In Hoptrup, Denmark, the home of my grandparents, for Dad’s 59th birthday. My grandmother hosts a perfect afternoon coffee and makes the most beautiful table-scapes.
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Happy birthday, Dad! I’m certainly glad you were born, and I’m so glad we are able to be in the motherland together.
This is a great song from one of our buddies, Sims, who is part of the Minneapolis hip-hop collective, Doomtree. I love when artists in an often unsentimental genre aren’t afraid to get a little mushy and give their significant others props. I also love when my husband sings along with this song. This video by our buddy Fifties Dad is full of his intricate animation; just try sitting while those sketches dance!
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Joel and I have been looking for good reason to visit Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Only an hour east, it offers respite from the busy city with its stark landscapes and undeveloped Lake Michigan coast.
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My cousin Kimi (http://instagram.com/mum_jaeger) and her partner in crime Matt came from their little town of Fairfax, Iowa to our big town for Kim’s 26th birthday. They are kindred spirits; always up for exciting adventures and charmed by the simple pleasures of life. Although they didn’t bring him, I know their two-year-old son Jack would love to see Chicago, too, one day! He’ll be more likely to appreciate it when he’s another year older.
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The boys demanded we get kites, and they were convinced that they needed the big roll of string - 500 feet of it! It was amazing to see the colorful nylon against the sky, and to feel them pull as they rode the gusts. So high up and out over the lake, the kite felt almost like an extension of our limbs!
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It was a bit scary when we realized (from a PA announcement) the amazing ice shelves we stood on at water’s edge were so unstable. But we made it out alive, not encapsulated in ice until the spring thaw as the booming voice threatened. And we got the best view in the house; captured in photos!
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Oxford American Thesaurus
-civilized
-progress
-evolved
-wait
-in-between
-purgatory
Today’s Research
Wikipedia
-window screen fibers
Oxford American Thesarus
-taut
-embed
-depress
-loosen
-feel
Today’s Research
In the spirit of all the post-Super Bowl commentary flooding the interweb, here’s “Football For Nerds” (by vlogbrothers).
This Midwestern city is preparing for the what we call “The Holidays,” a time of celebrating warmth and light in the cold and dark. This celebration materializes on storefronts, at city parks, and in apartment living rooms: strings of lights against fir and pine needles, ribbons brandishing the color red, traditional symbols of Christmas now acceptable as secular as long as we leave baby Jesus out of it. Perhaps it’s because I spent the majority of my life four hours west that my idea of The Holidays involves snow and ice. Though my living room floor is covered with scraps of “Noel” paper and string and I am constantly looking for either the scissors or Scotch tape, I can’t quite bring myself to listen to “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” and mean it.
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Instead of plumes of smoke being sent into the sky from fireplaces, there’s clearness at night. We’re missing shoveled divots on the street being marked with objects indicating parking dibs: summer’s molded plastic armchairs; staplers and cracked paper trays from the old office, fresh out of the HR-supplied cardboard box labeled “Old Work Supplies;” and even a Duchamp sculpture. We haven’t felt that magic moment where all the Cheeto bags, broken glass, shitty paint jobs, and the few visible treetops are swept under a white rug. It’s Winter Lite, not unlike beers with the same suffix - called beer and accepted as beer but having none of the amazing qualities of beer.
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My jackets are on rotation between windbreakers with a sweatshirt and my warmest down. I’ve had a cycle of three sinus infections, which normally afflict me only once at the time of most drastic seasonal change. Today’s chance of rain is greater than 50%, all day. It’s a time of transition, a veritable Chicago season: Winterim.
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Speaking on the phone with my parents who live in city-limit Iowa this morning, the day following Mom’s birthday, they’re stuck inside, discussing snow removal plans over the phone with the neighbors, extending morning coffee by a couple hours while they sit together opening her gifts.
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Winter is the time that life slows down, hours on the job shorten; accepted by everyone because snow impedes physical travel. It’s the great equalizer, affecting the busiest suits downtown and the bluest of collars on the South and West Sides.
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Winterim, though, hampers no one. While preparing for the holiday that for many of us is the biggest production of the year, Chicago still works its butt off. Traffic congestion clots the major arteries as normal, and every free moment is a chance to run to the store, hoping the perfect gift (as seen on fifty-nine billboards and proclaimed before Never Shout Never YouTube videos) is at the ready.
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Abercrombie & Fitch and Aeropostale sew their extremely long names onto hoodies (abbreviating at times, for economy), a definite item on Veronica A. Teen’s list so that she matches everyone at school. America buys “last-minute gifts” (as advertised in a “News Release” on its company website) or the surefire cell phones to appease their tech-hungry teens because it seems that people don’t realize that the best holiday gifts would get their kids off their phones, or are too busy to care.
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Maybe our winterim will become a full blown winter in the new year. The city may slow down in late January, or February as it has done in recent memory. If only our confused Mother Nature could get a little consistent with when we’re afflicted by snowpocalypse, we could attach our major celebration of the dark in light, warm in cold, life in death, to a new holiday, say, Valentinesmas.
Seasonal Adjustment
I especially like numbers 5 & 8. What have you fixed lately?
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I fixed a pair of my mom’s old brown wolverine boots with leather soap, polish, and new strings. However, they’re requiring continual fixing (sole separating from the shoe type stuff), and I don’t know if it makes sense to keep going or get new ones. I asked for new ones for Christmas, anyway…
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On a chilly Thursday, I took my notebook full of brainstorms to the school where I formerly taught, Holy Trinity, for a meeting with the coordinator of the Resource Learning Center (RLC), Brandon Baisden, the two-successful-years-running man behind a buzzing hub of after school tutoring activity. I was prepared to explain a plan that had altered over time due to constraints: my vision for writing tutoring within the already established RLC room, including my willingness to share space and my ideas for how to distinguish between students who would be coming for writing and who would be coming for homework completion.
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I had proposed my ideal scenario toward the end of last school year, after I told the administration I wasn’t returning to teach ninth grade English. I hoped, along with the English department, to start a writing center, a lab, in the school, where the primary focuses were discussion of ideas and the slow, delicious development of cohesive artifacts of thought. This seed had been planted in my mind during student teaching at Iowa City West High School, where we student teachers were expected to spend one period of our day in the writing center. Though it wasn’t well attended by high schoolers, my co-ST Adam and I knew how awesome it could’ve been if it was better promoted.
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The thought of a writing center was invigorated following a particularly inspiring discussion at The National Conference of Teachers of English in Chicago last year, in which The Boston Writing Project explained their institution of “urban” writing centers and their subsequent success. These aren’t that uncommon nationally, though they are in Chicago. There’s an International Writing Centers Association, a Wiki for coordinators of these centers, and plenty of people writing about them. Dawn Fels and Jennifer Wells, the authors of The Successful High School Writing Center(2011), sum up my enthusiasm well:
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“[W]riters turn to the writing center, where the perspectives of students, instructors, and institutions intersect. Writing center tutors help students to understand these perspectives and then to negotiate them… Through their conversation, tutors and writers connect different perspectives in a way that leads to problem solving.”
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In my experience, much of the academic study that goes on in some high schools is focused on memorization of terms, dates, and formulas. While this is an important facet of education, these memorized items aren’t always applied in a way that engages critical thinking/problem solving, and hence, real, applicable learning.
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In short, the school, with the understandable concern of funding, decided that this was one initiative too many for the next school year. I was sad to leave, but had a new direction in mind, and perhaps had some inkling of a future possibility. We shook hands and said goodbye.
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The English department didn’t forget about my vision and kept discussion going with the RLC.
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Cheeks rosy from zipping through Noble Square, I locked my bike behind the school and walked to Mr. Baisden’s office. As we talked, I got the feeling that he and I were picturing very different writing centers, so I asked, “Will we have a table to ourselves, a computer devoted to our use, or is the room next door being repurposed for the writing center?” I continued, “Or, will…”
He interrupted, “No, Katrina - you’ll have the computer lab upstairs. It’s sitting empty after school and barely being used during school.” Following this new realization, I could barely stop the stream of ideas that flooded my mind . To have our own space with computers… in addition, huge, corner windows overlooking both Division and Cleaver streets provide plenty of connection to the outside world. Well, this was the beginning of The HT Writing Lab.
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After spending this week cleaning out the room that had been a ghost town of unneeded textbooks, tumbleweeds, and a bunch of machine parts which, when compiled, made up an entire deconstructed computer. We now have a blank slate, blank white boards, clean bulletin boards. We have some rules, a first-draft of arrival forms for students, and a sign above our door.
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We have a space that will evolve into a living, breathing “beehive of ideas,” as Joel called it last night. Getting started with students this coming week will show us what we need to acquire and how we’ll need to evolve. It’s so exciting to get started.
This has been a great week. The first two days were spent at Holy Trinity substituting for the ninth grade Geography teacher, a teacher very conscientious about leaving enough work to surpass the amount needed for the time I’m there. Barb H., you’re a gem!
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Tuesday night was my super-cool friend Ursula’s birthday. It was also her three-year-old daughter’s birthday, but we only surprised and kidnapped one of them for a girl-hang at The Wine Cellar. Crucial time with the ladies.
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Yesterday I got to start off hanging out with Calvin, a charming toddler guy. We watched two episodes of Bob the Builder, one about train tracks and one about treehouses.
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Foundation…
Construction…
Completion!
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Great life mantra, really.
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After getting Zen with Cal, I spent the next few hours losing that calm in the best way, running around the gigantic Harold Washington Library with Holy Trinity juniors gathering research for their big ol’ research papers. It sounds like I’ll be doing some writing tutoring in the afternoons at HT, so it was great to help get them started on the right foot. Writing a good paper, compiling evidence to support a strong argument, requires (duh) quality research.
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I raced my bike through the downtown jungle back to Noble Square to grab supplies and make it to HT. I had just enough time to get on the PA mic to notify the remaining ladies at school; we had our first meeting of HT Women in Action. Poor attendance has been a trend of our first meetings in years past (I’ve been moderating for 4 years), but since we’ve been advertising for the month prior and doing PAs, we had a solid group of girls this time. I am really eager to keep this club strong all year with Deb W. as a co-moderator!
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Today I’ve had computer time locked down the first half of the day, and this afternoon I must get to yoga. I’m listening to KRUI (Iowa City) today. Even though college DJs are generally some of the more verbose (and occasionally muttering) people on the planet, this has been my favorite radio station for music of anywhere I’ve lived, period.
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Enjoy this jam they just played.
e.e. cummings never fails to bring a smile to my face.
—E.E. Cummings, Poetry, February 1961
Cummings was born on October 14, 1894.
With a strike looming, everyone in the Chi has an opinion on teachers - mostly saying how greedy, how selfish, how unloving they are. One news report gave the majority of the story’s air time to a group of protesting parents continually urging the teachers, and I’m paraphrasing, “to think about the children for once.” While I haven’t taught in Chicago Public Schools, I have conferenced and conversed with some CPS teachers, even some people in CPS administration, and they certainly aren’t the big bad wolves they are accused of being. The neighborhood message board to which I subscribe, EveryBlock, is abuzz with frustrated taxpayers who can’t believe teachers want a higher wage. My response:
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It’s interesting, but not surprising, to read the extremist rhetoric and emotional “it’s for the children” pleas both here on EveryBlock and on the local news. Of course, the young people of Chicago are on everyone’s mind as the logistics of a day or days home from school need to be ironed out. The fact is, no one is talking about the actual terms the CTU is putting on the table, and it’s certainly not just a raise they’re asking for.
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I encourage you, taxpayers, to read the words from the actual source:
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http://www.ctunet.com/media/press-releases/breaking-news-ctu-files-notice-of-intent-to-strike
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and to stop taking everything the over-emotional Chicago news media says for absolute truth. The amount of information left out of news reports on the strike is shocking.
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Teachers want an increase in pay for the extended school day and year. Wouldn’t you, if your employer was asking you to work 19% (or so) more? Teachers also want their textbooks on day 1. A seemingly simple request. Teachers want better, less mechanical ways of measuring student achievement. I’m sorry, but do you want a generation of bubble-darkening robots? I certainly don’t, but Rahm’s people want easy answers and measurable outcomes.
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Teachers are not bad people. They want what’s best for their students, probably more than some parents. Why else would they go into such a thankless line of work?
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Teachers get such a bum rap when it comes to salary. If teachers were valued more and this value was reflected in their pay and perception, perhaps we’d need less punitive measures in other aspects of life. Education is the root of it all; if schools were pillars of pride in the Chicago’s neighborhood communities, if teachers were seen as experienced scholars and the upholders of knowledge, if parents interacted with the schools and sought to be extensions of the schools, perhaps teachers wouldn’t need to fight each year for the tools necessary to teach in their classroom, and some respect.
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photo: pslweb.org
Chicago Teachers’ Strike
