2007, take 1

This is not a blog about movies but…

I’ve seen four good ones in as many days, two in theaters, two on DVD, so…
Juno:  Over-hyped (but how could it not be?) but hilarious.  Like the hype is saying, this is Ellen Page’s big break (because I don’t think Hard Candy was everyone’s cup of tea).  The dialogue is as witty as promised, after [...]

This is me on a Friday night…

working away on planning the first few weeks of January, the beginning of our Weather & Water unit.  Planning curriculum has been one of my favorite parts of teaching; it occurs to me that I really miss that process of making choices about what to teach and how to teach it.  No matter how committed [...]

Hey school bloggers, need a job?

Get paid to do what you already do (only, more so). The skinny? You’d be launching a blog for The Open Planning Project, which already launched StreetsBlog, the roving reporter on everything to do with improving NYC’s streets, from transportation to community… The idea behind TOPP is to use the open-source model of [...]

Gifted

This morning I read in the Boston Globe about the creation of Handmeon, a “gift ecology” website which aims to introduce gift-giving rings inspired by the practices of the South Pacific Kula tribe, where significant objects are passed along to confer social status, with no expectation of return.  Here and now, part of the appeal is the nonconsumer, [...]

Morale…

I gave each of my teachers on the sixth grade team a small gift certificate and a bunch of stickers, and a little note of appreciation. We had a cake at our team meeting, and coffee. I have such low morale myself right now, but I really want to do every little thing [...]

STRESSFACE

Oh well.

I love this, but the authorities removed it.  I think we all need whimsical things to wake us up, make us pay just a bit more attention to the world out there.  But, alas, not everyone agrees.

(Dis)comfort

He doesn’t feel comfortable in my class, he tells his mom, which is why he chose not to come see me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or today when I sat in the cafeteria at lunchtime conducting office hours for students who failed their lab report (most of them) and wanted to rewrite it a third time [...]