My Floor is Covered in Construction Paper Bits

Although I have not been in this blogging hiatus for very long, already some new projects are receiving more of my time, energy and attention.  Here are some things I’m doing:

• reading How Fiction Works by James Wood
• making a life-sized poster of the human form complete with construction paper internal organs
• contributing to three committees at work: the green committee, the newsletter committee and the “teach teachers how to blog” committee

Differentiating lessons for a multi-level class is time-consuming, but I love doing it. I know I spend three, four, maybe five times longer on lesson planning than do my coworkers, but I choose to.  I am building an arsenal of materials and aids that I can keep forever. Lamination will help preserve them.

Here is a picture of my male body poster. I call him Sam. He will get laminated this weekend.

And here are some students using the little labels to drill each other on the human body vocabulary. I made three colours of body part labels: blue for my literacy student, yellow for the intermediate students and green for the advanced students.  They broke off into homogeneous groups to quiz each other while a T.A. took Carl out for one-on-one work.  Next week I will bring in Sam and Samantha so we can divide into two teams (an equal number of advanced and intermediate students on each team) to stick the labels in the correct places on the posters. I hope it will be a fun game.

The Samantha poster will show the pancreas, kidneys and a few other things not showing on the Sam poster.

We Wish to Interrupt this Regularly Scheduled Program

I wish to interrupt this scheduled break to announce that Sylvain has, after a year and a half, landed a job.  He got the call for an interview just one week after his employment insurance ran out.

I am so proud of him for being willing to enter a new field with all the learning and starting over that entails.  The coolest part is that he and I now both earn our livings at not-for-profit organizations/companies and also both volunteer for non profits.

I am also proud of him for the equanimity he displayed while unemployed. No, he was not immune to the beating one’s self-esteem begins to take as the result of weeks looking and not finding, resume’s sent without calls for interviews and interviews that are not followed by the good news call. Nevertheless, he never stopped saying, “I am not worried. Everything is going to work out in the end.”

He has been offered a job by the one employer he most wanted to work for.

Thank you for all your good thoughts over the past many months.

Taking a Break

I have been feeling a need to take a break from blogging for a while now. I’m not sure how long I need, I just know that I haven’t been as inspired to write lately. At the same time, I’d like to resume my old habit of writing SNAIL MAIL. I also want to dedicate time and energy to writing my way through the book Writing Down the Bones.

Please don’t think that just because I’m not coming online to read blogs or write posts that I’m not thinking of you or that you’re not close to my heart. You all are.

I leave you with some things to play with.

• Dvolver – make a little movie for free (no registration required, either!)
• Play World Instruments
• Sudoku Slam (careful – it’s addictive!)

Ciao for now!

One More Day of WIFF

We’ve just enjoyed our second day partaking of the Windsor International Film Festival. This year we’ve chosen four films to see over three days. Last night we saw Beginners with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer. It was very good. In fact, it was probably excellent, but I couldn’t hear all of the dialogue because of the poor sound system in the Palace. We were seated at the back and it seemed that only the front speakers were on.

Tonight we saw Miranda July’s The Future, which was my idea because her last film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, is one of my favourite films of all time. So I’ll see anything she creates from now on. After I’d asked Sylvain to please add it to our slate (about five minutes before he was to hand over our money for the envelope full of advance tickets), he emailed me “you’re asking me to go see a movie narrated by a dying cat???”

I loved it. Well, I loved the 85-90% of it that I could hear.  When I win the lottery, I’ll buy a new sound system for the Palace. Oh no, wait. When I win the lottery, I’m opening my own indie cinema. I forgot about that. It will have a good sound system.

Tomorrow we are seeing Circumstance and A Separation, both Iranian. Yay, subtitles. It won’t matter how bad the sound is.

Reasons to Smile

Something for educators and parents to think about: here.

thank you note from student

 

thank you from student

 

Grace in Small Things 188

• the coloured chalk spelling out apple stilton kale panini on the small blackboard hanging by the counter with the old cash register
• a glass of rioja on the tiny table by the open window yes open why not open because it is that most perfect of fall days when it only takes a thin sweater not even buttoned against the crisp golden afternoon
• the way the beaded curtains sway slowly ever so slightly making shadow curtains dance across the newspaper
• the way the chef hand delivers his creations to the table and says ‘enjoy’ in a way that makes me think he loves what he does
• that i can do this