizes and nuns with a few lay teachers. Thinking back on it, it was fortunate for us. Why? We had more opportunities our parents were not economically in a position to provide. Which is probably why I learned to ski when I was 12.
Time as a child evaporates so fast, so it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask for a teacher to spent one recess or two with a student that has fallen behind. Although if you have 30+ in a classroom like they do here, I’m sure it is much more difficult to have the mental energy to do it.
I still have a soft spot for the nuns and it is hard for me to not approach one when I see them, although they are a rare species now a days.
In order to ‘cut costs’ they are allowing more and more in a classroom with simply 1 teacher. It’s impossible. You don’t teach a class that size – you maintain them. I know a lot of teachers who did early retirement when it was made available and schools have either replaced them with first year teachers or simply, not replaced them at all. When I started subbing 5 years ago… 6 years ago, the average classroom size at the high school was 18. Now they’ve built another high school but the average class size is 32. Very very very difficult.
Unfortunately, I do not see that changing, at least until we value education and obviously educators more. With people never looking at the larger picture, the effects of their actions, votes, all of it, we can’t, as a whole, change. Everyone wants fame, fortune, etc Now, without working for it, earning it of understanding how any of it works. The way I see it, nothing will change until we can change how education works in this country. Right now, it seems like a factory production line and few are coming out the other end with the skills needed to be a productive contributing member of society.
The reason I do literacy work is because I realized no one can progress in life with out learning how to read. You can’t play music (with rare exception) you can’t be a mechanic, artist, everything really, unless you can read. If a kid learns how to read for fun, an obstacle has been removed because when the absolutely have to read, they will know how. D’Oh, sorry, will get off my soap box now.
On the bright side, I pulled another 25 comics for your classroom tonight. Will try to put them in an envelope and get them moving in the next day or two😈
Looking forward to the comics!!!! My kids see them on my desk and they’re all…. whazzat????
So yay for more!
Right now, the powers that be – those being the ones controlling the purse strings who have NEVER been in a classroom – are all about The Test. Nothing else matters. Just the end results of The Test. There has to be a better way of evaluating our kids and teachers than The Test. Too much pressure.