Elizabeth's profileThe Sacred Realm of the ...PhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
The Sacred Realm of the Celtic GoddessIt's kinda small and insignificant, but Cleopatra and I like it. Plus, if you read all the way to the end, you can leave us a comment or two! |
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Because if I added them all, it would go on for miles. Now alphabetized by author for your convenience!
Just a few of the movies I love and watch often.
Sorry to disappoint, but I just don't watch that much TV. I'm probably too busy reading, after all.
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12/12/2008 The End is in Sight!In less than one week, I will have actually survived my first full semester as a real live high school teacher, and, as I haven't written in months (when I have time to write, there's nothing to write ABOUT, and when I have stuff to write about, there's no time because I'm usually working about 60 hours a week), I thought it might be nice to recap, at least in a vague sort of sense.
Teachers have been in the news in a negative sort of way for blogging about what goes on in their classrooms, and, as I appreciate and value and desperately need to keep working at my job, I'm not going to go into anything even resembling details. What I will say is that this job is a lot darned harder than most people think it is! I'm grading homework almost every night, and I'm already seeing my summer dwindle in the face of not-to-be-missed professional development opportunities (I'm about 100 hours short of the promised land, and if I actually DO everything everyone wants me to, I'll be about 100 hours OVER by next August). I'm rushing to get all the homework graded this weekend so I can actually relax over the holidays (okay, I need to stop kidding myself - I won't relax, I'll be writing lesson plans for NEXT semester, but at least the homework will be graded). I guess I'm just a disgusting overachiever, but I really do take this job intensely seriously - we really do mold the future, and I want to mold it the best way I know how.
For the most part, though, I'm having a lot of fun. I get to spend my days reading great literature four times daily (okay, I'll admit it - I don't love great literature all that much, as I've said before, and by the third time, I'm usually bored - I now understand why colleges use those huge lecture classes: so they can do the lecture just once and be done with it!). If they'd just pay me about half again as much money, I'd do this forever (and I will probably do it forever anyway - this economy is not good for English majors, especially ones who focused in creative writing, and I like this job better than I've liked anything else I've done).
Not much is going on on the Certification Road. I've met once with my certification committee, and I have been observed to within an inch of my life. I've got another meeting next week, and I'm starting to relax about this stuff - my mom keeps saying it's just hoops they have to jump through and if they didn't think I could do the job, they wouldn't have hired me in the first place, but I'm a Polish worrier, so I stress anyway. I need to take one more certification test (two if you count the Psychology test I'm not required to take but would like to take), but I am waiting for my income tax refund (see earlier posts for expenses related to THAT, which are, well, expensive). If all goes as planned, I'll be permanently certified by this coming August and can finally close the chapter in my life entitled "Alternative Teacher Certification" and open one called "Certified Teacher."
Personally, I'm single just now because I'm too busy to date, but I'd like to get back out there sometime in the not-too-distant future. I got dumped just before school started (a long story and I'm still angry about it), and I miss being in a relationship, but I'm not sure I have much to give to one just now due to my insane work schedule. I'm also the Speech and Drama coach, and this demands plenty of my free time, as if grading English papers didn't take up enough of my personal time.
Side note: I got an iPod Touch with my check from the Government last May, and I have discovered the Joys of Podcasts. Some favorites include The Geologic Podcast, Escape Pod, PodCastle, ClonePod, Astronomy Cast, NPR Science Friday, and the English teacher's delight, The Princeton Review Vocabulary Minute. I plan to get a laptop of my own FINALLY with this year's tax refund, and I am already anticipating many hours of happy listening. Of course, www.wnua.com still has the best smooth jazz anywhere, but I can't get it in my car. *sigh!*
Other than that, what can I say? It's a Friday night, and my big excitement is getting up early tomorrow morning to take Cleopatra to the veterinarian in Owasso. GOD, I'm boring! 3/18/2008 On The Job Hunt (or Why I Am Frustrated With Online Teaching-Job Websites)Happy March, pals and gals, that time when teachers start thinking of the next academic year. For me, it is a time of furiously looking for a job, preferably (once again) within driving distance of my folks' (thank you for the raises, Governor Henry, but the sad fact is that I still can't pay my student loans AND rent, especially after I bought the new car last fall).
The question then becomes, Where to look? How?
I've heard the Internet is a wonderful tool for finding a job. Well, sort of.
For businesspeople, there is Monster.com, Yahoo! HotJobs, CareerBuilder, and I'm sure many others. For teachers in Oklahoma, there are two that I know of: OklahomaTeachingJobs.org, and Teachers-Teachers.com. Each site has its strong and weak points, but overall, I'd say that they both could use a LOT of help.
I'll start with Oklahoma's site, OklahomaTeachingJobs (there are links to both sites in my Links list on the main page). The site is well-designed, I think, and it's easy to search by region (important, when you can't afford to move). I like this site a lot, except for one thing: no one updates it as the jobs are filled - I saw listings last week that I know were filled last year - I can tell by the post date. Some are even older than that. So it's hard to know what is actually available, and makes the state of Oklahoma's education look a lot more desperate than it actually is.
The other site, Teachers-Teachers, is not nearly as well designed as the first. It is designed to do a lot more than I need it to, for one - I don't want to spend all day scanning and uploading my certificate, certification test scores, resume, and everything else - just give me an address and I'll mail them to the schools I'm applying to. I don't want to use this site to map my entire professional history - I have a resume for that. All I want to do is to see where the job openings are, and whether or not I'm qualified for them. Another thing I don't like is the inability to search by region within a state - it doesn't help me to know that there are openings in the Panhandle - I can't afford to move there (and would hate it anyway - all that's out there is dirt, or so I'm told, and I'm a city girl at heart) I want to know what there is within an hour's drive of Grove. All of that, and their site is behind in removing old or filled positions as well, once again inflating the job market to poor unemployed educators.
So basically, both sites suck, and I am getting discouraged.
On another note, I want to apologize for not chronicling my adventures in awhile - the truth is, I've basically spent my time substitute teaching and haven't had any adventures to speak of, or at least none appropriate for this forum. 7/25/2007 The Joy, Glory, and Wonder that is AP Summer InstituteIt's been over a week since I got home from the Advanced Placement Summer Institute workshop I took completely on my mom's say-so July 9-13, and that means that I have been negligent in my reporting. In my defense, though, I have been busy sending out job applications to all the schools whose teachers I met at APSI and encouraged me to apply for openings they had. That was an awesome part of the week, meeting teachers and hearing about job openings I didn't previoulsy know about (which just goes to show that it's way better to know someone on the inside than all the online postings in the world - I don't know that that sentence makes all that much sense, but hey, I've been up almost twenty hours; cut me some slack, please!). So I've been filling out applications and continuing to tweak my resume, plus working at my new part-time summer job selling clothes for Stage, a clothing store here in Grove. So yeah, I've been busy.
But I digress. I'm supposed to be talking about how much I learned at APSI, which was a lot! After this one week, I now feel prepared to teach Advanced Placement Language and Composition, and would not hesitate to do so, whereas before the workshop, I would have felt set adrift in a sea of brainiacs with no shore in sight. I now know exactly what is on the AP Language and Composition tests: I have copies of every test they've released over the last fifteen years, I believe, and I have scored samples of all of last year's essays, with commentary and rubrics. I'm still not scoring very accurately, based on the practice sessions we did, but I feel like I was getting closer the more we practiced.
And really, I don't think the test is all that big a deal, except for the time limits, which are insane - I think students have two hours to do 50-some-odd multiple choice questions about several passages they have to analyze (and analyzing is a lot harder than just reading - although in my defense, I would have passed the multiple choice section using my regular "skimming" method I use on tests, but I wouldn't have made a very high passing score) and only two hours to write three essays - it's an exercise in time and crisis management, and I understand that a lot better than I did before the workshop, that's for sure! But I learned some good time management strategies to teach the kids, too, and I feel really good about almost everything - I'm great on multiple choice, I can nail the synthesis and general argument questions every time, but I'm still tripping up on rhetorical analysis - I'm just not used to looking at a piece that closely (if I had been, I might have done much better in college - they seemed to think I already knew how at OU). But even over just the week, I learned a lot about it, and I feel confident that as time goes on I will keep learning more and more and honing my skills even more sharply.
Plus, we got to stay in a really nice hotel in Tulsa - the Doubletree - and Mom, Jan, and I (we all hung out together since we had carpooled in Jan's car to Tulsa - Jan is one of Mom's colleagues - she also teaches AP) even got to eat dinner with Weird Al Yankovic on our last night at the hotel (see my MySpace Blog here for more details - and you'll have to click the link on my main page, because I'm too tired to link properly).
There were only a couple of things I didn't like so well, and I think it was more of a personality thing than anything else - I get frustrated sometimes with all of this "teach to the test" garbage. I mean, sure, I know the test is important, but I don't think the test is the end-all and be-all, and I thought we focused a little too closely on the test and not enough on the actual learning, but as I say, that is just my personal preference. The only other real issue was the food - everything was white and heavy (white bread, white bagels, etc.) and I didn't get enough fiber! Next year I will pack fiber supplements, and maybe my own lunch - as I said many times, I'd have been so much happier with a turkey sandwich and a big salad - they had stuff like lasagna and turkey and dressing, for gosh sakes, and I'm used to eating more lightly at lunchtime.
I'll definitely go again next year - I wonder if they'll let me do all three English workshops back to back (AP Language and Composition, AP Literature and Composition, and Pre-AP English) next year? I'm all for it, so long as the state wil bankroll it for me. I also saw that they have AP Psychology too, and I'd love to learn to teach that as well. *Sigh!* So much to learn, so little time! 6/2/2007 An AddendumI almost forgot to mention that Sandy Garrett is the State Superintendent for Public Instruction of the State of Oklahoma - that was really thoughtless of me and I apologize. Sometimes I am a bit scatterbrained, and in my quest for brevity I leave out important facts. 5/29/2007 Guess Who Was Having Lunch At The Same Place I Was Today?Today was the first day of the end-of-year professional development at the high school. I had planned to sit in on the morning session, as it was an extension of our latest book group. I had planned to head home afterward, but when Mom invited me to lunch, there was no way I'd say no (I make it a policy to never turn down free food). Several of the teachers from the session we'd just finished came with us as well, and we decided to eat at a cute little cafe near the school. At some point, a woman in jeans and a red sweater walked over from another table and started talking to my mom and a couple of the other teachers. I was at the other end of the table and the ambient noise was too high for me to hear anything, so I just smiled and looked pleasant.
We ate and left, and I got caught up in the afternoon's vertical team meeting - I hadn't planned on attending, but Mom thought it would be a good experience for me. I learned a lot, but I completely forgot to ask about our mystery visitor until we got home and Mom was telling Dad about seeing Sandy Garrett at the restaurant. I said, "Oh, was that who that was? How cool!" Mom said she was in town on vacation.
I don't want to be obnoxious and invade her privacy, so I won't say anything else about it, but I thought it was really neat and wanted to share it.
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Thanks for stopping by! Cleo and I would love to know what you thought of our online home.
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Hola
Hola.Un saludo desde España.Islas Canarias...Ángel
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