Riddles

What's hot pink, fits in the palm of my hand, and is my new favorite toy?

What object kept me so occupied that I never left the house on Saturday?

What has completely changed my public transportation experience?

The answer to all three, of course, if my new iPod nano! I love, love, love this little gadget. I know I'm a latecomer to the whole iPod revolution, but I still have to exclaim to everyone I meet about how incredible this thing is! The only disappointment so far has been that when I turn out all the lights and wave it around, there isn't pink neon light streaking behind the iPod like in all the advertisements I see all over the city. But I have a feeling that those brainy iGeeks are working on that right now...

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

I just finished the best book I have read in 2006. It has made me view goldfish, guts, trivial pursuit, high school, democracy, and many famous quotations in a whole new light. Five hundred and fourteen pages and it seemed every word, sentence, metaphor, and character was alive. It was not only a book that makes you want to read, but want that makes you want to write.

I know, I'm raving too much, which is why I'm telling you not to run out and buy this book now. I want you to open up the book with no expectations, the same way I did. So, write the title and author on a sheet of paper and stick that paper in the bottom of your purse, in your glove compartment, or in the pocket of shorts you won't be wearing again until June of next year (unless you're one of those people who doesn't check your pockets before throwing clothes in the washer.)

Be Mischievous.

I'm on my lunchbreak, taking a little respite from my day of IEP-writing every spare second. After scarfing down my sandwich and strawberry yogurt, I treat myself to a few of the Dove chocolates my mom sent with my birthday present. Each chocolate has a special message on the inside of the wrapper. I barely glanced at the wise words of "Make a list of your dreams," "Discover yourself," and "Dare to love completely." However, like a teenager who can apply her YM horoscope to her personal life every single month, I felt certain that this package and this particular chocolate was sent to me with some divine purpose: "Be mischievous. It feels good."

Yesterday, I was riding the train in my typical fashion, so engrossed in my book I was unaware of anything around me, including the coworker who had gotten on the train three stops earlier. He scared me half to death by grabbing my book. It is now an official joke around the school, as I have been greeted several times with "How's the G train book club going?"

A friend was talking to me about how to get him back. She, a pro at being miscievous, has several ideas for what to do. Maybe Dove can inspire me add a little mischief to my life...as soon as I finish these IEPs.

Twenty Five Years and One Day

I spent some time yesterday afternoon looking up essays and stories about turning 25. What I found was mostly nonsense, ridiculous panic, or (in one case) the to-do list of a misguided 23-year-old who wanted to get married, have a baby, buy a house, and get her masters degree by the time she turned 25. After that little bit of research, I decided that I was spending my November 6th turning 25 in a much better fashion than anyone I came across in my googling.

I've spent the past few days having mini-celebrations with a variety of friends that have added up to one fantastic birthdays. I also participated in the yearly tradition my roommate has of asking, "What did you learn this year?" We were walking down the street, trading turns listing what I had learned, and by the end of the walk I was feeling nearly-wise. The number one lesson I've learned? Decisions motivated by guilt are not healthy (sounds obvious, but when applied to a decision such as whether or not to leave a negative work environment filled with children that you love, well, it can get pretty tricky.)

There have been so many lessons that it's unbelievable they've been crammed into only one year. It turns out that when you're not overwhelmed by learning lessons about a new job and a new city, you get the chance to learn a few lessons about yourself. Hopefully, 25 will be just as good as 24.

When the Kids Make You Laugh

After a crazed week in which report card grades were due and 7 IEPs had to be completed, I have found that laughter has become incredibly important for maintaining my sanity. So, some highlights:

1) A very serious youngster chose a fun-sized 3 Musketeers as a reward. He studied it for several moments, then turned to his friend. "Why don't they have 3 Stooges?"

2) In a campaign speech for President of the Student Government, one boy stated, "I promise to do something about that smell in the boys' bathroom, because it's just -- I mean -- you know -- it's just disgusting. I'll get air fresheners, maybe a ceiling fan, but I promise you, I'll do something! (Followed by wild cheers.)

3) Two girls who have been best friends since first grade are together so constantly that I call them the twins. Today, they came into class and said to me, "Yesterday afternoon we got in this huge fight. We were yelling at each other and everything. We thought we would never be friends again, but this morning we're talking again and we're not mad at all. We wanted to know if you know why?"

4) I am accidentally paged over the intercom as Mister instead of Miss. For the rest of the day, students continue to come up to me and tell me they didn't know my husband worked there. One student went so far as to apologize: "I'm sorry I wasn't calling you Mrs."

5) In adaptive physical education with students who have developmental disabilities, one student points and laughs when he sees I forgot my socks at home that morning. I asked, "Are you laughing at me because I left my socks." He starts laughing harder then goes to one of the male coaches, "Do you have some socks she can borrow?"

6) During a lesson on using the five senses to improve your writing, the entire class is completely swept up in our creation. The sentence I provided for the group activity was, "Susan immediately regretted accepting the dare to compete in the pie-eating contest." Each of my students contributed details about the sights, sounds, tastes, etc. By the end, I felt like I lived through the contest as my quietest student roared like the crowd, a boisterous student belched like the main character after eating the fifth pie (which was burnt,) and a student who has never participated in literacy discussion enacted the final barf scene. A great end to a wonderful story, and great end to a rough week.

Slightly Bruised

Typical Friday afternoons this year:
3:00 Play basketball with colleagues in the school gymnasium
5:00 Change out of basketball clothes, go to happy hour with said colleagues to meet other colleagues
6:00 Leave bar to go to soccer practice
6:45 Get back to Astoria, change into soccer clothes in my car, hop out and start running laps with my teammates
9:00 Finish soccer practice, begin that weekly debate: go out with soccer friends or go to bed

I love my Friday afternoons, but usually they are so busy that by 9:00 I know there's no way I'm going out. Last night I stayed awake long enough to shower just because I needed to warm up after two hours of playing soccer in the rain. I woke up this morning with a variety of bruises like I have never seen before: cleat marks on the instep of my left foot, a bruise in the shape of the seams of a soccer ball running along my ribcage, and a rainbow of colors on both knees.

Don't get confused, though. There is that warped, athlete-mentality that loves these things. By the time I get to soccer, I'm so ecstatic after playing ball and socializing all afternoon, that my teammates often ask if I'm drunk. (Which I'm not, by the way, keeping it to a one-beer minimum between basketball and soccer...) I think that it's endorphin-overload, and I might just be addicted to it. I already can't wait till next Friday, bruised or not.

Word Solutions?

In my last post, I was concerned about my choices for word problems in math. Today, I got a unique word solution. One of my classes of students with learning disabilities has extreme difficulty with math vocabulary, so we are constantly drilling as we progress through math problems.

One of today's examples was a fraction. I pointed to the numerator and said, "What is this called?" The class called out "Fraction" in unison. I said, "Yes, the whole figure is called a fraction, but what is the top number called?" After a ridiculous amount of discussion my students finally had the terms "numerator" and "denominator" down. I ended with, "And what is the whole thing called again?"

Blank stares. During the course of three minutes, they had forgotten the word fraction. All of them. They began calling out guesses ("division?" "whole number?" "nectar?")

I tried to prompt them, "Come on guys, you know this. Don't make it more difficult than it is. What is the term for a numerator and denominator put together."

One student raises his hand in such an assured way I think I can finally breathe again and believe I might be a successful teacher. Then in a serious voice, he asks "Is it called a numeranominator?"

Word Problems

I'm looking for examples of word problems for one of my math classes to help them learn how to use the process of elimination. I'm always in search of high-interest materials, so I was excited to find word problems about Harry Potter. As I started reading though, I realized they were just the cleverly disguised "which train gets there first?" problems that everyone hates. The first one reads:

Harry Potter has asked his friend Hermione for a potion to turn them and their friend Ron into birds. (The flying car is in for repairs, so they need to make the trip to Diagon Alley as birds.)
Diagon Alley is 9 miles away and a dose of Hermione's potion lasts 50 minutes. They only have enough potion for one dose each. If they can go 24 miles an hour as birds, and they start at 4:30 p.m., can they get to Diagon Alley and back to Hogwarts again before the potion runs out at 5:20 p.m.? If so, how much time will they be able to spend in the Alley?

This seems like a cruel trick for my low-level students. Let them get excited when they see the name of a beloved character, then crush them with so many variables and two questions at one time. For now, I'll leave Harry Potter in the Literacy word.

Movies and Bocce

Yesterday I found myself with quite a bit of free time between doing research for school and meeting a friend, so I did something I haven't done in ages: I took myself to a movie.

I went to see The Last Kiss. I bought my ticket, decided against the oh-so American coke and popcorn (having just recovered from some crazy virus) and took my seat. I knew as soon as the previews came on that I had made the right choice. I love books and movies, and even movie previews for the exact same reason, I get to be transported to another world for minutes, hours, or even days if the book is a long one.

So I was actually a little disappointed by the movie when instead of transporting me to another world, it kept me right in my current one. No, I'm not pregnant or experiencing some sort of life crisis associated with an impending birthday...but the characters were not unlike many of the people I know. They made painfully unheroic decisions, they often did just what I might have done in the same situation, and there were no surprises.

When telling my friend about it later, I struggled to explain. The story was fine, I liked that it didn't tie up all loose ends, the acting was good...so why is it that I was somewhat disappointed? Am I so conditioned to happy endings, to feeling uplifted as the credits roll, to walking out of the theater with a renewed faith in humanity? Is that what movies are for?

It wasn't the worst $10.50 I've spent, and I didn't regret it, but things definitely got better when I met three friends at one of our favorite bars in Brooklyn. Complete with an outdoor garden,a basement music venue, book-lined walls, quirky food, and bocce ball, really who could ask for anything more?

After waiting an hour, we finally have our turn to bocce. (I have no idea if this is a verb.) We're playing, and I have just finished my turn when I hear, "Boo, you suck!" I look up to see none other than an old roommate who I haven't seen in two years. I almost didn't hug him hello after he publicly heckled me, but I quickly forgave and we spent some time catching up. Meanwhile, my friends finished the bocce ball game without me, and just to clear my name after the heckling, I should mention that my team was up 10-4 when I left and lost 11-15 once I was gone...

Okay, so there's my ramble. From mediocre movie experiences to a wonderful feeling of being right at home surrounded by food, competition, and friends. I've been pretty out of it recently, but hopefully I'll return to my typical blogging craziness, in much shorter doses...

Sad, Sad Blog and Strange Boat-Building

I could make many excuses for the blog-neglect of recent days, but I will leave it with the fact that sleep took precedence.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I saw the strangest thing ever today on the subway. I'm sure I've said this before, but whatever I labelled as such has been beaten out by an older couple sitting quietly on the J train into Manhattan this afternoon. The woman had a little canvas bag filled with tools. The man had a wooden model boat that was about a foot and a half long (this was definitely not a project meant for rush hour.) Without ever communicating, they handed tools back and forth, a nearly silent team as the man carved the boat and the woman chose the next tool. I don't believe they even made eye contact.

The best part was when the woman said something inaudible and the man responded with, "I told her she couldn't drive. Told her she's worse than a drunk with that one eye and that one leg."

You can't make this stuff up.

Behavior Modification?

On the G train home I somehow found myself sitting in the middle of a group of 6 high school kids. They were acting pretty typically: sarcastic and cool like any teenagers. They started talking about New Year's resolutions. The conversation went a little like this:
Kid A: I'm going to stop cursing.
Kid B: You said the same thing last year.
Kid C: I know how to make you stop. Every time you curse, I'll hit you like this. (Punches Kid A in the shoulder.) And I'll keep hitting you until you say 'Bad habit, bad habit, bad habit.' You have to say it three times.
Kid B: Yo, son, you come up with some crazy shit.
Kid C starts punching him repeatedly.
Kid B: Why you punchin' me? OHH! Bad habit, bad habit, bad habit!
Kid C: Stops punching him. See, it's gonna work.

Waking Up

I slept on the couch last night and this morning I woke up to a breeze drifting in throught the living room window and the quiet that sometimes suprises my Queens neighborhood. That combination of the breeze and the quiet somehow took me back in time to the mornings from my childhood that I would wake up in the daybed on the screened-in porch of my great-grandparents' house. Even though I knew I wasn't actually back there, I did not allow myself to open my eyes to see the sight of my own apartment over a decade later. Instead, I kept them shut tight and let myself be transported. In no time at all, I could hear the tv replaying the scores of the previous day's baseball games for my great-granddaddy. I could smell the coffee, eggs, bacon, and biscuits in the kitchen and hear the gentle murmur of my grandmother and great-grandmother talking. I could see the sunlight pouring into the three screened-walls of the porch, stretching across the acres of flat farmland.

Don't be confused, I'm not feeling sentimental this morning. I'm feeling fortunate. I'm up now, with my present-day sprawling all around me: books and folders for class, yesterday's newspaper still mostly unread, my bag packed for today's soccer game, my friend who stayed over last night sound asleep in my room, and the city blocks spreading into the distance that I can't see through the buildings cluttering the view. And for a few moments this morning, I got to live in both worlds. I'll probably never go back to my great-granddaddy's farm since he died several years ago and my great-grandmother moved to Florida. But at least today I got to visit.

Thinking and Waiting

I'm wasting time on the internet waiting for my clothes to be done at the laundromat in ten or so minutes. And in that time I stumbled across a new blog with a post about gentrification in Harlem. A friend and I often talk about gentrification, how strange and upsetting it can be to be a part of the white community moving into New York City's "changing" neighborhoods. It's a complicated issue, and I think that this blogger makes an interesting argument. Just wanted to pass it along.

Where There's Smoke?

Today I was heading uptown on the 6, when the train stopped due to "an incident" on the track around 59th street. After several minutes, collective complaints were growing louder and the train was not moving. I read nearly two chapters of my book before the conductor announced to stand clear of the closing doors and the train started to move again.

Just moments later, the groaning started once more when the air conditioning on the packed train shut off and the conductor announced, "For your comfort we have turned off the air conditioner due to the smoke in the tunnels. We do not want you to breathe in the smoke, so we will turn the air conditioning on again once we have cleared this section of the tunnel."

Is it normal to just go back to your book after an announcement like this?

Wake Up, Teach, Drink, Play Soccer, Drink

That's my day in a nutshell. Things have been so busy the past couple weeks that I feel as if my mind and body are out of sync. My eyes will be ready to shut, but I can't get my mind to quiet down. Or I'll barely be able to string a thought together, but my body is running all over the place trying to get things done. At the moment, it's the mind that's still awake. I've drank some Gatorade and had a quick sandwich to fend off any chance of dehydration tomorrow, a day filled with almost no plans. It's good after several days packed with things that I just don't want to miss, no matter the expense. After not missing a computer training session early this morning, not missing teaching, not missing happy hour with friends from work, not missing soccer practice, and not missing going out with friends from my soccer team, I think it will be a nice change of pace to miss the sunrise, miss the sound of my alarm clock, and miss eating breakfast on the run. It's possible that if the year continues like this, Saturday will replace Sunday as my favorite day.

How-To Snafu

I am addicted to my g-mail homepage and its many features, one of which is a how-to section. Every day there are two or three options that, with just one click, can teach me how to build a birdhouse, how to remedy a hangover, or how to defeat a myspace addiction.

After a long, but good day, I came home and wanted to blog a little bit. It's nice to choose some incident, not matter how meaningful or insignificant and just write. I poured myself a glass of water, logged onto my computer, clicked my Mozilla Firefox icon, and found myself staring at my beloved homepage. The how-to for today: How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger. I thought, Google knows I blog, often with mediocrity, and is trying to get me to stop. Then I thought, I'm not ready for this yet.

Sure, I'm a teacher and all, but I decided this was not the moment to embrace learning. I checked my bank balance, looked at my myspace page (must read that how-to again...), then found my way to a friend's blog. Just today, she happened to write about how important blogging was to her and why. She invoked the words of a woman I respect, and made me feel proud for my blogging once more. I am writing. Not in a journal, not for a class, just for myself (and a few family members, friends, and random people who stumble across the page...)It doesn't matter the forum, it matters that I am writing.

Feeling better, I went back, read the how-to, and decided it was much too late for me. After all, we are coming up on the 200th entry here. I will continue to blog, but if I have some free time, I might just try to build that birdhouse.

The Perfect Question

Today I had one of those small victories in the classroom that is oh-so gratifying. In my literacy class, I introduced a paragraph-writing strategy a senior teacher showed me last week. My students, who are in my class specifically because they struggle with reading and writing, quickly understood and flourished with the new strategy. It was one of the best class sessions I have ever had. The crowning moment: a student who usually refuses to write asked me, "Can we please write more than three supporting details?"

Grading Papers

What possessed me to assign so many sketches to my graphic design class? And then what possessed me to decide to write notes on each student's design ideas? Don't I know I am almost buried in paperwork already? Don't I know I have an IEP due Wednesday? Don't I know that class started for me and I have two assignments due tomorrow? And knowing all this, why did my brain allow my mouth to tell my graphic design class I would be returning their graded work tomorrow morning?

Sad Facts

Sad Fact #1: My beautiful Kona bicycle was stolen the first week I moved to New York City.

Sad Fact #2: Over two years later, I have still not replaced it.

Sad Fact #3: My bike rack for my car has been sitting unused on the balcony for over a year now.

Sad Fact #4: Realizing that I will be getting rid of my car before I get a new bike, I decided it was time to sell the bike rack on craigslist. I went out to the balcony to get it so I could take pictures for the ad. When I lifted it up, I felt some resistance. I quickly found that the neigbhor's ivy plant had grown around and through the bike rack.

Sad Fact #5: Half an hour later, the bike rack is ivy-free, and I have attached it to my car, enduring a surprisingly sentimental onslaught of memories of the old Kona bicycle attached to my car on various trips.

Sad Fact #6: The ad is on craigslist.

No More Secrets?

Just this morning I came across a statement in the New York Times that there are no more secrets in New York City. Just two hours later I discovered one.

When I arrived at soccer pratice at the Con Edison field in Astoria, our new home field, I was certain I was mistaken when I heard a cow. I thought, it must just be a door creaking or something. Then I heard it again, and this time much more clearly. I peaked through the slats along with my teammates and we counted cows together.

The field is located on a street in Astoria with very little traffic and NO pedestrian traffic, which means no one realizes that right there, across the street from homes, is a slaughterhouse. Now I understand the mysterious smell that sometimes poisons the air around my neighborhood. And I'm wondering what else is contained in that northern blank space on all the maps of Astoria...