Summer and the "problem" of doing nothing

As a teacher, all year you dream of summer and of doing nothing. Yet when the times comes, actually doing nothing is much harder than you imagined. It's tough work to actually do nothing. Oh the guilt! The shame! 

Hallelujah!

It's the last day of school, ya'll.

Motivation

Some teachers from my school got together and did a remake of Beyonce's Formation video and it is EVERYTHING!  The idea was to motivate the kids to work hard and do well on their EOGs (End of Grade tests).

I'm feeling pretty motivated by this, how 'bout you?

Too Old for This Sh*t?

College theatre buddy, Joe Pug, played at Cat's Cradle last night in Carrboro. We usually try to go and see him when he's in town (we saw him twice in Oregon!), even if it is a Wednesday night.  However, being a near 34 year old working woman, I've decided that shows on a school night, especially a rainy one, are a "no go" from here on out. 

Unless, it's Beyonce.

Or unless I forget that I said this, buy tickets to a show and then remember after the fact that we are in fact too old for this.

Horsefeathers guy playing a violin and a saw!

Joe Pug doing his thing

Just Like Old Times

Marissa is in town this weekend for her baby shower (whaaaaattt????!?!?) and we rounded up some of the old school Holt crew to celebrate Friday night just like how we used to do. Some of the new school Holt peeps joined us as well and it was just right. Love Marissa and love these people!

Good Things Do Happen in April

Picking up trash on the American Tobacco Trail with the Girls on the Run Team last week

Fish Fry Friday at school with REAL soul food

Stand Up Paddle Boarding with my man

New Beyonce

A Loyal Pittbull Turns 8

Sparkle Shoe Friday

It's Friday, which means sparkle shoes are in order.

And Happy Earth Day!

Girls on the Run...

...So much fun!

This past weekend was the Girls on the Run 5k. 2500 girls from around the Triangle participated in the 5k event. Some of them, like my team, ran their first 5K ever!

Gathering in the grass before the race

My lil' running buddy

Fayetteville Street Team

Awesome husband who came out to support by running with a girl

Awesome sister who came out to support by running with a girl

Alton Brown

I had no idea who he was (until I googled him) and I'm sure many of the kids at Fayetteville Street didn't either, but Alton Brown came to our school!

This is him.

He did a cool science/culinary experiment that involved popcorn, exploding balloons and dried crickets. 

Needless to say, the kids loved it and now we all know who Alton Brown is.

Popping popcorn with an extra hot lamp

Making culinary science jokes.
 I didn't know it but he has his own show AND was on Iron Chef!

He's doing 2 shows at DPAC tonight and we got front row seats at Fayetteville Street Elementary.

Trying to emulate the chemical reaction that occurs when popcorn is popped. Inside the balloon is kale (for fiber), packing peanuts (for cellulose), and dried crickets (for protein).

This was right after he made that lady eat a dried cricket!

Heating up the "kernal"...this poor woman!

And...POP!

The best part was that Alton Brown stayed after the show and gave each child (over 300) and teacher a personalized autograph!

Thanks, Alton Brown!

Book Character Day

AKA: how to let kids wear costumes to school at Halloween without allowing them to dress like scary things...

I'm the very ugly bug!

Kids Just Know

We have a cat at school that sits outside the door like this every day at the same time. 

I asked my students what we should name him, to which they replied "Jimmy"!  

Well, OK, then. 

That's the perfect name for this cat.

Linda's

Or "the place where we used to get drunk on cheap beer in college and then again in grad school".

It's still very much the same.

It us us who are different because now we drink cheap wine instead of cheap beer and get called "mam".

We're so mature.

And this guy comes along:

Love them.

I get to do really fun stuff at work

15 years?!

I graduated high school 15 years ago today. 

Does that make me old?

Rewards of Teaching

Teaching is hard, especially when you're teaching 86 seniors the last term of their senior year. They stare at you, get on their phones during class, try to get out of doing their work, and other seniory things that I can't really get mad about because I did them all myself when I was a senior.

However, one of greatest rewards of teaching is seeing your students present exemplar work or having a student say "Thank you, I learned so much from your class". On my last day of class this Thursday I got to experience both of these rewards.

For our final project for Multicultural Literacy, I gave the students a choice between writing a 10-page paper or writing their own Multicultural Children's book.  I got a lot of really cool books and some well-written papers (along with some half-assed papers as well), but this book below really takes the cake. It's the story of my student's father, a Japsnese-American who was afraid to eat his lunch on the Boy Scout trips he went on when he was younger because it was different from the other lunches. 

The cover. Notice these individually cut out, collage-style illustrations

Notice the detail on the rolled brown paper bag lunches

We all have these thoughts sometimes.

I love how she captured the emotion in these faces.

This isn't the whole book, but I just wanted to share a few pages of this adorable and moving story about being different. I'd like to think that my stellar teaching had a small hand in its creation.

This week in news

I got in the school paper of my old high school:

My Multicultural Literacy students made some awesome posters in class:

Baby boy Viktor turns 7:

Carrie finds ancient photo strip...when was this??

I take Andy Warhol style selfies of myself when bored:

Today's Emoji

There's the perfect emoji for when you're just killin' the game and it is

This lady thoroughly expresses what it's like when you're on fire for your first day of teaching class.

...Also can be used when you're going to go out on the town and shake a leg.

...Or when you're wearing a very hot red dress. Now I just need the dress. 

Blogging about my blog, learning about life

A nice reminder of what an awesome ESL teacher I was

It's the calm before the storm, I feel. Starting March 31st I will be insanely busy for a 10 week stint. Between teaching a course at UO, supervising student teachers, working part time as an assistant researcher, and teaching yoga who knows when I will have time to even think about how much time I don't have. Aye!

But for now, I'm feeling a brief calm and instead of using my time wisely to prepare for my class, I'm finding myself re-reading old blog entires which in it's own way is very useful for reflection and self-growth. That's the cool thing about having been blogging (relatively) consistently since January 2010.  That's 5 years! A lot has happened in the past five years and it's kinda neat to relive it all through my blog. Some things I read are embarrassing, some hilarious, and some even heart-breaking. 

 I think the greatest lesson to be learned from reading old blog posts is, ironically, contentment (santosha). This idea of contentment is something that I have wrestled with for a long time, hence me naming my blog Santosha. I don't suppose this to be the end of my wrestling, but maybe now I've just been ushered into a new class of wrestling. I've got some insight based on my experiences and how I can now reflect upon what I wrote.

Most importantly, I am amazed at the shift in my happiness or contentment during my time as an ESL Teacher. I started out bright-eyed and bushy tailed, excited about my job and life and somewhere down the line I became disillusioned. I let a desire for more (more money, more education, more degrees, more life experiences, more places to say that I lived in) cloud my vision of just how truly good my situation was. If I remove those desires from the equation, all of which are materialistic or ego-driven (aside from the desire for more life experiences, of course) I can reach the conclusion that I always had everything that I ever needed. Unfortunately, it took giving up those things to realize how truly perfect they were. So, in this sense, I believe it to be impossible for a human to understand contentment unless they have once abused their own understanding of it.  Or like Joni Mitchell said "You don't know what you got till it's gone".  

But, hey, at least now I'm cured of my grass is always greener syndrome.   

Gratitude day 7

So grateful to be back in school and for my Graduate Teaching Fellowship. I may have to grade tons of exams, but my tuition is paid for and my little undergraduate students are super cute.

Commencement Speeches

What is it about graduation speeches? They are almost never good and are almost always boring.  Why do speakers feel the need to be boring and cliche?  Why do speakers feel the need to spend copious amounts of time talking about themselves and their accomplishments and how you can do it if you just do what I did?  Does anyone really care?  Does anyone even listen to the commencement speech?  The sea of graduates are thinking about their own things, talking to their buds, wondering if they actually passed that last final or, if they are smart, they are slightly drunk.  Is there a tougher audience?

Well, I've just added something new to my bucket list: 

Speak at a Commencement Ceremony (of some kind...even if it's a pre-school graduation...it counts, y'all) and not be boring.