Stop and smell the goose poop

I took Moo on a walk this afternoon. It's spring break, and it was sunny and 70 outside, and I had spent the whole day in a hotel basement at a language acquisition seminar (which actually was wonderfully inspiring and made me want to run off and start my PhD in Second Language Acquisition...but that's another story), so it was time for my outside fix.

It's really springtime here. We'll probably get a 2-foot snowstorm before the end of April, but today the daffodils were blooming and the trees were budding and everyone in the neighborhood was in the park riding their bikes and flying their kites and walking their dogs and practicing their soccer and playing their tennis. And Moo kept stopping every 30 seconds to sniff around at goose poop and worms, poking through the dirt and reeds, and I kept trying to drag him along, realizing that his harness was not designed to pull him forward, only back. So I resigned myself to going at his pace: meander, backtrack, sniff, explore, repeat. And I started noticing all kinds of things. The patterns of the wind on the lake. The mallards sleeping on the shore. The kids on the porch swing across the street. The freshly plowed flowerbeds. The shiny red buds on branches above my head. The little girl with her daddy buying paletas de fresa. The grandpa teaching a kid to fly a kite. Isn't that what a walk's supposed to be? Feeling a part of it all? Not hurrying along with headphones stuffed in my ears.


It reminded me of school. Here are our kids, inquirers by nature, stopping to poke around at every little thing that fascinates them but that we as teachers all too often fail to notice. And we yank them along by the leash, powering through the curriculum, making stops only for the sights we know will reappear on the standardized tests, dragging them past all the things of real interest. Goose poop isn't on the standardized test. (Or wait...is that all it is?...no, no, that would be something a bit different.) No wonder so many of our kids seem to lose their natural curiosity, to become apathetic toward school in general. No wonder so many of our teachers get burnt out with it too. That's not the way it has to be. Which brings me back to the seminar. Ahhh, education that matches the way brains actually learn. More on that another day.

Photo update

Here's a link to the facebook photos I just posted. If a picture's worth a thousand words, this more than makes up for my lack of blogging in the past month. Enjoy!

On the potential benefits of flat tires

Just because I have a car now doesn't mean I'm giving myself permission to give up biking every time it's a little bit cold or snowy. They plow the bike trails in Denver, after all, even if they don't do the roads. I successfully made the commute with no wipeouts, but did manage to get a flat tire 1.2 miles from school. Boo. And then my pump broke when I tried to reinflate the tube--the plastic pieces got a bit brittle in 6-degree temps--and left the tire completely emptied of any air that had previously been in it. So I walked (and ran, now being late for professional development) the rest of the way to work. And once I got there, I was reminded of just how much I love my coworkers. Two offered me rides home, one ran home over lunch and brought back two bike pumps, another tracked down the pump from the school gym, and another, after looking at my 4-times-patched tube, ran to the bike shop down the street and got me two new tubes. And one more, stopping by to make sure I had everything fixed, offered, albeit jokingly, to follow me in his car to make sure I got home. Even if I can take care of myself, it's nice to know there are people looking out for you.

The co-op

Happy New Year! Apologies for my three-month hiatus in blogging. Life's been busy (and that is a serious understatement.) Turns out I've been doing an abysmal job of finding the balance I talked about back in September. One of the many things keeping me busy (but also very much inspired) has been the realization of a summertime vision for a food co-op. It's now been up and running for about three and a half months now, and I'm thrilled with the success so far.

The basic vision: to organize a group of people who love good food and the making of it, and who care about where their food comes from, to trade homemade value-added food products. I wanted to bake bread, freeze jam, dry fruit, culture yogurt, can tomatoes, pickle cucumbers, dehydrate backpacking meals, make applesauce and tofu and salsa and granola and pesto...but I knew that as soon as the school year started, I'd be lucky to have time for even one of those things. The idea, then, is that if I make a large quantity of just one item to share, I can trade it for a variety of other foods without spending the time actually making them all myself.

After bouncing the idea off a number of friends and feeling out interest, we ended up with a group of 14 and met to flesh out visions and logistics, and the co-op was born. Essentially, we meet for a food exchange twice a month, bringing shares for everyone once and receiving shares both times. Emily went into a bit more detail about logistics in her blog, so I won't do it again here. James also set up a blog for the co-op itself, where all of us involved can post photos, recipes, questions, etc. I just posted a collection of food photos from the past several months there, so check them out if you like. And of course, feel free to ask us questions on that blog, or here. I'd love to see where this idea goes if people start running with it in different directions.

Balance

My dad asked me over the phone this weekend how I was doing at keeping my essential agreements. I told him I've been doing a great job of balancing work and play; the problem is that I've done it by working just as much as before and playing twice as hard. Not a sustainable way for me to live, it turns out. Lack of sleep and far too little down time turn me into the kind of person I don't want to be. I think I'm improving, though. Last Monday was about as bad as it got: I put in a full day of teaching and planning, went to a meeting on how to train other teachers to use their Promethean boards, biked home for just long enough to change out of biking shorts and grab a banana and a swimsuit, rushed off to a kickball doubleheader, ate the banana for supper between innings, headed straight to our string quartet business meeting (in a hot tub, naturally), made it home by 10:30, ate some real food, put the mute on my violin and practiced with miniscule bowstrokes for Tuesday's gig so as not to wake up my sleeping housemate. Today, I did not go a single other place after work. I came home, picked raspberries, read a book in German for fun, ate a leisurely supper, played piano, talked to an old friend on the phone for an hour and a half, and wrote in my journal. And posted a blog entry. And am going to get nearly a full eight hours of sleep. Let's see if I can make this trend continue.

Essential Agreements

At my school, we don't have rules. We have essential agreements--the understandings we've established between students and teachers, paras and supervisors, staff and administration, to create the healthiest environment for us all. This year, after a summer spent putting a lot of things in perspective, I decided that in addition to my essential agreements with my students, I needed some for myself. For a perfectionist in a profession where you can never be perfect. For a teacher who needs to remember that she is many things other than that.

Photos and back to school

I'm totally losing at this I-have-a-bedtime game. Tomorrow marks the first Monday of the school year (for teachers, at least; students don't come until Thursday.) To celebrate the fond memories of summer, though, I uploaded a new album of photos to my Picasa site. Enjoy! And now, to bed, with an alarm clock set. Qué pena, ¿no?