I’ve been thinking about the lists people sometimes make of “Things to do before I die”. Well, being a completely lazy person, I’m thinking that YOU should make that list for me. So whaddaya think? Any reasonable requests?
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Gooda wark Danialsan
We have three “Access periods” each week, because good middle schools have things like that. It’s in all the literature. Our access groups are students selected at random from 6th-8th grade. Once you have someone in your access group they stay with you until they enter high school. We don’t know what happens to them after that. So we’re pretty much stuck with the kids that we get unless you can convince another teacher to trade with you.
I have the best access group. It was a little experiment in self-fulfilling prophesy. When we first started doing these groups I told mine that they were the best access group. We fed off the fact that we happened to win the first inter-access group contest, and now they are the easiest group of middle students to work with ever. The 8th graders make the 7th graders tow the line and 6th graders are all terrified of me.
This week we’re talking about bullying, and to introduce it we showed The Karate Kid to the rugrats*. It works well for an introduction, and when we first did this 2 years ago I made up a Karate Kid “talking points” cheat sheet for our teachers to use to lead the discussions. It’s an interesting movie to use, because it’s got the swears, drinking, smoking, fighting and racism in it, but it’s incorporated in a way that makes it easy to turn each one of those into a useful discussion. I think next time we show it I’ll include all of the swears in my introduction so the students aren’t shocked when they hear them in the movie.
We tried something new this time. We took a long sheet of paper from the art teacher and combined the two 12×12 screens into one huge 12×24 screen and showed it in letterbox. It worked surprisingly well.
*I said “rugrats” because I knew Annette would jump all over me in the comments if I said “kids”.
Cool Scoop
My Mom and Dad bought this for me last spring. It took me a while to get around to using it, since I’m not a big ice cream eater. (I usually just scoop a spoonful out of the carton and eat it then.) This thing is AMAZING! It scoops like a dream in the closed position, then when you open it – instant falling into the bowl. I highly recommend it. The brand name is Good Cook.
FoodSucker
Yeah, I know it’s called a FoodSaver, but FoodSucker is so much more fun to say, and it’s not crass – it’s appropriate!
Occasionally I have been known to convince myself to buy something that we really don’t need. (Occasionally – ha!) About a year ago I really wanted a FoodSucker, so I waited the normal one-month period before I buy a major thing, all the while creating all these scenarios where I would be vacuum-sealing food left and right! So I bought one, sealed up everything in sight in one evening….then put it in a closet, never to be seen again until last week.
Overall, I highly recommend them. You can wrap and store a lot of things for a long time, but never, ever BUY one. Find somebody who has one that will loan it, provide your own bags, and bake them a cake as payment.  (My favorite is yellow cake with chocolate frosting.)
Trapped?
Lloyd and I have spent the weekend working in the computer lab switching old computers over to new ones. Actually, I spent most of Saturday reading and watching movies, but today I’m a big helper. My skills at drilling holes have come in handy to attach cable holders and surge protectors to the underside of tables. Lloyd’s doing stuff, too, but it’s not nearly as important as the hole-drilling. Hole-drilling is key.
Anyway, there’s a big ol’ buncha snow falling from the sky, so I’m certain we’ll be trapped in Lincoln overnight. So, Annette, if you’re reading this, I’ll need tomorrow off. (heh heh heh)
IF we sent out Christmas Cards
Ok, let’s just get it out in the open that this is NOT a real card – it’s just a funny thought that popped in my head, and like all prototypes, had to be carried out immediately. But if we WERE going to send out cards, this would be it.
