There are, as near as I can figure, four primary activities of an academic. They read a lot. They read and read and read and never quite get caught up with the reading. There is far more information than we can all process. Which is why we spend a lot of time talking to others about it. We talk out our ideas, we talk over your ideas, we talk about teaching and students. We complain about not having time to write. Which is the third activity. We write a lot. We write research reports and lit reviews and articles for practitioner (teacher-oriented) magazines. We write syllabi and comments on students papers. We write power points. We write an ungodly amount of emails. Finally, we teach. We teach anywhere from two to four courses a semester, depending on the kind of University you go to work at. Bigger research loads = lesser teaching load.
So recently I've been following the advice of Paul Silvia who says, in so many words, stop complaining about writing, make the time, write, then forget about it.
This approach has been remarkably productive for me. I've finished one project that has been hanging over my head since August. I've mostly finished my Candidacy paper. I'm making good progress on the first article I want to submit to a peer-reviewed journal.
Simple but inspirational. Well worth the $8.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, January 17, 2011
This may cut into my knitting time
So last semester I did some research along side of my student-teacher supervising, and as I would collect data, I would stash it in a few places, like a dog burying a bone it knows it will want later. I had emails and written feedback of written lessons and written feedback of observations and a lot of videos of student-teachers teaching. I had their written reflections and videos that they recorded to exemplify one aspect or another of teaching. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Alaska, why weren't you coding it as you went along?" and my answer is that the design of the project required that I didn't really know which students were participating, so I couldn't code anything until I knew.
But now I now, so I ordered an external hard drive of epic proportions and started to move all of the data on to it in neat, organized folders, thinking this might take 8 or 9 hours, but . . . I was so wrong.
It turns out that a) at least one of the folder bones is just plain gone. Thankfully every attachment sent by email is kept my our campus web mail, and therefore, I have everything back in one form or another, but retrieving them meant going back through over 300 emails to find them all. b) There were issues with mac v. pc and I lost precious time translating files into forms everything on my pc could read. I needed everything on the pc so I could use NVivo 9 to organize it all, but holy cow . . . what a chore.
So, I feel hopelessly behind now in my coding and completely overwhelmed by the amount of data, but I am gritting my teeth and plowing forward. The one good thing--it's forcing me to choose between coding EVERYTHING and finding those items that will reveal the most about what I want (i.e., I found myself going to great pains to record a series of emails about the cultural content of a lesson. This is not unrelated to classroom management, because lessons that do not include material accessible to students (e.g., it's above their heads in some way, they have insufficient background knowledge, it's taught in a language they don't understand) are inevitably classroom management problems waiting to happen. But I really don't need to go that broard. I think I can show what I want to show just looking at teacher response to student misbehavior--and that makes me breathe a sigh of relief because that means I do not need to look back at all the written lesson plans until I suspect that lesson design was the cause of the problem and I need to support that assertion. Does that make sense? (Nod your head, sip your drink, look interested.)
Anyway, this is actually HUGELY helpful to me. It helps me see the wisdom in my advisor's comment that going into the (new) research project for this spring, I might want to focus on only three class periods with these students--versus trying to code every minute of the 16 to 20 sessions that we will meet.
But in the meantime, between teaching two classes, taking three classes, and working with the data monster of my MA Thesis, it's going to be a very, very busy semester. Maybe not so much time for knitting.
But now I now, so I ordered an external hard drive of epic proportions and started to move all of the data on to it in neat, organized folders, thinking this might take 8 or 9 hours, but . . . I was so wrong.
It turns out that a) at least one of the folder bones is just plain gone. Thankfully every attachment sent by email is kept my our campus web mail, and therefore, I have everything back in one form or another, but retrieving them meant going back through over 300 emails to find them all. b) There were issues with mac v. pc and I lost precious time translating files into forms everything on my pc could read. I needed everything on the pc so I could use NVivo 9 to organize it all, but holy cow . . . what a chore.
So, I feel hopelessly behind now in my coding and completely overwhelmed by the amount of data, but I am gritting my teeth and plowing forward. The one good thing--it's forcing me to choose between coding EVERYTHING and finding those items that will reveal the most about what I want (i.e., I found myself going to great pains to record a series of emails about the cultural content of a lesson. This is not unrelated to classroom management, because lessons that do not include material accessible to students (e.g., it's above their heads in some way, they have insufficient background knowledge, it's taught in a language they don't understand) are inevitably classroom management problems waiting to happen. But I really don't need to go that broard. I think I can show what I want to show just looking at teacher response to student misbehavior--and that makes me breathe a sigh of relief because that means I do not need to look back at all the written lesson plans until I suspect that lesson design was the cause of the problem and I need to support that assertion. Does that make sense? (Nod your head, sip your drink, look interested.)
Anyway, this is actually HUGELY helpful to me. It helps me see the wisdom in my advisor's comment that going into the (new) research project for this spring, I might want to focus on only three class periods with these students--versus trying to code every minute of the 16 to 20 sessions that we will meet.
But in the meantime, between teaching two classes, taking three classes, and working with the data monster of my MA Thesis, it's going to be a very, very busy semester. Maybe not so much time for knitting.
Helen Mary Harrington Black Humbarger
February 11, 1912 - January 16, 2011
Helen was married to my grandfather for over 50 years. She raised a son and three daughters. She did the sort of hosting and traveling expected of the wife of a professor in those days. When I went to Ohio Wesleyan, they were mostly at home in Ohio or at the farm in Indiana, and I have written before about how much they meant to me while I was there.
I will link to an obituary when it is posted. Here it is: Obituary of Grandma Helen
I cannot post about Granma's passing without saying that the peace of mind and care she received in this past decade would not have been possible without the incredible sacrifice of time and energy on the part of her daughter, my youngest Aunt, Charlotte. Charlotte's care meant that Granma had both a trusted confidante and a highly trained personal nurse daily. It meant she could stay in a very nice assisted-living home even when dementia took a toll in the last few years. We didn't have to worry about Grandma with Charlotte at the wheel. I know we are all grateful for that.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I'm Awake
Tonight our quadrafire pellet stove malfunctioned and the ash box ignited. From the pattern of pellets in the ash box, my best guess is that the cleaning rod at the bottom of the crucible jammed partly open, causing the stove to attempt to light pellets, and feed pellets, continuously into the crucible. Smoldering pellets fell into the ashbox, and eventually there was way more fire in the stove than the stove could handle.
Eventually the whole house would have filled with smoke. I suppose the consequences of that could have been pretty devastating.
But it was okay because both of our smoke alarms have working batteries. I woke up and ran downstairs, took about a minute to assess the problem, followed my instincts or inspiration and got the stove to stop fanning the flames, got Chris up to help me, he opened the basement doors, and using my two best oven mitts, I got the ashbox out the garage doors and tossed the whole thing in the snow. Even with the oven mitts, that thing was hot.
Then I went back inside closed all the doors against the billowing smoke, and going back around out the front door, grabbed a shovel and piled snow on the smoking ash box. We're probably going to need a new ash box.
At this point the whole house still stinks of smoke and that acrid burning plastic smell. I think that's the exterior trim on the stove.
The front door is wide open, the back door wide open, some of the windows wide open.
Here's what I learned: the kids can sleep right through the blaring smoke alarms. I won't stay out past their bedtime without an adult babysitter who is going to stay up.
For years I've worried that in the event of a fire I wouldn't be able to wake my deep sleeping husband. Turns out he wakes right up the moment I say softly to him, in a certain tone of voice, "I need your help." Maybe that's the Spirit. Maybe that's 15 years of marriage. Probably a combination of both. All I know is I've hollared at him when a sick little boy was puking all over the place and he woke not knowing his own name.
Ugh. The smell is awful. I wonder if I should get out fans. It's been an hour now and I definitely want to go to sleep. Think I will go check the perimeter, the ash box, and if everything looks okay, start closing windows and doors and head back to bed.
Eventually the whole house would have filled with smoke. I suppose the consequences of that could have been pretty devastating.
But it was okay because both of our smoke alarms have working batteries. I woke up and ran downstairs, took about a minute to assess the problem, followed my instincts or inspiration and got the stove to stop fanning the flames, got Chris up to help me, he opened the basement doors, and using my two best oven mitts, I got the ashbox out the garage doors and tossed the whole thing in the snow. Even with the oven mitts, that thing was hot.
Then I went back inside closed all the doors against the billowing smoke, and going back around out the front door, grabbed a shovel and piled snow on the smoking ash box. We're probably going to need a new ash box.
At this point the whole house still stinks of smoke and that acrid burning plastic smell. I think that's the exterior trim on the stove.
The front door is wide open, the back door wide open, some of the windows wide open.
Here's what I learned: the kids can sleep right through the blaring smoke alarms. I won't stay out past their bedtime without an adult babysitter who is going to stay up.
For years I've worried that in the event of a fire I wouldn't be able to wake my deep sleeping husband. Turns out he wakes right up the moment I say softly to him, in a certain tone of voice, "I need your help." Maybe that's the Spirit. Maybe that's 15 years of marriage. Probably a combination of both. All I know is I've hollared at him when a sick little boy was puking all over the place and he woke not knowing his own name.
Ugh. The smell is awful. I wonder if I should get out fans. It's been an hour now and I definitely want to go to sleep. Think I will go check the perimeter, the ash box, and if everything looks okay, start closing windows and doors and head back to bed.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Heesh
I just have a hard time making time to blog during the semester. There's so much going on and the day starts so early, goes full speed ahead, and ends with a quiet house and me trying to get a few minutes of quiet time.
Today was exciting. It started out great and it got better.
First, it was Ben and Milo's birthday. So we started the day with hugs and congratulations. They got to take cupcakes to school to celebrate and I managed to dodge the rain and get on the bus before the downpour.
Then I got the better part of an article about teaching math conceptually read before the first World Languages class. This was the first class since their student-teaching experience ended last Thursday, which meant for Michelle and I, a rediscovery of how much of our own classwork we could get done with all the extra time freed up by *not* typing up observation notes and lesson plan feedback. Still, it was good to see them all this morning. Working with undergrads has some things in common with working with fourth-graders. You get attached in no time.
After class we (Michelle and I) headed back to the office to eat lunch (she brought a yummy soup for us both) and to chat and to try to get more reading done. She headed off to her afternoon class and I fetched my car and went to get my mail, hoping for Max's report card. No luck, but we did get a lovely advent calendar from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and the twins got a stack of birthday cards. I put those all aside for the future, triaged the bills, and headed over to the high school to finance Max and a friend who were carbo-loading (that's a joke. They're 14-yr-old boys. They just food load. Any food.) before theater rehearsal started. From there it was back to campus, having passed the magic hour (4 pm) when I no longer have to park in the next county with my student parking pass--I can park for free in the parking garage right next to the building where my evening class is.
Right before class I got an email from one of my advisors saying that an idea I have for a research project is not half bad and we should get together soon to go over it. I need a 1-credit independent study with this fellow to round out my ESL-certification requirements, so I had come up with an idea this weekend. I thought he might say no, because I have to work on my thesis this spring, too, but no, we'll meet and maybe my next research project will be with elementary ELLs. That would rock :)
We had class, it went well, and then I gave Michelle a ride out to her car (it started to rain buckets) and then I headed over to the church where Chris was waiting in the hallway with his reading material. He is the best ward mission leader ever. We hung out and talked and soaked up the happiness of the church building while the twins did cub scouts and ate birthday cupcakes. Then Chris ran over to the high school and got Max and I took Ben and Milo and friend's daughter home. When Chris and Max got home, Max gave Ben and Milo their birthday cards (+ Wii points) and performed for them an original rap he wrote to commemorate the occasion of their 9th birthday. We will try to record it later this week. Right now he needed to get some homework done and then collapse into bed.
There were lots of messages from loving family on the answering machine for the twins and they loved that. There voice mail on my phone for them and they loved that. And there was a call from California from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and they loved that. Tomorrow night we'll have our "official" family party with Grandma Gaye and the rest of their cards and presents, but tonight was good, too.
Then we all went to bed, but when my head got to thinking instead of sleeping and Chris fell asleep listening to me talk about stuff (he gets up an hour earlier than I do to take Max to seminary every morning-trust me, I didn't take it personally) I got up again to go write some thoughts down. Then, just for the heck of it, I checked the high school's website and after signing it I found Max's report card. And lo and behold--it was all manner of As. Regular As, A-'s, and a genuine A+.
Any sleepy feelings I might have had went skidding out the window and I texted Grandpa and Grandma in California (because it was still a decent hour there) to tell them the good news. I'm so proud of all the hard work Max has put into this quarter. He really has made a tremendous effort to do his best, to improve his writing and his homework consistency, and I am ever so proud of him. We don't pay for As or use other "rewards" because we think those suck the intrinsic motivation out of school. We want him to set high standards because he knows he can meet them and it feels good to succeed, not because he'll get a wad of cash for it (and anyway, I can't afford those grades. He's got 8 periods of classes--no lunch. For that I could buy him a new cell phone and have change. I'm not doing that either.)
But we might take him out to lunch. A bottomless pit of french fries and a bacon burger and unlimited peanuts at Five Guys and an embarrassing stream of "We love you"s and "We're so proud of you"s. That's a good lunch, I think.
And now I should really attempt to go to sleep. Probably if I stop playing on the computer (and stop trying to cram for the graduate-school version of a vocabulary quiz) I'll blink and wake up at 7am to the alarm :)
Tomorrow is Wednesday and Wednesdays are my qual methods class, getting ready for the twins' birthday party, an hour of speech therapy for them, dinner, cake, and presents :) Another good day, don't you think?
Only two more days till curtain goes up. They do a school preview of The Winter's Tale at 10 am and then the actual performances Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday matinee. Grandma Gaye and Grandma Judy will each go this weekend with their respective offspring. Then it's full speed ahead into Thanksgiving break. This year we're going to Philly to be with family there :) We're getting a hotel room Wednesday night at some variation of the hotel Marriot chain, and coming back Thursday evening. By this time two weeks from now, we'll have a Christmas tree in the corner. Good times :)
Today was exciting. It started out great and it got better.
First, it was Ben and Milo's birthday. So we started the day with hugs and congratulations. They got to take cupcakes to school to celebrate and I managed to dodge the rain and get on the bus before the downpour.
Then I got the better part of an article about teaching math conceptually read before the first World Languages class. This was the first class since their student-teaching experience ended last Thursday, which meant for Michelle and I, a rediscovery of how much of our own classwork we could get done with all the extra time freed up by *not* typing up observation notes and lesson plan feedback. Still, it was good to see them all this morning. Working with undergrads has some things in common with working with fourth-graders. You get attached in no time.
After class we (Michelle and I) headed back to the office to eat lunch (she brought a yummy soup for us both) and to chat and to try to get more reading done. She headed off to her afternoon class and I fetched my car and went to get my mail, hoping for Max's report card. No luck, but we did get a lovely advent calendar from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and the twins got a stack of birthday cards. I put those all aside for the future, triaged the bills, and headed over to the high school to finance Max and a friend who were carbo-loading (that's a joke. They're 14-yr-old boys. They just food load. Any food.) before theater rehearsal started. From there it was back to campus, having passed the magic hour (4 pm) when I no longer have to park in the next county with my student parking pass--I can park for free in the parking garage right next to the building where my evening class is.
Right before class I got an email from one of my advisors saying that an idea I have for a research project is not half bad and we should get together soon to go over it. I need a 1-credit independent study with this fellow to round out my ESL-certification requirements, so I had come up with an idea this weekend. I thought he might say no, because I have to work on my thesis this spring, too, but no, we'll meet and maybe my next research project will be with elementary ELLs. That would rock :)
We had class, it went well, and then I gave Michelle a ride out to her car (it started to rain buckets) and then I headed over to the church where Chris was waiting in the hallway with his reading material. He is the best ward mission leader ever. We hung out and talked and soaked up the happiness of the church building while the twins did cub scouts and ate birthday cupcakes. Then Chris ran over to the high school and got Max and I took Ben and Milo and friend's daughter home. When Chris and Max got home, Max gave Ben and Milo their birthday cards (+ Wii points) and performed for them an original rap he wrote to commemorate the occasion of their 9th birthday. We will try to record it later this week. Right now he needed to get some homework done and then collapse into bed.
There were lots of messages from loving family on the answering machine for the twins and they loved that. There voice mail on my phone for them and they loved that. And there was a call from California from Grandma Donna and Grandpa Richard and they loved that. Tomorrow night we'll have our "official" family party with Grandma Gaye and the rest of their cards and presents, but tonight was good, too.
Then we all went to bed, but when my head got to thinking instead of sleeping and Chris fell asleep listening to me talk about stuff (he gets up an hour earlier than I do to take Max to seminary every morning-trust me, I didn't take it personally) I got up again to go write some thoughts down. Then, just for the heck of it, I checked the high school's website and after signing it I found Max's report card. And lo and behold--it was all manner of As. Regular As, A-'s, and a genuine A+.
Any sleepy feelings I might have had went skidding out the window and I texted Grandpa and Grandma in California (because it was still a decent hour there) to tell them the good news. I'm so proud of all the hard work Max has put into this quarter. He really has made a tremendous effort to do his best, to improve his writing and his homework consistency, and I am ever so proud of him. We don't pay for As or use other "rewards" because we think those suck the intrinsic motivation out of school. We want him to set high standards because he knows he can meet them and it feels good to succeed, not because he'll get a wad of cash for it (and anyway, I can't afford those grades. He's got 8 periods of classes--no lunch. For that I could buy him a new cell phone and have change. I'm not doing that either.)
But we might take him out to lunch. A bottomless pit of french fries and a bacon burger and unlimited peanuts at Five Guys and an embarrassing stream of "We love you"s and "We're so proud of you"s. That's a good lunch, I think.
And now I should really attempt to go to sleep. Probably if I stop playing on the computer (and stop trying to cram for the graduate-school version of a vocabulary quiz) I'll blink and wake up at 7am to the alarm :)
Tomorrow is Wednesday and Wednesdays are my qual methods class, getting ready for the twins' birthday party, an hour of speech therapy for them, dinner, cake, and presents :) Another good day, don't you think?
Only two more days till curtain goes up. They do a school preview of The Winter's Tale at 10 am and then the actual performances Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday matinee. Grandma Gaye and Grandma Judy will each go this weekend with their respective offspring. Then it's full speed ahead into Thanksgiving break. This year we're going to Philly to be with family there :) We're getting a hotel room Wednesday night at some variation of the hotel Marriot chain, and coming back Thursday evening. By this time two weeks from now, we'll have a Christmas tree in the corner. Good times :)
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Gratitude
I don't often think about it anymore, but tonight I did--remembered sitting in our driveway in Minnesota in one of a series of cars that Honda gave Chris to drive around his five-state district--we had just gotten back from a date night, or maybe we were just leaving to go on it, but the topic of conversation was the most recent traumatic conversation I'd had with Max's teacher. We decided then and there, it was just before Christmas, that we would finish out the school year--because the twins were barely one and because we believed that Max should finish what he started--but then we would homeschool him. Max couldn't seem to get a grip on his behavior at school, and the teachers--well it was just one crazy conversation after another. Max hadn't had a truly great teacher since preschool. We were tired of it. We felt "they" were creating a self-fullfilling prophecy with Max. They expected him to misbehave--and he did.
So we homeschooled, and while there was much that was wonderful about it--it was truly the most satisfying teaching I have ever done, and he learned a lot--our family is not ideally designed for homeschooling. There came a time when I felt that the damage had been undone, that Max was ready to give school another shot, and so we tried the Charter school. Since then, each year has been a little better than the one that came before it. And each parent-teacher conference season got a little easier than the one that came before it. At some point he stopped being the gifted chatty kid who couldn't stay in his seat and he started being the gifted outgoing leader who teachers missed when his seat was empty. (Ben and Milo are more like those wolf cubs on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Even when they're biting the teacher wolf's tail, she's still kind of bemused by them. I've never had a rough p/t conference for them. If you don't know the show I'm talking about, you're too young to be reading this blog anyway.)
Tonight was a choir concert at the high school. I've been to a lot of school choir concerts. I sang in them when I was in high school (in Mass, not in CA), and Max has been in choir in school since 5th grade. None of them prepared me for what I saw tonight. The choir director at State High is unbelievably professional. He is warm, he is brilliant, and he evokes from ordinary kids extraordinary sounds. Only 7 weeks into the school year, I heard the best choir concert of my life tonight. And my kid, my tall, funny, smart guy with the fabulous hair, was there loving it all.
I am so--words are inadequate to express the depth of my gratitude that Max HAS this. He wakes up and goes to morning seminary and rushes to school because when you are a bright kid and someone truly challenges you to learn more, do more, think in new ways, solve a problem worth solving, it's like the best cold spring water on a hot day down a parched throat. It's exciting.
I feel silly gushing like this. Adolescence has proved to me that it's a wild ride with big ups and big downs and there have been periods when I have thought maybe I'm not cut out for it (but, Chris is pretty good at the big-kid part, and he wouldn't let me give notice), and so I get that we've got a long way yet to go with this whole project.
But when you're building something as important as the mind, body, and soul of a young man, it's an incredible advantage to have good tools to do it with. I'm so grateful that he's at a place where when he chooses to stretch, to learn, to grow, that he has so many good options. Great options. I am so grateful.
So we homeschooled, and while there was much that was wonderful about it--it was truly the most satisfying teaching I have ever done, and he learned a lot--our family is not ideally designed for homeschooling. There came a time when I felt that the damage had been undone, that Max was ready to give school another shot, and so we tried the Charter school. Since then, each year has been a little better than the one that came before it. And each parent-teacher conference season got a little easier than the one that came before it. At some point he stopped being the gifted chatty kid who couldn't stay in his seat and he started being the gifted outgoing leader who teachers missed when his seat was empty. (Ben and Milo are more like those wolf cubs on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Even when they're biting the teacher wolf's tail, she's still kind of bemused by them. I've never had a rough p/t conference for them. If you don't know the show I'm talking about, you're too young to be reading this blog anyway.)
Tonight was a choir concert at the high school. I've been to a lot of school choir concerts. I sang in them when I was in high school (in Mass, not in CA), and Max has been in choir in school since 5th grade. None of them prepared me for what I saw tonight. The choir director at State High is unbelievably professional. He is warm, he is brilliant, and he evokes from ordinary kids extraordinary sounds. Only 7 weeks into the school year, I heard the best choir concert of my life tonight. And my kid, my tall, funny, smart guy with the fabulous hair, was there loving it all.
I am so--words are inadequate to express the depth of my gratitude that Max HAS this. He wakes up and goes to morning seminary and rushes to school because when you are a bright kid and someone truly challenges you to learn more, do more, think in new ways, solve a problem worth solving, it's like the best cold spring water on a hot day down a parched throat. It's exciting.
I feel silly gushing like this. Adolescence has proved to me that it's a wild ride with big ups and big downs and there have been periods when I have thought maybe I'm not cut out for it (but, Chris is pretty good at the big-kid part, and he wouldn't let me give notice), and so I get that we've got a long way yet to go with this whole project.
But when you're building something as important as the mind, body, and soul of a young man, it's an incredible advantage to have good tools to do it with. I'm so grateful that he's at a place where when he chooses to stretch, to learn, to grow, that he has so many good options. Great options. I am so grateful.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Wednesday Night
I am soooo tired and I want nothing more than to go to sleep, but I've a wicked case of heartburn tonight and laying down only makes it worse, so while I wait for the zantac to do its thing, I thought I would try to post a quick blog entry.
We're having a good fall here in the Hults household. Max has taken to State High like Emily takes to a bucket of brand new tennis balls, and State High seems to like him back. After emphasizing to all the freshpeople that they SHOULD try out for the fall play, but they would NOT get cast--they ended up casting three freshpeople--including Max, who got a great part. Although morning seminary at church starts at still dark o'clock, he (and his trusted driver, Chris) haven't missed a morning yet. They have a dedicated teacher who is far more chipper at that hour than I am. (I get to drive if Chris is out of town on business.) He's doing well in his classes, especially Geometry, and we are just so proud of him we can hardly stand it.
School for me is crazy busy. There's a lot to do as both a Graduate Assistant and for my classes. I honestly don't know how I'd do my research for the Master's Thesis I need to write if I weren't also taking the Qualitative Methods course this fall. Everything I'm learning in there I have to immediately turn around and apply to my research project.
Ben and Milo are rolling along in third grade. They're still doing speech with Penn State, and that's been the hardest part to fit in the schedule. I can get them to their therapy appointments, but I keep forgetting to have them do homework for it when we are doing the rest of their homework.
Emily hates being alone during the day while we're all gone. I totally get that. I hate that she can't come with me to school, too.
Chris has two trips coming up and I'm so grateful to have Gaye's help while he is gone. I did one week when both Chris and Gaye were out of town and it was really all just too much--and that was before Max's play rehearsals started.
I'll try to post more soon. It's late and time to try again to go to sleep :)
We're having a good fall here in the Hults household. Max has taken to State High like Emily takes to a bucket of brand new tennis balls, and State High seems to like him back. After emphasizing to all the freshpeople that they SHOULD try out for the fall play, but they would NOT get cast--they ended up casting three freshpeople--including Max, who got a great part. Although morning seminary at church starts at still dark o'clock, he (and his trusted driver, Chris) haven't missed a morning yet. They have a dedicated teacher who is far more chipper at that hour than I am. (I get to drive if Chris is out of town on business.) He's doing well in his classes, especially Geometry, and we are just so proud of him we can hardly stand it.
School for me is crazy busy. There's a lot to do as both a Graduate Assistant and for my classes. I honestly don't know how I'd do my research for the Master's Thesis I need to write if I weren't also taking the Qualitative Methods course this fall. Everything I'm learning in there I have to immediately turn around and apply to my research project.
Ben and Milo are rolling along in third grade. They're still doing speech with Penn State, and that's been the hardest part to fit in the schedule. I can get them to their therapy appointments, but I keep forgetting to have them do homework for it when we are doing the rest of their homework.
Emily hates being alone during the day while we're all gone. I totally get that. I hate that she can't come with me to school, too.
Chris has two trips coming up and I'm so grateful to have Gaye's help while he is gone. I did one week when both Chris and Gaye were out of town and it was really all just too much--and that was before Max's play rehearsals started.
I'll try to post more soon. It's late and time to try again to go to sleep :)
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Beginnings
There is something about the start of a school year that flips all of my cookies. I love the new school supplies, those few weeks when you can find a pen in the first place you look, and the chatter from the kids about new friends, new teachers, new challenges. Max likes all of his new teachers but is sufficiently awed by their apparent zero tolerance policy for missing homework.
If you haven't seen the back-to-school pictures Chris took this year, log onto facebook and go look in his photos. Charming. We'll order prints of those and skip the school pictures (well, the kids will still go dressed to look good so they show up nice in the yearbook or whatever, but that's it. They just cost too much to put up with the poor results. Ben and Milo are at that age where sitting in front of a backdrop cloth makes them bare their teeth like preteen wolves and Max is at that age where he knows Chris just takes a better picture.)
Oh my heck. I see that smile and it's all I can do not to just pull down the moon for that boy.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Here's the shot of the shawl as artfully displayed by the fair staff. (Okay, yeah, that's a wire hanger, but I think it's a BLUE wire hanger. So there's that.)
At least the color is more true.
So I'm midway through the second week of the semester and I realize it could all go to heck, but sometimes good things happen to decent people, and so I am just going to go ahead and say it: this may be the best semester ever.
I have this silly little course I have to take as part of a graduation requirement. It only meets two Monday evenings a month, and instead of being just a check off box, I have learned something new and quite useful in the two classes I've attended so far. It's just a one-credit course, so there's next-to-nothing in the way of homework and yet--it's taught by a truly talented instructor. I know, right?
Tuesday evenings is my Vygotsky in Education class. Taught by a professor really incredibly adept at guiding discussion, it's a great group. LOTS of class participation. In it's sister course last fall I found a truly compelling theory through which to explore more ideas in education and I'm looking forward to that kind of growth again. It's a ton of reading, but it's so worth it.
Wednesday mid-day is a Qualitative Methods course that the professor tried to get me to drop because it's not supposed to be for Master's students. It's for second year doctoral students. I resisted and she let me stay. I'm so glad! I wanted it for guiding me in how to do the research I want to do for my master's thesis and that seems to be exactly what I'm going to learn to do. Plus out of thirty of us (HUGE class for this level. We'll break out into two groups for 2 out of 3 hours of the class.) there are two other Masters students.
The students I'll be observing this semester are a smart and talented bunch. They're young, but most aspiring teachers are. I'm really enjoying observing their classes.
_______________
When I came back to my knitting this summer, I rediscovered all the projects I'd abandoned and the general feeling I have about them is "Wow, THIS is great yarn! And what a great pattern!" It's very satisfying to finish unfinished business. Here are fingerless mittens for me:
Milo
Ben
Am I not blessed beyond all that I deserve? I am.
If you haven't seen the back-to-school pictures Chris took this year, log onto facebook and go look in his photos. Charming. We'll order prints of those and skip the school pictures (well, the kids will still go dressed to look good so they show up nice in the yearbook or whatever, but that's it. They just cost too much to put up with the poor results. Ben and Milo are at that age where sitting in front of a backdrop cloth makes them bare their teeth like preteen wolves and Max is at that age where he knows Chris just takes a better picture.)
Oh my heck. I see that smile and it's all I can do not to just pull down the moon for that boy.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Here's the shot of the shawl as artfully displayed by the fair staff. (Okay, yeah, that's a wire hanger, but I think it's a BLUE wire hanger. So there's that.)
At least the color is more true.
So I'm midway through the second week of the semester and I realize it could all go to heck, but sometimes good things happen to decent people, and so I am just going to go ahead and say it: this may be the best semester ever.
I have this silly little course I have to take as part of a graduation requirement. It only meets two Monday evenings a month, and instead of being just a check off box, I have learned something new and quite useful in the two classes I've attended so far. It's just a one-credit course, so there's next-to-nothing in the way of homework and yet--it's taught by a truly talented instructor. I know, right?
Tuesday evenings is my Vygotsky in Education class. Taught by a professor really incredibly adept at guiding discussion, it's a great group. LOTS of class participation. In it's sister course last fall I found a truly compelling theory through which to explore more ideas in education and I'm looking forward to that kind of growth again. It's a ton of reading, but it's so worth it.
Wednesday mid-day is a Qualitative Methods course that the professor tried to get me to drop because it's not supposed to be for Master's students. It's for second year doctoral students. I resisted and she let me stay. I'm so glad! I wanted it for guiding me in how to do the research I want to do for my master's thesis and that seems to be exactly what I'm going to learn to do. Plus out of thirty of us (HUGE class for this level. We'll break out into two groups for 2 out of 3 hours of the class.) there are two other Masters students.
The students I'll be observing this semester are a smart and talented bunch. They're young, but most aspiring teachers are. I'm really enjoying observing their classes.
_______________
When I came back to my knitting this summer, I rediscovered all the projects I'd abandoned and the general feeling I have about them is "Wow, THIS is great yarn! And what a great pattern!" It's very satisfying to finish unfinished business. Here are fingerless mittens for me:
Milo
Ben
Am I not blessed beyond all that I deserve? I am.
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