I Try To Learn From The Best

I'm always looking for teachers examples that I can follow, tricks of the trade that they use that I can experiment with in my class. Today I was watching Willy Wonka and I thought the teacher was AWESOME! Here are two quotes that shows just what a great teacher he is:

"I've just decided to switch our Friday schedule to Monday, which means that the test we take each Friday on what we learned during the week will now take place on Monday before we've learned it. But since today is Tuesday, it doesn't matter in the slightest. Pencils ready!"

"Of course you don't know. You don't know because only I know. If you knew and I didn't know, then you'd be teaching me instead of me teaching you - and for a student to be teaching his teacher is presumptuous and rude. Do I make myself clear?"

PS I forgot this movie was a musical. . .

Sometimes A Little Rebellion Can Be Fun

It was summer of 2006. I had accepted a job teaching Interior Design, Child Development and Clothing at Bingham High School starting that fall. It was strongly encouraged that I attend Utah's Family and Consumer Science Summer Conference in Riverton Utah. I requested the time off from my retail position and made the 20 minute drive in my Toyota Pick-up (Which I need to take a moment to say that I miss it SO MUCH. There was just something about that truck that was so comfortable and made you feel . . . connected with the road, I guess).

Summer Conference is two days long and it was a difficult couple of days. It catapult me right into my adult life. No more being a kid. I was reminded of a quote from Raising Helen, where the niece is upset with her aunt, her new guardian. She screams, "Don't you remember what it was like to be young?!?!?" And Helen, the aunt, replies, "Of course I do! It was last Wednesday!!" All around me were reminders of adultness. Women in their 30s and 40s and 50s and so on. . . Women talking about students, about babies, about grandkids, about divorces. And all I could think was, I DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE THESE WOMEN. Of course, once you get to know someone you'll end up loving them, and I know that now. I know a lot of these women and I do love them. Some of them are great role models, and some of them are dear friends, but at the time this is what I saw:
Crocheting
Knitting
Frumpy clothing
Quilting
Some of the most boring shoes you have ever seen in your LIFE
Basically I just got scared of growing up to be. . . boring.

So on day two of the conference I wore:
A rockin' white tank top with skulls
A little gray cardigan
Black yoga pants
Pink shoes with skulls (I had a theme going. . .)

I AM NOT GOING TO GROW UP TO BE BORING!!!!!

Now that I know that my story is my own and that I will end up according to how I live my life, I've toned down a bit. I still dress up to the nines when I attend this conference but I'm not quite so intense. Growing up can be hard, especially when it happens so quickly.

Forever

*Written on Sunday evening

After Adam finished his triathlon yesterday he laid down to rest while I went out to the swimming pool to enjoy the warmth I've missed all winter. While I was there I started chatting with some men in town for mountain biking. They were funny and teased me for stealing their pool chair, even though there were plenty to go around. They asked me questions like where I was from, what my husband did for work, how I liked teaching. . . basic stuff. They also asked how big of a family I had. It came up naturally in conversation, but I can't remember exactly how. I said, "I'm the oldest of 6 kids." So they went on to say how unfair it is when oldest children are expected to be a good example and the pressure can be too intense and how much oldest children are expected to help out with younger siblings. I admitted that it was true, I did help a lot with Kenny and Hannah, but that I didn't mind. It was a lot better than other things I could be doing as a teenager. But it got me thinking, people always assume that helping out with younger siblings is such a drag, but really if you love them it isn't so bad.

Then this morning as I got ready to head back home, packing up the hotel room and doing my hair, I got a song stuck in my head. I really have no idea where it came from, I hadn't thought of this song for a long time. It was a song from Pooh's Grand Adventure, I think its called Forever. Pooh is singing to Christopher Robin about how they are going to be friends forever. When I was a high school student, my younger siblings were on a different school schedule than me and so Andrew and Rob and Kellie would all be in school, but baby Kenny and I would not. We spent a lot of time watching Pooh's Grand Adventure and I remember writing down all the words of the song Forever. Then I would sing it to Kenny, pausing at smaller words and he would fill them in. It went a little like this:
Kim: Forever and ever is a very long time. . .
Kenny: . . . Pooh.
Forever isn't long at all when I'm with. . .
. . . you.
I wanna call your name
Forever
You will always answer
My name (the actual word was forever, but Kenny always got it wrong, which was actually cuter than getting it right)
And we will just be we, forever you and me, forever and. . .
Ever.

Maybe I didn't have an ordinary teenager experience. I think I had an extraordinary teenage experience. And I wouldn't change it for anything!

Well, today I'm glad I don't teach Spanish.

I'm procrastinating my lesson for church tomorrow. I started it, but got distracted by this, that and the other. This was checking my facebook. That was checking blogger. And the other was finding this button on my Mozilla web browser. The button said "Translate" and it was blue. And I had never seen it before. I clicked it and it said, This page has been automatically translated into English. Well it was my friend Tiffanie's blog (Love you Tiff!!) and so, duh, she WROTE it in English. Still, I was curious. So for some reason I selected French off the drop down list of languages. I don't speak French, so I couldn't tell if it was correct or not. So then I changed the language to Spanish. And wow!! It totally translates her whole blog (later I tried it on my own blog too!) into dang good Spanish. I mean, I haven't studied it for a LONG time, so maybe I'm incorrect about the accuracy, but it seemed pretty close to me! So write your paper for school into your blog. Translate it into Spanish. Or French. Or Hebrew for that matter. Its like Google's version of the easy button.