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I am an artist & teacher with a ❤ for visual expression, educational methodology, homesteading, & Jesus. My geek-love is The Joshua and we have three peanut-butters: Caleb, Jack, & Louritta.

Macworld in My World

01/14/2006

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This year, Macworld had the K-12 Education Symposium back and I was SO THERE! It was a very inspirational conference for me as I was able to hear from many people who are utilizing technology in ways that actually further student learning.
Many people around me have a tendency to use technology for the sake of technology, in ways that say, “Look! We have computers! It meets the technology standard! YAY!” When, in actuality, it does not actually better student learning and is not a wise use of technology. But, technology can be used to actually BENEFIT students. I want to be better equipped to utilize technology in a meaningful way.
I enjoyed thoughts by David Warlick; he spoke on Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age. He is part of The Landmark Project. I especially enjoyed reading the associated article on The New Literacy, which spoke about the importance in emphasizing teaching skills to our students that “reflect the information environment of the present, not the past.” Good stuff.

Welcome Beautiful Boy

01/12/2006

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My brother (Chad) and his wife (Ronnie) added one to their flock yesterday. He doesn’t have a name yet, but he was born a healthy 10 pounder! Yeah, I was heavier than you when I was born, kiddo! *Steph issues an official “WELCOME TO OUR WORLD!” to young Whiting boy.*
Anyway, it’s been so fun to add nieces and now a nephew to my family because they get all of the adults on the ground playing again. That, and they add a whole new dimension of joy and pride to us all as we fight for their attention.
I’ll post some pics and his name when I have more info. In the meantime, I polled some of my students for name suggestions and some of them were mildly amusing. Here’s one conversation after a student suggested the name “Borgnine”:
Mrs. L: Vlad, WHO ON EARTH has the name BORGNINE?
Vlad: My cousin! He’s so nice!
Mrs. L: Oh. *walks away sheepishly*
Here are a few more of my favorites – note that these are all REAL names that my students HONESTLY suggested… just kind of multicultural at times: Biff, Boss, Brahams, Buzz, Eggbert, Glossi, Goebbels, Gokul, Graybert, Henning, Itai, Jambow, Kamp, Regards, Rendel, Royi, Salvador, Shehtert, Taiki, Thor, Vladimir, Weinrib.
Let’s hope that young Weinrib Whiting is able to get a better name from his parents! 🙂

My First Protest

01/11/2006


Yesterday I had my first protest. It wasn’t the stand on the street yelling kind of protest, but the silent hold-my-sign-along-with-a-group-of-others-so-please-notice-us kind of protest. It was at the Cupertino School Board meeting; currently we are negotiating a new contract. The contract will hopefully include some cost of living adjustments and salary increases, being that most of us can only afford to live here because our spouses are engineers. I actually make less now than when I started almost five years ago. So, I’m really hoping we get the mula, especially considering that our superintendents have taken some pretty insanely significant salary increases over the past few years while the rest of us took cuts. I digress…
My sign actually said something about our union standing united. Josh photoshopped it with a quip my political-guru brother-in-law said was basically at the heart of every protest. I’m thinking of actually making that sign and keeping it my trunk. See, in Minnesota, you keep a snow shovel and jumper cables in your trunk so you can help yourself or others in need. In California, you keep a variety of protest signs in your trunk so you can hop out of your car and join any random group of angry people who want something. I figure, this sign could really work in all situations! I’m even thinking of some cool rhyming things I could chant that would enhance my nifty little protest sign…

Good Morning Starshine!

01/10/2006

I hate mornings. Only on weekdays. For some reason, I get up early on Saturdays quite naturally very often. It’s the other days of the week where I’m tired and mildly delirious and have to go to work and I just don’t get up well.

Credit Whore

01/10/2006

Okay, maybe the word whore is a bit strong, but that’s essentially what I’ve become. You see, in education, the only way you can get a raise is by getting something called Continuing Education Units (CEU), or by accomplishing a higher degree. It’s basically me paying so I can continue teaching so others can get paid for teaching me so others can teach them… on an on until there is a huge bureaucracy of people taking classes from each other and leeching off the government as much as possible. Or something like that.
Well, I can’t get a raise or move up to the next level unless I have enough units. Doesn’t matter how good of a teacher I am. Just how many units I have. Well, I don’t want to take really hard classes that require lots of homework. I want the credits! I want them cheap and I want them fast with very little effort. I know that sounds sad… I mean, I want to grow as an individual as well. But, for those of you in education, you know that education classes are generally the place for hoop jumping – for discussing something you’ve discussed a million times before, but participating nonetheless so you can just get the credit. They are not the place to go to experience personal growth. The whole thing makes me a little ill to be honest.
I found out that the fastest and cheapest way for me to earn CEUs is to go to conferences, usually over a weekend, and pay for units through a local university. So, this weekend I’m going to the MacWorld Educators Symposium in San Francisco, immediately followed by a Reader’s Conference in Asilomar. I went to the Art Education Conference in November (which is actually a useful conference for me). I’m also going to the iCUE Conference in February and the Northern California Art Education conference at the end of February.
All said and done, I will have earned enough cheap & quick units to earn me a nice little raise. Sometimes I wish I could just get rewarded for being a good teacher so I could have my evenings and weekends to… I don’t know… do non-teaching related things. That would be way cool.

Meet Ella!

01/09/2006

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Please welcome the newest addition to our family, ELLA! Official name: Ella Bo Jangles. I know, she looks a lot like Henson, but she’s actually smaller and is a girl and has one blue eye (in addition to her other brown eye, of course). Her personality is also very different from Henson’s. She wiggles and licks a lot and is generally sweeter. She was my Birthdamaversarymas present from Josh this year.
Overall, she gets along with Henson fairly decently. It has been difficult to potty train her because the California weather has been raining a lot lately. Nothing like standing in the cold wetness saying, “Hurry up! Go potty!” to a shivering little puppy who may catch some kind of weird pnemonia because of your crappy training. She just looks at me like, “Why are you doing this to me? WHY!?!”
She’s better now than a few days ago.
Cool part is, Ella and Henson and 5 are all named after people/things Josh and I look up to. Well, Josh got to pick two of the names anyway.

How’s My Driving?

01/03/2006

I love commercial vehicles that have those signs on the back that say “How’s My Driving? 1-800-PLEASE-DONT-COMPLAIN.” Or something like that…
I was driving behind one today. It was a Schwann’s Truck. It was the first time in my life that I was REALLY REALLY tempted to actually call that number. See, unlike Andy’s rant about crazy drivers, my Schwan’s trucker was actually TOO SAFE of a driver. Oh man.
Seriously, I went just two short miles down McClellan Road and it took me almost twenty minutes. He drove like 5 miles an hour (seriously) the whole way. I had to keep shifting my car down into first gear in order to keep up with him. And, there were school zones and stuff and he would STOP at every stopwalk even though there were NO CHILDREN IN SITE! Sheesh!
I wonder what the call to the How’s My Driving? Customer Service Rep would look like.
HMD?CSR: I’m sorry ma’m… did you say he was driving TOO SAFE?
ME: YES! Who drives like that? It’s a danger to society!!!
HMD?CSR: How is that a danger to society, driving too safe, that is?
ME: BECAUSE I WANT TO KILL HIM!!!
I figure it would go something like that anyway…

Holidaze

12/25/2005

Man, I am so tired. Not sleepy tired. Just general, “Hi! Merry Christmas! YAY!” tired. Josh and I have several days left in Minnesota and I’m really hoping these last ones will be super chilled out. It’s rough that I see my family 1-2 times a year and that they are always crazy whirlwind events.
Other random thoughts:
• I’m excited for January because I don’t have any grad classes. I’m planning on… NOTHING! YAY!
• Working on finding a volleyball team for the off-season of my regular team.
• I decided that proportions in restaurants are WAY too big as I’ve eaten out several times recently and couldn’t even finish half of my plate. I wish restaurants would let me buy a half orders and just pay half the price. NO, I don’t need hash browns and three pancakes and toast and a huge omelette. Just give me a small omelette and a few hashbrowns and I am good to go. No wonder we’re all dealing with obesity issues because we still have the childhood complex of “finish all your food!”
• Josh and I aren’t allowed to go into pet stores ever EVER again. Every time we go we see really really cute puppies and then we want them. Then we feel bad when we decide it’s completely illogical to get them.
Sorry my blog has been super bland lately. I’ve not been able to think of ANYTHING except my classes. I’m hoping to rent a nice digital camera in the coming months to finally get my art portfolio up. But for now… relax!

Pretty Good Year

12/06/2005

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Despite my being way too busy this year, I was able to finish off a pretty decent volleyball season. I’m looking for another team to play on since it’s my favorite form of exercise! This was the first year my team played in the advanced league and we did quite well! We were in 3rd/4th for most of the season, but ended the finals in 2nd place. Considering all of the position switches we made and creative strategies we tried it was also a very cerebral game. I ended the season playing serve-receive setter, middle back defense, and outside hitter. I know, weird team positioning, but we tried to keep people where they played best against the opposing team so we did lots of formation shifts.
Now I just have to get through my last week of San Jose State classes and I’ll be golden for awhile! Can’t wait for some chill time over Christmas break and into January!
(Pic Above, from L to R: Dave, Steph, John, Brenda, Edwin, Jessica)

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