A Month in Review

I've been absent all month - vacationing in New Jersey and at a Girl Scout Camp. Here's a just a look into everything that went down and my proof that I really am living well!

Wedding:
~KnJ's wedding was amazing! Although this dress, one of the shortest I own, is now hanging in my closet among the near 27 others I am still constantly reliving those times. The bachelorette weekend and the wedding in Virginia Beach meant I spent tons of time having loads of fun! I forget how great it is to relax with some really amazing people. I felt so safe, secure and confidant because those are the types of people I surround myself with. It is such a great honor that people choose me to help celebrate and represent them at their weddings.

Time with my nephew:
~In the short month I had with EK, we had tremendous breakthroughs. A kid who is afraid of swimming and not trusting enough to take off his swimmies is now jumping into shallow water with no goggles and without holding his nose. He has a strong kick and can show me his long arms. He will definitely be a strong swimmer.
~When I first got home, he wouldn't even say good morning. I'm not into constantly forcing kids to use manners. Instead I help them see how bad I feel when he doesn't respond to me and just show him positive interactions using the rest of our family. Now when I walk down in the morning, if he says good morning and I don't respond he says, "Auntie Brynn! Good morning!" until I specifically address him. Then out of nowhere he became an excellent sharer, asked me to teach him how to blow bubbles with gum and wouldn't leave my side. Then, before I left, he made sure I have his mom's number so that I can call him throughout the year.
I am sure going to miss that little boy. I hope he knows how much I love him and how proud I am of him, even if he doesn't hear those words enough to know what they mean.

Camping:
~I spent 2 weeks at a camp that is not my "home camp" - it's not the one I attended for years as a camper, went through CIT and Junior Counselor, working my way onto staff and into a management position. Instead, this is a camp I had never worked at. By the end of the two weeks, I remembered what I had felt years before in those long months between summers: camp is not a location. It is a group of people, feelings you all share, memories you create and an entity deep inside you. The physical attributes, the people and the places, they may change constantly but Camp never changes.
~I learned how to make orange cake - baked right inside oranges! How exciting of a dessert would that be? I cannot wait to make it for some "dinner party" or appropriate event during the year. The only change is that I will make it in my oven instead of over a campfire. Sigh.

Family:
~I love spending time with my family. We joke, we have fun and we love each other. We play Scrabble, eat Italian food, swim, watch movies, go to picnics, drink coffee...the list goes on and on. I hope to soon live closer to home because I love being able to be near them. I miss them already.

All in all, it was an amazing month at home. Seeing friends and family and living the good life. For all the crap I put up with sometimes, nothing compares to the positives in my life right now.

Love, love.

Why YOU need MATH

"Plato, whose mathematical knowledge was broadly up to date, could converse with the mathematicians as an equal and a problem presenter, even though his personal mathematical achievements were not significant."- Taken from is God a mathematician? by Mario Livio.

This is something I try to instill in my students constantly. They don't need to be amazing mathematicians in order to be good at math, nor do they have to be straight-A math students to contribute to mathematical discussion. Here's something else I tell my students:

"The science of figures, to a certain degree, is not only indispensably requisite in every walk of civilized life; but investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational being."

Okay, I don't say it in these words. George Washington said this (as taken from is God a mathematician?). More than 230 years ago, good ol' George Washington realized the importance of math in everyday life.

Okay so WHY is this important? Why am I talking about Plato and George Washington? How is this relevant to today? Well yesterday I saw a mud-slinging campaign commercial, saying that since Obama took office, unemployment has risen 20% and gas 110%. To be honest, I have never looked at the figures for unemployment. It's fair to say that I haven't studied gas prices either, but I drive and I do know my math. Around this time last year, gas was almost $4 a gallon (in southwest Virginia - don't pull the "oh our gas is so much more in ___ because it counts as part of your cost of living being higher and therefor your pay directly varies. In plain English: you get paid more so you can afford higher gas). Then gas prices went down to well below $3, went back up, and now sits around $2.29. Okay, so it has gone up and down, but that's all within Obama's administration. Well, according to CNN, in May of 2008 (that's right, before Obama) gas prices hit $3.75 and were still rising. That's the same as what's happened these last 3 years. Gas goes up - gas goes down.

Sort of lost? Maybe you're still following but this is what it boils down to: if something increases by 100%, that means you take the original amount and double it. If gas has risen by more than 100% that would mean it has more than doubled. Clearly, this is not the case. This is where statistics become misleading. Gas has increased by 110%, but I don't know to which year they are comparing these statistics. Heck, gas has risen- well, what percent is $4 out of $0 - such as when we drove horse and buggies! How ridiculous is it to fake statistics like this? This is in no way pro- or anti- Obama or any other way political. This is merely a pro-mathematics rant.

YOU NEED MATH to be an intelligent, responsible and active citizen of this fair country. You need to be able to watch TV, read the newspaper, and take in information all around you, analyze it, and create your own, well-informed decisions.

This is one among billions of ways that I use math every day. You do, too.

Be mathy!

Finding a Mantra

So I read an article yesterday about a woman who uses a mantra (repetition of a word or short phrase) to help her get through life. When she stresses, when she is working out, when life gets to be too much, she repeats "I embrace life" over and over until her feelings have passed and she is renewed. That is what has started my current experiment.

I used a mantra once, for a short period of time. I looked into the mirror every morning and repeated "you are beautiful" 3 or so times. You know what? I have transformed into a very powerful and confidant woman. I don't know if it's a direct result of my morning ritual, but that really helped me get out of a pretty dark period in my life.

I currently have trouble controlling my thoughts and anxiety: they keep me awake at night, I invent fights with people that aren't really happening and I find myself getting really overwhelmed by certain circumstances. (On a side note, I will say I am starting to master the art of instantly de-stressing the moment the ball is out of my court. Between state tests,
benchmark exams, work situations, etc. I stress, stress, stress and then as soon
as the time has come and I can't do anything more, I'm done stressing. I have
realized it's pointless to keep stressing when I have done all I can.) I also need help powering through workouts, cleaning my house, and generally getting motivated to do anything.

I have decided to try a mantra. Last night, as my thoughts raced, I tried a few different mantras: "Just breathe", "I've got this", even "Find a mantra". Mm, not really liking those yet. The article said the mantra should be results oriented, but my needs are varied. It should be positive ("I am strong" instead of "I am not weak"), which isn't a problem, think the best of yourself ("I am healthy" instead of "I will try to be healthy"), and have a rhythm.

I think I am going to try "I am living well" to help me through things. When I need to say NO to snacks: I am living well. When I need to clean my house: I am living well. When I need to sleep or de-stress, I am living well. If I just need to keep running: I am living well.

This is the beginning of my new experiment. I will keep you posted as to how it goes.

Live well, friends!

**Update just a few hours later:

I need to add this recent development about why I love my the saying I chose. I took an hour today to lay out in the sun reading a book. My new mantra instantly popped into my head: I am living well. Not only can I use my mantra to help push me through the tough times, it also serves as a reminder to not take the good in my life for granted. There is a lot of good and I love to thank God for it. Saying that I am living well brings me closer to God - it serves as the beginning of prayer. I LOVE that aspect of it. Also, because I can use it during the good times and can use it so often throughout every day, I think it will be easier to remember to use it when times are tough. also LOVE that aspect! So powerful!

2 Relatively Successful Cake Experiments

So last week I completed two cake experiments: and ice cream cake and a fondant covered cake. Here's how they went:

The ice cream cake was first. I was asked if I was able to make one and said I never had but could attempt it. Well, the woman changed her mind (it would have been too hard to transfer nicely from an hour away anyway) but it really got me thinking. I wanted to make an ice cream cake and started looking around. I didn't want to just stack ice cream with fudge. I wanted true cake + ice cream. I also wanted some aspect of it to be homemade. I had a cherry chip cake mix in the cabinet, so I started there. I made the cake according to the box and baked it. I read online how people went about freezing their cakes. One woman said she flips hers AS SOON as it comes out of the oven and puts it directly in the freezer. Well, I know this isn't a great idea but if I didn't try flipping immediately I would have constantly wondered if that would have been better. Turns out, it wasn't.

Clearly, it fell apart. But! that didn't deter me. It was just an experiment so I didn't really care much about how it looked. I froze it from here and continued to work with it.

While that was freezing, I made the ice cream. I knew I didn't want it to be just ice cream because it would be too hard after freezing. So I combined vanilla ice cream with Cool Whip (next time I might try making my own whipped cream?) and then blended together frozen blueberries and cherries. I put that back into the freezer to harden while I "cut" the cake in half (it more or less fell appart among fault lines you can sort of see there). Then I layered cake, ice cream, and more cake. I froze that back up and then covered it with some remaining whipped cream. It might not have looked very pretty, but it tasted delicious.

Next I started making a bachelorette cake for a friend. I decided I wanted to attempt to cover a cake in fondant, to make a two-tiered cake, and to try a lace pattern. The cake was supposed to be sort of classy but still fun.

The top tier I made out of two 6-inch cakes. I wanted them to be sort of thick so I filled them quite a bit - but that also meant I had to cut off quite a bit of the rounded top. It was hard to get it perfectly level, but really I could have gotten my small leveler out of the work closet. Oh well. I then made some of the fondant blue and cut strips. It was hard to keep them even because I don't have any fondant cutting tools and so it kept pulling. I knew I wanted a man popping out of the top, but darn it if Ken dolls are hard to find and more expensive than Barbie. Plus, they're too big to put into the top. I found this wrestler instead - luckily they're already topless! I made his bow tie and the garter for his hand, ripped off his legs and then stuck him in there!

The bottom tier I made using 3 8-inch cakes, each made real thin to avoid too much rounding. I guess I forgot to mention above that I mixed blue food coloring in one 6 inch tin and green in the other to make a tie-dye-ish cake. Here I layered blue, green, blue. All layers had butter cream in the middle. After layering the cakes, I covered them with buttercream and froze them again. Then I pulled out each tier and let them warm up just enough to make the icing tacky. While waiting for it to warm, I flavored my fondant using coconut rum (an ingrediant I also put into the cake in place of half the water). I then rolled out the fondant to about a quarter inch thickness and tried to make it circular, about the diameter equal to the diamter of the cake and twice the height (so here about 14 inches). Still needs work but I was happy with how well I did for the first time. I used my rolling pin to lift the fondant onto the cake. I smoothed it out using my hands - I have no fondant smoother. It didn't get as smooth as I would have liked though. I think I had too much buttercream on the outside of the cake. I didn't have any air bubbles but the fondant was still lumpy because of the excess of icing.

I tried a few different lace patterns on cake board before deciding on this one. I used the buttercream to draw the scrolls on the side of the cake. Again, not great but I was still happy with how it turned out. I put edible pearls in all of the places where multiple scrolls touched. Then on the top I wrote "One more fling before the ring" although it came otu a little messy because my icing was really warm. I had placed the top tier to figure out where to write, but then took it off for transport (about 8 hours).

When we got to the hotel where we were staying, I put it all together. Everybody loved it, bride included. I got a bunch of comments like "I've always heard fondant tastes gross but this is delicious!" and "At work we always pull off the fondant before serving wedding cakes because it's too much - but you have the perfect amount." I guess this was a job well done!

What I've Learned

I last wrote in October and these are just a few things I've learned since then:

First - The things they didn't tell me far outdo the things they did tell me:

1) Nobody told me that I would need to take a nap every day when I got home. I have been told, now that it's all over with, that this is a symptom of first-year teaching. However, I put so much of myself into every day that I don't know when I will ever "get use to it." It is so tiring to be constantly monitoring children, answering 2 questions you prepared for and 3 you didn't (all at the same time), rearranging examples and lessons in my head and in general being constantly on my toes - in both the literal and figurative senses. I love the fast-paced world of teaching but it is so emotionally and mentally draining that it often pulls from the physical also. Chores? Ha! Making dinner? Bah! I often neglected every other aspect of my life because I was just too darned tired! Nobody told me that.

2) Nobody told me that I wasn't supposed to put books on my bookshelf. This is just one of the general, procedural knowledge nuggets that people take for granted that the new people would know. As a veteran, you know how to set-up your room at the beginning of the year and how to clean it up at the end. Ideas such as not putting books on shelves that need to be moved for floor waxing - well those just didn't occur to me. I thought I was nearly done with my books and had arranged them neatly when the principal happened to mention in passing to "be sure your books are stacked on your counters." I didn't know that when I was given grades of transfer students, they wouldn't be entered into the grade book by the guidance / resource counselor who takes care of every other aspect of grades and reports. I didn't know I had to print report cards out by assignment and with a signature line. Nobody told me that.

Second - Reading is relaxing, unless you're at a really exciting part.

I love to read and I have neglected it for far too long. I have read about 5 books in the last 8 months and still have 5 more to go before I go on another book-buying binge. (I also have plenty of other un-read books on my shelf that I don't consider my "must reads" of now.) It is so hard to read during the school year because it keeps me up at night. I always need to know what happens next and feel compelled to read "just one more" chapter. It's also a lot more fun to read when other people have also read the book, so I think I am going to start blogging about the books I read and hopefully will find people to respond. So far I can write about Beautiful Lies, Secret Life of Bees, House Rules, The Help, and another book whose title happens to escape me at the moment.

That takes me to the third thing I've learned:

Just because I'm a math person doesn't mean I can't write - it just means I can't spell.

I want to write a blog - a more specific blog. But I realize it also can't be forced because then I have interest in writing. Clearly I can't keep up with something just on whims. I just helped my boyfriend write his resume - believe me I can make working at a grocery store sound like the most important job you've ever held. I would love to write a book - but about what? I just love writing. Everybody assumes that you are either a numbers person or a words person, but why can't you be both? I would also like to pick up some sort of freelance writing job, but I wouldn't really know where to begin. Really, is it possible to get paid for all of your passions? Teaching, writing and cakes? Can I combine them all into one? Hmm.

Oh and the spelling thing - I love playing Scrabble. I know plenty of winning words but it's the darndest thing: I can't spell worth a lick. Oh well, that will maybe come with time.

Well that would be it for now. Luck to you and luck for me!

Falling and Failing but not Dying

"You will still have an F on your report card, but you won't have failed at life."

This is a bit of advice I gave to a student when we was upset about his grade for the first 6 weeks. Now, he knew that the reason he failed was because he chose not to do a big project we had done. I talked to him about how sometimes we fail, but we have to learn from our mistakes and pull ourselves up from it. I ended with that last sentence, which probably sounded pretty corny but at least it was from the heart.

I think about how I have learned to internalize this advice. There have been so many times this year where I have felt overwhelmed, fallen flat on my face, and just bombed some lessons. As all first year teachers usually do, I stress out and stay up late trying to overcome whatever it is I need to beat. I try to get as much done as possible. Unlike many first year teachers (and many people in general), once the deadline is passed and I still don't have all of my midterm grades in (or the meeting started and I haven't analyzed my data or whatever it was I was supposed to do) I let go of the stress. I take a note of what it was I failed at and I start thinking of ways to overcome it next time. How can I change my actions so that this does not happen again?

You see, reflection is the key to any positive change. Once an event has passed, their is no going back to change it. You cannot turn back time to fix what has already been done. All you can do is look toward changing the future. I consider myself a pretty optimistic person and I am sure that that outlook helps me to be able to leave the stress behind. I figure, everything happens for a reason, even if that reason is just so you learn something.

So when you feel like you're falling, or you realize you've failed, just get up and brush it off. You're still alive and have plenty of time to change everything for the better.

Clap Once if You Can Hear Me - Using camp techniques in the classroom

Next week is the end of our first grading period, so I feel like I should take some time to reflect:

Camp in the Classroom

My classroom philosophy is to have a warm environment where students feel safe and welcome. I want there to be rules, but I also want it to be fun. Through my many years as a camper - looking up to women who gave me boundaries, consequences and guidance at the same time - I learned what attributes I admired and respected from those in charge. Through my years as camp staff, I became very aware of what techniques gain respect and how adolescents respond in different situations.

The first time I realized I was using camp philosophy in the classroom was during my second lunch duty of the year. (Of course, it could be a combination of camp and my years in education classes - or my ability to think rationally in most situations - that led me to where I am now.) There were a group of students who were consistently being unruly. As we dismissed the rest of the students, I held back this group to have a discussion with them. Even though I am a new teacher, I do understand how to relate to this age group and was doing just a fine job of discussing their behavior. I explained what my expectations where, named the behaviors that I did not think were meeting the expectations, and was about to discuss what consequences would come for not meeting these expectations. At that moment, another teacher stepped up and started to belittle these students, calling them babies and treating them as such. When I replayed the incident in my mind, I tried to think as a student in this situation would have. Which teacher would I respect more? Which would I not want to listen to in the future? Whether because of camp or college, I know that if we treat them as young adults, giving them rules and consequences based on expectations, then they will be more apt to live up to be the people we hope they will become. They may not like the rules we impose, but they will eventually understand why they are in place. If, instead, we treat them like children, that is how they will act.

Also from camp, I know the value of giving positive directions instead of negative ones. If you tell a child "don't run," then that child hears the last word, "run," and does not correct the behavior. If you ask the child to "please walk" then she will hear the word "walk" and know what is expected. Similarly, I try not to ask my students to stop talking or to yell out answers. I ask my students to "please be quiet" and I say "thank you for raising your hand." They are beginning to catch on. I will know more by the end of the year, but it is my hope that they will respond more positively to these types of requests. Students are children after all. They will talk, they will be out of control, they will play with manipulatives instead of listening to the answers to homework. It is my goal to be patient. So, when I need to get their attention, I do not yell at them to be quiet, flicker the lights or slam the door. Instead, I say in a quiet voice, "clap once if you can hear me."