Too Much Information?

I have a blog, I post a daily photo of myself every day on Flickr, I have a Myspace account and a Facebook account (to which I semi-regularly post "status updates" telling my Facebook friends what I am currently up to). I share plenty about my daily life and my friends and "friends" that are linked to my various accounts are able to keep pretty good tabs on me (as far as I'm willing to share), I'd say. But is this taking it too far?

Is anyone on Twitter? I checked and none of my friends are. Yet.

Happy Friday

Today was a wonderful Friday for me. I had a meeting to attend that was just three blocks from my house! And even better, it didn't start until 9am. This meant I got to sleep until 7:45. By the time the meeting ended at 1pm there was no point in going back to school since I get an hour for lunch and then an hour for travel time. There was nothing else to do but go home :) So wonderful!

The meeting was about scoring for the big state English proficiency test that all of my kids just finished taking this week. Starting on Monday I have to train a group of teachers at my school to score them. The scoring should only take a couple of days since my school doesn't have that many ELLs. Then it will be back to real teaching again.

Three Angels

Why I love Kindergarteners . . .

One of my Kindergarten girls, Jessica, was trying to tell me a story but I couldn't understand a word of what she was saying. "Angel, the man who cleans the floor!" She said, referring to our custodian. "My cousin's name is Angel, too."

"I know." I said.

"There are two Angels. My cousin and . . . Oh, and the one that flies. So there are three Angels: the one that flies, my cousin, and the one here."

So precious.

My First Ever Meme!

I've been blogging for about three years now and this is my very first meme. And clearly I need the inspiration right now since I haven't blogged in month. Thanks Julie!

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you've posted your answer.


1. What was I doing 10 years ago?

In 1998 I was 17 and a senior in high school getting ready to graduate! I was planning my first backpacking trip to Europe which really gave me the travel bug. In the past ten years I have taken a trip or lived abroad almost every year (the first two years living in NYC were pretty rough financially so I didn't make it anywhere those years).

Also ten years ago on that backpacking trip I randomly met a Jordanian guy who I had a romantic summer fling with. We have always kept in touch and have seen each other on various trips of mine to Europe (and one of his to NYC). It still amazes me that ten years later he is still a really important person in my life. Meeting him also sparked my interest in the Middle East, learning Arabic, and now a desire to go teach abroad in the Middle East. Sometimes I forget that all of this started with a chance encounter in the Florence leather market.

It's interesting to reflect upon how ten years ago the things going on in my life were sort of setting up for what is happening now.

2. What are five things on my to do list for today?

Well, the day is over now but the only thing on the to do list was to go to brunch and I can proudly say that I accomplished that!

3. Snacks I enjoy:

-carrots and hummus
-fudgesicles
-chips and guacamole
-brownies

(These are just random things that popped into my head. I'm not sure if they are my most favorite. I'm sure there are others.)

4. Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I don't really sit around thinking about what I would do if I had extreme amounts of money. Like Julie, I do know that I would travel the world. It would be nice to have a house in a few different places that I like to visit often so I could split my time between say, NYC, Italy, etc. And (obviously) I would donate to a worthy cause. Most likely something involving education would be on that list.

5. Three of my bad habits:

-Hitting snooze in the morning. I love the morning and I REALLY would love to be a morning person in theory but I just can't get out of bed in the morning. Even if I've already had more than enough sleep.

Hmm . . . the first one was easy, let's see.

-Maybe taking ridiculously long showers. All the time. I know, it's bad to waste water (and time) but I love being under the hot water and as much as I try (or don't try) I can't seem to take a quick, or even relatively quick, shower. I have ALWAYS been like this.

-I'm starting to think spending too much time on the internet. Sometimes I "multi-task" by watching T.V., talking on the phone, and/or eating while being on the computer.

6. 5 Places I have lived:

-California: I lived there until I graduated high school.
-Arizona: I went to college there and my family moved there too so I don't really have family connections to California anymore.
-Florence, Italy: I studied there twice. Once for a study abroad program and another time as an exchange student with the University of Florence.
-Sardegna, Italy: After I graduated from college I taught English in Sassari, Sardegna for a year.
-Brooklyn, NY: I moved here in 2005 when I started teaching as a Teach For America corps member. I put NYC as second choice of cities that I wanted to teach in but in my heart it was really first. I'm so glad that I ended up here.

7. 5 jobs that I have had:

-Lifeguard
-Starbucks Barista
-selling jackets in the leather market in Florence
-working at the reception desk in a youth hostel in Corfu, Greece
-waitress (in Italy and Arizona)

8. Peeps I want to know more about:

-Minty at Pepperknit
-Kelly at An Adventure of a Lifetime
-Ruth at Out of Uganda
-Ms. Brave at Ms. Brave Teaches NYC
-Miss G at Closing the Gap in NYC

Language Learning

Recently I started taking Arabic classes again. The classes were going well at first but tonight I was really frustrated by the way the teacher was presenting the lesson. There were so many things that I would have done differently. Mainly I was frustrated that the teacher was doing all of the speaking in Arabic and we, the students, barely got to say anything. How can you learn a language when the teacher is talking and the students are listening? Students need to SPEAK in the target language. This critique comes not from my teaching experience here in NYC but from my TEFL training in Italy and then teaching for a year at Inlingua (a private language school) because those experiences were comparable to the class that I am currently taking. So when I got home tonight I wrote an email to the school telling them about my concerns. At first I thought the email was going to sound really rude because I was so frustrated but I think it turned out to be quite reasonable. What do you think? Would you have emailed the school too?

Hi,
so I just had my third Arabic class and I am not feeling satisfied with tonight's lesson. The first class (which was my trial class) was good but the teacher deviated from the book so that perhaps wasn't an indication of a regular lesson. The second class was with a substitute and it was also good. This third class, using the book with the regular teacher, I did not like. The problem that I have is that the teacher did the majority of the talking. For most of the lesson she read all of the tables of words to us in Arabic and asked us if we knew what they meant. We then responded in English. Then for the exercises she read the sentences to us in Arabic and we answered filling in just two words in Arabic. There were so many opportunities for us (the students) to be reading/speaking in Arabic that were missed. I felt really cheated out of the time that we had in class. With just three students we should have had ample speaking time. Instead, the teacher talk time was about 90% while the student talk time was about 10%. I hope that we can somehow resolve this because otherwise I really like the class (and the teacher) and want to continue with my Arabic studies. please let me know what you think about this. (And if perhaps I am addressing this with the wrong person could you please forward this message on?)

Thank You,
Ms. M

Our "Quality" Has Been Reviewed

So the first word (given by our principal over the loudspeaker just minutes after the reviewer left) was that our review was "extremely positive" with more details to come.

I'm sorry, but I'm not excited that my school did great on our Quality Review, because it just isn't. For the second year in a row we managed to fool them. If I were the principal I think my goal for next year would be to get the same result without any crazy preparations leading up to the day and a half review. If all these pretend things we did for the review (bulletin boards, data binders, classroom rearrangements, prepping the students and teachers to say the right thing) were just naturally in place all year with out a mention of the QR, THEN I'd be happy we got a good review.

Kindergarten Writing

This week I introduced my kindergarteners to using a rubric to get a "happy face" on their writing. I showed them a big rubric I had made on chart paper and explained all that they would have to do to get a happy face.
- a detailed picture
- a sentence with a capital at the beginning and a period at the end
- spaces between each word
- all words sounded out ("stretched")

After explaining the rubric I asked: "Who wants to do their best writing and get a happy face on their paper?" They all raised their hands and were really excited. AND they all really did their best work of the year. They were so excited to see if they were going to get the happy face on their papers. Even my kids who usually struggle a lot got it with a little help.

There's just one kid, my newcomer, who didn't get the stretching of the words. He's just not there yet developmentally. But he did his neatest writing, a great picture, perfect spacing, copied the sentence starter I have them ("I learned that . . ."), and then wrote a string of letters for the rest of the sentence. I asked him what his sentence said and he said he didn't know. He really did his best work of the year though. So do I give him a happy face or really stick to the rubric and give him the "medium(?) happy face" because he can't stretch his words? He was the only one who couldn't do all four things even with help.

I gave him the medium happy face and told him what an awesome job he did.