While searching for the origins of the the spelling of "colonel" for my class, who found it a most unlikely spelling ( Read more... )

The people on LJ are so creative, I thought I'd put out a plea for help. By Thursday, I need to come up with ideas for elements of a fantasy story. Here is what I need ( Read more... )

You Are 30 Years Old

From Xina. She's always wanted to catch up to big sister. She's apparently bypassed mom as well!

30

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe ( Read more... )

I scored a flu shot today! Went in to the Dept. of Public Health for a TB test and found a long line of people waiting for flu shots - so I asked for both when I finally got up to the window. Bingo! Done. My state has lowered its age requirement to the point where I qualify for the flu shot and given that I work in a miniature germ factory, flu ( Read more... )

Midnitewolf doesn't know this yet, I think, but one of the kids he went to high school with was killed in Fallouja last Thursday. Remember JP, dw? Apparently he was in the Marines. It was on the front page of the local paper today, and it's been on my mind all morning. He was only 24. He'd played football and been on the track team with dw. Such an ( Read more... )

This morning at work I had a card in my box. These usually means I'm supposed to do yet another thing I didn't know I was supposed to do, but this was a card from the family of one of last year's students, a wonderful kid, very creative thinker. He was always excited to be at school and was really every teacher's dream student. Because of his ( Read more... )

My uncle, my mom's brother, passed away today. He'd had Alzheimer's for a long time and it wasn't entirely unexpected, but he was my favorite uncle and I'll miss him. He was a lovely gentle person who could fix anything with baling wire and duct tape and had a strong belief in taking care of all repairs on everything himself. A great character, a ( Read more... )

I recently found this recipe in old files as I was trying to make sense of OSX's menus (the computer variety). It is a fantastic soup, perhaps more suited to winter than summer, but excellent all the same. Mind you, normally I don't cook. I did discover that increasing the recipe leads to more mess during step 3. It's still worth it ( Read more... )

Somehow, when I signed up for teacher school, I never actually thought that I'd be recommending that kids be retained. But I have to - 4 of them. And more than half my class has been "invited" to attend summer school. It may not actually happen, but these kids either have undiagnosed learning disabilities (which I strongly suspect in 2 cases, but ( Read more... )

I had my second "Stull" evaluation today - all positive, all fantastic comments. I'm meeting all the standards I'm supposed to meet, even if I can't totally understand what the standards say (it's written in legal teacherese) I'm not sure where principal's information came from, since the vice principal only saw the one lesson, but I guess they see ( Read more... )