Category Archives: the coffeepot’s on

Creative Cookies

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We call it the Clounge or the coffee closet. It’s a storage closet in the school offices, a narrow closet that houses spare books and curriculum resources and the huge lock boxes that keep our state tests secure. On the other side we have a long, narrow table and small cabinet that support two microwaves, a toaster, and the coffeepot. Closet + Lounge gives us Clounge, and coffee closet is self-explanatory.

This Clounge is narrow – narrow enough that only one person can stand in between the table and storage shelves. At lunch time, there’s a lot of “Excuse me. Can I get past you to the water cooler? The refrigerator? Or maybe could you just hand me my yogurt?” as we maneuver around to get what we need.

But once in a while, someone brings in a treat. This one came from a long-term substitute to say Thanks on her last day with us.

Cute, aren't they?

Cute, aren’t they?

We had some fun discussions, trying to figure out who ate the head from the turtle but left its shell, wondering why everyone left the smilies for last. One thing was simple; that frog was calling my name. It was great with coffee.

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One Child a Year – an encore

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I checked my email and online grade book on Sunday night (What? Sunday? Doesn’t every teacher work Sundays?) and got excited in a way that other teachers will understand. One of my (ahem) high maintenance students had a tech problem, so I called him to help. It’s not as easy as you might think; this student attends our virtual school and a religious school. The only time I can phone his family is after school hours on Friday. Well, it worked. I walked him through the process of getting into the site and finding the documents he needed, and he did it. Just don’t tell any taxpayers I worked overtime for free; they’ll never understand.

Here’s the encore that came to mind. Originally posted in 2008, it needs little or no revision to be current. Enjoy.

Beginning teachers want to change the world, put their hearts into their work, matter to someone, somehow. I have come to realize that there are limits, big limits, to the good I do through my teaching. And when it comes down to changing a life, having an impact on a child’s future, a wise co-worker told me to expect to make a difference once a year. One child a year.
At first it sounds callous, minimizing. Realize, however, that we’re not talking about everyday teaching. I teach the entire class to read, to write, to handle long division. But a life-changing impact? A difference that changes the route students will take, puts them on a path to success — or not — doesn’t happen nearly as often as idealists think.
Now, in my eighteenth year of teaching, I wonder who those children are and were. I may never know. A few may touch base with me again. Most won’t or can’t. Many don’t even realize that a teacher, any teacher, turned them around and set them in the right direction.
The victim of bullying who learned to take control might join the list. Then there’s the slacker with a high IQ who earned his first D or F and finally learned study skills. The late bloomer who discovered her favorite book ever on my shelves and realized she loved to read may feel that link as well. But those are the easy ones.
The child whose family was evicted from their apartment, the family I helped find services for the homeless, won’t ever know that I made a difference. Her parents are too busy keeping a roof over their heads and feeding the kids to think about teachers, and that’s exactly where their priorities belong. The depressed adolescents that I referred for help? The counselor made a bigger difference than I did, and again that’s just as it should be. The student who struggled with math and finally, finally “got” fractions under my watch, may be the one child for that year. Or not. It might have been the quiet student, the one who sat in the back and listened intently, absorbing everything he heard, but never saying a word.
So I keep on plugging, planning for class, differentiating for those who need it, and hoping. I hope as well that maybe, just maybe, I made a difference for someone, somehow, each year.

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Daisy Goes National with a burst of Intelligence(s)

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The Social Media Powers-That-Be from the national office called me on Thursday. They needed a blog post and they needed it – well, they had needed it yesterday. They had a very rough draft – could I use my wordsmith talents and help them out?

I could. Flattery aside, the topic was one that needed no research, one I knew well enough to write in my sleep. I stayed awake at my desk (thanks to the office coffee) and rewrote almost the whole thing. It wasn’t my best work, but it was still good. Good enough, anyway, to make the national blog look good. Ahem. I mean it was good enough to make our local branch look good to the people on the national level.

Enough talk. Take a look! 

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And so it goes – a review of the First Days of 2012

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2012 was an incredibly eventful year. For better or for worse, here are the first posts from each month on Compost Happens.

January 1st: Last year’s retrospective, looking back at a very eventful 2011. Read ahead for links to the first of each month in 2012. One year from now, you’ll be reviewing 2013. That thought is both frightening and exciting.

February 1st: In a year fraught with conflict, I wrote many letters. Some were real and landed on desks in Madison and Washington, D.C., and others landed in cyberspace on Compost Happens.

March 1st: Writing is therapeutic. Blogging and email fit the category, too. Last March I reminisced and quietly rejoiced in my new-found state of normal.

April 1st: I didn’t post on April 1st, and April 2nd featured pictures of my cubicle (cute, but not exactly thrilling content). Instead, I give you March 30: the power of refusal and the word No.

May 1st: The strength of grass-roots organizing – the 4 by 10 method.

June 1st: 2012 was an eventful year in the political realm. As we geared up for a gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin, I spent a little volunteer time as a Holder of the Lights on a local overpass.

July 1st: Why my life would make a lousy reality show.

August 1st: Perspectives on trees and pondering fortune cookies; the two are related. Trust me.

September 1st: What does a progressive blogger post during the Republican National Convention? Analysis, that’s what. Here’s a brief analysis of some of the worst prime time moments of the RNC’s gathering.

October 1st: Busy? Did I say busy? October is typically a wild month here at the O.K. Chorale, and this year was busier than most.

November 1st: Encore posts can come in handy. On November 1st of 2012, I was experiencing scary symptoms of a possible stroke. I set this encore to post so the blog wouldn’t be empty. November 2nd explained what happened at the hospital as I lay on the gurney hooked up to all kinds of beeping machines thinking “Thank goodness I voted early!”

December 1st: Sandwiched between a rant about the Clinic That Shall Not Be Named and pictures of construction vehicles in the front yard, I pulled up an encore post to remember how much my young ones have grown and matured.

Here’s hoping 2013 has more achievements and happy occasions and fewer tragedies than 2012.

 

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Leftovers

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I woke up to a dishwasher full of clean dishes and kitchen counters still piled high with the dirty dishes from last night’s dinner. The leftover food got stored in the refrigerator right away last night, but the leftover clean-up took longer.

So I did what I do: I made coffee.

While the coffee dripped, I unloaded the clean dishes and put them away. Next, the dirty stacks found their way into the dishwasher, filling it almost to overflowing. I added detergent, pushed Play (our family’s way of saying “turning it on”) and filled the sink to finish the rest.

With the kitchen counters now piled high with clean dishes, it was time to have breakfast. The last piece of leftover homemade bread in the toaster with Nutella: perfect with fresh coffee. Leftover monkey bread was nearby, too, if I wanted dessert.

The next leftover wasn’t edible, but related to edibles. The freezer was slowly failing. It still made ice cubes, but ice cream was soft and squishy. This was not a good sign.  The refrigerator portion still kept food cold, though. What now? Or, as Chuck put it, why must this appliance choose to taunt us on holidays? You see, readers, we spent Thanksgiving weekend with a working freezer and a non-working refrigerator. With help from our good friend Google, we tried a few fixes and got it working again.

Now, Christmas time, the leftover part of the essential kitchen appliance was reaching its end. Google wasn’t helpful this time – at least it wasn’t helpful in providing a fix. The results of our research convinced us that we couldn’t make the leftover work any longer; we needed to buy fresh and new. Since we did the shopping type of research at Thanksgiving, Chuck was ready to buy. He didn’t even need me along, thank goodness.

The next project: empty the fridge before taking delivery of the new one on Friday. Deep breath: we can do this. Family, get ready to eat leftovers at every meal. Bunnies, your food will have its own cooler. La Petite, take home a cooler full of leftovers for your own dining pleasure.

Meanwhile, I’ll attack the most difficult project: emptying the refrigerator doors of leftover magnets and messages and art work. I sense a somewhat emotional post coming up – with pictures.

See you later, readers. I’m off to work on leftovers.

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Grandma Daisy thinks back to Election Day 2012

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Readers, I think this might be the last Voter’s Voice for a while. I’m enjoying President Obama’s victory, Tammy Baldwin’s successful run for Senate, and the feeling that I may have contributed in a tiny way to the campaign. Meanwhile, let’s look ahead in time and listen to Grandma Daisy as she reminisces about women’s rights and the election of 2012.

Grandchildren, dear, did you say your history teacher asked about 2012? About the way women suddenly came to the forefront again? Oh, I remember it well – the idiocies and the intelligence, the outrage, the voter turnout, and more.

I was worried, children. If President Obama had lost his bid for re-election, we were facing some very difficult times. Many, many women were getting more and more worried. I saw protesters carrying signs saying “Didn’t we protest this s*** already?” and they weren’t kidding. If the other guy won, Mitt Romney was his name, we were looking at a serious loss of rights as women. His VP running mate was even worse in the way he looked down on women — but that’s another post.

That brings me to the idiocies of the campaign. One of the old, white guys in Congress was running for Senate in Missouri, a fairly conservative Southern state. In response to a question on abortion in cases of rape of incest, he claimed that in cases of “legitimate rape” women had ways to “shut that whole thing down.” I would have laughed, too, honey, except that he was serious. Seriously stupid, that is. Later on a candidate from Indianapolis tried to tell women that if they got pregnant from being raped it was “God’s will.”

Both of these dinosaurs were defeated. Women voters decided it was God’s will that we shut their whole thing down. 

Now Mitt had some women problems of his own. He sidestepped a question about the Lily Ledbetter Act – equal pay for equal work, sweetie, it’s in your history book – by claiming he’d made efforts to seek out qualified women for his state cabinet. He had supposedly asked women’s groups for referrals, and they gave him “…binders full of women!” Binders full of resumes, that is. The outrage came from people who said, “Hey, Mitt, it was already the 21st Century. You didn’t know any qualified women in 2003?” and worse, the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus came forward and said, “Mitt did not come to us. We went to Mitt. After he won, we gave him resumes of many potential candidates.” Oops. Twice bad, Mitt. Twice bad. 

So – we were dealing with old farts who didn’t know their basic reproductive science, and potential leaders who thought women were second class citizens not worthy of the same rights as men. There were bright moments, though. 

Some of the best and the brightest moments in 2012 were women who skipped the binders and went straight for the ballot. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin. Oh, Tammy! I was so excited when she decided to run for Senate. I was even more excited when I, a lowly campaign volunteer, got to meet her. She was articulate, smart, and very personable. She listened more than she talked, and when she talked, she gained our attention and our respect. When Baldwin’s victory came, the headlines were all “First openly gay senator elected in Wisconsin!” And we said, “Oh, yeah, we knew that.” But her being gay didn’t matter one way or the other. We Wisconsin voters, gay or straight, female or male, elected Tammy Baldwin to the Senate because of her skills, her intellect, and her record in her fourteen years in Congress. 

So, young ones, there’s more to say on the mood of the election. I could go on longer – the battleground states, they way Mitt and his VP didn’t even carry their own states in the end, the closeness of the popular vote, the issues of birth control and more. Voter suppression attempts, early voter turnout, oh, my the list goes on.

I was looking forward to hearing and saying “Senator Baldwin.” It was like hearing “President Obama” for the first time. And now that Obama had won his re-election, I could look forward to saying President Obama for another four years.

Well, my dears, that’s the main thrust of the story of women’s rights and the 2012 election. Now I’m going to make a pot of coffee. Does your mother still have a package of Obama Blend Coffee in the cupboard? It’s a blend of Hawaiian, Kenyan, and Indonesian beans, and it’s as delicious as it is clever. I’ll have some in my Born in the USA mug.

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Testing: 1, 2, 3 – Encore, almost

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It’s that time of year again! State testing. The Wonderful Knowledge and Concepts Exam. Criterion Referenced Items (a.k.a. WKCE-CRI). Rubrics. Fill in the bubble next to the correct answer choice. Make sure you erase completely and make your new mark heavy and dark. Use only a number 2 pencil. Any questions? You have 40 minutes. Begin.

I teach in a public virtual charter school, an online school, and my students live all over the state of Wisconsin. Since we can’t expect all of them to come to us, we go to them for the required tests. After the Packers beat the Rams on Sunday, I put on my test season sweatshirt (above), packed my bags, and got ready to go.

My destination: a hotel in a major metropolitan area with conference room or rooms that will hold all of our area students. Four of my colleagues and I set up camp in our hotel rooms, including connection to the hotel wi-fi and an in-depth investigation of the in-room coffee makers. We had supper in the bar (the hotel restaurant was out of our price range), checked out the conference rooms for size and set-up, and then settled into our hotel rooms again to relax.

I set out my clothes for the next day — casual, yet teacher-dressy — including my school name badge (so parents will know who I am) and my district ID (in case the state agency decides to audit us). I’m ready.

In the morning, students armed with number 2 pencils will arrive, ready to attack their test booklets.


I hope they all remember that multiple choice items have only one answer, and they should make their marks heavy and dark.

And I sure hope I can forget this repetitive test proctor speech so it stops running through my head and invading my dreams at night!
Note: this is an encore post with a few revisions to bring it up to date. I’m settled into the same sorta-ritzy hotel as last year, with four coworkers instead of two because our enrollment skyrocketed this year. The number of students to be tested in this location doubled, as did the number of younger students that need a benchmark reading assessment. Later – later this week, perhaps, I’ll share some of the trials and tribulations of maintaining test security on the road. 

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Who is Paul Ryan?

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You heard the news, folks. Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan is now Mitt Romney’s running mate. But who is this guy? What’s his vision? What is Paul Ryan really like?

Paul Ryan represents a district in southern Wisconsin in Congress. He is 42 years old, the fourth youngest candidate on a major party ticket. His relative youth may be a factor if it strengthens his appeal to Generation X, Generation Y, and even a few Millennials. Baby Boomers are not so sure; we’ll get to that another day.

Paul Ryan is an economist by trade. He graduated from college with a double major in economics and political science. On the surface, this could be a plus on his balance sheet. He is articulate and intelligent, and he can expound upon economic theories at length.

A CNN morning anchor (we’ll call her “Ash”), was gushing about Paul Ryan on Monday morning. Yes, gushing. Let’s see if I can remember. His eyes, his hairstyle, his smile, and then his past. She was excited that he’d been a bartender – she also worked her way through college tending bar and cocktail waitressing! She was thrilled to hear that he’d worked for Oscar Mayer because he’d driven (are you ready for this?) the Weinermobile. Just what she wanted to see in a Vice President: good looks, experience behind the bar, and a Weinermobile on his resume.

But let’s look more deeply than our giddy blonde anchor did, more deeply into this economist’s vision for the country. His budget plan, nicknamed the “Path to Prosperity,” didn’t really propose to increase prosperity for the average middle class American. His plan as introduced last fall included major changes in the programs known as entitlements, most notably replacing Medicare with a voucher program. His overall plan also relied on severe spending cuts. These cuts, and the austerity policies that would result, promised to be extreme and far-reaching.

The Ryan Budget bill did not become law. It passed the House, but the Senate voted it down.

What’s next, moving forward? Well, blog readers, that’s where the problem sits. Paul Ryan’s plans would move our country in reverse, back to the archaic values of the 1950s. His plans are extreme, severe, and austere in all the wrong places.

Ryan describes himself as being “…as pro-life as a person can be.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t include pro-women who need birth control, empathetic toward women who become pregnant by rape or incest, or supportive of women who have a legitimate need to terminate a pregnancy. He doesn’t value their lives at all.

Rep. Ryan’s budget proposals favor privatizing public education and using public funding in order to do it. His austerity measures and cuts will harm public schools – schools that are suffering  financially already.  A full generation of students are at risk. These students, unfortunately, are too young to vote.

Rep. Ryan likes the idea of for-profit colleges. He ignores the years of evidence that show for-profit colleges’ students’ poor payback record for federal student loans. Defaults on loans like this – well, where does the money come from to make up the missing dough? Ryan hasn’t answered that question. He has a history of voting against increasing amounts or availability of Pell Grants, grants that target low-income students pay for college. In general, his policies show that he views education as a privilege for the wealthy rather than an opportunity and a right for all.

Look beneath the surface, voters. How will a Ryan extreme budget affect you and your family? Make your judgment based on the real and detailed policies and philosophies, not on the thirty second sound bites on television.

And beware of gushing anchors. Bright eyes, a head full of hair that hasn’t grayed (yet), and a Weinermobile drivers’ license aren’t enough for this voter.

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Best and Worst Medal Ceremony

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Best shuttle service: A clear gold medal to the Littleton, Colorado Hampton Inn. Shuttle took us anywhere within Littleton, including the school for the blind, restaurants, and location for boarding the light rail to get downtown.

Best beverage: Gold goes to Ted’s Montana Grill for their wild berry lemonade. I had two and a glass of wine. What a great drink to accompany a bison burger! Silver goes to Starbucks in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for their ice tea lemonade.

Best public transportation: Two gold medals go to light rail in both Minneapolis and the Denver area. In coordination with public transit buses, these light rail systems provided a great means for our family to get where we wanted to go.

Best breakfast: Hotel breakfasts had many options, including the waffle-maker (Colorado) and the pancake machine (Minneapolis). P.S. The coffee was strong and tasty everywhere.

Best lunch: Comfort food from a chain restaurant, Noodles & Company. Me, Daisy, choosing a national chain? This time, yes. We were exhausted, tense from figuring out the train and bus systems, and hot and sweaty in the 90+ degree weather to boot. Seeing “Wisconsin Mac and Cheese” advertised on Denver’s Noodles & Company drew us in. A taste of home away from home: priceless.

Best dinner side dish: Gold: NoNo’s Cajun Grill in LIttleton. We were inspired to look up a recipe for Corn Macque Choux. If we can come even close to this dish, it’ll be delicious.

Best dinner entree: Bison burgers at Ted’s Montana Grill, tied with the shrimp basket cooked to perfection at Ivan’s of East Troy, Wisconsin. Maybe this decision was tainted a little by the relief we felt at arriving safely almost-home and avoiding a  complete meltdown, Amigo style.

Best view: This one isn’t really fair. Which would you rather see, the Mall of America or the Rocky Mountains? Colorado, of course.

Best value: public transportation from Denver International Airport to our hotel. It cost us less than half what a taxi or shared shuttle would have cost, and gave us a chance to see more of the town than we would have otherwise.

Best Save: Chuck, for finding a Best Buy kiosk in the Minneapolis – St. Paul airport when Amigo’s iPhone battery ran low. We’d mistakenly packed his charger in the checked luggage.

Now: the other side of the awards.

Worst access: Holiday Inn Express in MN. The key cards were inconsistent at best, and impossible at worst. Our “good” key card opened the door an average of one time in seven. Sorry, Holiday Inn, that’s not even close to being good enough.

Worst noise level: Union Station in Chicago. Between the heat and the noise, Amigo was beside himself. I can turn off my hearing aids; Amigo, with his super sensitive hearing, cannot.

Worst overall experience: Amtrak. Amtrak, we’ve had good trips and great trips, This one was a huge disappointment. In fact, it’ll take another full post to really make clear all that went wrong. Wait for it.

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