I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging because I’m finally almost done with National Boards and I have about a billion things I want to write about both related to NBPTS and not. First, I need to get the invasion on my site under control… apparently things are so bad even Toby can’t fix them without an investment of hours of time… Note: The spam won’t impact you, the reader. It just slows down my site and fills my inbox with awful messages.
A few of the social studies culminating projects I’m looking at in our curriculum (the pretty terrible Harcourt Social Studies) include bulletin boards. That seems awful to me, but with a few tweaks, I think I can make it happen, especially if I can add in a tech component. Enter Padlet. Here’s my first board!
You know I love my Starbucks City Mugs, but I also love the city travel mugs Starbucks makes. The only downside is that the travel mugs are 10 oz, too big for me to get a short beverage and too small for me to get a tall beverage. So I got this OXO tumbler, much to Toby’s dismay (apparently I have too many beverage vessels).
You can see it here holding SoHo blend tea by Harney and Sons. I’m reading The Maelstrom, the fourth book in The Tapestry series by Henry H. Neff. I wasn’t crazy about the third book in the series, but I’m glad I stuck with it because this one is wonderful. Exciting and thrilling, with complex, interesting characters.
I spent the afternoon and evening on a self-imposed Twitter ban after I got overwhelmed by all the Boston marathon Tweets. (P.S. I’m so distracted by the Boston Marathon logo right now because somehow I never realized it’s A FREAKING UNICORN?!?!)
What was there to do? Plenty of things, I suppose, but I just kind of stayed glued shut. Toby and I walked downtown for dinner, walked back home, I sat around feeling listless and impotent…..
I felt a hopeful spark when I saw the Facebook posts going around asking people to wear race shirts today. “THAT is something I can do.” I said. ACTION.
As I was rummaging through my closet for my old Portland Marathon shirts, cynicism crept in. “Aren’t I just making it all about ME rather than all about them?” I wondered? “Am I showing off because I’m wearing a marathon shirt instead of a 5K shirt?” I’m not much of a pink-for-breast-cancer person, which then led me to wonder, “What’s an effing shirt going to do anyway?”
I’m pretty bad with negative self talk. I put down the shirt and wandered back out to the living room, where I complained to Toby about my back hurting. He pointed to my yoga mat. While I was lying down there, I made a plan.
I would start running again. Yeah yeah, I’d said it trillions of times before, but this time, it would be an insult to the people of Boston if I didn’t follow through. (I’m also pretty adept with guilt. It goes well with my negative self talk)
But it was more than that too. There’s power in solidarity. Seeing friends post their runs dedicated to Boston Marathoners has been moving. And people couldn’t do much to prevent Boston, and I can’t really do much to “fix” it, so isn’t a big part of all this reaction just fear? And isn’t the only way to deal with fear to address it head on?
Fine. I’ll get up and run.
For people who don’t feel safe running in their neighborhoods.
For women who don’t feel comfortable running alone.
For people inured and feeling betrayed by their body.
For those paralyzed by depression and self loathing — for ME.
I wasn’t actually sure I’d do it. I’m always full of big plans at 10:00 at night.
But I did!
Oh! And there was one other thing I could do. When I was a newspaper reporter, I did a story on the nonprofit Girls on the Run.
They’re great. So I donated to them. My contribution was enough to buy water bottles for a whole team of girls. If you live in the Puget Sound, you might want to consider joining me at their spring 5K.
Julian, in addition to being an excellent advisor on men’s clothing and home goods, is also an all-around encouraging chap, personally and professionally. So when I sent him a message FREAKING OUT that Paul O. Zelinsky suggested we meet up in New York, Julian told me I should totally go for it. “But for reals?” I think I probably squealed. “YES FOR REALS.” He said, but probably not in all caps. I’m the one who’s heavy on the shift key.
So on April 2, I met Paul O. Zelinsky! (Toby says he hates it when I refer to Paul by his full name. He’s taken to calling him “Paulo” with an Italian accent.)
Paul suggested I meet up with him to see him speak at the Gateway School, the first private school I’ve ever been inside.
On my way to the school, I accidentally entered the AMDA building, located next door to Gateway (there was scaffolding up, so I couldn’t see what was written on the storefront). “Hi there, I’m Shannon Houghton, here as a guest of Paul Zelinsky?” I said. “Ashley?” The woman asked me, handing me a name tag with Ashley Somethingorother printed on it. She gestured me toward a staircase. “We’re ready for you, you’re going to head up the stairs to the left.”
Apparently I was about to perform an audition at my potential educational institution. I TOTALLY SHOULD HAVE GONE and posed as Ashley, but instead I said, “No, wait wait wait, I’m SHANNON, and I’m looking for the Gateway School?” “Oh, next door.” I hurried out, bumping into a nervous-looking young curly-haired woman, who was presumably Ashley. “Good luck!” I said, earning a perplexed look.
I went up to the 6th floor and wow. What a facility. Then I met Paul, who was setting up for his presentation. YAY! Meeting in person!!!
An aside that I haven’t had a chance to blog about yet so whatevs, I’ll just make this into an enormously lengthy post. I had “met” Paul in late 2012 when he Skyped with our classroom.
Which was glorious in and of itself. We got to see his studio AND EVEN his grandmother’s painting that inspired his version of Hansel and Gretel (which I learned about in the excellent biography Show and Tell). He even wore a Yale sweatshirt because I told him we’d be Skyping on our school’s college dress day. Little things like that make me so impressed with humanity.
So having communicated with Paul and having him read aloud The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless Her Cat, I wondered how today’s presentation would be different. Turns out, it was TOTALLY DIFFERENT, and also different between the upper and lower school. The upper school presentation was my favorite — I was so interested I forgot to take photos. Paper engineering has been interesting to me ever since I had the chance to interview Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart.
With the wee kids, Paul talked about Z is for Moose and read it out loud (amazing). He explained the difference between tight and loose art.
He collaborated with students to create a ZMoose.
Seeing someone draw in person is breathtaking. The kids applauded Paul’s rad charcoal sketches.
After the presentation and a book signing (And isn’t it remarkable when someone is able to put people at ease even if their companion is obviously kind of nervous? Mr. Schu told me that’s something Paul does well, and he was right), we took the subway to Brooklyn and then we had snacks at Paul’s studio, where I had a chance to hold a thumbnail book mockup (!!!!!!) and all sorts of original art.
Did you know that the veneer sheets that Swamp Angel and Dust Devil were so super-thin and flexible you can see light through them? They’re gorgeous. GORGEOUS. The cover art for Rapunzel made me all weepy, and the gold thread on the cover for Rumplestiltskin (my favorite POZ book) absolutely glowed.
You may have seen that Julian dropped by…
So in addition to seeing Paul draw earlier in the day, I also had a chance to see him use Photoshop. <3
We took a circuitous walking route to lunch that took me by amazing buildings (the entire neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights is protected as a historical site) and an incredible view of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
The view of the city from Brooklyn Heights is probably the best I’ve ever seen. I didn’t bother taking a picture because I knew I’d just be disappointed that I didn’t capture it right. Not to get all John Mayer circa 2001 on you, but it’s true.
We ate, then we parted ways! And that was my day! (Well, there was actually more, there was also ridiculous dress-purchasing at Hooti Couture and seeing All in the Timing. It was kind of an insane day.)
Wow.
I don’t know how to end this post! Other than to thank Paul for being so generous with his time; for being such a friendly and talented and charming human being. And to thank Julian for giving me permission to not let fear stop me from going on adventures.
Today(March 20th 2013.)our class had our first mystery skype!It started with Marcos A. introducing mitchel k.(question&answer person.)
Mitchel K. asks questions while Alejandra V-G makes sure our connection cable doesn’t come unplugged.
Then ms.Houghton suggested to start asking questions.Here is some of the questions we asked:
Maya R. asked: “Do you live in a cold hot place?”
Selam W.asked: “Do you live in a large state?”
Adam H.asked: “When was your school built in?
Savanah A.asked:”Are you east of st.louis?”
Mitchel K.asked:”Are you near the space needle?”
Yoeel V-M’s photo of his Mystery Skype map.
Now the after the questions we found out that the kids we were at Camalot!(Thanks to Kyle M.)
After the skype we asked Kyle:”How did you know they were at camalot?”
And he said:”The skype name they used was familiar to me.”
Additional information from Ms. Houghton:
All photos in this post were taken by our photogapher, Yoeel V-M. I added in the captions.
Our students were pretty pumped about their first Skype, conducted with the fantastic students from Mrs. Steighner’s 2/3 HCAP class at Camelot Elementary. We’re looking forward to further MysterySkypes, and Thien T. helped me set up a shared Google calendar to record upcoming Skypes, as well as field trips and other school events.
Tyson E. created a Google document with information we gathered about Camelot students and their corner of Auburn (although they’re a Federal Way school, their mailing address is in Auburn).
I didn’t read as much as I could have last week. Toby was out in San Francisco, so I gorged myself on Parks & Rec and Sherlock episodes. I’m halfway through some longer books too, so they don’t appear in my group picture below.:
It’s become a rite of passage in many 2nd – 4th grade classrooms. Crafting Gallon Man. For the past five years, we did it too, and I was always thoroughly disappointed when my students didn’t remember their capacity conversions as well as I hoped they would. Even singing a sweet little ditty didn’t help. I like this song a lot better.
It’s daunting to talk about what doesn’t work in our classrooms when we have good intentions, but Sherlock urged me to write about how I changed things this year.
So this year when we started our measurement unit, I shared realia of the four main capacity units in the United States. We talked about how the units are related (see conversions in brown) then drew two common versions of Gallon Man.
Instead of sending them off to cut and glue their own gallon people, I told them that during independent work time, they’d need to create their own visual representation of capacity.
I explained that their visual representation of capacity must be meaningful to them so they would remember the conversions. Some of theirs wound up looking pretty much like mine, which was just fine.
I said that they could be as creative as they wanted as long as they were accurate mathematically. I also asked them to write a brief explanation of how their visual representation could be used. For example, in the representation above, I went back and asked the student what she meant when she said “the number of pints in a cup.” She said, “Oh, I got it backwards! Because the way I wrote it, it’d mean half a pint in a cup.” Which is correct, but not what she intended to say.
And in this representation, the overall number of cups in a gallon was accurate (16), but they were distributed incorrectly (three cups in each quart on his feet, and four cups in the pint on his tail). We talked about how he could change his representation to be mathematically correct while still keeping his artistic integrity (taking off the tail hairs and adding an extra claw to each feet).
This one was mathematically correct:
They worked during Math Daily 5, and most finished by the end of the day. The rest made sure they picked Work on Writing or Math by Myself during Math Daily 5 later in the week so they’d finish everything.
The next day, as we went over our representations, we also discussed why we needed to create a memory device for capacity, even though we don’t really need to come up with anything to remember, say, the number of days in a week or the number of inches in a foot. Here’s what they came up with:
I’ll assess their application of this learning later next week using our district unit tests as well as a scavenger hunt using a plant book so it connects to our science unit. I’ll try to remember to post that too.
As always, I’d appreciate any feedback you have on this lesson.
I’ll admit, I took the above picture and applied the vignette filter before I had read much of Jarrett Krosoczka’s The Frog Who Croaked. I anticipated a pseudo-film-noir book, kind of in the style of Chet Gecko.
Nope! Jarrett’s first chapter book (he wrote all the Lunch Lady books) has more of the tone of a buddy cop film. The urban issues he includes are LEGIT. The book takes place in the fictional Kalamazoo City, but it definitely reminded me of a different troubled city on the opposite side of Michigan. I would honestly include this book in a reading list for the MSU economics course on public policy.
I’m sure every single post about this book will include the following video, but there’s a good reason. It’s definitely one of my top five TED talks. Yesssss.
Thanks as ever to Niki OhsBarnes for getting this snacky show on the road.
Today I’m planning my next social studies unit, which focuses on geography. I’m SUPER pumped because this will line up really nicely with our plant science unit — the culminating activity for the social studies unit is to create a community nature center guide, with each kid picking a different community in the US and discussing the plant life (and landforms) found there.
I’m hoping it might also be a good time to play around with Mystery Skypes, which I heard about from the inspiring, thoughtful Cheryl Steighner. This is my social studies unit for my National Board entry, so I’m hoping to make it really beefy and wonderful.
Anywho, back to snacks. Upon discovering I’m officially, medically overweight (according to one measure), I pretty much eliminated sweets from our house. But I do still have AMAZING Michigan potato chips from my parents’ thoughtful Christmas prezzie. I have an entire CASE of Better Made BBQ chips. YESSSSSSS. (“What do you want for Christmas, Shannon?” “All of the Michigan things!” And they delivered. Because my mother is the best gift-buyer on the planet)
OMG speaking of which, look at what SANTA included with Toby’s Taco Bell gift certificate.
Yeah. So snacks. Salty > Sweet every time. Happy Treat Tuesday.
Oh! And so you should totally follow my mom on Twitter. She’s kind of seriously the best around. And she has mastered the art of ironic hashtags.
(Ryan Calme and Kelty at a stream. Photo by Jess Calme.)
I asked Toby to walk through starting a webstream with me. He spends forever and always watching Minecraft streams and indie game streams and League of Legend streams. (I was going to link to all of the streams that are constantly being broadcast in the mancave, but Toby pointed out that most of the streamers use profane language. Which is another topic for another day.)
Anyway. So why’d I bother setting up a stream? I mean, I know I’m not going to be fascinating to watch, unlike my artist pals who livestream their sketching. WHICH IS AMAZING. But I have had a few folks ask me how I’m able to design units or assessments or write stuff so quickly, so I thought seeing what I’m doing might be useful. Plus, you get to listen to the sweet tunes I’m listening to. And eventually you’ll be able to hear my commentary too.
AND WHO KNOWS, maybe one day you’ll be able to watch me die a fiery death in Minecraft.
So here’s how I got everything set up. It took me less than an hour, and that included me getting grouchy and stopping briefly.
1. Acquire streaming software.
If you have Windows, you can use FFSPLIT and have a stream ready to go in two seconds. No joke. It’s crazy-fast. I don’t have Windows. If you have Windows, skip to step 4.
2. Cry because you’re using a Mac. Shake your fist at your father because you know he’s laughing at you for using a Mac.
3. Look at this article. Follow all the directions EXACTLY. All of them. (The only thing I changed was that I created a streaming account at Twitch rather than JustinTV.)
