So, a very dear friend of mine is very ill, and needs to have surgery in order to fix a recent complication of an already existing unidentified syndrome. Like so many of us, he has no health insurance, is unemployed, and this surgery is going to cost him lots and lots of dollars (estimates of $10,000 or more). He is a great person, and doesn't deserve to spend the next ten years paying off horrendous bills, and I'd like to help ease the cost for him. I am coming to all of you with this because you're awesome, and I know there are so many generous hearts out there. I know the Christmas crunch is approaching, but if it's possible for you to buy some delicious Nessa-lovin' to help me help my friend out, it would be appreciated so, so much.
For $10, you'll be able to choose from a bunch of different cookies (peanut butter or chocolate chip, gingerbread cookies are $15 due to ingredients), candy (toffee), and fudge (plain, peanut butter, or mint) all baked and cooked up by me, put in a box/plastic container, and decorated with whatever stickers I have lying around at the time. ^_^;
**Anyone who doesn't live within delivery/pick up distance, I will happily mail you your baked goods!
If you are able and willing, please donate to John directly by visiting his website here. If you want to read about this issue in John's own (delectable) words, visit this page. And finally, if you just want to skip all the hullaballo and just get to the donatin', please click here and throw John some love.
Of course, I completely understand if folks aren't in a position to spend money, so your good thoughts for John's safe recovery are more than welcome. His surgery is next Friday, the 20th, if you want to send out good energy on a specific day!
Thanks for reading guys... any help is welcome! Spread the word! Comment or send me an email at prettypagan [at] gmail [dot] com if you're interested in the baked goods!
Blessed Be!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Only Thing That Matters
As I was reminded this evening by my excellent godfather, the only thing that really matters in this life is the here and now. We cannot change the past - what is the point of endlessly obsessing over things that we may or may not have done wrong? We cannot know the future - what is the point of planning for a future that may never come and concerning ourselves, worrying ourselves, over things that we cannot know? The only thing we have is here and now, the only thing we have is the next breath.
I'm a little disappointed with myself for forgetting that so easily. When three people that I loved very much and in very different ways all died within a year of each other, I swore I would live my life like each moment was my last. I would remain grounded here, I would stay focused on now. And school makes that a little impossible. Of course you have to plan ahead. Otherwise, nothing will get done. But then I have to sit back and ask myself, if the world was literally going up in smoke, what would I be doing HERE and NOW? My thesis doesn't matter worth a damn in the long run. My unit plan for three months down the line is ashes. All that is left is me, in my body, taking breath, focused, focused, focused.
I feel so Zen right now it's not even funny. And I'm so glad, because I haven't felt that way in a long time. And I should, dammit. I should feel this every single second of every single day.
So should you.
Goodnight.
I'm a little disappointed with myself for forgetting that so easily. When three people that I loved very much and in very different ways all died within a year of each other, I swore I would live my life like each moment was my last. I would remain grounded here, I would stay focused on now. And school makes that a little impossible. Of course you have to plan ahead. Otherwise, nothing will get done. But then I have to sit back and ask myself, if the world was literally going up in smoke, what would I be doing HERE and NOW? My thesis doesn't matter worth a damn in the long run. My unit plan for three months down the line is ashes. All that is left is me, in my body, taking breath, focused, focused, focused.
I feel so Zen right now it's not even funny. And I'm so glad, because I haven't felt that way in a long time. And I should, dammit. I should feel this every single second of every single day.
So should you.
Goodnight.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Slipping
Today I attended a professional development workshop at my placement school. It was the first "real" PD I've ever attended (not including the NYSEC conference I went to last October...), and it left me feeling even more confused about the world of education.
There is something to be said about the discrepancy between what we learn in the program (education should be holistic and joyful!) and what I've seen in the classroom/school (education should be wrapped in a neat little box!). And what bothers me about this discrepancy is that I've always felt that education should be about the outside of the box.
On the one hand, it's great that so many schools are trying to support teaching staff by giving them strategies to try out in their classrooms - strategies that will give them more "control" (an issue I have anyway, as I feel control in any situation is an illusion) or show them a new way to approach direct/collaborative/guided instruction or what have you. On the other, though, I'm bothered by the idea that education is being boxed up. It's like these PD people are saying, "Let's make education nice and neat and pretty, and we'll tie it off with a shiny big bow!" when education is really messy and nonlinear and as far from shiny as you can get.
It's a slippery business, trying to box in something that's completely huge and amorphous and wild. It's slippery because people are slippery. You can't package the school day into a nice, neat package and call it a day! You have a mixed bag of students. You have a mixed bag of home lives, socio-economic issues, day-to-day adolescent crap, teachers-with-tempers, every single day of the school year. There's no telling how those things are going to interact, and trying to put them all under one thumb or one label or one mandated method for doing things is not going to solve anyone's problems.
We don't all fit one label. When will the higher ups realize this...?!
There is something to be said about the discrepancy between what we learn in the program (education should be holistic and joyful!) and what I've seen in the classroom/school (education should be wrapped in a neat little box!). And what bothers me about this discrepancy is that I've always felt that education should be about the outside of the box.
On the one hand, it's great that so many schools are trying to support teaching staff by giving them strategies to try out in their classrooms - strategies that will give them more "control" (an issue I have anyway, as I feel control in any situation is an illusion) or show them a new way to approach direct/collaborative/guided instruction or what have you. On the other, though, I'm bothered by the idea that education is being boxed up. It's like these PD people are saying, "Let's make education nice and neat and pretty, and we'll tie it off with a shiny big bow!" when education is really messy and nonlinear and as far from shiny as you can get.
It's a slippery business, trying to box in something that's completely huge and amorphous and wild. It's slippery because people are slippery. You can't package the school day into a nice, neat package and call it a day! You have a mixed bag of students. You have a mixed bag of home lives, socio-economic issues, day-to-day adolescent crap, teachers-with-tempers, every single day of the school year. There's no telling how those things are going to interact, and trying to put them all under one thumb or one label or one mandated method for doing things is not going to solve anyone's problems.
We don't all fit one label. When will the higher ups realize this...?!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Not the Voice
I just finished reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and this particular quote stuck out at me:
"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear." (p. 135)
There is something about this that just screamed YES! to me. In all of my pre-service readings, we read about and discuss what it is for students to come to a text and decipher it, what it used to mean for students to read "literature" or the "canon" and regurgitate pre-approved interpretations that would get you into an Ivy League university but wouldn't get you thinking for yourself. This is something that, especially coming from an author, is a direct challenge to that long-held tradition of university interpretation - of what constitutes good literature/how we should or should not respond to that literature.
Because it isn't the voice that commands the story. As much as some people will argue this is true, once a novel or an op-ed or a children's book is out of the author's hands and in the hands of the public, the way that piece is received and interpreted and responded to is going to be dynamic. It's going to change. The ears that a text falls on are going to command how that text is interpreted - how it should be read. And since there are any given number of ears for a single text to fall on, well... the interpretations will be varied, to say the least.
I struggle with the knowledge that this approach to reading and literature is so abhorrent to the academic community at large. I know that many pre-service programs these days advocate for such approaches to the teaching of literature, but there still seem to be so many challenges to fully implementing a curriculum that embraces varied interpretation, even when "progressive" teachers are supposedly filling the ranks left by older teachers who cling to the conservative, bottom-up style of instruction.
I start my practicum next Monday. I received my placement today, and all I can think about is how amazing this book was, how it is a book for people who love the look and feel and sound of words... and how I am going to inflict such readings on my poor guinea pig students. By the gods, I'll make them respond... even if the response is to hate the book!
"It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear." (p. 135)
There is something about this that just screamed YES! to me. In all of my pre-service readings, we read about and discuss what it is for students to come to a text and decipher it, what it used to mean for students to read "literature" or the "canon" and regurgitate pre-approved interpretations that would get you into an Ivy League university but wouldn't get you thinking for yourself. This is something that, especially coming from an author, is a direct challenge to that long-held tradition of university interpretation - of what constitutes good literature/how we should or should not respond to that literature.
Because it isn't the voice that commands the story. As much as some people will argue this is true, once a novel or an op-ed or a children's book is out of the author's hands and in the hands of the public, the way that piece is received and interpreted and responded to is going to be dynamic. It's going to change. The ears that a text falls on are going to command how that text is interpreted - how it should be read. And since there are any given number of ears for a single text to fall on, well... the interpretations will be varied, to say the least.
I struggle with the knowledge that this approach to reading and literature is so abhorrent to the academic community at large. I know that many pre-service programs these days advocate for such approaches to the teaching of literature, but there still seem to be so many challenges to fully implementing a curriculum that embraces varied interpretation, even when "progressive" teachers are supposedly filling the ranks left by older teachers who cling to the conservative, bottom-up style of instruction.
I start my practicum next Monday. I received my placement today, and all I can think about is how amazing this book was, how it is a book for people who love the look and feel and sound of words... and how I am going to inflict such readings on my poor guinea pig students. By the gods, I'll make them respond... even if the response is to hate the book!
Monday, January 26, 2009
Making Meaning.
So, as a pre-service English teacher, I have been exposed to an awful lot of text dealing with the teaching of writing. It's one of those things that I never really thought about before I went off on this crazy journey, but it's definitely something I'm thinking about now. What is writing? What does it mean to teach writing?
Even after two years in an education program and coming out of a class on teaching writing just this December, I still feel like I haven't a clue as to how to answer these questions. More specifically, I still don't really know how to expose my students to writing and explain to them how to do it without simply explaining what I do as a writer. This of course has its potential benefits as well as serious drawbacks (the most obvious being that my students are not, in fact, me, and therefore will not learn the same way that I do or did), but I am at a loss to otherwise give writing instruction to students who don't really want to write, much less have someone comment on whether or not they're doing it well.
I'm a woman with many interests. I want my fingers in every pot. I want to travel and I want to experience the world through a distillable lens. I want to play with language and I want to play. But most of all I want my own life experience to inform my teaching so that my students can be equally interested in life - equally desirable of having their fingers in all the pots. I want to foster their sense of curiosity because they're human and they have one whether or not they'll admit it. And I feel, on the brink of my student teaching practicum, that I have been utterly unprepared to do this.
They say that one in every five teachers leaves the profession before they've spent an adequate amount of time getting their feet wet (about five years). They say that this rate is highest in urban centers where a multitude of factors make for (in)tense learning situations. They say you'd better harden your shell, because the kids will eat you alive if you show even the smallest bit of compassion for them as human beings.
I say it's all bullshit.
I will not be one of those teachers who doesn't care about her students. I will not be one of those teachers who gets scared off by administrative bullies or the testing culture. I will not be the teacher who walks away after two years because it's not what I thought it was going to be. And I will not be the teacher who goes home at night and doesn't reflect on her own practice. Because this is not who I am. This is not what I want. And I won't let it happen.
I will reflect. I will rejoice. And I will renew, when the situation calls for it.
Even after two years in an education program and coming out of a class on teaching writing just this December, I still feel like I haven't a clue as to how to answer these questions. More specifically, I still don't really know how to expose my students to writing and explain to them how to do it without simply explaining what I do as a writer. This of course has its potential benefits as well as serious drawbacks (the most obvious being that my students are not, in fact, me, and therefore will not learn the same way that I do or did), but I am at a loss to otherwise give writing instruction to students who don't really want to write, much less have someone comment on whether or not they're doing it well.
I'm a woman with many interests. I want my fingers in every pot. I want to travel and I want to experience the world through a distillable lens. I want to play with language and I want to play. But most of all I want my own life experience to inform my teaching so that my students can be equally interested in life - equally desirable of having their fingers in all the pots. I want to foster their sense of curiosity because they're human and they have one whether or not they'll admit it. And I feel, on the brink of my student teaching practicum, that I have been utterly unprepared to do this.
They say that one in every five teachers leaves the profession before they've spent an adequate amount of time getting their feet wet (about five years). They say that this rate is highest in urban centers where a multitude of factors make for (in)tense learning situations. They say you'd better harden your shell, because the kids will eat you alive if you show even the smallest bit of compassion for them as human beings.
I say it's all bullshit.
I will not be one of those teachers who doesn't care about her students. I will not be one of those teachers who gets scared off by administrative bullies or the testing culture. I will not be the teacher who walks away after two years because it's not what I thought it was going to be. And I will not be the teacher who goes home at night and doesn't reflect on her own practice. Because this is not who I am. This is not what I want. And I won't let it happen.
I will reflect. I will rejoice. And I will renew, when the situation calls for it.
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