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>Those vagabonds. Really. First the tulip and daylily traded places. Now there’s a hollyhock in the middle of the as-yet-unplanted garden plot. How does this happen? I blame the squirrels for the bulbs moving. But the stray hollyhock? Maybe a bunny or bird ate a seed and, er, dropped it there.
I transplanted it before spreading the compost. Here’s hoping it thrives in its new home.
>I get my news from a variety of sources: my local newspaper, news websites online, and more. I find people who are like-minded online, too. This primary election — you know, the longest one in recent history — isn’t as dull as some say. In fact, even as I worry that Party conflicts may provide the opposition with too much ammunition, I’m finding it downright fascinating.
Teaching is a political profession. Besides the internal district politics, administrative power and control, my daily work is affected by decisions made in the state capital and in Washington, D.C. When my friends tell me that they just want to “close their doors and teach,” I want to grab them by the shoulders, look them in the eyes, and say, “You can’t shut out the laws! You need to help make them! And change them!” And then I want to go home and write a letter to my senators and congressional reps.
A few years ago Rod Paige, then Secretary of Education, called my national association (the NEA) a nasty name. He asserted that our tactics were terrorist in nature. I wrote letters. I sent emails. Many, many educators did the same. By calling teachers terrorists, he put us in the category of those with whom our government is at war. This kind of outlook in the Bush cabinet has been very damaging to public education.
Now the NEA (National Education Association) is looking for slogans to help publicize the need for professional wages in education. I have a few ideas, and I know there are clever educators who can access their inner salesperson and come up with a really good campaign. What do you think, boys and girls? Women and men? Ladies and gentlemen of the classroom and beyond? Educating everyone takes everyone — in the village and beyond — and it’s not cheap.
My slogan thoughts so far:
Do the math: pay like a pro.
No Classroom Left Unfunded
A “free” Public Education is priceless, not costly.
There are slogans built into existing quotes, too:
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
But for now, I’ll keep informed on the upcoming election and I’ll keep writing creative and effective lesson plans to connect with students in every way I can. I feel fortunate to work in a great field, one where I can make a difference. My votes can help ensure support from the legislatures and the White House.
Yours can, too.
>I am looking forward to our family vacation.
That said, I still need to teach four more weeks, grade a few more (lots more) papers, complete a big batch of NCLB-related paperwork, complete a full set of progress reports, and clean/straighten/ close up the classroom.
And… help Amigo with his homework. Keep track of his finals schedule, figure out his transportation for that week, and get him there and home on time.
Move La Petite home from school. This might not be as bad as it’s been in the past, since she’s not living in a dorm any more. She has a year lease on the apartment, and most of the furniture and other large items will stay there. We’ll just have to move her mattress, her stereo, her clothing, her shoes, her rabbits… well, maybe it will be a big trip after all.
And then, when the school year is actually over and I’ve locked the classroom door and left it behind, I need to get the family ready to travel.
One of Husband’s many sayings is this: “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your goal was to drain the swamp.”
I think I need to rephrase the first sentence of this post. I will look forward to vacation the day we leave and everything else is done. Then, and only then, will I be able to breathe freely and easily. I’ll be ready to leave my own “swamp” behind.
>”Mom, Grandpa sent me a white elephant!” La Petite moaned one Christmas morning. Grandpa’s heart was in the right place. He knew she loved rabbits, and he had picked out a ceramic candlestick shaped like a rabbit. The rabbit was, I kid you not, this rabbit was scary. He meant well, and she kept it (at the back of a shelf somewhere), but thank goodness she was old enough to appreciate the thought behind the gift!
As kids get older, it’s harder to shop for them. La Petite is in college, so we let the grandparents know what she needs for her apartment and for school. They often pick up gift cards for her favorite online stores, too, knowing that clothes and Converse shoes make this girl happy. Most of the time we’re lucky that way.
Amigo is a little tougher. When he was young, his toys were easy to pick out; they were the ones that talked, sang, and made noise. The noisiest, of course, came from the grandparents. We think they were laughing all the way through the store knowing what they were plotting for their own offspring! Now he is interested in cooking, so they buy him Braille cookbooks and kitchen utensils. Kitchen utensils make great fidget tools for a fidgety kid, too.
Parent Bloggers Network suggests Grandkids Gift Guide, a resource for gift giving. This could be handy! It doesn’t have a specific area for teens or college kids (yet), but there are some unique and fun items in the 12 and over section. No candle holders. Darn.
>PTA decided to extend Teacher Appreciation Week to be two weeks long. They asked kids to bring in flowers. Despite the poor quality photo from my cell phone camera, I think you can see that I feel appreciated. Yes, that’s my messy desk behind the vase. Hey, it’s May. My workload is at its heaviest right now. In other words, it’s the perfect time for kids to give me flowers.
But I must say I like these flowers even better. 
P.S. PTA gave us “breakfast” in the lounge at recess, including Starbucks coffee. W00T!!
>Husband laughs at me when I take pictures of my compost bin and its lovely product, but a few comments and emails have said, “Show us! Show us more!” I’ll lead you to a few, and then add in whatever turns up in the camera this season.
To begin with, this is the bin. Thrilling, eh? We had to knock down the fence so that the lid would stay on. Luckily, the neighbors (the landlords) didn’t care, even appreciated that we were willing to take care of it so they didn’t have to do the work or dispose of the wood themselves.
Before and after pictures! The science teacher in me loves this one. The organic process, the macro and micro-organisms doing what they do, not to mention the minimal garbage I send to the landfill, what’s not to love?!
I saw this on “sale”, and I just couldn’t buy it. It’s lovely, it would look nice on my kitchen counter, but I can’t bring myself to spend money on compost. Part of the beauty of composting is that it’s low or no cost. I’ll just keep re-using my old plastic containers and then throwing them out when they finally give up the ghost.
>If you know the name Julia Ward Howe, you probably know her as the writer of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Ms. Howe’s poetic voice also suggested Mother’s Day, long before it became a holiday, as a day to celebrate celebrate peace.
The first stanza of her Mother’s Day Proclamation reflects her protective feelings as she wished for the men in her life to be safe from the ravages of war.
“Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
MOMocrats are celebrating Mother’s Day all week by asking moms to share their dreams. I join them as Mom, as teacher, as political liberal, but mostly as dreamer.
I dream that differences will be valued, not disdained.
Eye color, hair color, body shapes, and skin shades will be appreciated for their beauty and variety.
Cultural traditions will not disappear, but will thrive and grow together into a rich and fascinating sharing of knowledge and beliefs.
I dream that blindness will be merely a different way of seeing, and deafness impair only the quantity, not the quality of the language ‘heard’.
Children will matter because they own the future. Their education, academic and social, will become and remain of utmost importance.
The mediators and the peacemakers will be recognized as the strongest leaders.
Questions will come from curiosity, not ignorance, and the answers will breed respect.
Knowing each other, knowing ourselves, will lead to knowing that fights and conflicts, wars of all kinds, will cease to be of value.
>Hi, I’m Daisy, and I compost in my backyard.
You could call me an urban composter, although my home city is more suburban in size and style. I have a bin in the backyard, a bucket in the kitchen, and a small pitchfork and shovel in the garage. These are my tools, and this is my story.
I gather more kitchen garbage than I ever thought possible and dump it in the bin. Layered with grass clippings, weeds, and the occasional pile of leaves, the mixture, well, rots. Slowly but surely, it decomposes and becomes again one with the soil. I stir it once in a while with a pitchfork or turn the layers with a shovel, but that’s about all. Compost, as they say, happens. And it often happens not because of my efforts, but regardless of what I do.
My bin is simple. It looks like a large black garbage can, but it has no bottom. The lid is easy for me to take off, but somehow the raccoons haven’t gotten into it. Husband bought it for me several years ago, assuring me that it is made from recycled plastics.
Regular ingredients in my compost include coffee grounds, banana peels, apple cores, potato peelings, and melon rinds. Children prefer not to eat the heel of the bread? Compost. Bag of chips down to the crumbs? Compost. Shucking corn on the cob from the farmer’s market? Compost. Some of my more unusual ingredients have included wax paper covered with cookie crumbs, the paper wrapper from a fast food sandwich, and paper towels used to wipe up a spill. We’ll add small amounts of grass clippings because large layers tend to mildew and not mix well with the rest. The contents of our pet rabbit’s litter box can go in the compost on occasion, but again, not too much or it simply won’t decompose completely. In the autumn, the fallen leaves will provide the final top layer before winter sets in and it‘s too cold for the process to work.
There is very little that can’t go in the compost. Eggshells might work in warmer climates; here, they still look like eggshells months later. Meat, dairy, and seafood are not good ingredients because they decompose slowly or because the smell will attract wildlife you might rather not host in your backyard.
I was chatting with a teaching colleague in August, discussing the fast pace of our jobs and how weeding and composting give me such pleasure. My coworker, an environmental science teacher, understood completely. She knew that sometimes, we just have to sit back and let nature’s cycles take life at their own speed.
In our climate (northeastern Wisconsin), composting only works for about half the year. Every spring we spread the previous year’s compost on the garden, and then the whole cycle starts again.
Yet, in this fast paced, oft-wasteful world, it feels good to take action on a small scale. Composting does that for me.
This post is a reprint of a guest post written last September. I’m getting ready to spread the spring compost layer, and it feels great. We had a frost warning a few nights ago, reminding me not to plant too soon, but the compost and rototilling can happen any time.
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