My Worst Week in Years

I try to go through life looking on the bright side of things. But this week has really put that to the test. Last Sunday late afternoon, I started to feel a little odd so I took my temperature. It was 100.3. I had no other symptoms but just having the fever meant no school for me. Sounds great except I had to notify the school and get lessons together for my sub. Asleep that night I had a huge bout of sweats and my fever broke. Monday morning, no fever. 2 PM no fever, 7 PM fever is back. No school Tuesday. Notify the school and make more plans. I hate to make lesson plans for subs. (Later I found out the district had it's own issues on Tuesday, so it wasn't a total loss.) I go to school Wednesday but feel a little weak. Come home and sleep a lot, but no fever. Starlab is Thursday so I go in, although, since my voice is not real strong, I play a lot of music in Starlab. I like it and the kids seem to like it. Almost through the day on Thursday, I feel my mouth starting to feel funny and check it to see several canker sores inside on my tongue and side of the mouth. As I drive home I feel a bump on my lip rising, a cold sore. My wife and I had arranged a long time ago to visit a college campus this weekend and I had appointments I needed to keep, so we packed up and traveled to Daytona Beach. During this whole episode, let me say that Orajel was my friend. My fever was gone but my mouth was a mess. I nursed it as best I could and the sores are starting to fade away but it is not back to normal. My appetite this week was awful, leaving me with this one bright spot: I lost 11 pounds, in one week. This is not how I wanted to lose weight.

I sincerely hope that those are the final sick days of my teaching career. Stay tuned.

A Fair Week

I love the English language. I enjoy the interplay between words of different origins, of homophones,

of double meanings, you name it. More about that later. But first, this. Once a year my school holds a fund raiser for clubs and organizations. It is called the Pine View Fair and this year it was Saturday, October 18. I went but not as a sponsor of any group. I just walked around, ate some food, talked to some parents and students and generally enjoyed the ambiance of this, my final (as a teacher, anyway) PV Fair. 

When I entered the Student Union, which served as a food court for the fair, I deliberately ate nothing at first but walked all around surveying the various offerings. I like to support the kids and I like to eat, so it seemed like a win win situation. I enjoyed chips and salsa,  a spring roll, a homemade chocolate chip cookie, a hamburger, 2 Indian donuts and a second homemade chocolate chip cookies, in that order. (I have a real weakness for those cookies.)

Now about those Indian donuts. Definitely a new experience for me.  The two I had were from different batches made by different people. There was apparently some sort of bragging right associated with these treats as several students tried to tell me which ones were superior. I ended up trying one each from two different batches. They were little balls of fried or baked dough, reminiscent of the shape of hush puppies, soaked in a sweet liquid. I could tell they were not from the same batch. The textures were different, if not much else. They were both tasty and I would probably, given the opportunity, eat them again. The spring roll was excellent. The hamburger was satisfactory. The chips and salsa (actually, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole) were nicely spiced. But the chocolate chip cookies were savored morsel by morsel. I could make myself sick eating home made CCCs.

Of course, the quality of the food was not the main concern. Instead, it was an encouragement to the students, who put a lot of work into this event. The weather this year was outstanding. We might have asked for better weather, but I am not sure how it could have been any better. There was a climbing wall, a dunk tank, skill tests of tossing and throwing objects, a robotics test driving arena, a science show, dichroic jewelry for sale by the art department, and much more. I have no idea of the numbers, but a lot of folks were there and I am sure a lot of money was raised. Success.

This week in astronomy we did one of my favorite activities. We started the chapter on telescopes so we examined lenses and mirrors. My room can get very dark with lights off and blinds drawn, since I have aluminum foil lining all the windows. I made my room a camera obscura and used a lens to project onto a piece of paper an image of the scene right outside our door. I love it because it always gets such a reaction from the students. It is difficult to appreciate without seeing this but, trust me, it is a memorable experience for my class. I keep telling my students that they are never going to forget this class. Maybe, if I keep telling them that, they will, in fact, remember some of it.

Back to English. When I joined facebook in 2008, one of my early posts was titled "Some of My Favorite Words 5 Syllables and Longer." I think my all time favorite is 'sesquipedalian,' which means the use of big words. English is so contrived that ghoti is a way to spell fish. That is gh as in rough, o as in women and ti as in motion. I may revisit this in a future post.

This was the last full week of the first quarter. The school year is 25% over. The time is going so fast. 

Well, thanks for reading this.

A Full Week

This was one full week. My school had a guest speaker. There was a total lunar eclipse. We had Starlab. And we had a taste of fall weather.

But first, this. A couple weeks ago a reporter from The Torch, my school's student newspaper, came and interviewed me about this blog. It had not crossed my mind, at all, that the school paper might think my blog was interesting or worthy of covering, so I was surprised and pleased. I attribute their interest to one of two things. Either it was a slow news day or, more likely, since the school has an online edition, there is more opportunity to write and publish articles, so they had space to fill. Either way, I think it was a nicely done story. Here is a link to it. Thank you.

Our school has guest speakers from time to time. Over the years the quality of the speakers coming to our school has been known to be a little uneven. This time, however, it was great. The speaker, Nadja Halilbegovich, had a terrific story. She grew up in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. After that country splintered apart, Sarajevo was besieged for 4 years. Now this was 20 or so years ago, before any of the students were born, but they were attentive and enthralled by her story. It is recounted in her book, My Childhood Under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary. If it is as good a read as it was a tell, it will hold your interest.

While the speaker was great, the eclipse was not. I woke up at 5:00 AM to come to school. As I left home, I saw the partially eclipse moon playing peek-a-boo through some holes in the clouds. By the time I arrived at school, the holes were fewer and by the time totality began, all the holes were gone and we did not see any of the total eclipse, only cloud bottoms. We heard it was great and a former student of mine posted some photos on facebook. Not very satisfying but better that nothing. And, while this was the second of a tetrad of lunar eclipses, meaning there are 2 left in the next 11 months, the next one is visible from the Pacific Ocean, not Sarasota. We have one more chance in this group of 4 eclipses, next September. That will be visible in all the Americas (except Alaska and northwestern North America.)

In the 25 years I have lived in Florida, my observation has been that the hot weather of summer usually lingers until the third week of October, plus or minus a week. This week we had 2 days of cooler, below average temperatures, as a front sneaked further south than usual and reached us; a harbinger of things to come. It wasn't much, but I'm not complaining.

We had Starlab this week. One of the things I enjoy about our little portable planetarium is its acoustics. I have a boom box that plays music I have acquired over the years that I think plays well in that venue. I like even more the fact that I get to pick the music that my students must listen too. Now I have eclectic taste in music, but there probably is not much overlap between my student's playlists and mine. Here is the music I played this week.

Becoming One of "The People" - Avatar sound track
Cello Suite No. 1, prelude - J.S. Bach
Adiemus - Karl Jenkins from the album Songs of Sanctuary
Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles

I am always looking for music that would fit well in the planetarium. Suggestions are welcome.

As of now the weather forecast for Sunday (10/12/14) evening is clear. I have scheduled a stargaze. If the weather holds, it should be great. I tend to effuse after a good stargaze. Stay tuned.

Alphabet Soup

I had another great week. If this is getting a bit old for you, sorry, but I cannot help it. The only down aspect of the week has been the continuing lousy weather. Lousy with respect to stargazing. We had one break Thursday night when the first quarter moon could be seen along with Antares and Mars. The Greek name for Mars,the red planet, is Ares. The red giant star, Antares, meaning rival of or against Ares, is near the ecliptic and every 2 years or so Mars (Ares) approaches Antares. This was that week, so we got to see the two red objects, one a star, the other a planet, within a few degrees of each other.

As I write this, the outlook for stargazing has improved immensely, at least with respect to the rain and clouds. The seasons first cold (cool) front has move through and we are seeing night time temperatures that we haven't seen since May. Now we have to wait a week for the waxing gibbous moon to get out of the evening sky. During that week we have a special event you should know about. On Wednesday, October 8, 2014 there is a total lunar eclipse visible (in the eastern USA) before sunrise. The partial eclipse starts around 5 AM and totality about 6:25, lasting until sunrise and hour later. Let's hope for clear skies.

On to the topic that is in the title of this post. I have determined that one thing I will not miss in my retirement years is the alphabet soup that is educational acronyms. These are abbreviations that are intended to be memorable and helpful, I think. In my career the use of these shorthand forms has proliferated in a Fibonacci-like magnitude. Here is a list of just some, a very few, of these devices that I have seen and used over the years. Perhaps they will bring back memories, fond or painful I know not which.

DOK - depth of knowledge, the newest one for me. I do not recall seeing this before this week. I may have and my memory has failed me, but it is what prompted this post.
AP - advanced placement. I teach AP Computer Science.
ADHD - attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
CBA - curriculum based assessment
GPA - grade point average
IDEA - individuals with disabilities act
IEP - individualized education plan
NCLB - no child left behind
OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder
PSAT - preliminary scholastic aptitude test
WISC - Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
CRISS - creating independence through student-owned strategies
PVA - Pine View Association, our parent-teacher association
FIRST - for inspiration and recognition of science and technology, a robotics organization
STEM - science, technology, engineering, and math
STEAM - science, technology, engineering, arts, and math
FCAT - florida comprehensive assessment test

I have no ax to grind with regard to these. They are a part of an educators life. They can be helpful at times but mostly they just are. (I mean that just the way it is written.) I know that all professions and careers have them (the military is very well known for its array of acronyms,) so we get used to it. Does that mean we have to like them? No, especially when one is used that you don't know and you have to ask what it means. All I can say is that they are one part of the job that I will not miss.

Anyway, remember to look for the lunar eclipse Wednesday, October 8 before sunrise. Wishing you clear skies.