How do the choices you make shape your/our future, fate, or destiny? Why or why not?


Fate or destiny? I am a believer that everyone has a path... if you listen to that little voice inside you when you are still, in nature, away from the din of the electronic, you will hear and know what path and which decisions to make. One can go NUTS analyzing every choice, so the way it works for me is to pause before committing to anything or saying anything that seems out of character for someone who is polished, serene and happy with where they are in life.

If it's not right-- it just doesn't SIT right. I see most people as having spiritual, mental (i.e. business, etc. ), and health aspects. If everything is working and the decisions are honoring all of the three, then you have a sense of peace, accomplishment, and that everything is somehow right with the world. If you make a choice that is not right for you -- you feel it.. It may be a few minutes later (like when you yell at someone and you really didn't mean it -- you were just having an extremely awful day), a week later, or sometimes years later as you look back and reflect.


Sometimes, at least for me, the choices seemed rather inconsequential -- just a computer purchase, a car, etc. and yet those decisions for me ended up making all the difference -- it helped put me on my path and allowed me to become who I am and led me to the things that I love to do. Would one choice along the way have changed all that? Probably not, but it might have changed the level, the depth and the intensity of the shape of my life. If I had moved from this area, who knows? If I had gotten the job with Stars and Stripes in Europe right out of college -- my locale and life experiences would have been different. However, I think I would have always ended up teaching in some fashion.

How have my choices influenced/shaped my future, fate and destiny? They have led me to where I feel I am meant to be. Are there still things that I would change and/or alter? Of course, but those decisions didn't lead me away from my true path-- just took me on some deadends that I had to re-trace my steps to get back. Sometimes they took me through some briar patches and I had to fight to get back on track, but I am where I am supposed to be--- for now.

Thank you for your patience this week. A grandmother of mine passed away on Sunday and I have been trying to help with arrangements and locate a missing item in my house for someone all week on very little sleep.

Thanks for all the kind words and patience. The five week projects require you to read and to be confident in what you are doing. For some of you this is the first time that you have been asked to fly solo and interpret the instructions. It may be a bit stressful for you. Hang in there.

See you on Tuesday when I return.... I will be out on Monday as well for school business (sorry!). Check the website for the lesson plans.

WARMING UP--- The weather has changed, but not that much! Please check the weather reports.

Week #17 WAVE VOCAB
7th Grade
anecdote (a brief, humorous story). The speaker told a short anecdote to make the audience laugh and get them interested in the speech.

8th Grade = protracted (drawn out; lengthy)
The school year seemed long and protracted because of the extended day.

WEDNESDAY WRITING - Week #17

• Write about a time when you or someone you know was bullied and how it was or could have been better handled.
• Write about a bullying incident from the video andhow you would have handled the situation if you were the victim or observer
• Reread the speech (attached-- copy will be made available for everyone in the class) that Bobbie gave for the "No Name Party".
  
• Have students write down comments or questions that could be used for discussion - or - develop a prompt for studens from this FRIDAY's DISCUSSION activity.
  
• STUDENTS work in small groups to come up with slogans or posters to display in the classroom or school to prevent bullying.
  
• Students share a piece of writing, discussion topic, poster, etc., related to NO NAME CALLING week.
  

An older sibling or friend, invites you to an "R" reated movie and plans to use a fake ID (to get a ticket). Explain why you would or would not go. Take into consideration the repercussions from the law, your parents, and the theatre employees in your response.

I would wait for the movie to come out on DVD and then ask my parents to pick it up so that they would be able to make the decision. Personally, I would not want to be embarrassed at the ticket counter with someone telling me that I was too young or the possible contact to my parents. Why would I want all that drama?

My parents (when I was a teenager) trusted me to do the right thing and to be responsible so I never did anything to violate that trust. It worked out well for my family. I was usually also just able to set my own bed times (even when I was little) so I never wanted to do anything that would require my parents to be more worried about me and what I was doing. I liked my freedom and wanted to keep it -- going to a movie with somone I knew was going to use a fake ID would not have been something I would have done.

Enjoy your weekend!

To help get you back into the school groove:

• WHAT DID YOU DO? If you have a moment, send me a schoolnotes email about what you actually did over the holidays and copy a post to the blackboard account -- it will get you ready for the writing that is coming
• THINK ABOUT IT - What Do You Believe? As part of our January unit we will be preparing some entries for a National Public Radio program called This I Believe. Start reflecting on what makes you tick!
• WAKE UP! Start getting up and ready at a slightly earlier time than you normally do. Get that alarm ready and your system back into the swing of things.
  
• BAG CHECK- Check through your backpack to make sure that you have everything that you need for Monday! Pencils, pens, paper and especially any reports, papers, etc. that you were given a grace period to complete.
  
• LEAVE THE TOYS AT HOME! While all those new gadgets are cool and all, please leave them home and get used to setting your phone to off during school hours. If you received some generous presents, set up a time off campus to share them.
  
• BODY BREAKS: Start to each on school schedule and get your body used to taking care of needs according to the school clock.
  
• REST - Get some extra sleep and due to the weird weather, drink some additional water and take a walk or two to get back into the swing of things.
  

Looking forward to getting started on your five-week projects, the yearbook (once we get the necessary CD-rom) and welcoming in the New Year at ESMS.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Hope you have had a grand vacation and have been enjoying time away from school :)) Looking forward to getting started on our five week projects and for those wondering about your proposals, we will be talking about them on the first day back. Prefer that you only work with one other person and your items will need to be very well defined.

I have been reading, walking, catching up on videos (love the mail in system!) and spending LOTS of time with my family. Found some new technologies that we are going to be using to enhance our journalism department and we will be hitting the yearbook assignments hard to meet our first deadline. So, get your photo and uploading skills ready--- here we go.

Look forward to seeing you when we return -- enjoy your break and welcome to 2007!

"Character is what you are in the dark" - UNKNOWN

What does this mean to you? How do you act when no one is watching? How do you act when your parents, teachers, or friends aren't watching? Explain.

What happens when you get home and reflect on the day? Do you remembe the kind words that encouraged a person in need of some uplifting or were you trying to impress your friends with words that damage the spirit, but made your clique of friends laugh? Each day, I try and take some time to reflect on the person I was during the day -- am I proud of every action, word, and deed? If I find myself lacking in some way, I work to make amends immediately and to change my path the next day to improve on who I am and how I am everyday.

It's hard to be the best person I can be on a daily basis. It takes constant reflection, monitoring and focus. In the dark, when I am alone with just my thoughts and the silence of the night, I hope that I act as I believe and make mental notes of how to change something that doesn't sit right with who I am, and what I believe in.

It is a never-ending process. I have seen people who, alone, are caring, protective, and supportive turn into angry, hurtful people trying to impress. I wonder how much damage is done by not following and acting in a manner that is consistent with who you really are when the silence of the night envelopes you and you are face to face with the power that is in charge of the universe.

OFFICE WORK
If you ever want to know why it is that things always seem to take so long to process at a school site, come and spend time in the office. There are many things that go on - parents dropping in, phone calls about things that seem quite random, student issues with behavior and un-wise choices -- it's been an experience. Sitting in the office for a day or shadowing an administrator will give you a diferent idea of what it takes to be successful. You need to be able to juggle, multi-task and have very strong boundaries so that you can tend to your own family at home. It's amazing what happens in one day!

WHAT KIND OF PARENT DO YOU THINK YOU WILL BE? Why? What responsibilities do you face? What responsibilities do you think your parents face?

Prompt for the 11/15/06 WAVE Journal Entries

Since I parent students all day long, I am not sure how I would react with children at home as well. Deaaling with students asking the same questions, five times a day, with over 250 students going through my room during one school year -- not sure if the patience needed to tend to my own children would last after days spent teaching. Some days are better than others - and I leave with a sense of wonderment at seeing the world through a child's eyes, while other times I leave just wanting to go and live like a hermit in the mountains where I don't have to answer one more question ever again.

My parents' faced the responsibilities for two kids who were very easy to deal with. No big problems, we both liked school, enjoyed being involved but not too much, both liked doing things together as a family. Parents today with separate familes and sometimes both parents working and children scheduled to the max, often means that I as a teacher am spending more time with some people's children than they are. That is a tough balance -- kids need time to talk with their parents or in the case of adolescents, sometimes NOT talk with their parents. They are listening, they just don't necessarily like to show it.

Graduation Day is coming soon! May 19th (or close to that Saturday) is my long awaited graduation day for my masters' degree. It's been a long haul and I have learned more through that program than in years of working on my own. The hours of studying, working, writing, reading, and researching have finally paid off.

So enjoying having my life and my mind back so that I can work on things that I have been putting off for a long time-- my life is finally off from hold so that I can work on things for my own life. One day and one assignment at a time.

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THINK A STUDENT SHOULD LEARN WHILE GROWING UP? WHY? Convince parents and teachers about passing this information on to the next generation.

I believe the most important thing a student should learn while growing up is how to learn. There are many different ways to view a situation, an event, a novel, a news story -- it all depends on your perspective and what lens you are using to put the items into context.

I never learned much about how to look at the world from the perspective of a historian or a scientist. My history and science education was serverly lacking. It is not that I didn't take the courses or do well in them - I did. It was just that I did not appreciate how to look at things from the scientific and historic perspective. What variables might have influeced A so that it ended up at Z? What observations can I make to help form a guesstimate about what is happening. Where do I go next to test out my theory? What do the theories say to support or negate my claim? This type of thinking has only come to me later in life.

Same can be said for the historical perspective. I learned facts, figures, names, and places but was never shown the big picture of how it all tied together. I never got that history is something that you are making and living everyday -- and I never felt that I got a lot of the cultural and global perspectives necessary to better understand current events. We used to "do" current events -- cut out an article, wtite about who, what, when, where, why, and how -- but we were never encouraged to look beyond that to see how things were tied together or the impact that A might have on B.

Now that I am older (not old, just older) I wonder what my life might have been like had I had those additional lenses to look through at the events in my life. I am excited about learning more, now that I have some tools about how to do research and how to look through different lenses. Wish I would have had that when I was traveling and going to school - if I had encountered one teacher who looked at things through patterns or changes over time-- how different my world view. I feel like I am playing catch-up. I feel a bit cheated. Maybe I can help my students to see that world as well, while they are still on the path of discovery rather than at the stage of reflection.

Ending and a New Beginning

I am finishing an extended journey. I have been living and breathing an incredible time with a courageous group of twelve. We have struggled, cried, triumphed and learned more in 15 months than can be easily put into words. We have been through two weddings and a baby, countless hours of work away from our families, and mountains of books and papers.

We have been reading, writing, pursuing understanding of new concepts and the integration of those already slightly familiar into our existing schema. We have been writing and reading and researching. We have been questing to find what it takes to make sense of the material for all of us. We have been learning.

I have learned that what makes me a better teacher is also being a continual student. Whereas some instructors inspired through example, as Miles Horton put it, some of my best teachers were the worst teachers. I also learned what NOT to do and what it must feel like when I am not clear with directions, when I change requirements at the last minute, have no clear goal for assessments, other than as a grade to put into a book, and what happens when the experience of my students is TOTALLY ignored and make no attempt to start from where my students are rather than with the same lessons the same handouts, the same method of attacking the material.

I have seen this incredible group of intelligent folks become behavior problems out of self-preservation, so we would not lose our minds in classes that did not adapt to our needs, our experience, our collective knowledge and find a way to push us to learn more. I have seen those who have struggled meet the challenges of technology and wrestle with concepts that are the antithesis of their core values and come through as more enlightened educators.

I have also learned that through it all, I can perserve -- one page, one paper, one assignment at a time. I learned that I can rise to a new level of expectation and meet it even when I have only had three hours of sleep. I miss the time to spend with family and nature and I know that this too shall pass and soon those simple pleasures will be available to me again.

The Task: Read "No Sweets, Please" about a girl who shares food with a friend who has a pre-existing condition that on a restricted diet. The goal is to finish the story taking into consideration Marsha's concerns that she may have contributed to an adverse reaction and what she would do to change her behavior to help her friend.

Marsha decided to go to the library and do some research on diabetes to find out if the food she had been sharing with Jergen might have had an impact on his condition. When she found that diabetics need to monitor their blood sugar carefully and that Jergen was known for not following those directions, Marsha decided to change her ways.

Part of Marsha's plan including starting to say "NO" to things that she really didn't feel like doing, but did anyway so that people would like her. Marsha let her friends talk her into many things that she didn't quite feel right about, but again, she didn't want to make anyone mad at her or to upset anyone.

When Jergen returned from the hospital, he once again, asked Marsha for her desserts. However, Marsha was prepared. Since she didn't like sweets anyway, she had asked her father not to put any sweets in her lunch. She explained that she didn't eat them anyway and that they usually got squished in her lunch bag.

So, when Jergen asked for the dessert that he knew Marsha would not eat anyway, he was suprised when Marsha told him, "Sorry, Jergen. I don't really like sweets, so I just asked my dad not to spend the extra money on them. Instead of the Twinkies and other sweets, I am getting the money that would have been spent buying those things that I wasn't eating anyway in my allowance.Why don't go and take a lap when we are both done with our meals and after you have checked your blood sugar."

From then on, Marsha's friends noticed that she was a "pushover" no more. She only did what she really enjoyed and often offered alternatives rather than just going along with whatever anyone tried to get her to do. Marsha and Jergen made walks at lunch a regular event and eventually set up a walkathon fundraiser for the whole school for the American Diabetes Association and donated the monies in Jergen's name.

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/sep/stories/whitney.html picture source
I long for the mountains! The last one that touched my soul was Mt. Whitney that I climbed with an honored group. It was incredible to see the sunrise , to hike higher and farther than I ever imagined that I would ever be able to achieve. I have yet to summit -- there was blasting that day and I had many issues including battery issues (when you start at 12:01 am it is a bit dark). It was incredible.

I am so happy to be able to get back to the mountains and to get to the outdoors yet again. Soon!

WAVE PROMPT: What do you like most about yourself? Least about yourself? Why?

I listen. I have a natural ability to pick up on where people are in their life's journey and a means of connecting to the person on the inside, behind the mask. I see the core and am able to filter out the manifestations of protection that occur when one has been hurt along the journey. I enjoy that I can be a great listener, although lately, I haven't been able to process much or take the time to listen to the lives of others. I like that I "get" people and look beyond pretense and bad days, knowing that the people who are in my life are there for a reason. I have something to learn from them and if I am willing to truly slow down and listen, I will be given an invaluable piece of the my life's puzzle.

Right now, I least like the fact that I have to say "NO" and focus on myself more than I ever have at any time in my life. I am coming up on a major deadline, with parameters and requirements that seem to change daily. Frustration is the least objectionable and most politically correct term that I can use to describe the process of trying to meet the ever-changing, and rapidly-approaching deadline. I want to be able to sit and reflect and to ponder the universe. I miss having time to listen for the messages that have been left for me. I miss my time for reflection.

Sharing Day
Sharing day was interesting. We used a protocol to share the writings from Wednesday. Everyone switched books and looked for a quote or a statement that they wanted to comment on. Everyone got a chance to share their quote and we moved around the circle. For the first practice done as a group, we commented on just one quote throughout the whole group before moving to groups of four and one group of five.

Some comments....
>students don't like to be passed over when asking for responses to questions
>students working in groups like to be responsible for a section of the work they can call their own
>many students expressed some very stereotypical views about people who were different from themselves indicating that additional work on tolerance and anti-bullying may be in order

I spent 10 days at Space Camp and learned more about what it means to be a teacher and more about myself than I have in many years of professional development. I learned that when under incredible stress, I tend to forget to look at other options-- I develop tunnel vision. Also when under stress, I forget to just relax and this leads to that tunnel vision as well.

I learned that wonder can come regardless of the level of experience. I was one of the few non-science teachers that attended the Boeing-sponsored Teachers' in Space Camp and often felt out of place and as if I had taken someone else's spot. Yet, each night in my room I reflected and realized that you don't have to know it all to get excited about a sharing a topic with your students. It's the wonder and the passion and the excitement that you share that will inspire -- the rest is just the details. I had never made a rocket of any kind and the bottle rocket that was constructed by my group was the only one to stay in one piece during launch and "re-entry" (aka crashing to the earth).

On the last day, we launched rockets with gunpowder engines and once again, mine held together. It was amazing to sit under the trees in the 98 degree heat with 98 percent humidity (at 9am) and realize all that I had learned. I also lamented not getting into science earlier and never having found a teacher who turned me onto the wonders of nature and also never finding a history teacher who was focused on more than dates, places and battles to help me develop that type of historical thinking as well. Sad. I would have liked the journeys or to at least have that type of thinking and looking at the world in my arsenal of tools. I now wonder if I would have thought differently about the many camping trips that we had taken if I had been equipped with a more scientific and historic view.

I hope that from my experience at Space Campt that I will be able to help inspire some scientific and historical thinking so that my students will leave knowing a bit moer about a different way of viewing the world. How many geniuses have we overlooked because we didn't let them explore and didn't equip them with the necessary thinking tools to be successful.

Who is your favorite/least favorite relative and why? Do you behave the same or differently with each person? Explain. Our 9/20/2006 Writing Prompt for WAVE.

When I am in the company of my blood relatives I am a different person. I laugh, smile, and most importantly, I feel at ease. I don't have to worry about saying or doing what would be thought of as a the wrong thing. I am accepted for who I am and where I am in my life with no questions asked. My Michigan family is this for me -- no worries, no need to send something on a specific day or time, just unconditional love. What is expected is to stay a piece now and then and give some of my time to hang out at their homes, sit down and enjoy a meal, and to share what is going on in my life. My grandmother is currently the hub of all this activity and she is the center of the visits in Michigan.

When I am in the company of those whose culture and social-cultural norms that are more foreign to me, I feel on edge and constantly on guard. I have to watch what I say, how I phrase my words, my actions, my tone of voice, my dress -- all very stressful. Love seems to be more conditional in these settings, based on outward apprearances and outward shows of affection rather than the internal ones. I don't have many situations like this anymore as most of my relatives have now passed away who represent this cultural group.

I am who I am and although I can always make changes in how I deal with life and those I love, I am essentially at the core the same person I have always been, although, hopefully, more highly evolved and aware. I am approaching a milestone and when people say that you become your parents -- I see it as a compliment not a criticism.

Response to Writing
Schmidt, Sabine. "Trip to the site of the World Trade Center is an eye-opener for children." The Daily Breeze 6 Sept., 2006: A2.

This article reminds me that Sept. 11th may not be as memorable for my students as it is for me. I lost a friend, Ruben Ornedo, on a plane that crashed into the Pentagon. The day of remembrance is something that I take very seriously and this article that we read in class as a reading sample, helped to remind me of the many emotions of people who had different links to this day that changed history for many.

As Schmidt says: "No doubt, Sept. 11 has changed our lives forever. Now is the time to do our part. In the long run, it's going to protect our children's future."(Schimdt A2)