What Have I Been Doing?

Wellllllll . . . Lately I have been spending way too much time engaged in activities that a friend's daughter says are just mindless activities that give you a false sense of accomplishment - computer games. Most notably, Farm Town and Country Life on FB. Argggh! I quit Farm Town back in the summer because I was spending several hours a day on the computer just playing that stinking game, but I unblocked the application a couple of months ago, and unluckily for me, my farm was intact. Then, being the follower that I am, the same friend whose daughter calls computer gaming mindless activities with false senses of accomplishment (which they are), sent me a request to help her out in Country Life - so I did!!! Now I am sitting here once again with this stupid game occupying me in the evenings.



Sitting here putting this down in black and white makes me feel ashamed of myself. I can really see that it does no good at all, and it does, indeed, induce a false sense of accomplishment since there is no real-life gain in playing these games. Yes, you build up a bank of coins and goods, but what can you do with it? In a way you are competing against others, but there is nothing measurable achieved. As a teacher, I have viewed video and computer gaming as the enemy because many children neglect reading and homework and physical activities in favor of their virtual counterparts. Now I find myself getting sucked into the very thing I have advocated against. Hmmmmn. Time for a change in habits for me, I think.



I can think of about three dozen things that I could do right now to take the place of my little addiction. Coming to the foremost, with the arrival of nice weather, is cleaning out the flower beds around here. That includes picking up the pukey remains of last fall's pumpkins sitting in melted puddles of what-used-to-be-orange, white, and green nearby the steps. Soooo attractive to look at. I always do that - leave them for spring and I always un-enjoy it so much! As long as they are hidden by snow, I let them go, but they are always lurking under the snow and in the back of my mind, waiting for spring! As old as I am, you'd think by now I would be done with it and haul them down to the compost heap (so-called) in the fall.



Another upcoming job is too clean out the veggie plot. That, too, is a fall job that I didn't do this year. But it was kind of neat this winter to look out the back door and see, hanging on for their dear lives, the little pear-shaped heirloom yellow tomatoes that were left on the vines. (Unlike those lurking pumpkins!) I don't know why, but these particular tomatoes really stick to their vines. I bet too that they will self-sow if I don't get too aggressive cleaning that area. I loved those tomatoes in salads this past summer, too.



Another big thing I can do to stay away from computer games is my continuing self-directed professional development. I have spent many evenings this winter reading and researching and relearning many early primary best practices for teaching reading. My big job change at the beginning of the school year prompted this flurry of PD, and it feels as if it has really paid off. I am much more secure lately in my knowledge base and my teaching practices. I think that increased confidence has benefited my students, too. Either that, or just their natural developmental progression has increased their growth through the school year, but I like to think my intervention has helped! I am still reading and rereading my Jan Richardson, Debbie Diller, and Richard Marzano. Another hugely valuable resource that I continue to explore is the Florida Center for Reading Research web site maintained by Florida State University. This database is vast and although I have downloaded and copied all the materials for grades K-3, I haven't read or evaluated it all, yet. Of the eight-ten activities I have tried, I found several worth using again, so I will definitely keep sifting through this treasure trove of materials looking for teaching materials to use with my students.



The other things keeping me busy lately have been hand-made goodies. I am hosting a traveling round-robin swap through my paper doll group on Swap-bot. That endeavor has been semi-sucessful in that one person dropped out after not sending on the dolls she has received for the past couple of months. I think she has deeper issues than the doll swap, though, so I hope she gets everything in her life straightened around. She is a talented artist in real life, but her health and employment issues are not where she needs to have them. The other swap participants have hung in there and are creating some really cute outfits for the dolls. Don't know who has my doll right now, though! I've also been making a BUNCH of jewelry. I finally used the bright red coral nuggets (huge and honkin!) that my hubby bought for me at a bead and gem expo in August. Now I need to think of something exciting to do with the biwa and dentil pearls I bought there as well. Now they are GORGEOUS! I really need to come up with a special design for them. I also have been making a lot of Pandora style keychains lately. They are pretty cool. I've also been experimenting with some fabric creations, but I am not trotting them out for a while. I need to work on my technique! And last, but certainly not least, I finally found out that my flip book of paper dolls is being published in the summer issue of Somerset Studio's Gallery magazine. I can't wait to see how they feature it. I hope it will be a multi-picture spread just so people can see the diverse group of dolls I stamped and embellished. And that, Folks, it all there is for this update!

Update to the Update

Yesterday I talked about how busy I've been with my Swap-Bot group, paper People Art Dolls, but I have been even busier in my real life! If you read my post two days ago you heard that I was switched (I'm making myself passive in this move!) to the other elementary school in our district a week before school started this year, and was assigned to a new position. Although this move was an involuntary move on my part, I have grown to like the job most of the time, and am enjoying the interactions with the children I am teaching.

Our school district has been experiencing a great deal of upheaval the past couple of years. Our enrollment has declined considerably necessitating a reduction in force for two years running. This, coupled with an inability to come to terms with the board of education on a contract for certified staff, has also created some divisiveness between the teaching staff and the administration. The way all this affects me is that due to the reduction in force, teachers who were riffed left positions open that had to be filled from within and many people were shifted to different jobs and buildings. The job I am now doing was to have been done by a veteran, 34 year teacher. She was assigned to a different building, and rather than moving for her last year of teaching, she decided to retire thereby leaving a vacancy which was filled by me. I really don't know why I was chosen, other than the fact that it is a reading position and I do hold a reading endorsement. There were however, several other people who really wanted the position, and had expressed no interest in it or desire to move again since I had just moved from that building two years previously.

But I guess sometimes we need a little prodding to break out of the ruts we have grooved ourselves into, and I am no exception to that axiom. I was pretty upset about the move at first because at the end of May I had packed up my fifth grade classroom as ordered. Every. Last. Bit. Of. It! From the floor to the ceiling, my fifth grade classroom was packed awaiting orders to see if I would be moved. Everyone in our building had done the same because we knew there were being cuts and there would be many moves made. But in July I received a letter telling me my assignment was to remain the same with the exception that I would also be adding fifth grade Social Studies to my teaching duties. That was fine with me; I love social studies. So, I thought I was set to go. Since I had so much to unpack (I own some books!), I began unpacking and getting my room ready about the first week of August. It took me about two weeks, to get everything unpacked and put away, and to get my posters hung back up and to decorate my bulletin boards, do copying for the beginning of the year, and to get things ready for the students. I also wanted to be ready ahead of schedule so I could take the week before school started to enjoy family things and get things done around the house. Finally, because I was ready ahead of schedule, I began overhauling all my filing cabinets at school and reorganizing everything in them. By this time it was August 13th, and school started on August 24th.

Well, on the afternoon of the thirteenth when I was on my way home, my friend called to tell me that the superintendent of out district was asking for my cell phone number! Now that was a new one for me! I immediately became nervous. The Sup't. does NOT just call you up on your cell! Anyway, as soon as I got home I checked the answering machine to see if he had called our home phone. Whew, I thought to myself. No messages from him! Well, a little later, as I sat on the deck talking to our neighbor, my cell rang, and guess who it was! The superintendent. And guess what his message was. When he asked me why I wasn't saying anything after his message, I told him I was pretty much dumbstruck, but I wish I'd asked him some questions. Like why me? How long had my name been tossed around for the job? But I didn't, so now those questions will remain unasked and unanswered. But again, sometimes we just have to be shaken out of our complacency and get handed something new, which is where I am at this point.

So, do I like my new job? Yes, I do, on most days that is. It is very different than what I had been doing, and I am having to relearn many things from my undergrad days in college regarding early literacy. That is a good thing, though, because I really enjoy research and learning. Is it easy? No, because nothing about teaching Kindergarten, first, and second grade children can be assumed or taken for granted. It is very touchy-feely and hands on, and having been accustomed for so long to fifth and sixth graders who are more independent, I am having to make some major adjustments to the way I speak, think, and teach, among other things. Some days I feel as if I am mothering more than I am teaching, and some days I go home wondering how Kindergarten teachers ever make it to retirement! On the other hand, it has made me much more humble about my abilities because now I can really see the hard work and dedication put forth by our primary teachers! In my former life I often wondered why children arrived in fifth grade missing some piece or other of what I considered essential knowledge, and now I marvel that they arrived there with as much as they did have!

How long will I be in this position? I don't know, but I think the move has a been a positive one for me if for no other reasons than the ones I wrote of in the preceding paragraph. Change has a way of opening our eyes to a new perspective and that, for me, is a good thing.