Weekly wrap-up

Last week before spring break, and man am I ready for it. I'm actually planning to work all through it but no student contact hours! Today had some long teacher meetings and for once a meeting was actually productive. I got a lot of good feedback on tweaking or even totally rewriting some labs I've wanted to fix for over 2 years now.

Found out that a former roommate and overall sweet, sweet dude is pretty sick. Everybody at tRBC is really bummed about that, to put it mildly. Hopefully we'll hear some good prognosis news soon (fingers and toes crossed). It took several days for the seriousness to sink in on me. I'd say the ambiance here has been pretty down all week for that and other reasons. Last night we watched The Brothers Bloom, which was really long but it made me and others laugh out loud many times and that was greatly appreciated.

A surprise cold snap hit midway through the week (okay, this is the Great Frigid North, so in March it's not that much of a surprise, but still unwelcome). A month ago I would have been delighted to ride my bike in 25-30˚F weather, but I am way done with that now. I'm tired of my balaclava and mittens. On the bright side, I did get to wear the scarf that SG recently sent to replace the one I lost in IL.

Some good. Some bad. If your are the praying type, say one for my friend. It can't hurt.

Nothin' much

Not a lot to tell anyone about but I'm trying to be better about blogging and so I don't want to let a post lapse. My friends B-alicious, A & J came to visit from Mpls this weekend. Except for teaching a morning lab, I had Friday off and so once I got back home, B-alicious, M and I all met up with roomie D at a fantastic Indian buffet where I had previously had dinner but never before done the buffet. It was pretty good and upon returning to tRBC, B-alicious, M and I sat with very full bellies and watched "Pumpkin" while I embroidered and we all tried not to doze off from food coma. Then we took a walk around my neighborhood, which is always larger than I expect, evaluating peoples' choices of yard decor. There was a really cool bottle tree that I want to go back and take a photo of.

I'm trying to pick back up on doing crafty-type stuff. Since moving to tRBC over 3 years ago now, I haven't done much in the way of crafting, largely due to the fact that all my crafty shit is packed like sardines into my closet and a pain to get out, and also there's rarely a bare table upon which to work. I should clean up the porch table now that the weather is nice. The last two Sundays have been "ladiez craft days" with friend S (and this weekend B-alicious joined in). I've done some card-making, some quilling, and a little embroidery. Inspired by a series of "Stitch-a-day" posts on the Hand Embroidery Network, I'm trying to take up embroidery again. I used to do it a lot as a kid, but I only knew the straight stitch so I'm gonna get fancier this time.
There was some other stuff this weekend, but I don't want to use all of my thrilling material at once.

Scary me

So I believe that I've mentioned that I'm teaching a special class this semester for students who don't have the pre-reqs they need, and they are supported by taking concurrent math and reading classes that are targeted to the skills they need for my class. Thus, each student in my class has 3 teachers in this block of classes.

A couple weeks ago, one of the math teachers mentioned during our weekly meeting that the students were afraid to come to my office hours. That is, they were afraid of me. Me. The other teachers chimed in that a student or two had admitted something similar, and honestly I'd kind of suspected it since my office hours were always empty. We were all baffled because really I'm just not that scary of a person. Especially because I go out of my way to be positive and encouraging as a teacher (yeah, you just might barf if you saw me in class), and because, you know, I'm just kind of goofy. I think their fear has to do with the structure of the block, that everything is building up to them passing my course, and so I'm the "heavy" who they have to impress. Plus these students have not historically performed well in classes nor had positive relationships with teachers.

Anyway.

I made an announcement in both of my lab sections the next week that I really did want them to come ask questions, and I wanted to help, that I'm impressed by students who show the initiative to come to my office, and that I don't bite. They all laughed, and nobody admitted to being afraid of me, but I didn't try to find out who it was, either. I guess they just needed that extra little push, which I never would have known if somebody hadn't 'fessed up to another teacher. Now I'm swamped during my office hours, and it is awesome!

Greens Heaven

This week both roomie D and el señor B made greens, kale in chorizo and collards in sausage and bacon, respectively.

I can eat greens twice every day without having the same flavor twice. You have no idea how happy this makes me.