Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

 With most of my seeds now planted, my garden is at the hurry-up-and-wait part of the spring. So I'm going to paint a picture for you with words, starting clockwise at 7 o'clock, because the door from the house is at six.

First, when you leave the house, you're on the patio. It's sheltered to the south/left by the part of the house that contains the bedrooms. Walk about twenty feet, and you get to the first garden. The part you can see from the door is mostly mulch and weeds, because that's Shenzi's preferred place for a quick pee. But go around the corner a tiny big and you get some lovely patches of a ground cover we planted last year, whose name I can't recall, and it's coming back and spreading nicely. Around 8 o'clock, there are three patches of bulb garden. The first two are daffodils and crocuses. The crocuses are done now but the daffodils are full of life. There are the single-trumpet ones that bloomed first, the double yellow ones and double white ones that came after, and last to bloom were the yellow doubles with orange in the middle. I love them all. I've loved daffodils since my year in Gerardmer, France, which celebrates a daffodil festival most years. 

The third bulb garden, nearly at 9 o'clock, is Lloyd's Garden. It's the grave of the rat we had for just a couple of months, whom we buried and placed a pretty pink-granite rock over. Then we planted tulips around the rock. The tulips are a commemorative variety sent out by the airline KLM, to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian soldiers. The goal was to plant a bulb for every Canadian who fought in the Netherlands, 1.1 million of them across the country. I just have ten. They have developing buds on them, only two of which have colour so far. They'll be in full bloom in a week or so.

Next to that, at 9 o'clock, is a weedy patch that was mostly black-eyed Susans last year. It's not doing much yet. There's also a little grassy space over there that we've left, because it's in the shade of the next-door neighbour's cedar hedge and also provides a pathway to the outdoor water source around the south side of the house. At 10 o'clock is the pool shed, which also houses most of the garden implements we use regularly. 

We're now along the back fence, which leads out to a green space that also functions as a hydro corridor. There's a gate, and then the little strip of garden that forms the bulk of my vegetable growing space begins. Yesterday, we cleared out the weedy corner by the gate, harvesting the edible weeds for a salad and putting down some fresh triple mix. Then we planted one of the zucchini plants that I started indoors less than two weeks ago. It's four inches high with two-inch proto-leaves on it, and the root system was pretty well-developed for two weeks, so even though we haven't hit our final frost date yet I decided to chance it. Behind the single zucchini plant, I seeded some Kentucky Wonder beans. They're supported by some bamboo poles that the previous owner had left in the pool shed. Next to them, moving right across the back fence, are some radishes that are very happy. They're an early spring crop and they're putting up secondary leaves. Once I harvest them, I'll probably use that space for Asian cabbage or carrots, unless the zucchini takes it over completely. 

There's a wooden divide then for the next part of the garden. To the right of it (we're around 11:30 now) are a few little lettuce plants that I started early from seed, just beginning to put up secondary leaves, and a long row of snow peas that are about an inch tall. I'm hoping today's warmth and sunshine will have those shooting for the sky. The space in front of the peas is destined for carrots in the form of seed tape. I haven't planted that yet because it's the only thing I can't easily cover in the event of a threat of frost. I'll probably chance it next week. I have no lack of seed tape if the first fails. 

At about 1 o'clock is the third segment of that back garden. I planted my three butterbush squash hills on Friday, two seeds in each, and there are Mason jars nearby to cover them with if there's a threat of frost. It will be warm enough to germinate them today and they got tons of rain yesterday, so I'll likely see sprouts on them pretty quickly. Behind those are more snow peas. Squash are heavy feeders so the zucchini and butterbush squash are supported by beans and peas, which are nitrogen fixers. These snow peas were planted only yesterday so I'm not seeing anything from them yet. 

We're now rounding the corner of the pool, in the northwest corner of the garden. There are two square raised beds there, built from a Home Depot kit by the previous owner. They have walking onions, yellow onions, Videlia onions, and chives in them. The walking onions and chives are mostly for green onions in salads, so we've already been harvesting from that for several weeks. The others are for bulb onions. The yellow ones came from leftover onion sets last year that were sprouting in the garage. The Videlias came from one kitchen onion that sprouted, which I then took apart to plant. Also in those two beds are two types of mint. Right in the corner is the mojito mint left by the previous owner. She had it in a freestanding pot, but it's mint - it spread. I had a chocolate mint over there, also in a freestanding pot. It spread into the other raised bed. Last but not least is the thyme plant which I started from seed last year. I love thyme as a seasoning and use it frequently, so having some fresh in my garden is one of the nicest things about having a garden. It's another plant that reminds me of France.

Heading over to 3 o'clock is a little patch where I seeded some kale. This is the sunniest part of the garden, as it's against the north fence and therefore has 100% southern exposure. After that is a patch of zebra irises which I left there because I love irises and these are well-established and beautiful. At four o'clock, after the irises, is the second zucchini plant and a few more beans. After that there's some floral ground cover that we haven't moved because that part of the garden is shaded by the house and not great for vegetables. 

I have two freestanding pots, the ones the previous owner had her mint in, that now hold fresh weed-free triple mix and Asian stir-fry/salad green seeds. They're living near the irises for now because that's where they'll get the best sun exposure, and they like warmth and a lot of sun. 

Garden centres are going to open shortly, so I'm going to pick up some nasturtium seeds or plants, depending on what I can find, to plant near the two types of squash. If they do well, they'll be added to salads. Both leaves and flowers are edible and have a peppery flavour to them that I love. 

The only other plant of note is the black currant bush I planted out front, near the lovely stand of yuccas. I don't worry too much about the front garden because I prefer growing food to flowers, and the front garden is mostly too shady for food. But the black currant bush is my baby. If it does well, I'll be planting at least one more there next year. So far it's putting out leaves on at least half its stems, so clearly it's reasonably content with its lot in life. I'm looking forward to trying my stepdad's Singing Johnny recipe, which is basically black currant-infused Irish whiskey. And jam, of course. Black currant jam is my favourite and it's really hard to get commercial black currants in Canada so I've only been able to get it when Piet's aunt offered me some of her black currants. I want some of my own.

So that's my quarantine garden. I have high hopes for the zucchini, and the butterbush squash did beautifully last year and provided I think about twelve one- or two-pound squashes (they look and taste like mini butternut squash, but the plants only take a couple of metres of space instead of, well, your entire garden.) I have high hopes that our modest investment in soil and seeds will yield a whole lot of fresh food all summer and into the fall, possibly even enough to preserve some of it by freezing or canning. 

 The lesson of sourdough is patience.

The next few posts are explanations of all the stuff I've tried in my classroom this year that has worked, followed by or interspersed with things I need to do better next year.

Brag #1: Morning Meeting

If I had to pick one thing that made a huge difference to my kids' learning and sense of community in my classroom, it would be the consistent morning meeting. It has evolved over the course of the year, with a few things staying the same throughout.

Morning Meeting has a script, which I wrote out in my transcripts on Planboard and then slotted into every MM slot in my day plans automatically. I stopped using the script in October but it's useful to have for supply teachers, volunteers/student teachers, and for the principal to see day plans that look like I actually put time into them.

At the beginning of the year, we started by greeting each student by name and shaking hands. After the first head cold, that became shaking elbows. We sang a song to go with it. Then we read the Morning Message, which I write on the white board every day. The Morning Message follows a very clear format: Dear Students, Today is Monday, May 8th. It is a day 1. We have Drama in sixth period. What are our learning goals? I can write with a capital at the beginning of my sentence and a period at the end. I can use the making tens strategy to add. Our spelling words are: (the Morning Meeting helper writes these in.) Our journal entry is: I have a Youtube channel. I make videos about. . . Have a great day! Sincerely, Ms. S. (and any student teachers/volunteers in my room that day.)

Then we do the calendar, the number of days we've been at school so far, and Explain the Number. (150 is an even number. I know because I looked in the ones place and there's a zero there, and zeros are even. 150 has one group of one hundred, 5 groups of ten, and 0 ones.) We also do some counting on our fingers and by 2's, 5's, and 10's, up to the number of the day. Last, we pick a new Morning Meeting Helper for the next day, and if it's a Monday, we choose new people to do the other jobs, too.  These things have changed very little over the course of the year.

At different points in the year, I've added:

1) Measuring: we went through three weeks when we measured the Morning Meeting Helper every day, and put a piece of tape on the wall next to the tape ruler to show how tall they were. In June, we'll do this again to see how much we've grown since February.

2) Hundreds Chart: Once we started getting good at place value, I took most of the numbers out of my pocket hundreds chart and put them in a bag. The kids picked one number every day and had to figure out where it went, then explain why they put it there. If they made a mistake, we worked through it until they found the mistake and fixed it. Then we cheered for them because making a mistake and fixing it makes your brain grow! 

3) Singing the Days of the Week and the Months of the Year. I took this out just after Christmas, once I was sure all my kids knew it. 

4) To be added: I need to teach reading a clock, so I think I will add a bit of that to Morning Meeting for the next few weeks.

5) Sharing: Shortly after Christmas, I realized that I'd left Sharing (aka Show and Tell) out of the Morning Meeting. So we added it in and assigned each child a day. They're getting good at remembering which day is theirs, though the Monday people feel cheated a lot. 

I keep track of who has been Morning Meeting Helper recently, and we go through the entire class list before anyone gets picked again. 

So that's my Morning Meeting. It takes the better part of a period, but it's worth it for the number of concepts it teaches and reinforces.

This is now my primary journal. All my LJ stuff is moving here, after which the LJ account gets deleted.

It's sad, but not unexpected.  

It's been a really nice week overall. I've seen D seven days out of the last eight, at least briefly and several times for several hours or overnight. I'm starting to believe it.

My report cards are almost done. I have one more segment to do that I can finish Monday afternoon, and then I'm good. There was a brief kerfuffle yesterday when the principal brought to me a very official-looking letter, on letterhead and everything, and a copy of the report card information I'd given to the kindergarten teachers to put into their report cards. (Unlike the rest of the school where I do my subjects myself on students' report cards, I don't have virtual access to the kindergarten reports, so I have to write up my comments, give them to the kindergarten teachers, and they input them. This is a huge problem for the prep coverage teachers, because it means we don't know exactly what the program can do. Does it have a way to apply a single comment to a group of students? Does it change gendered pronouns like the other program does, automatically? Without knowing those things, I don't know if what I'm giving them is five minutes of cut-and-paste and clicking through, or an hour of individually cutting and pasting and changing pronouns for each student. I believed it to be the first when I gave it to them, which is why I gave it in that format.) The principal wanted me to do all the cutting and pasting for every student - easily three hours' work to do for everyone - so that the kindergarten teachers would be saved that effort. This was a total surprise to me, because the kindergarten teachers had been uniformly thrilled at what I'd given them.

I think what happened was that the newest, most overwhelmed kindergarten teacher took my work to show her as an example of what she wanted the gym teacher to do, and the principal misread her and thought that what I'd done wasn't up to par, either. So I spent forty-five minutes in tears starting to do everything that she'd asked me to do and trying to figure out how exactly to come up with an individual example of each student's work, until the teacher I'd developed the comments with came to me and asked why I was late to cover her prep. She told me that the problem wasn't with my stuff, it was with the gym teacher's stuff, and the principal just needed to make it across-the-board so it didn't look like he was being targeted. I'm not buying it; I think Laura misunderstood and believed that my comments didn't meet what they needed from me. She would have been totally within her rights to take the gym teacher to task for what amounted to incomplete report cards, without any reference to me. (And everything we said about the gym teacher was theoretically grievable under the union rules that caught me a few months ago, so I had to cut a few of those conversations short when they started to cross the line. That was So Much Fun.)

I have a letter half-drafted to her about supporting prep coverage teachers in the full-day kindergarten program, so that we can actually do what the program expects of us. For example, if she wants me to provide personal examples about each kid's explorations in music, she's going to have to provide three things: 1) in-servicing on creating an exploration-based music program that fits the kindergarten curriculum, 2) consistent access to an ECE who can do the recording during the times when I'm teaching and actually, you know, WORKING WITH THE KIDS, and 3) an iPad for the library to do that recording. When I'm without the recording technology, I use checklists to assess, and you don't get specific examples from checklists. Furthermore, if she wants me to actually know these kids and see when they're making progress, she's going to have to make sure I see them more than once a week for an hour. It's so easy to miss one class for a few weeks in a row in that situation, with the result that there is no continuity of routine or program in the library. (I missed one class for two out of three lessons in December and the entire month of January, for example.) I can teach and it will be valuable to the students, but I can't assess under that curriculum on that timetable.

Other than that, report cards have gone smoothly and I've basically stayed out of everyone's way for the last little while. I'm feeling very disconnected at school, but there's only 14 days left when I have to enter that building (the final PD day will see me at my new school, and I don't know where that is yet) and there's no point in trying to repair those connections with so little time left.

Meanwhile, things at the Menagerie are settling into place. C has been busy unpacking, so the place is starting to look lived-in. My room is looking pretty good, though I want some pretty cloth baskets to put on the shelves in the closet for my clothes; I don't need a dresser because the closet is more than big enough for the 1/5th of my wardrobe that I'm storing there, but I'd like everything hidden away a bit more. And I need a bathrobe. I also need to get Claire a new dresser, so I can take the white wardrobe thingy she's using now to the Menagerie. Actually, I should go over to Habitat and see if I can find something that would work for that. Dressers are a dime a dozen, right?

Teal deer version: I'm happy. Life is good. Frustrations at work are mostly because I'm doing a good job but the principal didn't see it. Summer is coming and it will be awesome.

D and C were here last week for a brief visit. They got visas and health cards and social insurance numbers, and they saw the house, and I still got to spend two nights with D. It'll hold me until June 1st.

Soon. Not soon enough, but soon.

I stumbled across this on my brother's facebook.

Let's see, where to begin?

Or, in simpler terms, a stable marriage is a clear route to a better life, but society has steadily chipped away at respect for that very institution.

Actually, the truth is exactly the opposite. When people are able to get out of marriages that aren't working, the strength of the ones that ARE is increased. How is it "respecting the institution of marriage" to force abused women to stay with their abusers, for example? On the other side of the coin, how is it disrespecting that institution to allow anyone who wants to, to enter into it?

So, educated women get married, pick more reliable partners, and enjoy much better outcomes. That would seem to contradict the feminist notion that men are largely unnecessary appendages, required as sperm-providers but otherwise expendable once that duty has been performed. It would also run counter to the view of family courts that fathers are largely unnecessary in upbringing children, other than to provide financial support.

First, the "feminist notion" he's talking about is not the bulk of feminists, and it's been oversimplified here. Certainly some women are better off without their sperm donors, because the sperm donors were beating them and the kids, or otherwise causing more problems than they solved. Why not discuss the fact that college-educated women have more access to privileged men, including the privilege that raised them to see being an involved husband and father as a good thing? As for the family courts, did the National Post miss the fact that in Ontario, joint custody is the default, precisely because fathers are seen as valuable and having rights to their children? This is a Canadian newspaper and should be aware of things like that.

I'm certainly not denying that two-parent (or three-parent, but I don't think the NP is ready to acknowledge families like mine, more's the pity) families generally manage better by their kids. That's a simple fact borne out by numerous statistics. What I'm denying is that this is a simple choice on anyone's part. The state of marriage as a middle-class institution is both an effect and a cause of privilege.

The pot shot at abortion at the end is priceless. The middle-class women who do not have babies out of wedlock had more access to abortion and contraceptives when they were younger than did the poor women who had babies. They didn't have fewer abortions - in fact they probably had more.

Pouring money into social programs is not meant to pull people out of poverty (though perhaps it should be, if we focused more on supporting people to work.) It's meant to close some of the gaps between rich and poor so that they can pull themselves the rest of the way. As usual, the NP has misrepresented the goals of social justice movements.

I've been saying for years that my metabolic issues were preventing me from losing weight. At the same time, internally, I was beating myself up for a lot of treats I ate, even when my diet was otherwise quite healthy.

Over the last two weeks, I've changed very little about my diet. I've cut out some of my sugar, but continued eating the occasional treat. I've been eating salads most day for lunch, but then I've been doing that pretty consistently since February.

I haven't actually checked a scale yet, but I tried on a dress I tried on at the beginning of June. Three weeks ago, I needed a 1X. Today, the X fit perfectly.

Now, it's not a fitted style and there's a lot of elastic, so I certainly haven't lost an entire dress size in most respects; but I've been noticing my summer wardrobe fitting loosely, in a couple of cases too loosely to be really comfortable. Nevertheless, it appears that with very slight diet changes and the metformin, I've lost a couple of inches of upper-belly/ribcage fat in the last couple of weeks.

I have not starved myself. I have not dieted strenuously. I've eaten much the way I was doing before. I haven't exercised hardly at all (too hot and I don't have my pool membership yet.) Yet the weight is coming off now that my insulin resistance is being medicated.

I'm finally going to replace my old scale and start using it on an infrequent basis.

I'm sharing this lesson in part so that those of you on supply lists can load it onto your MP3 player, throw a set of speakers into your car, and teach kindergarten or grade one music at the drop of a hat. If you find yourself in a classroom with youtube access, you don't even need the MP3 player.

Learning goal: students will associate various elements of music (tempo, timbre, pitch, rhythm in particular) with various animals according to the animal's characteristics. They will move creatively to the music, pretending to be the animals in question.

(You can find expectations to match this in the full day kindergarten curriculum. I suspect you can probably find expectations in any kindergarten program. Bonus points if you can get video of the kids moving, to leave for their regular teacher so she can use the lesson for evaluative purposes.)

Materials: A variety of music tracks or video tracks referencing animals, and the technology to play them.

Set: Who can tell me about hippos? Are they big or little? Are they slow or fast? (This is almost certainly a misconception - hippos are actually very fast. I'd let that go for this lesson.) As you play the song "Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud," ask the students to tell you what it is about the song that reminds them of hippos.

Play the song once. Get a few answers to the question: there are low notes, the music goes fairly slow, lots of talk about mud. Play it again, and this time invite the students to move like hippos. If they're having trouble, get right in there and move ponderously around the carpet.

Then ask the students about bumblebees: how do bumblebees move? Would you imagine high notes or low notes for bumblebees? Quick notes or slow notes? Tell them the next song is about a bumblebee, and when they're done listening, you'd like them to be able to tell you why it sounds like a bumblebee. Then play "Flight of the Bumblebee." (I used a version recorded by Perlman on the violin; this piece has been recorded on everything from a piccolo flute to a tuba, so make sure you choose one to start with that is played on a violin, otherwise you'll confuse the heck out of the kids.) Watch for the kids who move like bumblebees, buzzing and flapping and darting or running in place. It's only a little more than a minute long, so let it go to the end.)

Get answers about why it sounds like a bumblebee. If you're in the regular classroom and have a place for such things, this is a good time to make an anchor chart with pictures and words: a hippo with the words "slow, low", and a bumblebee with the words "high, fast."

Lesson part two, probably during a second class period:

Remind the students of the previous work and the anchor chart. Tell them that this time, they're going to listen to the music without knowing what animal it's about. They get to move to the music and then guess what the animal might be. You can give them some examples: if the music is slow and low, they're going to move one way, and if the music is jumpy, they can jump, and if the music is calm and flowing, they can glide smoothly.

I used several pieces from the Carnival of the Animals, by Camille Saint-Saens. Some of the recordings had a poem about the animal at the beginning, so I set it up ahead of time to skip that part. I played the kangaroo first, and the kids quickly realized it was jumpy music with some calm parts. When asked what they thought it was, I got one kid who said it was a cat, because sometimes cats prowl and sometimes they jump on stuff; that's a level four answer. Another kid guessed a bunny, and another a kangaroo. After that I played the elephant one, which is played on double basses; they got that one quickly, too. Then I played the swan one, and they had more trouble with gliding movements; I got a lot of ballet twirls from the girls for that one, but the answers were about fish and birds, because it sounded like the animal was gliding calmly.

Wrap-up: Students can contribute to the anchor chart about elements of music, and talk about how music can represent movement in different ways. Since the point of the lesson is to explore movement rather than language, it's up to you how much you want them to talk about what they did or learned. It might be valuable to get them to draw their perception of one of the pieces of music, for an art/music connection; perhaps use the Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals for a drawing connection.

It was an awesomely fun lesson to teach and I got a lot of good information out of it.