Working My Way Up to Change

I LOVE change!

This isn't really true, but a wise man once encouraged me to embrace the statement nonetheless, due to the ever-present state of change in...well...everyone's

In any case, I've been inspired, partly by a book I just read-on-cd [Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver; I HIGHLY recommend it] and partly by the environment of gluttony in which I find myself during my time in the US, to invite or perhaps more accurately force some change in my life this school year.

I'm basically telling you all this for the sake of accountability.

I haven't really made any solid decisions yet as to what all I'm going to change. I'm an extrovert, so consider this blog me "thinking [typing]" out loud. Feel free to make suggestions and/or observations if you like.

So, to begin, here are some things I'm considering changing, or at least working toward changing.

-Eating Habits: things to consider include local shopping- how possible is it in Quito? Might "local" mean Ecuadorian in this case, since not a lot grows that high in the mountain? Might I make an effort to eat more Ecuadorian food (gulp)? Might I just focus on eating more healthily (whole grains, low carb, lots of fresh fruits and veggies, etc.) and forget the local part until I'm somewhere where I have more options (aka, the US)?

-Exercise: I'm just gonna go ahead and say it- gross. Blech. Eww. These are my feelings about exercise. I just can't seem to help it. I've tried lots of things and it boils down to this: I hate to work out. Nonetheless, I feel compelled by my health and my vanity to do it anyway. This summer I bought the Zumba Fitness Kit as well as a Pilates DVD. I'm hoping to combine these with walking with my wonderful friend, Beth, for a total of working out 5 days a week, which seems to me to be the exercise equivalent of, say, being silent for a year to hear God better or something. Way above reasonable. So if you think I should work out more than that, I don't care. So don't bother telling me.

-Devotions/Spiritual Life: I'm not very satisfied with my Spiritual walk right now. That's pretty common for me when I'm not on a normal schedule. Ironically, I seem to have more trouble making time for God when I have more time. In any case, I want to put a priority on setting aside time to read, pray, meditate, and just BE with God this year.

-Sleep: I have no doubt that I will need to adjust this if I expect to bump up the last two topics. Since I know you're curious, I need about 8.5 hours of sleep each night in order to not feel tired and not get too easily annoyed by my delightful students. If I plan to get in a workout, shower, devotions, and breakfast before leaving for school each morning, I'll need to be greeting my days at about 5am. That means I should be hittin' the sack around (closes eyes and sighs) 8:30pm. Oy-vey.

-Random Other Responsible Things: flossing; not drinking soda; drastically minimizing sugar in my diet; using my awesome juicer to take advantage of cheap, fresh produce by drinking veggie juice regularly; buying a small food processor to help me do better at eating veggies twice a day.

So, there it is. The list to consider. I'm a little apprehensive about biting off more than I can chew. But on the other hand, the illusive "they" say that all these things will make me healthier, happier, and uh, I don't know...make me fart sunshine, I guess. Maybe it'll be worth all that yucky change? In any case, I think that I'm at the point where I'm willing to give it a good long try and see if it's worth it. If not, I can always go back to my slovenly, irresponsible ways. I guess it can't hurt to try, right?

Student Evaluations; Year Two

Today I got the results of my year student evaluations. My regular readers (and people I talk to in real life) should already be aware that I love, love, love my kids, in spite of themselves. But this strong love does not blind me to the fact that the middle school age bracket is, perhaps, not the most ideal age range to request unbiased feedback, particularly in the form of students giving feedback to teachers. Some of them over-estimate my power over them. One or two might consider it an excellent opportunity for pay back against the wrongs I so mercilessly forced upon them throughout the year (the most frequent complaints involved my very strict no-bathroom-breaks-without-an-emergency-pass rule (each students gets 2 emergency passes per semester), my no-food-or-drink-except-water rule, and, of course, homework. But in general, when your students are 13-15, student evaluations do much less in the area of evaluating teaching skills and much more in the area of telling you whether your students like you.

But, be that as it may, I am required to have my kids fill out surveys, and so I do. Actually, it's really fun to read the results. Especially since many of my kids are ESL. So here, for your reading pleasure (and mine), are some of my eval responses:

[note the (sometimes snide) comments from the editor in brackets]

What one thing did you like about this class?

My friend

[ah, yes, the ever-popular, "My friend is in my class! Whee!" response. Very relevant to me improving things for next year; thanks for playing]

Learning how to learn better (2x)

Experimenting the things we learned because it worked.

[now THIS is an encouraging reply; YES! The things I teach you in Study Skills DO actually work! I'm so glad at least ONE student came to this conclusion]

Games for review (3x)

It was fun

Time goes by really fast.

[I think this kid must have that disease where you're sleeping with your eyes open and you just lose chunks of time. I was in this class; time did not go that fast from where I was standing...]

Teacher is funny.

[thanks for noticing]

Some of the assignments were interesting and fun.

[of course, the REST of the assignments...]

Learning the life of Jesus

Games

Review games (2x)

The boards

[no, I am not spanking my students. The boards are personal white boards I had our handy-dandy shop teacher make me; we use them for review games and the kids LOVE them]

Games (4x)

The liberty of where to sit.

When we played games or watched movies

She always helped me when I don’t understand.

[this answer makes my heart happy, as does the next one, although I'm a little bit skeptical of that one. Inspired? Really?]

The class inspired me.

We learn new things.

[apparently simple past tense was not among those new things]

The books (3)

What one thing did you not like about this class?

Some times is boring. [

yah, I can't really disagree with this. Sometimes it was boring, indeed. It's hard to be exciting and fun all the time]

Sometimes hard projects

Memory verses

Plays

[note that later on, we get several positive votes to counter-act this vote against plays (aka, review skits]

The teacher

[must've been a really stupid kid that wrote that]

Quizzes, notes, tests, or homework (14x)

You can’t go to the bathroom unless it’s an emergency, and you need a pass.

[snicker, snicker; this is one of the hills I am ready to die on. Seriously, there's no reason for you have to go to the bathroom during our 45 minute class. I can't tell you HOW many times I've argued this point]

Too much writing

[um, it's a writing class...]

She was a nice teacher.

[I HATE it when my teacher is nice; that's always the one thing I don't like about a class! ??]

Reading

Sometimes hard to understand

What did you like most about the teacher?

Her games (3)

Teacher was funny. (2)

She was fair and explained well.

She taught good. Good teacher

The attitude and the way she teached.

[apparently all this "good teaching" didn't focus enough on grammar]

She is nice.(2)

Kind and very responsible

High sense of humor (2x)

Games

She is always happy.

She gave us the plays.

[sounds like a disease]

Her attitude (3x)

The fun homework

[um, dost mine ears deceive me? A student appreciating homework? Be still, my heart!]

She helps when we need it.

She is always happy.

[this is a blatant lie. but I'm glad someone feels this way]

It is funny. (2x) [are you calling me an it?]

She explained our assignments.

She is nice and funny.

Personality

What did you like least about the teacher?

Projects (2x)

Unfairly mad

She is not strict. She needs to send more homework.

[is anyone else laughing at this one?]

Homework (3x)

That it is funny and makes games (?)

[sometimes students are admitted to the school whose English isn't sufficient. I believe we have found one of those students]

Quizzes

I loved EVERYTHING about her.

[I'm suspicious that this is the same kid that I "inspired" earlier. Cause let's be honest; even I don't love EVERYTHING about me]

She won’t let you drink anything that’s not water.

[gasp! The horror of not being allowed to hype up on Coke during class!! Ee-gads!]

Some days she had a little bit of patience.

[Though I am sad that my students noticed this, I was impressed with the communication of the idea by an ESL kid]

That we had to be silent most of the time.

[This response puzzles me. This is not true in any of my classes. All I can think is that I don't let them chat with each other while I lecture, though other teachers allow this; but lecture is always a small portion of my class...hmm...]

When we wrote journals

Cool teacher

[Again, there seems to have been a lack of comprehension, but I'm glad s/he noticed how cool I am. Maybe it's cause I tell them sometimes in class. ie: "Because I'm SO COOL, I'm not giving you homework this weekend..."]

When she made people participate even though we didn’t know the answer.

What did the teacher do to make the class interesting and relevant?

Made us laugh

She uses examples

Games

Variety of activities

She explained everything to us.

Fun stuff, games (3x)

She explains everything in an understanding way.

The class was decorated.

Sometimes trying to act it

Teach well

It was funny.

A variety of activities to understand

Games (5)

Different homework, projects or games

Reviews, movies (2)

Game about the class

[I wonder how they feel about the games...?]

Projects and review games

Fun assignments

Watching the movie after reading the book.

Ah, yes. Yearly student evals. Thanks for enjoying the responses with me again this year. Over-n-out.

The Dress Barn Drama

This week I visited my lovely friend, Josie, and her family at their home in the burbs of Cleveland. We, as always, had a fantastic time together, which especially impressive to me because Josie has two children, aged 3 and 15 months. It takes a special friend to be as much fun as mom of two pre-schoolers as she was married without kids and even single.

In any case, Josie is always gracious to take me around to all the stores that they have in the burbs but not in Ada. My favorite is Lane Bryant, and at the LB near Josie there's a Dress Barn next door.

If there is a Dress Barn in the greater Lima region, I am unaware of it, but in any case my first impression when I saw this store was incredulity.

[editor's note: Leslie would like all her readers to know that she spelled "incredulity" correctly the first time. Feel free to be impressed.]

What marketing genius decided to name a womens clothing store "Dress Barn"? It's like naming a sandwich place "Roly Poly". There are some images that shouldn't come to mind when a potential customer looks at your company's name. One of those things would be barns.

Thoughts of "big as a barn" and "broad side of a barn" come to mind; not exactly complimentary. But whatever; last summer I had good luck at a Dress Barn in Minnesota; I'll give it a whirl (my trip to Lane Bryant having been a big disappointment, I was eager to redeem the shopping trip). Among other potential purchases, I grabbed three jackets off the clearance rack [GOD BLESS AMERICA'S OBSESSION WITH SALES!] and headed for the dressing room.

Thirty minutes later, Josie patiently and dutifully giving her opinion on each item, I had narrowed it down to two dress shirts and two jackets, from which I needed to choose one. I've been wearing the same black jacket for the past...maybe 8 years? So a jacket decision seemed important at the time.

One jacket was a short, khaki-colored trench coat. The other was black pleather. Neither coat was a normal style for me, but I liked both of them. Then we noticed some black gunk on the trench coat. We debated whether the marks would come out. Then we contemplated the potential difficultly of keeping the light-colored coat clean.

[note: I bet if you're a man, you're really glad you weren't present at this shopping trip about now]

Finally I decided against the trench coat. This left me with the decision of whether or not I was going to dive into the world of pleather clothing. Perhaps I was a bit low on protein, because the decision seemed pretty significant at the time.

In the midst of the dilemma, Josie and I had moved back to the clearance rack and there we loitered as I struggled to be decisive.

Enter Crazy Pushy Lady. She, too, was looking through the clearance rack. About 60, with gray-colored-blond hair, she pawed through the options, chatting with us as if she knew us.

[note: I keep being surprised at how often that happens here. Complete strangers will talk to each other in stores sometimes. That NEVER happens to me in Quito]

After a bit of looking, she focuses in on the pleather coat section. She tries on a couple, and remarks that the one I have must be the last one in our size, and that the other, similar black pleather jacket offered doesn't fit her as well. Josie and I are polite and say something non-committal, like, "Oh, yeah?" and go back to our own decision. A minute or so later, the woman points out another rack with more black pleather jackets. At this point Josie looks at me significantly, saying with her eyes, "Wow, this woman's a bit pushy, no?" I smile; we obligingly look at the other jackets, which I do not like. We come back and the woman asks about what we found. I say they're different and I don't really like them. She finally just comes out and says it: "I want that jacket!" She's pretending she's joking, but we all know she's not joking; she is, rather, trying to do this impolite thing politely.

I finally decide to buy the jacket I have. I'm not gonna lie: this woman's pushiness may....possibly...have influenced my decision. A skoshe. Maybe.

We head up to the cashier (Josie, not doubt breathing a discreet sigh of relief) and get up there in time to hear Crazy Pushy Lady loudly telling the cashier that she wants them to call the other Dress Barns in the area to ask them to send another of the jackets to this store. She reiterates for all of us to hear, "This one doesn't fit the same. The other one is better. It's just too bad; if I'd have come in just ONE MINUTE earlier!" blah, blah, blah. The cashiers inform her that another store can't send one because it's clearance. Crazy Pushy Lady retorts emphatically that she's drive to the other store!! It's THAT important!

I put my purchases on the counter to be rung up and Crazy Pushy Lady asks if she can just try on the jacket, just to make sure. At this point, I'm starting to get a little perturbed. I want to say, "Woman, get over yourself." Instead, I hand over the jacket.

I sneak a peek at Josie, on my other side. By now, she's rolling her eyes and shaking her head in disbelief. My sentiments exactly. We finally pay and escape Crazy Pushy Lady and flee into the cool darkness of the Cleveland-suburb night. As we walk back to the car, we discuss the obnoxiousness of Crazy Pushy Lady. Josie comments that she's glad I bought the jacket just because she didn't want Crazy Pushy Lady to get it. I laughed and said it reminded me of dealing with a student who's clearly always been able to get his way at home if he nags his parents enough. Welcome to your new reality, friends! I teach middle school. If I could be worn down by persistent whining, it would have happened by now.

Poor Crazy Pushy Lady. She didn't stand a chance. And besides, the jacket looked better on me anyway. :)