Lots of the posts that begin in my head are driven by what I experience throughout the workday. Not long ago I thought I’d keep a log of things so that I could remember when I’m practicing writing later, but that didn’t last too long. What I learned was that I’m a quitter. Or, if you want to be super technical, I’m just too busy doing the actual work to write down what work I’m doing. Let’s just go with the latter because it makes me sound much better.  This time of year working in a school makes me more cynical than I’d like to represent. It screams I NEED A VACATION WHERE IT’S WARM AND THERE ARE TROPICAL, FRUITY DRINKS.

Lately, it makes me also think about how, if I ruled the World of Education, I’d create a wish list of what I’d like to see in schools. Most of it comes from my experience as a learner, not a teacher. I always wanted to learn in my way and when, on the rare occasion, I got to learn from teachers who taught me that way then I was the best kind of student. It’s best that I thank a great teacher right now: Mrs. Reisig from my 10th grade American Literature class. She knew the craft of teaching and hooked me in the most powerful way. Thank you, Mrs. Reisig. Here’s what I want from education:

Never sit down when teaching. It just doesn’t engage the average student.

Figure out ways to allow students to use the very medium to which they are accustomed: technology. Meet there where they’re at and don’t find ways to make them, as I’ve recently heard from an educator, “power down”.

Anticipate high expectations from all students.

Use critical thinking skills in the classroom. We all studied Bloom’s Taxonomy in undergrad for a reason.

Develop an atmosphere of reciprocity in learning.

Differentiate the learning that students have to master. I have a sneaking suspicion that there would be far less Alternative Schools if those students would have had differentiation in their classrooms in the first place.

Give every scientifically-based promising practice a chance. We had a speaker this year named Dr. Calvin Mackie whose words have haunted and encouraged me as an educator: “I’m not asking you to change your beliefs. I’m asking you to change your practices.”

Be the adult in every situation and give students a second chance when they misbehave. Don’t sink to their level.

Vary the activities within every lesson. Not every child learns the same way so you can’t teach in one manner all the time.

Life in the education world isn’t easy. If you’re not cut out for it then figure out how to be or else find a new profession.

Never work harder than your students in the learning portion of the lessons. Work hard at finding out what works.

Read research. Do your own action research. Keep data on your research to find out what works.

Evaluations should be from the bottom up: students evaluate teachers and teachers evaluate administrators. This isn’t a novel idea because I’ve seen it done with the Green Dot Schools when I did a visit in California last year.

Find a better way to grade. A lot of the grades I’ve seen students get over many years of education just are not fair and don’t represent what they know. Too often it represents how organized they are in keeping worksheets and doing homework.

No spoon feeding. If they can’t break down the text then show them how. And never use the term “dummy down” when talking about your craft. If you have to “dummy down” then I’m really worried about the instruction students are getting. I would hate to think that a teacher ever had to “dummy down” lessons for me thus lowering their expectations of my learning.

Give feedback every single day. Feedback, feedback, feedback. Students thrive on feedback.

Teach them how to do cooperative learning. Cooperate with them.

When you give a writing assignment, write with the students. They want to see you write and figure out the processes you use to write.

Don’t talk poorly about students. Never refer to them as a “bitch” or an “asshole” when you’re talking with other teachers. This one I know from experience when overhearing one of them refer to me as a “slut” after I got pregnant in high school. Yeah, that one has stung for a really long time.

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Last summer I was privileged to meet Liz Dwyer who writes the personal blog Los Angelista (whom my friend Erica turned me onto years ago and I quietly lurked and loved from afar) and who also has the World’s Most Incredible Hair. This is as yet, uncontested, but I suspect she’ll win an award for it someday. She linked to this fabulous idea about helping low income families help their children prepare for the SATs but it’s really the program called “I Need A Pencil” founded by a Harvard grad. It’s just got awesome written all over it and levels the playing field for kids who can’t afford to pay for all those SAT prep courses. The fact that Jason Shah is cool beyond words and has amazing, supportive parents just makes me want to cheer for him and this project all the more.

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Where education is concerned, what would you like to see in a perfect world?

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on the Purse Drive that I started a few months back. If you’re so totally over the fact that I came up with the Purse Drive let me just say this: there is a big ol’ contest I’m doing to win a $500 Visa gift card at the end of this post. So, either you can take heart and walk along this really cool journey with me or you can be selfish go straight to the end of this post to win something.

It’s up to you.

Just remember this teeny tiny word: KARMA.

Initially, the idea behind the purse drive came after one of my female students cried to me about not having the correct size purse to carry at school. Anything larger than a piece of 8×10 paper wasn’t allowed in the classroom as a safety concern. So, I started cleaning out my own closets looking for something and then started asking friends if they had anything they wanted to get rid of in the way of purses since I know how many purses my friends own. A LOT. YOU LADIES OWN A LOT OF PURSES. After that, I started asking around to my online friends not knowing whether or not they’d find it a worthwhile cause.

The overwhelming response made me think a lot about how grassroots efforts take off at rocket speed.

Then, I thought it would be difficult to figure out how to get the purses into the girls’ hands without starting a riot since I had some Coach purses and a few Betsey Johnson bags and other designer clutches. It occurred to me that charging a mere $5 per purse would work. There was a lot of criticism for that because they were donated in the first place so that only lasted a few days until the girls at my school realized they could come to me for a new, size-accepted purse. Now, the purses reside in a few places in my building where girls can go for a purse. More often than not they shyly enter my office, ask if I’ve still got some purses left, and if they are able to take a look at them. It’s encouraging to watch the process because they sort of act like they’re picking out a new puppy, not something to hold wallets and cell phones and tampons.

Some moments cannot be captured in print from this experience and I honestly don’t want to exploit every girl who has visited me for a purse. As long as this has been going on, however, I’m still surprised by the girls who ask, “Would you be able to help me with a purse, please?” and not because they say “please” but because they still need them and have, without any formal prompting, found their way to see me for a purse.

Enough sappy stuff, let’s get on with the giving away of even more stuff! If you click on that link you’ll be taken to my Review Blog to read about my experience driving a Lincoln MKT crossover vehicle for a week and then you can enter the contest to win a $500 Visa gift card. Good luck!

In celebration of the Chinese New Year Valentine’s Day I decided to stay completely OFFLINE for the weekend because I just about can’t even take the ridiculous amount of posts, pictures and updates that people write. I mean it, people. Some of you are downright jerks with all that noise. “Oh, I was spoiled rotten with a seven course meal” and “Jacob is the man of my dreams and he finally bought me that condo I’ve been wanting in the Carribean!” and “Woke up to crepes and espresso and then my hubby sent me to the spa for every imaginable service!” Quite frankly, I want to wring their necks for taking pictures of crap and posting it.

That’s probably why I’ve always loved Hilly’s idea of a Self Love Day.

Except I decided not to do one again this year due to time constraints and a full house over the weekend. Even though it wouldn’t be considered “traditional”, I had a pretty good day, too. Take that, filet mignon and lobster eaters!

7:30 a.m. woke up with a migraine headache. Fingers were swollen. Made the assumption that I needed to drink more water today.

8:00 a.m. did my normal Sunday routine of watching CBS Sunday Morning, reading Post Secret, and entering to win the HGTV house. I enter every day, actually. Because that house? With all it’s amenities and the green living lifestyle and being out in the desert where I can actually breathe easily? It should be mine. I want it to be mine. I love that house and have already named it but I won’t tell you the name unless I win the house.

9:00 a.m. pushed on my temples and wished for the Pancake Fairy to visit so I could feed my sons and my sister and her son and his friend from college. Lucked out and got an awesome sister who took everyone out for breakfast.

10:00 a.m. heard from my sweet Valentine that he wanted to come over and cook for me in the new deep fryer he bought. I won’t tell you his name either. Not unless I win that house. Decided to take the migraine medicine after all because what I was doing was NOT working.

The rest of the day was spent at a cheerleading competition my niece was in and let me say, there’s nothing like getting rid of a migraine and going to a convention center where thousands of girls are screaming and stomping their feet and clapping and squealing and MY GOD, THEY ARE LOUD. They are also weepy. Lots and lots of crying. Oh, and fake hair pieces. Those curly snap on pieces that look incredibly silly bouncing on top of their heads. Somewhere around 4:15 p.m. I wished for the Pancake Fairy to wrap me up in a giant pancake so the sound would be muffled. When it was all said and done we came home where my sweet Valentine and my son decided to deep fry a Twinkie. I’m not even kidding. They got Twinkies and Snickers and Mounds candy bars and deep fried the hell out of that stuff. Then we settled in to watch that graphic masterpiece Inglourious Basterds because hey! I’d already spent the day with screaming teens and artery clogging goodness and why not?

Who needs the Pancake Fairy on Valentine’s Day anyway? I had migraines and deep fried Twinkies and a sweet Valentine who spent the day with my family.

You’ve gotta be a little bit crazy to do all that.

I was waiting for this.

Not really all that safe for work. You know, the work that the men in the Dodge commercial were sooooo upset about going to for fear that they’d be, like, responsible or something.

Well, I’ve just gotten over quite the hot wing hangover. All I have to say is that the next time I say, “No, let’s not BUY PRE-MADE stuff for the Super Bowl Party. Let’s do it all from scratch!” then someone needs to stop me. Because there’s a new fryer in the house and the biggest jug of canola oil I’ve ever seen. Does some small country want to use the rest of it? I have plenty left over. But there are a few things I’ve learned about making hot wings and they are as follows:

1. Do a salt-soak marinade. Do this accidentally the first time and then by the time you get to batch four you’re all THESE ARE THE BEST BATCH YET but you can’t even speak those words. They are spoken in your head as you have two thoughts going on at once: one, about the best batch yet and two, about how your stomach ‘feels funny’ because you haven’t bothered to put a vegetable in it for the entirety of the day.

2. Don’t screw around with fake hot sauce or bourgeois hoity toity crap you get from a gourmet place. Hot sauce. From Louisiana. Otherwise? You’re doing it wrong.

3. Crispy wings is the key. So is butter. Butter is the key to so very many things in life. Crisp up the wings, mix up the sauce (with butter) and then put them in a frying pan with more butter and cover each individual wing with the sauce.

4. Cure cancer. You just might do that with this little magical recipe. Wouldn’t that be grand?

One of my new apps for my phone is the Hipstamatic. I blame listening to other people wax poetic about their apps for buying this one. It’s just retro photography stuff. I took this picture this morning of my back patio covered in snow. Kinda weird and freaky looking colors, but I like it.

So! This year for the game I actually watched it and paid attention. DO YOU HEAR THAT, ADVERTISING JERKS? I’m not at all thrilled with the ignorance with which the commercials were played nor was I happy with their lameness. LAME. I got up more times to check on the hot wings than I cared to stick around to find out why some football player I’d never heard of wanted to throw a thinly veiled opinion about my healthcare out there.

Mallory is a Colts fan. It’s weird, but she comes by it honestly. Her boyfriend is a Colts fan. So, naturally, when she’s home on a Saturday and there is a Colts game on, we’re watching it.  In any case, I was enough of a fan to be paying attention to the game that it’s taken me 25 years to understand. Because I now understand it I make up fully one-third of all football fans. I’m pretty sure the NFL knows this data, but can someone send that information over to the neanderthals in marketing? Anyway, this was a particularly difficult game to watch because my family are New Orleanians. (Is that the word? Or am I just supposed to call them ‘heathens’?) (Ha! Ha! I joke!) (No, really. I have to put that in there. My family owns guns and I shouldn’t joke about them.)

Speaking of owning guns, I sorta wished I did so that I could shoot the person responsible for that horrid Dodge commercial during the Super Bowl. I wouldn’t hurt them, because I’m not a violent person, but I would surely shoot them in the buttocks a la Forrest Gump for this. The best roundup of the ads was on Salon and I particularly liked this description of the that purposefully emasculating ad:

“I will shave. I will clean the sink after I shave. I will be at work at 8 a.m. I will be quiet when you don’t want to hear me say no. I will take your call. I will listen to your opinion of my friends. I will put the seat down. I will carry your lip balm.” Oh you will, asshole? Wow, I didn’t realize being a grown-up was soooo challenging. And as you glumly stare at the camera until your eyeballs look like they’re about to explode, all you demand is that you can zoom around to some fucking James Bond music in your dumb Dodge as you boldly take “Man’s! Last! Stand!” Way to stick it to us. The Charger: delusional masculinity’s reward for having to put the toilet seat down.

Oh, and have you read Margaret and Helen this week? Simply delicious. I should have snacked on that instead of 52 hot wings.

It was more like 58. Or 15,000. It was a lot.