Dear Mother Nature, I've Got Work to Do

It's not the grumpy old man in me shining through, but the man who wants to achieve great things with his time!  It seems that snow is on its way once again to the East Coast sometime around tomorrow evening into Wednesday morning.  This, of course, means school will most likely be canceled.

That sucks for all most (Maybe, just me.) teachers!  With one day of school already gone this week, the last thing my budding young scholars need is yet another day off.  :sigh:

On the brighter side, today absolutely flew by!  The Learning Objective?  Students created short skits based on Feudalism in Japan.  That meant, as facilitator, I was running around the classroom ensuring each of the groups were focused, understood the directions, were following the directions and would be ready to present after just 20 minutes of preparation.  That's a lot to handle in 45 minutes!

Some highlights?
1.  One student decided to add a cartwheel to the skit.
2.  At least four students had quite impressive death scenes.
3.  To top it off, one student had created a crown for himself that said "Emperor of China"  (Look at the objective if you're not sure why that's a highlight...)

Time to heat up a Lean Cuisine, do some grocery shopping (To prepare for Snowmageddon 2011) and more lesson plans!!

From the Beginning...

So I spent Thursday night after work watching LOST, which is one of my favorite past times.  I decided to throw in Season One, which is probably my favorite season.  Even with this being my 6th, or 7th time seeing these episodes, I'm still moved by the events that occur.

SPOILER ALERT:  Don't read if you plan on watching LOST and not being spoiled...



The Pilot episode (aptly named, The Pilot), begins in what is a beautiful bamboo forest, continues into a pristine beach then erupts into a chaotic, fire-engulfed plane crash where life and death are battling for the lives of the survivors.  Jack, one of my heroes, responds to the situation and takes this opportunity to show courage. (While personally, even with a medical doctorate, I'd be heading into the forest!)

As the Pilot continues, we see a multi-ethnic community coming together after a horrifying and traumatic event.  Even with all of the tension, uncertainty, and the enormous differences in their culture, these people are able to survive together.

Something that I always reflect on while teaching is this fictional situation.  As a Social Studies teacher, part of my curriculum deals with Multi-Cultural Education.  In my mind, I'm preparing my students for a LOST-esque  situation.  What if Sawyer, Sayid, Jin, Michael, etc are not slinging around ethnic slurs and arguing on the basis of their differences and began their journey on the Island in cooperation.  (A lot less drama, yes.)  But think of what they could have achieved from the beginning had they understood their differences.

More about LOST, and Teaching later...

Appetizers Supersized!

The last thing I need is to eat Pigs-in-a-Blanket, so I decided to make some JUMBO SIZED PiaB!   (Learned some things along the way, cook them for longer, use less cheese and maybe I'll crispify the dogs before I wrap them up!)

Second Post!

Saint Nick was very kind to me this year, including all of the things I bought myself!   This includes my shiny new Olympus E-PL1.  Below is a photo I shot while waiting for Ange while she tried on some dresses.

Cookies!

Spending the entire day (except for bringing Dharma out) inside caused quite a bit of cabin fever.  I 'hiked' a Gingerbread Man dog toy into the hallway and knocked a (huge) picture frame down... so we took a trip to Stop and Shop.

 (Note:  This is what is left after I ate six cookies and a glass of milk...)