EducatingMe

In benchmark testing my 6 year old today, I tell her that she is taking a very hard test. One that I cannot give her help on. There will be questions she sees that will be soooo easy and some she will see that will be so so so so hard - I was talking 6 year old ya'll She started the test and as I am looking over her shoulder I am pleased overall with her logic. And then she comes to a fairly simple probability question. There are 3 bins of toys. Each of the containers are filled with varying amounts of cars and dinosaurs. She was to drag and drop a tag of "very likely" OR "very unlikely" to show if she would have a better chance of picking out a car. The correct answer would have been two were very likely and one being very unlikely. She choose very unlikely on all three. She informed me that should could see into the containers AND she liked dinosaurs waaaaayyyy better than cars. So she was very unlikely to pick a car out of any of the bins. Even though...

I Love my family. I love Tatum and Jolene and Travis. I love God. I love finding something new in a book Ive been reading for years. I find that lately He has been particularly hilarious. Im sure he is cracking up too when I "make plans". I love teaching. I love teaching students and I love teaching teachers.  I love reading books...should I read Catcher in the Rye for a 4th time?  I love diving into more. I love getting to know something inside and out and then moving on the the next thing. I am kind of a diver.  I love thinking about big pictures. I love my backyard. I love writing blog posts and then sitting by the analytics and watching the numbers...ehm number go up...to 2. From one to two.  I love pinning things on Pinterest. I love even more getting to move those pins into my completed projects folder. I love talking with other teachers, tweeting with other teachers, Hangouts with other teachers. When you get a group of great teachers together they w...

I am a firm believer that teachers should continue to know and grow all the time. I challenge myself to read a minimum of six books every year. I have a lot of drive time with my job so using the Audible app makes this much easier. I was made to read Mojo, which you saw in my last blog post. The book made me want to vomit as much as I'm sure that post made you, my readers, want to vomit. It was OK, I'm just not into self-help books. The latest "made to read" is Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. This book had me on a roller coaster of mood swings. I have gone from wanting to cure the social injustices of the education system in East St. Louis to screaming at the book to shut the hell up, as there's no way the writer could know all of the things that go into what he's talking about. (I'm sure he is a brilliant man, I do not mean to discount his work). When Kozol, in his early chapters, talks about East St Louis I held on to every word. I couldn't...

I am the mother of two girls. I am constantly flirting with the line of consistency and tweaking my parenting style to mold them into the best human beings ever. I know, my expectations are high. But they are seriously amazing kids. Recently, they were talking with daddy and my oldest told him that I work too much - that I am always working. This was hard to hear. I work from home and so does my hubs and we self school with Epic. The kids are literally with us all the time. She has noticed that I am on my computer a lot and to her that looks like I am working. Well, I am on my computer a lot. Much is work, but some, even though technically Epic will benefit from, is play. I have come to realize that I feel like I have done it in life. Sure, I have those days and sometimes even those weeks where going back to teaching feels like the best option in the world, I mean I loved it. I have come to realize lately that admin is just a different game. I thought I was playing the same game init...

As promised, and now also feels long overdue (you know, seeing as how the last 16 posts came at you quick and dirty). Here is the first of several posts that take all of the EducatingMe write-ups that happened to on the trail and tie them to education, according to me. I will take it one post at a time and milk the Colorado Trail blogs for all they are worth. ;-) This one seem most fitting as I see everyone heading back to classes this week. Hang on tight and Grammer Nazis turn your heads there are some run on sentences here, but the rant required it. In the post about Granola Ways - I had no clue what I didn't know. We were about to embark on an epic journey with wide eyes and starry visions of what the experience would be like. Days later we would find that reality would punch us in the face. But like I said, when I wrote the post we had no clue. Do you remember when you graduated college with that crisp piece of paper in your hands (which you don't actually get for 3 mo...

End of ol' Trav’s Trail…. I told Erin, if she is going to make a video or documentary out of this whole experience, it really needs to revolve around the perspective of the SAG team. For Joe and I, the story is mostly the same every day of the trip. We wake up, pack up camp, and start riding. We ride until we are nearly devastated all to be redeemed by some spectacular views or thrilling pristine downhill segment, then we find another camp spot and do it again the next day.  One campsite along the way We did come away with a few stories. Joe hiking his bike to the top of Ten Mile Range in his socks has to be one of the best. Everyone has great strengths that surface from time to time, I discovered Joe’s great strength is having the determination of samurai warrior. We both crashed once, Joe came away with some bruises, I came away with a good laugh. We met some interesting people on the trail, but their story was typically very similar to ours. So, overall, we will h...

Well, I have rather enjoyed making a pretty daily post and cluing you guys into what is happening here in Colorado. I typically add pics so you can have a little eye candy with your content. But as some of you now know through Facebook, my phone was stolen from the rec center last night. I did not have my belongings locked up, so shame on me, but I had a pretty good record going of luck in this department. I have NEVER taken a lock into the gym. Guess it was 'bout time. Anyhow, no pics from the pool last night. I also lost the pics and videos of the boys from that morning and the night before. This is frustrating on many levels. But because of the blog, I have been pulling the pics regularly and really only lost two days worth of pics. NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. I am trying hard to have a good attitude about this, because there is really nothing anyone can do...except to raise your kids to know how horrible stealing makes the victim feel. We should all steal something very near an...