There is no reason for posting these pictures other they made me laugh.

Ha, he “he will have aged gracefully.” Not so much.

I found this photo on my IPhone and jazzed it up at picnik.com. Since I mention no names, I figure its okay to share on the blog. Before I student teach I’ll put it up in the classroom for them.

Spiderman scooter: check

Photo for generous Aunt Andrea and family: Check!

Something is missing…

Spiderman halloween costume mask: check!

Watching a three-year-old who truly believes he is Spiderman: priceless.

Here are two portraits of me created by my before and after students. Not too bad looking! At least they didn’t make me look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow man with glasses.

See how in the first portrait how I am wearing a sleeveless pink dress? That happens about once every ten years. Very observant! Also, in the second portrait you can see my giant, orange heart. So true, I wear my heart, big and orange, on my chest everytime I teach. :)

There is a second grader in our school’s before and after program that is a tough cookie.

He’s smart, he’s helpful and I like him a lot but he isn’t often nice to peers.

He says bad things to them, hits them, takes away toys, and when the victim tells of their injustice lies about what happened, even in the face of many witnesses.

On top of that when he has to pay the piper for this bad behavior he gives us a big fat “No.”

Blah! I’ve called mom at work. We’ve physically moved him to the office. I’ve withheld good things and pushed rewards.

We even talked about him as a subject tonight in class. I am supposed to ask my office staff for more support. Ha. Not likely.

He told the office that he lies because we don’t give him a chance to tell his case. How is that possible? I let him tell his side of the story before making any accusations.

It’s hard when one student tell me “He ripped the toy out of my hands and then slapped me across the face with it.” Then his side of the story is about how the other student dropped the toy and he picked it up and skipped off with it into a field of daisies.

Seriously I am at wits end.Unfortunately, the last two hours of the day neither he nor I have the energy for this struggle every day. I just want to kick back, do art and have fun not deal with his abusiveness to his peers. Maybe I should tell him that.

I’ve notice that parts of the 80s are back. Some of the parts I participated in the first round so that makes me out of the loop this round.

I did create a very amusing retro slide show about the PE activity of “Cup Stacking.” Included was the classic Beverly Hills Cop theme. It was a toss up between that and a Herbie Handcock song. Listen to both and pick your favorite.

beverly-hills-cop-axel-foley-theme.mp3

herbie-hancock-rockit.mp3

Now for the fashion. The idea of what 80s fashion should be wasn’t so bad. See below.

How it translated into fashion for the 35 plus demographic was so, so very ugly.

These women were suppose to be well-dressed and highly stylized. The rest of us just ended up with unflattering, drop waist, baggy clothing with shoulder pads the size of the padding in the WonderBras of the early 90s. Hey, I always wondered what they did with all those extra shoulder pads when they dropped out of fashion….

I am by no means a Scrooge, but years ago I decided to be a Christmas time minimalist.

I decorate; I celebrate, but I turn on “Christmas” only on the days it needs to be turned on. By “Christmas” I am not referring to the Christian themes of loving, giving, caring and sharing that we should always be focused on, I’m talking about the Christmas of the Hallmark channel.

That’s the Christmas where everything is perfect, even if you are The Waltons living in the Great Depression. That means if you are an average person living in the Great Recession you better darn well have a perfect Christmas season or something is seriously wrong with you. (By the way, I think they were allowed to call it a Depression back then because Depression did not mean “Get yourself on some pills” like it does now.)

Frankly, I feel this whole month of society-induced expectation for perfection makes everything that is slightly, less-than-perfect magnified. That is why we have the Christmas Blues.

It’s like having a massive, allergic reaction at Disney world. The mind cannot compute. Impossible!

Thank goodness for the recession. At least we all get a shot in the arm of reality this season to remind us that, no matter how close to Martha Stewart’s home ours appears, it will not create world peace.

I’m not trying to begrudge those of you who enjoy the Pre-Christmas high. Personally, I like to use the entire month as a reason to validate consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Just remember all, that some of us feel like bursting into tears all Christmas season because some normal life event has been put under the microscope by the mean, ant bully of society’s expectations.

It isn’t me this year. That is because I have scaled back my expectations of Christmas years ago. I think it started when I tried to get a friend to go to Christmas Eve mass at a snooty Catholic church. She and her friend showed up 80 sheets to the wind and smelling like “My Brother’s Bar.” I still drug them to half the mass, but the dirty looks from the fellow church goers were enough to make me want to hide under a pew even as I type this. Lesson one; you don’t need to go to Christmas service with others.

In conclusion, I’d like to conclude my favorite non-Christmas song that has helped me heal in times of emotional depression and recession. I like to meditate on the words and focus on freeing myself from the baggage that comes, not just with the season but with life.  It’s called “Love is Letting Go of Fear” by Olivia Newton-John.

My last class for my MTE program is a PE and Health class. It’s taught by a charming but quirky, 50-something who looks like a character from Woodstock, The Lord of the Rings, or Boulder, CO.

He’s a wiry man, balding with long, white hair, a long grey beard and dresses in baggy clothing and Birkenstocks. When he played Bob Dylan at our class break, I thought I had him pegged. Then he got out his guitar and played a sing-a-long version of a “bones of the body” game. Suddenly, how he looked or dressed didn’t either matter or fit convention in my mind.

The old hippy persona actually works quite well for teaching. He gets to say George Carlin stand-up things like, “Wow, man, that blows your mind,” with a completely straight face.

I need to figure out what my teaching persona is, apparently that is a key factor to being a good, relatable teacher while safely keeping a personal distance. Sort of like your alter-ego for teaching. I was reading a book by a Math middle school teacher. His persona was “geeky guy with no life that loves, loves, loves math.” He would make jokes about how if he had more friends he would have less time for math.

Anyway, Mr. Birkenstock did have some good sound bites I’d like to share.

“Every moment of everyday we are both a teacher and a learner.”

 “Stress is the minds inability to accept what is.”