It's getting to be that time again...

Last night I read this post from Graycie at Today's Homework. Maybe that put me in the back-to-school mode, because last night I had my own back-to-school nightmare. I was standing in front of a class trying to teach a lesson, but I couldn't find what I needed, and I was going through box after box on my desk. I think I even went through the trash. The kids were getting restless and I was getting frustrated, but I didn't give up - oh, no, I kept hunting that handout.

I'm still in the States but I'll be headed back home soon. I've been thinking about school and buying stuff for my classroom, but soon I'll be dealing with the real thing again.

Meanwhile, to get me in the mood, here's this week's Education Carnival.

Reading Update

Book #49 was the new one by Nancie Atwell, The Reading Zone. As expected, I liked it very much. Mostly, I got plenty of encouragement to keep doing what I'm already doing, but I also got some new ideas, mostly about how to handle things in the classroom and with parents. Atwell goes to bookstores every weekend, she says, and buys books for her classroom library, with particular kids in mind. She doesn't buy basals, and she apparently has quite a large budget for books. (It helps that she has her own school.) I don't have the luxury of going to bookstores every weekend (don't I wish!), mainly because we don't really have bookstores with English books where I live. I have, however, been able to acquire quite a few books for my classroom library on this trip to the US.

Book #50 was Second Honeymoon, by Joanna Trollope. Nancie Atwell categorizes the books her students read as Challenges, Holidays, or Just Rights. This book was a Holiday for me. Some of Joanna Trollope's books seem that way - just brain candy - and then turn out to have much more to them. I don't think this had any more to it than appeared at first glance, but it was still a fun read. Trollope is very good on vagaries of emotion in all kinds of characters.

Book #51 was The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian. Here's a book that's more than meets the eye. I don't recommend finishing it, as I did, right before you want to go to sleep. You'll be awake another hour mulling it over in your mind, trying to figure out what clues you missed and what was really going on at different points in the story. Warning - the violence is quite upsetting.

And book #52, ta-da, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! It's a rather unusual experience for me to be reading what everybody is reading! I got my copy on Saturday morning at Wal Mart. There was no hoop-la, just a pallet of books on the floor in the middle of an aisle. They were selling them for $17.99 - did anyone charge full price? Of course, I'm not going to give anything away, but I loved the ending. Rowling wrapped up all the loose ends in a highly satisfying way. In my opinion, each book has been better-written than the one before. This one was mostly fairly grim, but there were some wonderful comic lines as well. I haven't had a chance to talk to anyone else who's read it yet, but I look forward to some good conversations.

Seven Types of Food

Amy tagged me over two weeks ago for that meme where you're supposed to tell seven random facts about yourself. Since I just recently revealed eight random facts to my adoring readers, I have had a bit of trouble coming up with seven more. I finally decided to write about seven kinds of food I like. Of course, there are more than seven, and the ones I'm including here aren't in any order.

1. Ethiopian food. If you haven't tried it, you should. It's delicious - very spicy.

2. Indian food. I think this is my favorite - that was one of my eight random facts, so it may be cheating to bring it up again. If so, I apologize to the meme police.

3. Caribbean food. Beans and rice, delicious ingredients like plantains, mangoes, avocados. Yum.

4. Japanese food. Both my children mention yaki soba when asked what their favorite food is. We also really like katsu don, tempura, and many other dishes. And, of course, sushi. Nothing like the combination of smooth fish and the way the wasabi blows off the top of your head.

5. British food. I realize the British aren't really known for their food, but I still appreciate boarding school favorites like toad in the hole, bubble and squeak, everything on toast. It has nostalgia value, anyway.

6. Italian food. I love pasta in all its forms, and practically any kind of sauce on it.

7. Thai food. Wonderful mixture of savory and sweet (lemongrass and coconut milk).

As I said, I like many more kinds of food. In fact, I've hardly met a food I don't like.

I'm not tagging anyone specifically, but if you'd like to do this meme, please feel free to do so, and let me know in a comment so that I can come and read.

La Leche League Celebrates 50 Years

Here's a great piece from Chicago Public Radio.

Education Carnival

Here's this week's Education Carnival.

Saturday

I'm really going in for the inspiring titles lately.

Here's today's Saturday Review of Books. Hope everybody had a happy quatorze juillet (Bastille Day). Here's the parade in Paris.

Wednesday

Today we went to the zoo, zoo, zoo. We all had a lot of fun. It was a beautiful drive, too. They have been working on the roads around where we're staying, though they looked fine - OK, wonderful - to us before they fixed them. Not a pothole in sight. No goats in the road. Boring, in fact, according to my husband, who really prefers third-world driving, he says. Also, there's supposedly a drought going on but everything is wonderfully green. It's never this green in Tecwil even when we've been having lots of rain.

Here's today's carnival.

International Book Project

It's time for my yearly plug for the International Book Project. (Here's last year's.)

This is a wonderful organization that promotes literacy around the world. We were able to visit again today and I got many books for my classroom library.

The IBP gets many gifts of books - and they are always grateful for them - but few donations of money, which is needed just as badly. They use financial donations mostly for shipping, though as you can see on their site, they have some needs at their facility as well. If you're looking for a good organization to give your money to, I recommend this one highly.

Snow in Buenos Aires

It snowed in Buenos Aires! This is the first time that's happened since 1918. The BBC posted some photos sent in by readers. Here's an article about it.

Happy Fourth of July

Would you believe there's an Education Carnival today? Teachers are so dedicated, aren't they? They don't even take time off for parades and fireworks!

We had a wonderful small-town Fourth, with the fireworks still to come this evening. I hope my American readers enjoy the celebration.

Migrants

I'm fascinated by people who migrate, who move from one country to another, for whatever reason. Today, the BBC is featuring stories about some African migrants.

July

Clearly I'm not good at being on vacation and blogging. I missed another Saturday Review of Books and I even missed a Daily Photo blog theme day, and this one was an especially cool one, too. The theme this month was Red.

We spent a few days in Nashville and visited Cheekwood. I highly recommend a visit if you're in the area. Gorgeous botanical gardens, a sculpture trail, a small art museum (with the Fabergé display right now). There's a whimsical "Once Upon a Garden" exhibit for kids going on through the beginning of September, and after that there will be scarecrows. It's so wonderful to go to a place that someone has had the time, money, and forethought to create just for people's pleasure. That's the kind of thing you rarely see in Tecwil. People are mostly spending their time and money just surviving, forethought is a luxury the poor don't have, and you don't see many places that are purely devoted to being beautiful. Not that Tecwil isn't beautiful - it is, but not in that kind of lush, green, over-the-top way that requires a huge team of gardeners. It's often difficult to imagine that here exists on the same planet as there.

And in case you missed it...

I didn't post the Saturday Review of Books this past weekend. And while I'm at it, here's this week's Education Carnival.

I rarely use Internet Explorer, and my blog looks the way it's supposed to when I use Firefox. The computer I'm working on now doesn't have Firefox loaded on it, so I'm forced to use IE. I can't understand the spacing on my blogroll. Most of it is fine, but then all of a sudden it starts double spacing. I can't figure out why. So the moral is, use Firefox and the blogroll will look fine.

Eight Facts

My friend Tricia tagged me for a meme where I'm supposed to give you eight random facts about myself. I'm supposed to post the rules first but they seem fairly self-explanatory to me, so if you want to read them, go to Tricia's blog for that.

So here goes...

1. I took my first airplane trip at the age of seven weeks, and so did my daughter.
2. When I was little I used to eat lemons, skin, seeds, and all, straight from the tree in our yard.
3. I have been a registered student in four different countries.
4. I like almost every kind of food I've ever tasted, but I think Indian may be my favorite.
5. My worst subject in school was P.E. and I have many bad memories associated with that miserable class.
6. I'm very careful on stairs because I once fell down a flight and broke my leg - this happened while I was pregnant with my first child.
7. I took piano lessons for years but I can't play.
8. I hate the word utilize - why can't people just say use?

I can't keep track of who has already done this meme and who hasn't. In fact, I think I may have done it already myself, but I can't find it on my blog. If you want to share random facts, consider yourself tagged!

Reading Update

I finished books 45 - 48 of 2007 before leaving home. Here they are:

Day One and Beyond: Practical Matters for New Middle-Level Teachers, by Rick Wormeli. I enjoyed this book very much and picked up some useful tips. As I said before, I like his attitude towards middle school students. And I got a comment from the author last night, which was cool!

Living and Teaching the Writing Workshop, by Kristen Painter. This was my second time reading this one. It's helpful for teachers who are trying to write more themselves - full of exercises you can do and how to share your own writing with your students.

Words, Words, Words: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12, by Janet Allen. Allen summarizes the research on what works best in vocabulary instruction and includes many practical tips for working with words. There are some reproducibles in the book that I will definitely be using.

Managing Your Classroom with Heart: A Guide for Nurturing Adolescent Learners, by Katy Ridnouer. It's obvious that Ridnouer teaches in a very different environment from mine, and some of what she deals with makes me thankful for where I work. This was another helpful teacher book, and focuses on treating your students as individuals and showing concern for them, without having them walk all over you.

Still working on War and Peace...

Statistics

I wrote this last night, but didn't have an opportunity to post it.

Hours in US: 30
Number of different states seen on license plates: 35
Number of blowouts: 2
Number of blowouts previously experienced by my husband in nearly 30 years of driving: 1
Hours spent in tire shop: 2
New tires bought: 4 (After the first blowout we only got one new one, but after the second we went ahead and replaced the rest.)
Amount of money spent that we weren't planning on: I could figure this out, since I have all the receipts, but it would be a depressing statistic.
Number of issues of People I read in the second tire shop, thus updating my sadly lacking knowledge about celebrities and inspiring the format for this post: approximately 5
Number of times we thanked God for bringing us safely to today's destination: many

Carnival At the Beach!

Since we teacher-types are just loafing around these days, this week's Carnival is at the beach!

Reading Update

Books 40-44 of 2007...

Book 40 was The Town on Beaver Creek: The Story of a Lost Kentucky Community, by Michelle Slatalla. I read this for my book group and enjoyed it. It's about a town in Kentucky that regularly flooded, to the point where finally the town was abandoned and rebuilt. The author, who works for the New York Times, decided to preserve some of the memories of her family, many of whom lived in this town. The book is beautifully written. I had a little trouble keeping track of all the characters, how they were related, and what generation each belonged to. Come on, that's hard enough with my own family. I would have liked to have a family tree to flip to.

Book 41 was written by my guest speaker back in February. I'm not going to post a link to it - it isn't available on Amazon anyway - but to any of my readers who live here in Tecwil and read French, I recommend it. Email me and I'll give you more information about it. It was really interesting to read his take on events that I was here for, and also many that were before my time. Fascinating stuff. I'm sorry I waited so long to read it. It's just that when I'm reaching for a book to read for relaxation, I generally go for the stuff in English...

Book 42 was Retrovirus, by T.L. Higley. This was loaned to me by a colleague, who knows the author. It was well-done, fast-paced...not really so much my kind of book, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. It did irritate me that a lot of the suspense was ruined by the blurb on the back of the book. Just don't read that. It gives you information you aren't supposed to get until three quarters of the way through the book.

Book 43 was The Teacher's Guide to Big Blocks Grades 4-8. I started reading this a while ago after a professional development seminar, but I finally finished it. A lot of the things in it I'm already doing, but there are some very helpful suggestions I'm planning to implement next year. I know it's weird, but I do a lot of professional reading during the summer usually. It's a good time to start thinking about how I'm going to handle things next time around.

I was going to leave out book 44, but honesty compels me to admit I read it: Gossip Girl, by Cecily Von Ziegesar. I got this for my classroom library at a book sale the seniors were having. Some of the older kids were getting rid of their own books that they were through with. I brought the pile into my classroom without studying them very much except just to see that they looked like stuff my kids would enjoy. I gave this to one girl, and after reading the first few pages she came and put it on my desk and said she didn't want to read it. I asked her why and she muttered something about the language. I felt mortified that I'd given her a book to read that had disgusted her that much, because this girl is a very strong reader and has read many books written for adults. Well, the other night I decided to read it just to see what it was like. I'm afraid I agree with my student. The casual alcohol and drug use and promiscuity make the book inappropriate for my middle schoolers. The characters are shallow, horrible people, and I hope they aren't really reflective of the milieu they are representing - rich kids in New York City. I know these books - there's a whole series - are popular, but bleck, in my opinion.

And now I'm back with War and Peace - I'm hoping to at least make a big dent in it this summer. I'm also reading Day One and Beyond: Practical Matters for New Middle-Level Teachers, by Rick Wormeli. This is a great - and as the title suggests, very practical - book. It's full of ways to deal with the stuff that drives you crazy when you're teaching. I like his attitude towards middle schoolers - affectionate, but with high standards.

Chinua Achebe Wins Booker Prize

I am thrilled to read that Chinua Achebe has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize. I love his book Things Fall Apart, and I also liked No Longer at Ease (I'm not sure why that Amazon link calls it "No Loger at Ease") and A Man of the People, which is about Nigerian politics and is well worth reading by anybody who's observed third world-style politics anywhere.

Saturday Review of Books

I was out all morning doing painful but necessary things like getting vaccinations for the kids and getting a haircut for myself. Now I'm - yes - in my classroom. No school work to do, thankfully, but the internet at home still isn't working. I'm waiting for a callback (from the tech person) promised early Wednesday afternoon. Do you think the guy is going to call me back?

So anyway, here's the Saturday Review of Books.