My Killer Instinct vs. My Safe & Even Useful Outlet

Posted on by June 10, 2010
6

Mamacita says:  I own a pair of gardening gloves.  Really, I do.  I bought them after the ripping-poison-ivy-out-with-cloth-gloves-and-getting-resin-all-over-my-hands incident of a few weeks ago.  They’re very pretty, and still in the package.

The thing is, I don’t schedule my ventures into the savannah that is my yard.  I start ripping into the weeds at random moments, and I never have those gloves with me when the mood strikes.

I’ll be walking from the car to the door and I’ll be seized with a desire to RIP those confounded * weeds OUT of the GROUND by the ROOTS before I so much as take another BREATH.

And I start tearing at them with my bare hands.  And I don’t stop until they’re gone.  Until they’re DEAD.  DEAD, uprooted.  Piled in the driveway with one end a foot higher than the other because I ripped them out by the ROOTS.

Ahem.  I’m fine now.

Well, except for the fact that, as always, my hands are covered with blisters and splinters and cuts, one of which might need a stitch, and the itch, it is beginning.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, ouch, and bring on the bandaids.

But the weeds?  They are no more.

* Coot-talk for “damn.”  Really, it should be “damned,” but who’s scoring grammar for cussing?  Besides me, I mean.

Get Thee to a Conference, for Those Who Hone Not Their Skillz are as Useless as a Shoehorn in a Proctologist's Office

Posted on by June 9, 2010
6

Mamacita says:  Whatever you do for a living, and particularly if you work in education, I think it is of vital importance that you try to keep up with what’s going on in that area.  I work in education and social media, and I go to every conference I can afford, and even some I can’t afford.  The best ones, of course, are those you’re sent to by your school or business, but I go to everything affordable that has anything to do with me.

It’s rare that any piece of knowledge you pick up pertains only to one aspect of your life.  I went to WordCamp Chicago to hone my mad social media and computer  skillz, but I also learned a great deal that I can take back to my college students and use, as well.

There’s no such thing as knowing enough.  Nobody will ever know enough about anything.  No matter how much we know, or think we know, there is always more to learn.  It doesn’t matter what the topic is; there’s always more to learn.

At  WordCamp Chicago this weekend, I learned so much my head is spinning.  This is good.  As my head is spinning – EXORCIST – I am extracting tidbits of coolness from it like water from lettuce in a salad spinner.  And once I soak up all the water, I’ll start in on the lettuce.  When the lettuce has been absorbed, I’ll go to another conference and start again.

Nobody ever knows enough about anything.

And I shall add:  those who think they know enough had better be careful.

Businesses have clients and customers, and schools have students.  Clients, customers, and students know an awful lot, and if  the time comes when they know more than we do. . . . well,   we’ve succeeded, actually.  They won’t need us any more.  And then, we go to another conference or take a class and catch up and then we’ll be needed again and it starts all over again.

I’ve heard teachers say that certain students or whole classes made them nervous or even annoyed them because the kids knew more than the teacher.  Whose fault is this, I might ask.  A teacher who doesn’t continue to learn, year after year, for the entirety of his/her career, is not an educator.  He/she is only a lecturer, and probably a boring one that the kids could run rings around.  I know teachers who’ve used the exact same lesson plans for over thirty years.  I’ve worked with people who refused to learn even how to access their email.  I have had colleagues who hated it when there was a really bright kid who already knew every minute detail of the textbooks, tests, and topics in a class.  I’ve known teachers who resented it when a child asked a question the teacher couldn’t answer.  As for me,  I LOVE it when my students have questions I can’t answer.  It means we all go nuts figuring that answer out, together.  Cool!  Get to the lab, people and activate your schema!

When your customers/clients/students are able to run rings around you, and you permit it, and you don’t do anything to make yourself more knowledgeable, you’re not going to be good at whatever it is you do.  You won’t even be passable.  I don’t want you teaching my children, and I wouldn’t trust you to be competent at running a business.  Frankly, I don’t even want you dressing my cheeseburger.

If your business is kids and you don’t know what they’re reading or listening to or playing, what excuse do you have?  You have no excuse.  I don’t mean that you have to be one of them, because we’ve all seen THOSE pathetic souls, age 54, in Miley Cyrus jeans, Tinkerbell t-shirt,  and pink-tipped hair.  I mean, if you’re going to be able to communicate with your clientele in any kind of place, YOU have to learn some new tricks, old dawg.

In fact, I personally think that if your business is kids, you not only need to know what they’re reading, you need to read it, too.  How can your excited students talk to you about the Black Family Tree permanently stuck to the wall, with some of the faces burned away, and why, if you don’t know what that is?  And frankly, if you teach and you DON’T know what that is, shame on you.  You’re not keeping up.

Keep up.  Never, ever, ever stop keeping up.

When you stop keeping up, ie when you stop learning, call the mortuary and have them drive over to pick up your useless self.  You’re certainly not making viable use of yourself any more, nor any part of yourself.  Even if you’re working out three times a week, if you’re not learning anything, you’re not using your brain, and once you stop using your brain, you’re dead.  Worse than dead, really, because you’re not doing your fair share of thinking, participating, and contributing, but you’re still using up oxygen, resources,  and space on the planet.

Harsh?  Not really.  In this economy or any other kind of economy, what school or business can afford to keep dead weight?  And why should they bother?  Dead weight brings everybody down, and nobody has the right to do that to other people.

Get rid of the dead weight in our schools and replace it with learners.  Learners on both sides of the desk.  A teacher who doesn’t continually educate himself/herself throughout a lifetime?  Not possible.  I mean, not if that person is a REAL teacher.

No matter what line you’re in, make sure you are a lifelong learner.  Keep up.  Ponder.  Suppose.  Infer.  Make connections.  Rejoice in learning as many new things  as you can, every moment you’re lucky enough to be alive.

Never.  Stop.  Learning.  And never stop loving learning.  And if you do decide you’ve learned enough and you’ve earned the right to stop learning and just sit around watching tv and yelling at the weatherman and the referee and drinking beer and feeling great that you don’t have to learn anything else ever again, please, for the love of all that is holy, keep away from my children.  And everybody else’s children, too.  You’re toxic, and I don’t want your poison to infect or infest anyone else, least of all an innocent child.

Learn things.  And when you’ve learned those things, learn other things.  Etc, etc, and so on in patternlike fancy.

And while you’re at it, learn to use and understand proper context.  I mean, holy scheisse on a stick, there are some really ignorant cusses out there.  Let’s eliminate them all with education.

No Stopping or Blocking

Posted on by May 31, 2010
2

Mamacita says:  I love grammar.  I love the logic of it.  I love how there is a name and purpose for each word in a sentence.  I love how it takes a little intellect to put a good sentence together.  I love the almost mathematical precision of a good sentence, coupled with the brilliance of imagination and personality.  A good sentence is science, plain and simple.  A good sentence is composed via a formula that, when followed, creates an artistic thought that can be seen by others besides ourselves.

The action or linking part of that sentence is the verb.

But just how important can a verb be? I mean, if it were so important to choose verbs carefully, why do most of them have a million synonyms, thank you very much Mr. Roget.  Just find a verb that describes the action you need to describe and that’s it, right? One’s as good as another. They’re only verbs, after all. How could it be any kind of big deal which one you pick?

Well, kids, I’ll tell ya.  And please remember that all words have a denotative meaning (dictionary definition) and a connotative meaning (what your mind does with the denotation, ie “fat” is somehow fatter than “plump,” etc.)

Let’s use a couple of common verbs for examples:  STOP and BLOCK.

Denotatively speaking (see above) these two words are almost identical. In a thesaurus, their synonyms overlap.

Thesaurus entry for “stop” and for “block:”

Main Entry: stop

Part of Speech: verb

Synonyms: arrest, avoid, bar, block, bottle up, break, can, check, choke, choke off, clog, close, congest, cut off, disrupt, fill, fix, forestall, frustrate, gag, hinder, hold back, hush hush, ice, impede, intercept, interrupt, muzzle, obstruct, occlude, plug, rein in, repress, restrain, seal, shut down, shut off, shut out, silence, stall, staunch, stay, stem, still, stopper, suspend, throw over, turn off, ward off

Main Entry: block

Part of Speech: verb

Synonyms: arrest, bar, barricade, block out, blockade, brake, bung up, catch, charge, check, choke, clog, close, close off, close out, congest, cut off, dam, deter, fill, halt, hang up*, hinder, hold up, impede, intercept, interfere, occlude, plug, prevent, shut off*, shut out, stall, stonewall, stop, stop up*, stopper, stymie, tackle, thwart

And these two fraternal twins differ. . . . how?

Like this:

Back in the day, when I wore shorts and began my descent from the car in a public place, I could stop traffic.

Now, that same action would block traffic.

Any questions?

Mamacita (The Real One) Rants About Wiggly Kids and Recess and Stuff

Posted on by May 29, 2010
10

Mamacita says:  Some of this was first posted on June 30, 2007, but my opinion hasn’t changed since then, and I’ve added a few more opinionated Mamacita-isms. Are you surprised? I didn’t think you would be.

“No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it.”

That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, thanks to what I think of as my “Shit Epiphany,” it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” many of the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”

And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.

Heidi learned to read overnight. It does happen. At age eight, Heidi learned to read overnight. And then she went home and taught her friend Peter how to read, and he was in his teens. The “learning how to read when convinced one would never be able to learn because it was just too hard” theme is a big one in this book.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

Back in the olden days, there were plenty of outlets for restless boys to work off their excess energy. Families sent their  boys out to chop wood, plow, herd cows, walk miles to a neighbor or a store, etc. Our boys fell into bed exhausted from genuine labor every night. Now, few boys have any safe or easily obtainable or legitimate outlets, other than sports, for their physical energy and it gets kind of balled up (sorry) in them and then they explode, sometimes for no conceivable reason other than that the kid simply needs an outlet. I’m a huge proponent of self control, but self control can only do so much. Any teacher can tell you that a middle-of-the-day segment devoted to intense physical activity is of vital importance for our students. Girls need it, too, but I’m focusing on the boys in this post. Afternoon classes full of boys who have had absolutely no physical outlet are a nightmare.

Organized games are not enough. Not every kid will get to play; plus, once the adults take charge, it’s no longer free play; it’s business. Let the kids run wild for a half hour or so and let the teachers stand there and try to keep them from getting hurt. Tim’s elementary school had a hill to slide down and a piney grove to play in. I taught in that same school for years and by then, the piney grove, the hill, and most of the coolest playground equipment had been removed because a kid fell down. Go figure. Our kids don’t even know HOW to fall down these days. When they are on ice or trip and really DO fall down, they get hurt because they’ve had no falling-down experience. Kids fall down. Live with it. Sheesh.

And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

Because.

Posted on by May 23, 2010
2

Rerun. November, 2004. Before some of you were born, yes?
==
Mamacita says:  Remember that anecdote about the young bride whose husband asked her why she cut the beef roast* in half before she put it in the pan?

She told him she did it that way, because her mother always did it that way.

So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.

At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.

His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?

“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”

When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.

First of all, both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta.**

Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!

My son comes down to visit me frequently (Yay)  and the minute he enters the house, he requests grilled cheese sandwiches. When he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”

He is 24*** years old now, but he still wants his grilled cheese flattened with the spatula. Because that’s how his mother always made them.

When he gets married****, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?

Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.

*beef roast vs. roast beef: is it regional or are these two different cuts?

**No, I got no money or Velveeta from Kraft for saying this.  It’s just, well, true.

*** He’s 29 now, but who’s counting?

**** Mommy is still waiting.