Or A summer camping trip with my dad.
This past weekend, my dad and I went to the North Carolina mountains in the Wilson Creek Wilderness to camp. Here are some pictures of the trail. The middle one is a set of waterfalls and swimming pools. I don't have pictures of them, but we encountered two snakes on our second day. One was at Hunt Fish Falls and one was in the middle of the trail as we were hiking back to base camp. My dad had to take a stick and knock it on the ground near the snake to get it to go somewhere else so we could get by. Neither snakes were rattlers, so that was a plus.
Our campsite is only about 30 minutes in from the car. It sits at the bottom of this huge rock which the middle picture is taken on and is to the right of the far right picture. Above the rock is a great little swimming hole (the first picture) that is one of the reasons why we like the campsite so much. The other is that it is so far off the main trail that our dog, Max, can't hear hikers as they pass by. A constant background noise is the sound of the waterfall.
Hunt Fish Falls is the thing that originally brought us to this area around ten years ago. It is this humongous swimming hole. It is an easy 1.5 hour hike from our campsite to the Falls. There is road access from another side of the wilderness that keeps many hikers off our trail. When we got here we were the only ones. But after a while a family and a camp showed up.
The first night of our stay we were rained on on our drive up, during dinner at the campsite, and as we were sleeping. The result was that 90% of our stuff was wet be the first morning. Good news there was that our second day was beautiful and there wasn't a cloud in the sky until 5pm. We were able to dry out some stuff that morning before we went to Hunt Fish Falls.
[All of these pictures can also be viewed by clicking on this one.]
Or How NC has turned me into a bookworm and I love it.
Some interesting things I have learned this past week and weekend. In this time I have almost read two great books: The World Without Us and The Pixar Touch. The first is a thought experiment about what would happen if we (humans) dramatically and instantly left the Earth. The second is the story of the guys behind Pixar who pretty much made computer animation and computer animation film making.
1. North America used to have 15 species of megafuana (species of large animals that have very few natural predators). Most of these species were killed off within 1,000 years of early humans entering the continent.
Here is a wikipedia article about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_megafauna#North_America
2. Tires are a single molecule. I will say it again, Tires are a single molecule. Here's an exerpt from the book.
Here is a wikipedia article about vulcanization.Goodyear's process, called vulcanization, ties long rubber polymer chains together with short strands of sulfer atoms, actually transforming them into a single giant molecule. Once rubber is vulcanized - meaning it's heated, spiked with sulfer, and poured into a mold, such as one shaped like a truck tire - the resulting huge molecule takes that form and never relinquishes it.
Being a single molecule, a tire can't be melted down and turned into something else.
3. There are seven gyres in the world's oceans. They are depressions in the water created by currents and winds and they house lots and lots of trash. in 2005, the North Pacific Gyre was 10 million square miles of trash floating on the top of the water - almost the size of Africa.
Here is a quick wikipedia article on the oceanic gyres.
4. Here are several of Pixar's first movies. They are shorts. They are all completely computer animated.
Tin Toy (1988)
Gerri's Game (1997)
Red's Dream (1987)
Luxo Jr. (1986)
[ASSIGNED: SUCCESS STORY]
Why is it so much harder for me to write the success story blog than the failure story?
I can think of small and large things I was successful with in my first year teaching: I can teach the hell out of vocabulary in a way that makes it constructive; and I can break down an essay so that almost anyone can write one that will pass the state test. I am supremely organized. (To look at my home, you wouldn't think so, but my classroom and its documentation are impeccable.) I can write really good chapter study guides for novels and the quizzes that go with them are the perfect mix of comprehension and critical thinking. I did well with group work, and with letting my students teach. I can make grammar make sense.
But can I point to one student and say, "I made a difference in his/her life," and really mean it? "Make a difference." What does that mean anyway? How do we measure that? I didn't send a kid to Phillips Exeter. But did the letter I wrote for KJ get her into that Tougaloo program? Will that change her? Did the gift certificate I gave RW to make up for the day he missed the class reward hot wings party allow him to feel like I cared? Will he remember it? Who knows what each butterfly's wings will do.
Here's what I remember: The day I returned to the school to resign and tell my students personally I would not be back (I'd been out for 6 weeks on medical leave and would not finish the school year there.) I found RK and pulled him out of his Biology class because he'd skipped second period when I usually saw him. He was terrified, of course, thinking he was in trouble again. He and I had gotten off to a rocky start. He was resistant to the work I assigned and challenged my motives. But by [what would become] the end of the year he would knit his brow and listen to my lessons, and pour himself into the worksheets I gave. If he wasn't finished when they were being collected he'd protest that he didn't want to turn it in until he'd gotten it. He wanted to understand. And the look on his face when he did was pure joy.
In early October I was told my job was to get enough documentation to get him into alternative school. In January I had an incident in the class that resulted in five students being suspended. He was sitting in the group and got lumped in with the crowd. I could see he was hurt and felt betrayed. Did I sleep that night?
The next morning I spoke with the assistant principal, who managed discipline referrals. I appealed for RK, explained that he had been the victim of a "sweep" and that I wanted him back in my class. He never thanked me, but that's when things changed.
So when we were standing face to face outside his Biology class in May, I told him he was one of the reasons my decision to leave had been so difficult. I asked him to remember how good it felt to succeed, and to try to keep doing that. I told him I appreciated how hard he worked in my class, and that I knew he was doing it for me as well as for himself. He kicked his foot and looked down.
He was crying.
[ASSIGNED: FAILURE STORY]
Are there individual students whom I feel I've failed? Ha-ell yeah! Isn't that what the "one child at a time" jingoism pretty much guarantees? GIve me 120-something students and then let help me feel good about "making a difference" for one. Do the math.
But I have to admit confess that my biggest sense of failure has come from not being able to make a difference stick it out at SDHS. I made a commitment. At this point in my life, commitments are not made lightly. And I said I wanted a small Delta town, knowing these are the toughest assignments. Did I not fully imagine what that meant? Well, yes, be we never do. I didn't fully imagine what being a parent would be like, either, but I stuck with it for whatever it would be. How can I even begin to compare another 3 years in Mississippi to my commitment of the past 25?
I've said before and i'll say again (but now I'm changing the tense): All the reasons I left are the very reasons I should have stayed.
That pretty much says it all.
White Whine: The lack of leadership made my efforts there futile. Teacher Corps is not sending a new group of teachers there this year and I'd be alone further isolated. I can ultimately help more students by being in a school with some degree of leadership and organization. The school I'm going to is still classified as critical needs. There are still students in millions thousands hundreds plenty of students whom I'm not teaching no matter where I end up.
But then I see NW's curious eyes tracking me. Or I hear DT's soft voice as he asks my approval of every sentence he writes. I see DC's little stack of books she stores on my supply shelf. I reread SB's metaphor poem about her dead mother and compare it to the weight of her armor she wears every day.
And I know Dr. Mullins is right: It's not really about me. But I made it about me when I decided to leave.
White Whine: There will be students I love at G-W. I'll probably succeed in educating some of them. But I will not succeed in educating 120-some others to whom I made an implicit and explicit commitment. I told them all that they were not the reason I was leaving. It smacked of the "divorce speech" whereby parents veil the fact that it's the other parent they can't stand. But the kids are still left parentless. Do we I continue to soothe our my conscious by saying they'll feel better because of that fact?
I dunno. But now I know why I'll be sticking with gin.
Or Why it's good that my second year co and I are different people.
Creating the curriculum map for the summer was actually rather easy. My co and I both taught are subject, so we could bounce ideas off each other about which concepts we should spend more time on. We banged the map off in just a couple of hours.
I did not have to create such a map for my school during the year. JPS provided me with a pacing guide that lists what objectives need to be taught week by week. When I was slow the first nine weeks several people told me to pick up the pace. Other than that, the pacing guide probably made my life easier.
Or The only legit handshake in MTC.
Or How my first year will turn into a second.
Guess the song I'm trying to play.
I am now into the second week of owning this guitar.
It's been six weeks since my accident. Just over month since I came home from the hospital. In April, I left my house three times.
Emily stayed for two weeks, then had to go home. I've been driving since May 1, when I also started outpatient physical therapy in place of the therapist coming to my home. Monday, I gave up the walker for a cane -- the kind with four little feet, but I'll take it.
Physical therapy is three times a week, about three hours each time. I'm up to 45 reps at 80 pounds on the leg press. I can walk with a normal stride on the treadmill in the harness that lifts 50 pounds of my weight. (Five short of half my weight.) I only take pain meds at night.
Those of you who know me know that a year ago I could hold a 40-pound box on my shoulder and run up a six-foot ladder. For an eight- to ten-hour shift.
There are three 6 mm screws in my left hip, each about 7.5 cm long. I'm packing a lot of titanium.
As suspected, I will not teach this school year. I am hopeful that I'll be able to do my summer school teaching and classwork in Oxford. With luck, I'll be fully recovered by August when school starts.
But it's a long road. There are days I lose the mental battle.
Life deals us cards. I've had some amazing hands dealt to me, and I think I've played them as well as I could. I still maintain that things do not, as many say, happen for a reason. Things happen randomly. Our job, as higher-order critters, is to give meaning to those things. And that, my friends, is what is known as a state of grace.
Since my brother's death in November 2003, my family has read this poem in place of the traditional blessing at Thanksgiving, his and my favorite holiday. It's good advice to keep in mind. I taught it to my students as an example of extended metaphor.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks