Dreamin' again...

I am shutting down my Blogger activities.

2009-07-12T21:12:00.002-04:00

This is to announce that, effective immediately, dreamin-again.blogspot.com will no longer be updated. I think all my readers (read: Emma, Kef, and Mira...at least, those are pretty much the only people who have commented on my posts anytime in the last 2 years, except for one comment on an update regarding my husband's health) are on Facebook, and therefore it makes more sense to post directly on Facebook rather than make a post on Blogger and wait for Facebook to import it.

If you are reading this post via Blogger (rather than the Facebook-imported version), are NOT on Facebook and have issues with this cessation of Blogger blogging, feel free to post a comment on this post and I may reconsider.

I need to start over.

2009-05-23T12:37:00.002-04:00

I need to start over.

Posted using ShareThis

You never know.

2009-03-26T22:06:00.002-04:00

Last year my timetable had me in 2 different classrooms every day (one for math and one for science), both of which were used by only one other teacher all day. The teacher I shared a math classroom with had prep during the one period I taught in there, and got to know the faces of some of my students as she popped in and out of the room now and then and waited for us to clear out so she could get set up for the next period. We got along pretty well, and she complimented me on my board notes several times that year.

This year, that teacher has a couple of the students in her grade 10 math class that I had in that grade 9 math class. When I popped into her room to show her something a couple of days ago, one of those students noticed and loudly piped up, "Hi, Miss!" Later that day, when I popped down to the hospitality department to purchase yummy student-prepared food for my lunch (I *love* having an excellent hospitality department at our school), that same student was there serving food..."Hi, Miss!" In both cases, I smiled, said hi, and carried on with my day...I'm not real chatty with students outside my own classroom, unfortunately, and, well, let's just say my experience with this particular student was not the most pleasant.

Today, when I was chatting with that student's math teacher about this and that, I mentioned being amused at her enthusiasm...and this teacher told me that student has a deep respect for me as a teacher. Huh? *Her?* I sure didn't feel respected by her last year...huh.

Last semester, at parent-teacher night, I had a similar experience with another student...someone who was not doing so hot academically and probably got my unhappy face more frequently than I might have liked for wasting time during class. Pretty much the first thing her mother told me was, "You're her favourite teacher!" Huh? I'm *her* favourite teacher? Really? Don't I give her a hard time and get annoyed with her a lot? Huh.

This semester, I have been pretty sticky about making students use a sign-in sheet when they are late and when they take "washroom" breaks...a policy that I have adopted from multiple teachers in the school (it's got history behind it that we don't need to discuss here). I was mildly shocked one day to see my first instance of swearing at me on one of these sheets, basically telling me to eff off. Of course it was done completely anonymously, and I discussed with another teacher that I had decided to intentionally not address the issue in class...lecturing the whole class was pointless and would probably only lead to an escalation of aggravating incidents. She told me that it was an indication that I probably have a crazy student in my class, because as students have talked in her class she has got the impression that I am generally well-liked. Really? By my students? Even the ones whom I probably make feel my irritation with them on a regular basis? Huh.

Last semester, I commented once to my grade 12 college-preparation-level chemistry class that they were my favourite class (they were...probably partly because the material was more intellectual than the grade 9 and 10 courses I taught the rest of the day and partly because the students were closer to me in age than my grade 9s and 10s and I felt I "clicked" better with them). One student replied, "Why, miss? We're a**holes!" I guess the surprise goes both ways. Huh. Maybe that's something I should fix...students should not be surprised that when all is said and done, their teacher still believes in their potential and likes something about them, even if they are one of those students that seem to be wasting that potential at the moment.

One student from that grade 12 class greeted me warmly today & we chatted for a bit in the hallway (look at that...I guess I do chat with students occasionally)...and that was a student I had to fail. Really? He is not bitter? Huh. Perhaps he was just as surprised that I was not bitter about his failure to get the credit.

I could put some words in here about how you never know what impression you're making on those around you, or about how we are all being watched all the time, and I could probably even tie it into what I talked about during the young adults' service this past Sunday, but I won't. I am just recording some thoughts that were in my head here. Besides, I have an in-school professional development workshop all day tomorrow, and I still have to put together supply teacher material for my grade 10 classes (though I am actually just going to modify another teacher's material, and the prep for my grade 9 class is already done), and it's already 10:00 at night. Part of the reason I try to build in safeguards against procrastination when I assign projects is because I procrastinate so easily myself, heh...

The Bucket List

2009-02-16T12:37:00.002-05:00

[Got this from Miriam.] Place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not, then send it to your friends.

Things you have done during your lifetime:
( ) Gone on a blind date
(x) Skipped school [only a few classes, never a full day!]
( ) Watched someone die
(x) Been to Canada
( ) Been to Mexico
( ) Been to Florida
( ) Been to Hawaii
(x) Been on a plane
( ) Been on a helicopter
(x) Been lost
( ) Gone to Washington, DC
( ) Swam in the ocean
(x) Cried yourself to sleep
(x) Played cops and robbers
(x) Recently colored with crayons
(x) Sang Karaoke [but never at a bar/etc., only at friends' houses, in a college lounge, etc.]
(x) Paid for a meal with coins only
( ) Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch
(x) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't
( ) Made prank phone calls [no, but I have called people & then hung up because of being too nervous to speak]
( ) Been down Bourbon Street in New Orleans
(x) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
(x) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
( ) Danced in the rain
(x) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(x) Been kissed under the mistletoe [I think...]
( ) Watched the sunrise with someone
(x) Blown bubbles
(x) Gone ice-skating
(x) Gone to the movies
( ) Been deep sea fishing
( ) Driven across the United States
( ) Been in a hot air balloon
( ) Been sky diving [nope, but I've been parasailing]
( ) Gone snowmobiling
( ) Lived in more than one country [only for like 3 weeks, so likely doesn't count]
(x) Lay down outside at night and admired the stars while listening to the crickets [Camp Saugeen forever!]
(x) Seen a falling star and made a wish
( ) Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser
( ) Seen the Statue of Liberty
( ) Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle
( ) Been on a cruise [I think this means one where you sleep on board, so the various sight-seeing cruises I've been on likely don't count]
( ) Traveled by train
( ) Traveled by motorcycle
(x) Been horseback riding
( ) Ridden on a San Francisco cable car
( ) Been to Disneyworld
(x) Truly believe in the power of prayer
( ) Been in a rain forest
(x) Seen whales in the ocean [six times, and they were so close!!!]
(x) Been to Niagara Falls
( ) Ridden on an elephant
( ) Swam with dolphins
( ) Been to the Olympics
( ) Walked on the Great Wall of China
( ) Saw and heard a glacier calf
( ) Been spinnaker flying
( ) Been water-skiing [tried to, but couldn't get up, & then gave up]
(x) Been snow-skiing [I have never heard it called this before...anyway, I am counting cross-country here...gave up too early to get off the bunny hill as far as downhill goes]
( ) Been to Westminster Abbey
( ) Been to the Louvre
( ) Swam in the Mediterranean
(x) Been to a Major League Baseball game
( ) Been to a National Football League game
( ) Jumped in the ocean when it was 20 degrees

More fill-in-the-blank procrastination

2009-01-14T16:29:00.002-05:00

Well, look at that, I got sent another one of those fill-in-the-blank things that claims it helps your friends get to know you by telling them such soul-searching stuff as what you're wearing at the moment. Well, I'm in a mood to play along...

1. What is your occupation right now?
High school math and science teacher

2. What color are your socks right now?
Black. I always wear black socks at work unless the laundry situation does not allow it...I know, I know, black socks never get dirty, but I just can't help but wash them anyway.

3. What are you listening to right now?
The fans pumping mass quantities of heated air into my classroom on this coldest day of the year (until tomorrow)

4. What was the last thing that you ate?
Trail mix

5. Can you drive a stick shift?
Yes, and do so pretty much every day...I get very confused in an automatic car :S

6. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
Someone from the York University Foundation thanking me for the donation I gave way back before the strike started.

7. Do you like the person who sent this to you?
Well, sure, he's my brother after all...you can't not like someone related to someone as wonderful as me ;).

8. How old are you today?
28 (for another 17 days)

9. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV?
Hockey...but I don't even watch that.

10. What is your favorite drink?
Cola (Coca-Cola or Pepsi...I don't usually care which, although I swing one way or another at times)

11. Have you ever dyed your hair?
No. Someone told me it would never come back the same and that scared me off.

12. Favorite food?
Does chocolate count?

13. What is the last movie you watched?
I showed my students part of Lion King the other day. You know you're a teacher when you choose the movie based on its curricular relevancy (we just finished studying ecology).
The last movie I saw in the theatre was The Tale of Disappointment--I mean, uh, Desperaux.

14. Favorite day of the year?
My birthday...in theory. Depends on the year.

15. How do you vent anger?
Depends...is anyone around to hear me?

16. What was your favorite toy as a child?
I spent a lot of time with LEGO, My Little Pony, and Barbie...but I also liked making stuff.

17. What is your favorite season?
Weather-wise, spring, but summer in general. I now have magnets that state the three best things about being a teacher are the month of June, the month of July, and the month of August :).

18. Cherries or Blueberries?
Strawberries.

19. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?
I like e-mails...

20. Who is the most likely to respond?
*shrug* I hate it when these things ask this question. I think it is meant to guilt-trip someone into answering.

21. Who is least likely to respond?
See above.

22. Living arrangements?
Me and the hubby in a basement apartment we rent from my MIL (who lives upstairs with my 2 SILs)...oh, and the in-laws' cats like to spend a lot of time with us, too.

23. When was the last time you cried?
I don't remember. I thought yesterday I was headed for an exhaustion-induced session, but nope.

24. What is on the floor of your closet?
Stuff that has to be washed and then either hung or laid flat to dry rather than being put in the dryer. Why? Because I'm obsessive like that.

25. Who is the friend you have had the longest that you are sending this to?
I'm posting this online...that's a little different. The friend I still speak to regularly that I've known the longest is Jen.

26. What did you do last night
Came home, sat in a chair with my laptop on in my lap in order to send an e-mail attachment to a colleague, fell asleep in the chair (not having yet sent the e-mail), woke up, heard hubby wake up from his nap in the other room, sent the e-mail, went to Bible study, came home, dithered around on the Interweb for a bit, went to bed.

27. What are you most afraid of?
Failure

28. Plain, cheese, or spicy hamburgers?
Cheese. Preferably (brace yourself) processed cheese. With bacon. And some kind of awesome sauce, like the Baconator sauce (oh, wait, I forgot the Wendy's lady told me that's just ketchup and mayo mixed together).

29. Favorite dog breed?
Something with soft fluffy hair, not wiry/bristly hair. And NOT a Jack Russell or anything wtih a comparable energy. And not yappy. That still leaves the field wide open.

30. Favorite day of the week?
Hmm. I guess Saturday, because I like to sleep in. The feeling of anticipating the weekend and then leaving work on Fridays is nice, but I am usually tired/etc. on Fridays.

31. How many provinces have you been in?
I don't think I've been in Alberta yet (Mom will correct me if I'm wrong), and I definitely haven't been to P.E.I. or Newfoundland...so 7.

32. Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds.

33. What is your favorite flower?
I don't really have one. Roses are nice to get, but they're expensive :P.

One word.

2009-01-11T21:46:00.002-05:00

Got this from Emma via e-mail, and since I just finished setting an exam I think I deserve a break to see what this piece of procrastination is all about. Here we go...

Answers can only be one word...

1. Where is your cell phone? Coat

2. Your significant other? Martin

3. Your job? Teacher

4. Shoes you are wearing? Socks

5. Your father? Dad

6. Your favorite thing? Chocolate?

7. Your dream last night? Forgotten

8. Your favorite drink? Cola

9. Your dream/goal? Upwards

10. Room you're in now? Main

11. Your fear? Failure

12. Where you want to be in 6 years? House

13. Where were you last night? Home

14. What you are not? Done

15. Muffins? Yum!

16. One of wish list items? House

17. Where did you grow up? Scarborough

18. The last thing you did? Exam

19. What you are wearing? Grubbies

20. Your tv? Underused

21. Your pet? Shadow

22. Your computer? Maclicious

23. Your life? Busy

24. Your mood? Okay

25. Missing someone? Always

26. Your car? Efficient

27. Something you are not wearing? Shoes

28. Favorite store? Chapters?

29. Favorite color? Blue

30. Favorite place? Home

31. Last time you laughed? Today

32. Last time you cried? Forgotten

33. Who will/would repost this? Unknown

34. Four places I go to over and over again...
(a) Home
(b) Work
(c) Church
(d) Paul's

35. Four people who email me?
(a) Mom
(b) Flylady
(c) Boss
(d) Facebook

36. Four favorite foods?
(a) Chocolate
(b) Sushi
(c) Burgers
(d) Eggs

37. Four places I would rather be right now?
(a) Bed
(b) Dominican
(c) Bahamas
(d) Cuba

Four people you think will respond?
(a) Unknown
(b) Unknown
(c) Unknown
(d) Unknown

Three things about me

2008-11-14T21:14:00.002-05:00

So...I'm cheating at this by making this a blog post (which will be imported into Facebook) rather than doing this via e-mail, but that doesn't stop any of you who read this from creating a similar e-mail forward or Facebook note out of it, so I'm still within the intent of the message, right ;)?

Three things about me.....

Three places I have lived: Mom and Dad's (Scarborough), Tyndale College (Toronto), Mother-in-law's basement apartment (Scarborough). Does 3 weeks in Israel and Jordan count?

Three shows that I watch: Heroes, Lost, Battlestar Galactica

Three places I have been: Israel and Jordan (counted as one), North Carolina, several provinces across Canada

Three places I have been this week: church, work, Science Teachers' Association of Ontario conference

Three People who e-mail me regularly: Facebook (e-mail notifications out the wazoo, but I like getting them), the curriculum leader of science at my school, and several e-mail newsletters that I actually intentionally signed up for at one point but now just allow to collect dust in my inbox. I have decided not to take it personally that pretty much no one other than my mom e-mails me to say "Hi" because I know how busy my friends are ('cuz it's not like I often take time out of my day to say "Hi" either :( ).

Three of my favourite foods: Strawberries, sushi, pretty much anything in the "dessert" or "bacon and processed cheese burger" categories

Three people I think will respond: I hate surveys that ask this question. I refuse to answer. Respond if you want to and don't if you don't...if you have to choose, I'd rather get one of those "Hi" e-mails or a phone call than a response to this post.

Now here's what you are supposed to do.....(and please don't spoil the fun)

Hit the forward key, delete my answers and type in your own answers.Then send this to a whole bunch of people you know INCLUDING the person who sent it to you. The theory is that you will learn a lot of little known facts about those who think they know you. Don't forget to send it back to the person who sent it to you.

In dreams brought on by sleeplessness...

2008-10-18T11:25:00.002-04:00

I've had a couple vivid dreams the last two nights, so I thought I'd write 'em out. I don't expect them to be important or even that interesting, but meh...

Last night's dream was not scary, but you gotta laugh at how many different stories I mashed together. In my dream, I was Superman. (Yes, I am apparently so secure in my femininity that my brain sometimes makes me play the part of a guy...I've been Peter Pan and other male characters in past dreams as well.) I was in a house and saw Darth Vader terrorizing a family (because everyone knows that Darth Vader is Superman's arch nemesis...). He had this device on the ground that looked like a large black pyramid-shaped kitchen timer. Somehow I knew that the whole terrorizing of the family was just meant to be a distraction, and that when that timer went off something would happen that would badly affect not them, but me. Somehow I knocked the timer thing back some metres, and the family disappeared while I then tackled the timer, turned it multiple times to try to give myself more time before the thing would go off, and then carried it outside the house a bit. However, some kind of marching band music was already starting to play loudly inside the house, and I somehow knew that if I heard too much of it things would not go well for me (this reminds me of a Lois & Clark episode where some psychologist brainwashed some people to kill when they heard "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and then played it on a loudspeaker). I started to run down the street and tried to fly, but I could only get just above the local shops and houses, and I was slow as molasses. I spotted Darth Vader walking down the street following me, pointing me out to every passer-by he could find. I tried to overcome my weakness by thinking of Jane, the love of my life with the red hair (yeah, I know, red-haired Mary Jane was Spiderman's crush, not Superman's :P), kind of like how in the book version of The Princess Bride Wesley tries to think of Buttercup to help him when he's being tortured. It only helped a very little bit. Finally I went right up to Darth Vader and held him against a wall, but my super-strength was also affected by whatever my affliction was, so I couldn't even beat him up, just hold him against the wall and stare at him. Darth Vader told me that when I'd had my powers I hadn't appreciated them...I guess he was trying to teach me a lesson, but was I going to die as a result of this lesson? Apparently not, because I suddenly glimpsed a reflection in the window behind Vader of Thing from the Fantastic Four coming up behind me and getting ready to punch Vader's head (it's good to have friends with superpowers when your own run out, even if they're from a completely different series). I was about to duck when I woke up.

Moral of the story: even superheroes shouldn't rely solely on themselves to do stuff...working with a team = good.

I did also have a very vivid scary dream two nights ago...I don't remember all the details, but after trying a particular doorknob a couple of times and finding it locked I somehow forcibly unlocked it (I seem to remember using those large snips caretakers use to cut locks off of lockers at schools, but that doesn't make sense given that it was just a doorknob). The door opened into the side of a hallway. A frosted window was across the hall and a little bit to the right. Bruce Willis was sitting on the ledge of this window and was looking at me...and was missing his right eye, with the eyelid sealed shut (like post-New-Caprica Saul Tigh in the re-imagined series of Battlestar Galactica). Okay, so that looked disturbing. I had this sense that I needed to overcome some challenge in order to survive this encounter. Hmm, maybe the challenge was that I needed to face my fear and enter the hallway and talk to him. As I entered the hallway and greeted him, I noticed someone else who was coming towards me down the hall & was already practically beside me...a tall lanky guy wearing a lab coat, with his mouth open, emitting a high-pitched mechanical whiny sound like Data did in his nightmares in the ST:TNG episode Phantasms. Bruce Willis had also gotten up off the window ledge and approached me, putting a hand on me to push me backwards. Of course, because this was a nightmare, I was powerless to fight back, and could only stumble backwards as Willis continued to push me until I ended up back-to-back with someone else I couldn't see. After that, all I remember is Bruce Willis telling me something like, "You had your one chance, woman" (hmm, so maybe if I'd just gone away and NOT talked to him when I saw him I would've been ok?)...and then I woke up as all the people surrounding me began to drill into my stomach with a fairly large drill! Not a pleasant way to wake up :P. When I am tired and it is dark, things like that keep me freaked out for a couple hours...at first I couldn't even handle opening the door to go out to the living room :P. Stupid scary dreams :P.

Moral of the story: some doors are better off left closed...and locked!

Today's AVM clinic visit

2008-08-28T17:35:00.004-04:00

This is long. Sorry. It kinda has to be in order for you to understand the results of today's visit. Let me tell you a story...

***Part 1: Background***

Many of you will remember that in early August 2004, approximately four years ago, Martin collapsed at work with stroke-like symptoms. When he was taken to Sunnybrook Hospital (I know that's not technically its name), it was discovered that he had 2 AVMs in his brain, and that one of them had ruptured, sort of like an aneurysm. (If you don't know or don't remember what an AVM is, don't worry, I will include info on that below.) The focus four years ago was on saving Martin's life as the bleeding AVM threatened his life, then on getting him conscious again, then on getting him back to full mobility and so on. The AVM that had bled was removed via surgery two days after he collapsed (yes, Martin has had brain surgery), but since the other AVM was in a different area of the brain they did not traumatize Martin's brain further by digging around for it at that time. AVM #2 was left alone for the time being.

Three years ago, the medical team was pretty much satisfied that Martin had recovered enough from his bleed that they could start treating the other AVM--i.e., to do preventative work on it to get it to a point where it would not be able to bleed like the other one had. (Untreated, there is a 3% chance *every year* that an AVM can bleed.) The treatment recommended by the team was a highly focused type of radiation, which could be used to target just the AVM while leaving the surrounding brain tissue unaffected. Treating an AVM with radiation is not like treating cancer with radiation, however; while cancer patients go in for multiple bursts of radiation over many days, an AVM patient spends only about 20 minutes being treated in the radiation room (well, once all the setup is done...it takes a full day of CAT scans and such to prepare for it), receiving only 2 short bursts of radiation during that time. The radiation is completed on a single day. (The reason multiple sessions aren't required for an AVM like they are for cancer is because cancer grows...an AVM does not. As Schwarzenegger would say, "It's not a tumour.")

One day of radiation...that's all it takes. However, the treatment does not actually stop there. The purpose of the radiation is to create scar tissue inside the blood vessels of the AVM--scar tissue that builds up and builds up slowly, over the course of three years or so, until the AVM's blood vessels finally clog up and stop allowing blood to flow through them. If no blood can get into the AVM, the AVM can't bleed. While it might sound like a bad thing to cut off blood circulation, this is actually safe (and desirable) with AVMs because the blood vessels in an AVM do not service any part of the brain...they're kind of a tangle of useless blood vessels (more on this below). After the day the radiation is received, the patient goes about his daily life as usual, not coming back to the hospital until 2 years later (when the medical team looks to see if the radiation has done its job and finished making enough scar tissue), and, if necessary, once a year every year after that until the AVM shows that it has been fully treated. No additional radiation is given at the 2- and 3-year checkup (unless, I guess, if the progress of the AVM's treatment has been unsatisfactory and the medical team recommends it).

Last year, in the summer of 2007, the AVM clinic had Martin get an MRI done, and when the results came in we went back to the clinic to find out how the treatment of his AVM was progressing. The doctor told us last year that the MRI showed the AVM was either gone or almost gone, but that the resolution of an MRI is not fine enough to tell us for sure if it was indeed fully gone. For that, you need to get an angiogram done--a very invasive and uncomfortable procedure. The medical team recommended we wait another year, get an angiogram done at the end of that year, and then come in when the angiogram results were read to see what they had to say.

Today was the day of that visit.

***Part 2: A refresher on what AVMs are, and the results of today's visit***

The first picture above shows very loosely what an AVM is. On the left is an artery--a blood vessel that carries blood away from the heart, designed to handle the high pressure that such blood is under. On the right is a vein--a blood vessel that carries blood towards the heart, designed only to handle the much lower pressure that such blood is under. Normally, blood flows from an artery through several tiny blood vessels called capillaries before it gets into a vein, and the capillaries reduce the pressure the blood is under. In an AVM, these capillaries just aren't there. The vein shows up early, so to speak, and the blood flows directly from the artery into the vein. Because the vein is not designed to handle the kind of pressure the blood from the artery is under, there is a risk that it will rupture, causing bleeding into whatever body part the AVM is in (which, in Martin's case, is the brain, and bleeding in the brain puts pressure on the brain and is A Bad Thing). In addition to this direct artery-vein connection, this set of blood vessels is malformed, making a kind of tangle or knot of blood vessels in the brain. Hence the name AVM, which is short for arteriovenous malformation--"malformation" because of the tangled knottedness of it, "arteriovenous" because it involves an artery and a vein.

As I said before, it's not a tumour. It is not cancer. It does not grow. You do not develop it later in life. If you have one (or more than one!), you are born with it, and you would never know it until either it ruptures (this is how we found out about Martin's...collapsing with stroke-like symptoms kind of calls attention to something being wrong) or you require an MRI for some reason on the part of your body that happens to have an AVM (this is how we found out Martin had a second AVM and not just the one that burst). Even having a CAT scan for something else in your life generally will not call attention to any AVM you might have, because the resolution of a CAT scan is not fine enough to point them out. A more realistic picture of an AVM can be seen at http://brainavm.oci.utoronto.ca/images/malformations/avm_embo_treatment/what_is_avm.jpg.

Alright, enough background and on to the results. Three years ago, the medical team told us the AVM was approximately 2.5 centimeters in diameter (that's about an inch, for you non-metric folk). Today, we were told that it seems all that is left of the AVM is a shunt, although it is possible there may still be a small amount of tangle there. When I asked what size it is now, the doctor said it doesn't really have a size anymore, and that is when she drew the two diagrams that I have attempted to reproduce here. The second picture above shows what Martin's situation is now. The blood is still going directly from an artery to a vein (which is a Bad Thing), but most if not all of the tangle has been dealt with. The radiation has almost completely dealt with the AVM. Because the blood is still going directly from an artery to a vein, there is still a possibility of a bleed occuring. The doctor who spoke to us told us the chances of a bleed might be lower with this situation than what the chances were 3 years ago, but that there aren't enough good studies out there right now for the medical team to know for sure.

Where do we go from here? The medical team recommends we wait 1 more year and get another angiogram done at the end of that year, then come back to the AVM clinic when the results of the angiogram are ready to see what they have to say. Hopefully we will discover that the radiation has finished its job and closed off even this shunt. If not, we will have to make a decision: do we do another burst of radiation, or do we leave the AVM as-is and live with the (maybe reduced, maybe not) risk that it will bleed at some future point in Martin's life? Well, that is a decision for next year. For now, I will be glad that the AVM is much reduced from what it used to be, and hope that when we go back next year we'll find that the AVM is completely gone and that no further treatment is necessary. More radiation would not be the end of the world (especially since it was so effective in reducing the AVM down as much as it has), but it would mean quite a bit of discomfort for Martin on radiation day and for a few days afterwards.

There, I think I've said all I wanted to get out. Feel free to ask questions if you need clarification on anything above or just want to "know stuff."

Quick random vacation thoughts

2008-08-13T15:35:00.003-04:00

Yeah, I know, that webpage I put up for our vacation hasn't been updated since the first day, and we're now on day 10. I have been taking photos, I just haven't been uploading them, adding my comments to them, etc. I guess I'll just have to do it when I get home (I did go through the tedious step yesterday of editing a whackload of time stamps in iPhoto to make up for having had the date set one day off on my camera for a few days, and making new Google Maps screenshots to reflect the changes in our planned route).

Random thoughts of the now:

1. I just got back to the hotel here in Rivière-Du-Loup, QC after having had dinner at St. Hubert's. The last time I was at a St. Hubert's was years ago (I was dating Martin but hadn't married him yet, so it was somewhere between 8 and 13 years ago) when my family had won a stay at a cottage near Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré. When we walked into the restaurant back then, I asked for our table in French...and when we were seated, I noticed we'd been given English menus. I took that to mean at the time that my French had not been very good (though it's possible the host had heard my parents speaking in English). This time, however, I was able to interact with the hostess in enough French that she had a stack of French menus in her arms ready to take us to our table...until my mom asked her in English if they had smoking and non-smoking sections or if it was all non-smoking. Then the waitress looked confused and asked us if we wanted English menus. Anyway, that's a little thing that made my day :).

2. Totally unrelated to our vacation: I have now seen a TV ad for women's razors with 5 blades. I have not yet seen an ad for a man's razor with 5 blades. Has it not been developed yet? If not, why was the woman's 5-blade razor developed first? I would have expected that it would be marketed to men first. Why does anyone need a 5-blade razor anyway? And when will the insanity stop? The way of the future apparently is a razor with a googolplex of blades :P. (If you don't know what a googolplex is...look it up. There, you learned something today, thanks to me. Don't say I don't ever do anything for you ;).)

I'm sure you're all expecting me to dive into one of my long-winded entries about my vacation so far now, but it ain't gonna happen; I choose to go continue to enjoy it instead :). Bye for now.

Tales from the Senior Math AQ, part 2

2008-07-07T15:19:00.002-04:00

Today in class my teacher mentioned in passing that one of the only things she remembers from chemistry class is that are 6.02 x 10^23 particles in a mole. She says she only knows this because her chemistry teacher used to sing it to her. I immediately asked her who her chemistry teacher was...it was indeed the one, the only, Mr. Seshadri. She then asked me if he did the hydrogen cannon experiment for us with the lights off and then fell down as if he was dead--yep, he did that. (In her class, she was one of the girls who rushed to the front to see if he was okay, before he said he did that every year because it resulted in him being rescued by beautiful ladies. Yeah, I think he mentioned that to us as well.) She asked me if I knew the "To Be Happy is To Be Stable" song, which included the part starting off "happy happy happy happy..."--yep. I mentioned him singing the periodic table to the tune of the alphabet--yep, he did that for them, too. Ah, Dr. Seshadri, your legacy lives on. In my yearbook, he wrote only "Wah!"...that was all he really needed to say to sum up our time with him :).

Tomorrow my gaming life may be exposed to the rest of the class, since the formative assessment my table group has designed requires the use of 8-sided, 10-sided and 20-sided dice. Apparently no one else in the class is in the habit of having these things on their person (to be fair, I didn't have them on my person, either, though I did have to remove them from my satchel this morning when I changed it from D&D mode to school mode). Oh, the joys of getting adults to spend their paid tuition time rolling dice (it's a formative assessment of the probability unit from the grade 12 data management course, alright?)! I think every math teacher needs a couple sets of various-sided dice, though; the more you can bring gaming elements into the classroom, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

Now I will resume waiting for hubby to return from the procedure he underwent at the hospital today. As Inigo Montoya would say, "I hate waiting."

Tales from the Senior Math AQ, part 1

2008-07-03T20:06:00.002-04:00

As part of one of our activities today, each of us had to choose a mathematical concept found in the high school curriculum starting with the same first letter as our first names. Let's see, my name starts with J. Hmm. Not an easy task. I asked if I could be jerk (which is the derivative of acceleration, for you non-physics people)...that didn't fly because it isn't even in the high school physics curriculum, let alone high school math. (I don't think it even came up in the particular university physics courses I took...I think some high school teacher of mine brought it up in passing one day.) My classmate Jason and I were sitting back-to-back at different tables, and we both turned around and looked at each other and realized neither of us had a good idea, and none of our tablemates had any ideas, either (and neither did our teacher!). Eventually I decided we could be the unit vector ĵ (or j-hat, if you can't see that little circumflex). Thankfully, that worked nicely for the exercise we had to do, but for a while there ya kinda had to wish for a name starting with T (tangent trigonometry trapezoid) or something else with a lot of options. Well, at least we got to be unique :). Teachers, if you're going to use a strategy like that, have a backup for those of us who are somewhat, well, alphabetically challenged :). Oh, and you chemistry teachers out there, keep in mind there is no J on the periodic table, either. Boo-hoo :(.

All in all, my AQ course is going well so far, partly because my teacher uses a lot of group work and hands-on activities to teach us rather than lecturing for the whole 5 hours each day. The course runs 8-1:15 each day (with only a 15 minute break--yep, that's right, no lunch, but that gets us out nice and early rather than dragging the day on) and the last day of the course is July 24.

Possible free trip to the Olympics! Are you in?

2008-06-06T21:30:00.006-04:00

Have I got your attention yet?

Alright, before I go any further and explain what I mean, I have to make a statement that most of you can just ignore:

This blog post / Facebook note should be understood as being completely OOG--out-of-game--and treated as such by any in-game characters and elements. (If you don't know what that means, trust me, it doesn't affect you...carry on reading the rest of this.)

Now that that's over with...I have a question for you.

Would you be willing to do something a little strange if it could get you a free trip to this year's Olympics in Beijing? (Huge disclaimer: this might not necessarily work out, but more on that shortly.)

Rest assured, the "something a little strange" is not unethical, harmful, or illegal.

What do you have to do? Simple to say, not so easy to do well: you have to run a labyrinth, blindfolded, or help a blindfolded runner to complete a labyrinth by acting as part of its (humming) walls. For example, check out the labyrinth that a Tokyo team put together on June 1: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3dI-1Cog4 . Similar labyrinths have been run by teams in Guelph, Madrid, New Zealand, two separate locations in Brazil, Switzerland, Jerusalem, Dallas, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, and New York. The current record is just over 15 seconds (15:44) and is held by a team in San Francisco, although it is a pseudo-record because the method they used in that run breaks the rules in a way. Still, you can see their run here for inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfsh8o4hZ6E . I believe the current record for a run done completely by-the-book is still 16 seconds, held by the New Zealand team for a run they did May 4. You can see that run here: http://lostsportnz.blogspot.com/2008/05/3-circuit-labyrinth-in-16-seconds.html
Edit: breaking news: New Zealand now has a new record...14.03 seconds!!! http://lostsportnz.blogspot.com/2008/06/labyrinth-training-live.html

How does doing this get you to the Olympics, rather than getting you branded as a cult member or thrown in an institution? Bear with me. You may recall that I have been participating for the past few months in a game sponsored by McDonald's* and the International Olympics Committee--a game called "The Lost Ring." For reasons that I won't bother to explain here, these labyrinth runs are tied into that game, and are sometimes referred to as "the lost sport." Very recently, the game's designer, Jane McGonigal, did a presentation/interview about gaming at the 2008 New Yorker Conference (a presentation/interview which you can see here if you're really interested--it does provide some interesting social and psychological commentary and helps explain why some people get really hooked on online games, for example). Anyway, the important thing is that when she very briefly talked about the Lost Ring game (in the very last minute of the video), she said that they will be bringing people to the Olympic lawn in Beijing to play "the lost sport." While we have known for a long time that the International Olympics Committee is a sponsor, and that the closing date of the game is the same as the date of the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, this statement by McGonigal is the first time any of us have had confirmation (not merely suspicions) that a "lost sport" run in Beijing will be an important part of the game.

The question now is simply: which people will be taken to Beijing? While it is still possible that the "people" Jane referred to are just the actors hired to play the characters in the game, there have been other indications that point to the idea that the people taken will be the players who manage to put together the best labyrinth team in the world--the team that can run the labyrinth the fastest without breaking any of the rules. See, in the game, "the lost sport" is treated as a game that used to be part of the Olympics, but was "lost"...and now that it has been "found," we need to make it part of this year's Games (for reasons that have to do with a huge amount of backstory I am leaving out). Besides, if only the actors representing characters we already know about were involved, there wouldn't be enough people to run a proper labyrinth, so I have a feeling at least some of us players are going to be needed.

Here's the deal: I want to put together a Toronto team for "the lost sport." I have at least a couple of people from the Guelph team interested, in addition to myself. I need more (or at least I probably do, depending on how many people Team Guelph manages to bring along). If you are interested in participating, I don't care who you are or whether we have exchanged two words in the past 20 years, I want you on my team. You don't need to be an athlete--I'm certainly not! You just have to be willing to try something a little different and have fun with it. If you are interested, let me know. I have not yet set a firm date for a training run, but I am considering any of the following:
Sunday, June 29 (once church is done and I can get to and set up the area)
Monday, June 30
Tuesday, July 1 (Canada Day!)
Saturday, July 5
Sunday, July 6 (same concern as June 29)

I have to tell you that I am intentionally leaving out ALL the backstory and twists and turns and intrigues that have been part of this game for now. I want here to communicate solely what you need to know to judge if you're interested in doing this strange thing in order to possibly qualify for a trip to Beijing in August. If you want more details about what the premise of the game is and what-all else has been happening besides the labyrinth runs (and what the metaphysical, quantum-mechanical reasons are behind our need for these labyrinths), let me know and I will fill you in...but you don't need to know those details to participate in the training runs themselves.

*Here in North America McDonald's doesn't seem to be advertising their involvement too much, but you can see they are involved by noting references to The Lost Ring on the McDonald's Australia site and the McDonald's Spain site (you have to cycle through some of the floating images on the center of that site to see it, but it's there), for example, or by going to the official site for the game and noting the McDonald's symbol above "official partner" in the lower right-hand corner (once you get past the trailer) and the references to it in the Terms of Use on that site. Oh, by the way, part of those Terms of Use states, "You understand that the Game is for entertainment purposes only and no prizes or awards will be given in connection with Game"...but like I said, we have reason to believe that some of us will be needed in Beijing...I guess we just can't consider that a "prize" ;). Anyway, come to have fun...and if a trip to the Olympics ends up being part of the mix, all the better :).

Timetable update

2008-05-28T22:45:00.002-04:00

This isn't big news or even exciting news, but for the sake of completeness: looks like I actually won't end up becoming that female role model in the physics department at my school that I mentioned in my last post. While all our timetables are still up in the air right now, it seems that my school has decided who they're going to hire as the new science curriculum leader (what they used to call a department head), and that the person they're choosing has a physics background...ergo they will not need me to fill in any holes in the physics side but rather on the chemistry side. While I still would like to see some estrogen in the physics department, I'm not really upset at the way my timetable has worked out, since it does have some good benefits to it. (Who knows, maybe whoever they're hiring is a female physics teacher...is that wishful thinking?)

It looks like my timetable for next year will look like this:

Semester 1: this will be an all-science semester for me.

one section of grade 12 college chemistry
some combination of the grade 9 and 10 academic and applied science courses I taught this semester, teaching the bio and chem units in those courses (remember, my school makes the students switch to a physics teacher when they get to the physics and weather/astronomy units of those courses).

Semester 2: this will be an all-math semester for me, though I have no idea exactly what courses.

Some pros of this timetable:

getting to focus on only math or only science in each semester, rather than the split focus I have this semester
this means in each semester I will likely have a classroom to call my own (a science lab of my own in sem. 1 and a math classroom of my own in sem. 2), though I suppose that will partly depend on the timetables of more senior math teachers. The current science curriculum leader has already told me what lab I will have in semester 1--the lab she is currently using. While I don't really mind sharing classrooms with other teachers like I've had to do this semester (and it has actually helped me build a closer relationship with the teacher's I've shared rooms with), it sure does free you up to make the room your own when you are the only person in there all day.
it is not all new courses...I will have taught at least the junior science courses before (although I will still have to put energy into seriously improving what I did, plus the bio unit for the grade 10 courses will be different from the bio unit they had this year), and if I get grade 9 applied math again I'll have already taught that also
getting the grade 12 chem means that I will be able to pursue my Honour Specialist in chemistry once I've taught for 1 more semester. Getting an Honour Specialist qualification is one way for teachers to move up to the highest pay category for a regular teacher (i.e., not a curriculum leader or principal or any such thing). You have to have taught for 2 years, including 1 year in Ontario in the subject for which the specialization is being sought, in order to pursue your Honour Specialist. You also have to have completed at least 9 full university courses in the subject. Since I did a major in chem but only a minor in physics (and I only have 2.5 full university courses in math), chemistry is the only subject I can pursue specialization in without doing further university studies in the subject.

I will get my final timetable June 20 at the latest. I'm really looking forward to knowing before the summer break starts what courses I'll have next year...that is a luxury I did not get this year, since I was really only hired a week before I had to start teaching at Central Tech (plus I was still wrapping up exams with my students at my adult school during that week as well!). My officemate (who was a new teacher this past September) said he knew his timetable before the summer started, but found he really couldn't do any planning since he didn't know what resources and supplies would be available at the school...I will not have that problem. I already even know what classroom I will be in for the first semester next year. While I certainly won't be able to fully plan everything (for one thing, how you teach a course depends on who your students are and what they're like, and I won't know that until September for sem. 1's courses and February for sem. 2's courses), I will at least be much more familiar with the curriculum expectations of the courses by the time the summer ends, how they can be chunked together, and so on. All in all, that's pretty exciting to someone who heard a lot of good ideas about teaching in teacher's college but has not had the time to properly implement them in reality so far this year.

I also found out this year that it's official: OISE (the teacher's college at U of T) has accepted me into their Senior Math Additional Qualification course for July. As a graduate of York's teacher's college, it will be interesting to me to see if any difference in philosophy comes across in this course versus what I would expect at York. They certainly had different philosophies when it came to who they admitted to their preservice programs (*not bitter*...actually, even had OISE accepted my preservice application, I more than likely would have picked York anyway). Anyway, taking this course will hopefully make me a better math teacher than I was this year, although I think that being able to rely heavily on the notes of some more experienced teachers made me not all that bad a math teacher this time around anyway. I mean, c'mon, I did university-level physics, I'd better have a reasonable handle on math...though I know knowing it and being able to communicate it are two very different things, which is partly why I'm taking this course. I've also never had experience with some of the new teaching tools and technology that is out there for math teachers, such as geoboards and Geometer's Sketchpad, and I only had a very brief exposure to algebra tiles before I started trying to use them this year, so I'd like a little better explanation of how to use them effectively and a little more practice.

Now that today is done, I only have 10 more classes with my math class (and if I don't get asked to supervise the spec. ed. kids during the two-day EQAO math test, that will really work out to only 8 days with most of my math students) and 9 with my science classes, all not including exams. Summer is so close, I can taste it...hopefully I will survive the lack of sleep until then :).

No longer surplus :). (and definitely taking an AQ course this summer)

2008-05-15T22:28:00.003-04:00

Today at the end of the school day the curriculum leader (what used to be called a department head) for science at my school asked me if I'd checked my mailbox that afternoon, and suggested I do so. In it was, among other things, a memo from my principal with the subject line "Next year" and body text solely reading "See me." To make a long story short...I am no longer surplus to my school.

To make a long story, well, long: a retirement happened in the math department which has opened up some breathing room for the timetabling people, so I have been fully called back to the school. My timetable is, however, completely up in the air...I probably won't know for sure for a few weeks yet what I'll be teaching next year. Currently they have me down for senior chemistry, a calculus class and the senior "advanced functions" math class...but my curriculum leader tells me that is almost definitely going to change. She is being seconded to OISE for 3 years, starting next year, so the science timetables are still very much up in the air until we know who will get her CL position and which of the science disciplines (bio or chem or physics) they will teach. If what she is thinking pans out, however, I may move from teaching the bio/chem portions of the grade 9 and 10 courses to teaching the physics and astronomy/weather portions of those classes. This means I would move from my current office into the physics office, where there are currently only men. When I was initially hired and found out we had only males on the physics side, and mostly females on the bio/chem side, it made me a little mad that our subject/gender breakdown was so typical and that we didn't have any female physics role models at the school. Because of this, I kind of hope that my timetable will indeed work out to put me on the physics side, even though it is only my second teachable (and not one I could do my Honours Specialist course in--one way to move up to the highest pay category in teaching). It could also mean that on the science side I could get my very own classroom that I don't have to share with anyone (though I guess I'd still have to share the math room)--and it is a nice-looking classroom, a big improvement over my current chem room. My office would also be right next door to my science classroom (but again, not my math room), which would be helpful. Currently my office isn't adjacent to my math or my science classroom, so if I forget something in my office I either have to risk leaving the students on their own (actually not a problem with my math class as I do have an educational assistant I can leave them with; I also leave my grade 10 academics on their own for short periods of time in these cases as they are a very responsible class) or make do without whatever it is (which is what I have to do with my current grade 10 applied class).

I have decided that this summer I will indeed take the course to add Senior Mathematics to my qualifications list. I am doing this partly to increase my marketability; when I was still surplus and the vacancy postings were still important to me, I could only apply to science-only postings (since I only have chemistry and physics on my Certificate of Qualification), restricting me to only 4 vacancies which were all not ideal geographically. If I had had my math qualifications, my options would have been much broader. The retirement of the teacher I mentioned earlier also leaves my school with only 1 person qualified to teach senior math (as opposed to grade 9 and 10 math, which many of our math teachers are qualified for), so my having those qualifications could help me get classes of senior students rather than the grade 9 and 10s (who are ok in their own right, but it would be nice to have at least 1 senior course on my timetable). However, I am also taking the course because I had to teach math this year (and will more than likely have to teach some next year as well) and need to know more about the theories of math education that are out there now, how math is handled in the new Ontario curriculum (with the 4 different categories we're supposed to evaluate them in now), what new hands-on and technology-based methods exist now to make concepts clearer to the students, and so on. I've been doing fine in the classroom thus far (largely since I've been able to work from the notes of an excellent teacher who is currently on a leave of absence), but there is always room for improvement. I've also decided to do this AQ course in an actual classroom rather than doing one of the many online versions that are available. Yes, it does start at 8 a.m. (which is irritating seeing as I would be able to sleep in all summer if I weren't taking the course), and yes, doing an online course does have the advantage that you can perhaps more carefully ponder your responses before posting them than you could in a face-to-face discussion. However, I think doing the course in person allows for better interaction with one's fellow students, better exposure to any manipulatives and technology-based teaching strategies that are available for use now, and the building of a better relationship with one's instructors. I am going to take the course through OISE to perhaps get exposure to a different educational perspective than I got at York (plus York only offers the Intermediate Math AQ this summer, whereas I've decided to do the Senior course). The course runs 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. from July 2 to 24. If any of you former MSTers are thinking of taking this course as well, please let me know; it would be nice to have the company of someone I know, though of course I will hopefully meet other like-minded people there.

As usual, I have said far too much already, so I will sign off for now. Fellow teachers, hang in there; the end of the school year is coming up fast! Here's to a successful finish to what we started back in September (or, in my case, February, heh) :)!

Still surplus.

2008-04-16T06:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday (Tuesday) was the next step in the staffing process: all those who were verbally informed last week that they were tentatively surplus to their schools, and who are still surplussed even after the various staffing changes that have occurred over the past week, got a letter today officially informing them of the situation. I got my letter, so even though the person two spots ahead of me in the seniority line at my school has been called back and the person one spot ahead of me has been half-called-back, I still have to wait (until the half-called-back person is fully called back and then another spot opens up for me). Postings for vacancies at other schools start April 30.

By the way, a little tip for those of you who occasionally have to write official business correspondence: please watch what font you use. Giving potentially bad news like telling someone they are surplus to their school in a font like Comic Sans is just plain unprofessional. I was not overly bothered by the news (I still think something will work out either at my school or hopefully one that is better for me location-wise), but the font thing didn't help.

Update on the surplus situation (yes, already)

2008-04-09T18:29:00.002-04:00

I mentioned in my last post that I was third in line for any calling-back of surplussed teachers to a position at my current school, after my officemate (who was half-surplussed) and a teacher in the special education department. Today I found out my officemate has now been called back to a full timetable for next year, and the special education teacher has been half-called-back. I could still end up surplussed to my school, but it looks like things could still work out for me to remain at Central Tech rather than having to wait on a placement in another school.

News on the job front...not sure if it's good or bad.

2008-04-08T18:00:00.002-04:00

The Toronto District School Board has a very specific process that is used for staffing. All of us teachers have received (or have access to) a list of dates detailing what happens when. Since I share an office with another first-year teacher, and because our lack of seniority makes that process very important for us to know about, we have this list of dates posted prominently in our office. This morning, he pointed out to me that today is the day we would find out if we were tentatively surplus to the school (but not the school board)...something that has been hinted now and then might be the case for us, as much as the department head likes us and so on. When I went down to check my mailbox and do some photocopying during my prep period, the principal's secretary asked me to come down and see the principal at 3:20 p.m. At first I was worried about whether I'd done something wrong that was going to require my being reprimanded or whatnot, until I remembered my officemate pointing out today's date on the staffing dates list this morning. I let him know about my upcoming meeting just before I headed off to my class in period 4 (when my officemate has prep), and before I knew it, he was poking his head into my classroom, mouthing, "Me too."

Long story short, yes, my officemate and I--as well as a third teacher, in the special ed department--have been told by the principal and local union president that we are tentatively surplus to the school. This has nothing to do with our merit as teachers, as surplus decisions are made solely on the basis of seniority. My officemate has the most seniority of the three of us, and so he has actually only been half-surplussed...the school has half a timetable put together for him. I am last in seniority, after the special ed teacher.

Where do things go from here? Well, if things haven't changed by next week, the three of us will get letters confirming that we are surplus to the school. Postings for vacancies at other schools begin April 30; we can then apply and be interviewed for those postings. As situations change at our school, vacancies may come up, which may result in one or more of us being called back to the school (in order of seniority). Otherwise, we'll have to wait to see where the board can place us. Thankfully, the principal and local union president both said that all indications seem to be that no one will be surplussed from the board, so the three of us should still have jobs...they just might not be in geographic areas we'd prefer. If we do get surplussed from the board, we will find out sometime in June (again, there is a specific date, but I don't have that on me at the moment).

How do I feel about this? Well, part of me is very much hoping that a dream position will open up teaching at a good school somewhere in Scarborough, which would cut down on both my commute and my classroom management headaches. Part of me is disappointed that I may have to start all over in terms of building relationships with colleagues at a new school, finding out where to find lab supplies there, finding out how the school works, and so on. It's never easy being uncertain about the future, of course, but the fact that Martin and I don't rely upon my paycheque certainly makes it easier to bear (though I am using it to help us build up a down payment on a home of our own, so it does make me wonder it we'll have to put off that dream even longer). Overall, this could work out well for me...I just wish I could see right now what the end result will be.

One month later: how the new job is going.

2008-02-25T18:17:00.003-05:00

My last blog post was a month ago today. Back then I was still working at Yorkdale Adult Learning Centre, working part-time with no benefits teaching motivated adult learners grade 11 university-preparation-level chemistry. Today I am working full-time with full benefits (and Toronto District School Board benefits, at that) teaching grade 9 applied math, grade 9 applied science and grade 10 applied science to teenagers at Central Technical School...teenagers who, let's face it, have to be in those classes because those courses are mandatory requirements for a high school diploma in Ontario, and who aren't necessarily happy about having to learn anything about math and science (although there are some motivated students in there, don't get me wrong). At Yorkdale, I had a coop student teaching assistant in the two classes I taught (and remember it's an adult school, so the coop student was an adult--and one with many years of teaching experience from her home country); at Central Tech, I have a wonderful educational assistant in both of my grade 9 classes, though I am on my own with my grade 10 class (which is, unfortunately, the one I find the greater challenge...probably partly because it's the only one in which I'm on my own, but also because it's larger and I find the grade 10s more jaded than the grade 9s). At Yorkdale, I only had to prepare and mark assignments for one course; at Central Tech, I have 3 courses to prep for, and since it's a semestered school, that prep has to happen every single day. At Yorkdale, all the teachers in the academic department shared one very large office, whether they taught math or science or English or business; at Yorkdale, I share an office with only one other teacher (also in his first year), although I can go and hang out in a larger office with more people in it if I'm not too busy doing prep (which I usually am). At Yorkdale, I worked on the second floor of a building with no elevator; at Central Tech, I work on the 4th floor of a building that has no working, regularly-accessible elevator (since the passenger elevator is broken and the freight elevator generally isn't available to me, plus I don't have the key needed to call it). It's been interesting watching my body get stronger over the past few weeks because of the workout I get lugging my stuff and myself up and down the stairs several times a day, heh :).

Overall, I'd have to say that despite the challenges that come with working with teenagers, and despite the challenges that come with being a first-year teacher (and new to a school halfway through the school year, at that), and despite the challenge of having 3 different courses to prep for every day, things are going pretty well. Yes, I am overwhelmed. Yes, I am exhausted. Yes, I'm not doing as good a job as I'd like. Yes, I still have to find out where this, that and the other thing is in the school, and how to go about doing this, that, and something else again. However, I have still been getting positive feedback from other teachers I've interacted with as well as from my educational assistant, and when I mark my students' work, I do get a sense that at least some of them are learning something. There have been "moments" with some students that were very positive to make up for some of the "moments" that were less so. On at least one occasion, I successfully showed myself to be a "reflective practitioner" (one of the edubabble buzzwords these days) by picking up on a misunderstanding several people had in one class and designing a lesson that successfully corrected that misunderstanding for most of those students. While I sometimes feel isolated and alone as the new teacher having to deal with classroom management issues I haven't had to deal with before (plus not wanting to look incompetent by advertising my problems to the more experienced teachers), I have made connections with some staff members that encourage me and do give me the chance to vent that I need sometimes (and give them that chance in turn :)). I also get to benefit from the use of workbooks that have been put together for the grade 9 and 10 science classes to keep all the classes consistent regardless of who teaches the course, and even in my math class I am able to pull liberally from a binder and CD of stuff left behind by a teacher currently on a leave of absence, which really helps my prep situation. It also helps when I get a chance to chat with other teachers who are teaching my course and find out that we do seem to be going through the material at the same pace--this helps allay my fears of looking like an inexperienced first-year teacher who takes forever to get through the curriculum. So, yeah, overall there is a lot going well in this new job, though there is still a lot for me to learn and get organized yet.

It also seems that the other staff do trust in my ability as a teacher (whether with basis or not), because today I was asked by the assistant department head whether I'd be interested in teaching night school there as well. This came up basically because he is no longer able to teach his night school class and they are looking for someone to take on a particular course; apparently one of the vice principals suggested I be approached to fill that gap. While part of me would like to take advantage of the opportunity (especially to impress and not disappoint the senior staff), and also knows that I am much more of an evening person than a morning person, and let's face it, also would not mind the extra cash, the more realistic part of me says y'know what, I'm already exhausted without taking on a fourth course to prep. The plan for now is to turn down this offer and focus on doing the best I can with the courses I've already got. Teaching night school would also mean I would be out late on Tuesday and Thursday nights, which are two of the only three evenings Martin and I currently have together as-is (since he works the night shift Friday to Monday). I do want to be able to see my husband sometime, strange as that might sound!

Methinks I have babbled on long enough about how the start of my career is going; if you have questions, please feel free to use the comments to ask them. For now, back I go to planning and marking and such!

Had another interview yesterday...got the position today :).

2008-01-25T11:27:00.000-05:00

I had an interview at 11 a.m. yesterday morning. I taught my usual 8-10 a.m. class, drove down to the interviewing school, interviewed until 11:30 a.m., then drove back to my current school for lunch and to teach my 1-3 p.m. class. The interview team (which consisted of the principal, a vice principal and the school's curriculum leader for science) did a lot of smiling and enthusiastic nodding as they wrote their notes. At the conclusion of the interview, the principal told me they loved everything they heard, and that while he couldn't officially offer me the job there and then, he was going to try to contact my references and process the paperwork to get an offer in place as soon as possible...and that in the meantime, I could "rest assured." Today I got a call on my cell phone from that principal with the official offer, and so I have officially accepted and been hired into a contract position for semester 2! All that is left is for Employee Services to contact me about the paperwork I'll have to sign.

Starting February 1, I will be working at Central Technical School, which is in the Bathurst and Bloor area. I will be teaching grade 9 and 10 science and grade 9 applied math. Certainly there will be challenges working at that school, but I have also heard very positive things from people who have worked there. One interesting thing about their science program is that the students switch teachers partway through the course, so the person with the chemistry background teaches the chemistry part of the course and the person with the biology background teaches the biology part of the course. While I have enjoyed my time teaching the adults at Yorkdale, it is good to be moving to a contract position rather than a part-time situation.

Alright, less blogging and more marking...I have to get my responsibilities looked after here before I can move on to the next thing!

Interview went alright...and it's a contract position! Now for the waiting...

2008-01-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

I attended the interview today that I mentioned in yesterday's post. I had thought that the position was an LTO posting (i.e., just work there that one semester, then have to find myself a new job), but I learned today that it is actually a contract position! This means that I don't need to stay at my current school to have job security (if, again, I get offered this position, that is). I was also told in the interview that this is a very collaborative school. All the teachers who teach a particular course plan the course together, and a lot is already outlined and laid out. The department head pointed out that this means there is no more of this last-minute first-year-teacher panic saying, "Oh my goodness, what am I going to teach tomorrow?!?" While I have enjoyed being the course director, so to speak, of the one course I am teaching (since I'm the only person teaching it at my current school), I have experienced that panic many a time, so the prospect of a job where that would not be part of my daily experience is appealing. Another aspect of the collaboration is that each teacher teaching a course takes on one unit of the course and designs all the quizzes and tests for that unit (including a morning and afternoon version so multiple classes can write what is otherwise more or less the same test). The exam is a common exam (i.e., all the grade 11 physics students write the same exam, regardless of who their teacher is for their particular class), so this sharing of making up the tests and quizzes prepares the students to see exam questions from different teachers as well. All the teachers also offer input on the quizzes and tests, so that a first-year teacher like me doesn't have to worry about the students getting substandard evaluations when my unit comes up. This sharing of responsibilities sounds awesome. On top of that, it could be a shorter commute (approximately 10 minutes on city streets when traffic is good), although I don't really mind my current commute (approximately 20 minutes between city streets and the highway when traffic is good). All the other pros and cons were covered in my previous post.

Overall, it looks like if this position is offered to me, it is something I should be taking. Of course, that is a big "if." I have had very good interviews in the past that did not result in my being employed, and I wouldn't count this one among my "very good" interviews. In retrospect, I can see several ways in which I could have improved my answers, got more of the edumacational "buzzwords" out there, and so on. My "read" of the interviewers also was not exactly negative, but did not send me away with the sense of having nailed the interview that I've had in previous experiences. We shall see. I'll keep you posted.

Interview tomorrow means I might have some thinking to do.

2008-01-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

Friday I got a call out of the blue from a high school asking me to come in for an interview tomorrow (Monday) for a position for semester 2 only teaching physics. I did not apply for an LTO or anything at this school, so they must have found me either through the eligible-to-hire list or the supply teacher list (probably the latter, since this being only a one-semester position means it is a long-term occasional position rather than a permanent contract). The last time I got a call out of the blue for something I didn't apply for, I ended up with my current position, so this interview could actually lead to an offer of employment.

If such an offer is made, I am somewhat torn as to what to do.

Reasons to go to the new school:
- it is a good school, with good students, and so while I'd be giving up my very-well-behaved adult students, I still probably wouldn't have to deal with a great deal of behaviour management
- it would count as experience later on down the road if I am indeed moving into the adolescent schools, whereas one teacher has told me my current work would not count (though that is debatable, I think)
- I would have the full number of instructional hours high school courses are intended to be taught in, rather than the reduced number of hours that I have at my current school (mind you, though, I would also have some of that time taken up by things I don't have to deal with right now like assemblies and more administrative issues)
- I would get more pay, as well as benefits, which I am not getting now.

Reasons to stay at my current school:
- okay, so this other school is thinking of taking me on for an LTO for one semester...where do I go after that? There is no guarantee I'd be able to go back to my current school, whereas I know my current school is interested in keeping me around.
- I enjoy working with the adult students.
- my current grade 11 students are begging me to be their grade 12 teacher--they like me. In fact, when they found out we will probably have 2 sections of grade 12 next quadmester, with me only teaching one of them, some of them told me they were praying that they would end up in my class. It's hard to walk away when someone thinks you would be a Godsend if you were their teacher again.
- I enjoy the amount of autonomy I have to do what I want in my course (so long as the curriculum gets taught), and the camaraderie I have with the other chemistry teacher (who is also the head of the academic program at my school...it's nice to have the same teachable subject as the "boss" and have that sense of both connection and support). In the other school, depending on whether there are other physics teachers teaching the courses on the proposed timetable, I could lose some of that.
- I have just started to get myself established here...do I really want to yank up the roots I've started to put down and move elsewhere already?
- really, for me, it's not about the money anyway; Martin and I have always said we will not use any money I make to pay bills or anything because we don't want to be dependent on it in case I decide to stay home once we have children.

None of this will matter if I don't get an offer from the other school anyway (remember, schools have to interview at least 5 candidates or a certain percentage of the candidates even if they already have someone in mind, so this could just be a "quota" interview), but I need to start thinking all this through so that I will be able to respond fairly promptly should an offer come up. In the meantime, I have much marking and planning to do today, so back I go to that...I'll keep you posted.

A start on my resolutions

2008-01-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

Well, if you use the same calendar I do, it looks like another year is upon us. Time for a clean slate, a fresh start, and all that jazz. I have become somewhat skeptical of setting big all-out goals; it seems many people try to dive headfirst with lots of energy into their goals at the beginning of a new year (or whenever they set their goals...perhaps after stepping on the scale after a particularly indulgent day on the chocolate side of life...not that I would know anything about that, of course) only to crash and burn later and give up entirely. There are things I want to work on in my life, however, so I am going to set some smaller goals that I can build on and add to with time. Here are my top 4 goals for the beginning of 2008, in no particular order:

1. Get into and out of bed at the same time every day.
This also means making those times ones that will get me a decent amount of sleep every night. Getting my body on a regular sleep schedule will hopefully give me more energy for every day, cure me of sleepiness-induced apathy (towards my responsibilities, towards the important people in my life, and even towards my goals and dreams), and give me the freedom (energy, spark) to do more of the things I want to do.

2. Exercise at least 10 minutes every day.
Please don't laugh at my measly 10 minutes. I actually am hoping to do more than that each day, but on days when I feel overwhelmed with lesson planning and marking and such being able to tell myself that I only have to do 10 minutes may just make or break whether I do any exercise at all that day. I'm from the school that thinks doing some kind of cardio exercise at least 30 minutes a session 3-4 times a week is best (adding strength and flexibility and balance workouts on top of that over time), so that is what I will eventually be working up to. However, I need to start off small to experiment with how it's going to fit into my daily routine as well as not to injure myself by trying to do too much too soon (which may have happened that time I tried to take up running). I do not intend to ever be working out intensely every day of the week, as I believe the body needs rest days as well, but doing a small amount every day is how I am going to start out for now. (Also, while I see myself only doing intense cardio 3-4 times a week in the future, I still see more "casual" cardio being part of the other days of the week, so the every day nature of this mini goal is in keeping with that as well.)

3. Have a real conversation with a friend at least once a week.
I know I have been bad at keeping in touch with my friends. Yes, I am on Facebook quite a bit, but I hope people understand that there is a HUGE difference between being a "Facebook friend"--no matter how much wall posting and messaging you may do--and participating actively in an honest-to-goodness friendship. I have commented to several people that I believe Facebook actually gives us a false sense of being in touch and connected. Yes, I can get a sense of what's going on in your life from reading your status updates, your notes, and even what other people have written on your wall. However, I can also pick up any gossip magazine and read (though in a distorted account, granted) what is going on in the lives of person X, Y and Z...and that does not make me their friend. My goal is that by the end of the year it will be less of a miracle for me to pick up the phone and call someone, even during weeks when I feel like I am too busy to make the time. Keep in mind, though, that it's not completely my fault that some of my friends are strangers to me, because some of them are very busy people as well...I just hope that at some point some day of the week I'll actually be able to catch some of them long enough to have a conversation.

4. Return to daily devotions and prayer.
I know that I have lost sight recently of what is really important in life. I know I have become more selfish and care less about other people than I used to. I believe getting back to reading God's Word on a regular basis and opening myself to His work in me through prayer and meditation will help to cleanse me of some of the attitude problems I've picked up lately. Hopefully this in turn will have an impact on my friendships (so I will care for my friends more rather than just using them to meet my own needs for affirmation, etc.), my attitude towards my job and my responsibilities, and so on.

As I said, these four mini goals are only a part of what I want to work on in my life, but they are the ones I've chosen to start working with. (I think the sleep goal in particular is important for giving me the energy and spark I'll need to tackle all the goals I have for myself.) What about you--what are you working on right now?

Job update...things are going well...happy where I am.

2007-12-01T09:52:00.001-05:00

If you've been paying attention, you know that I've been teaching the period 1 grade 11 chemistry class at an adult high school for a little more than a week, and that the way Toronto's high schools work I'm paid only for the 2 hours I'm actually in the classroom teaching each day (not for my marking or my preparation). The quadmester started Nov. 15 and another teacher has been teaching the period 3 grade 11 chemistry class since that time. However, the period 1 class was without a permanent teacher before they found me because at this school you are hired on a per-course, per-quadmester basis, and the period 3 teacher wasn't available to teach in the period 1 time slot. Well, yesterday that changed. For various reasons, the period 3 teacher will be handing that class over to me as of Monday, though she will continue to teach the grade 10 science class she has also been teaching since the beginning of the quad. Since the course is the same as my current class, this means no extra prep for me, just some more marking--and more pay. It seems the staff at the school like me (I have had specific comments from a couple of people that I am a good teacher), and while there are no guarantees, comments and conversations I've heard over the past week seem to imply that should I want to continue at the school in future quadmesters, there may well be courses available for me to teach. Overall, this has me feeling much better in terms of job security. The environment at the school is also very supportive and friendly overall, and I am enjoying the teaching. Now that I have the second class, I have even decided to reduce my efforts to find a position elsewhere, even though teaching a full load in a "regular" high school would bring in more money. I am happy where I am for now, and I am getting experience developing a course and building up my resources (as well as dealing with all the administrivia that comes with teaching) without having to deal with a lot of behaviour issues. I am starting to think of my time at this school not as just a teaching "job," but as the start of my career. Life is good, for now I don't need to make more money than I currently am, and if it ain't broke, no sense wasting a lot of energy trying to fix it. I should say, though, that I do feel badly about the circumstances that have led to the period 3 teacher not being able to continue with that class, as it is not a happy situation for her.

Yesterday I taught not only my own first period class, I also supply-taught a third period computer class. When I agreed to sub for that class, I was a little worried, since I wasn't sure how much I was going to be able to help the students in a subject I am not officially qualified to teach (and have only 1 university course in--and that was in a language practically no one programs in anymore). It seems, though, that when you supply-teach you're generally there to be a warm body to administer pre-assigned work and make sure the students behave themselves (easy enough since this is an adult high school)...being able to help the students is wonderful, but in supply situations it is sometimes just a bonus. It turned out, however, that I was much more helpful in that class than I thought I was going to be. This computer class is one in which students mainly learn how to use some common applications, besides some details regarding computer hardware, the Internet and the ettiquette and ethics involved in computer use in a business setting (secondary teachers, the course code is BTT2O and you can read the course description in Ontario's grade 9 and 10 Business Studies curriculum document). The students in this class have a workbook of exercises they are to work through at their computers. In this section of the course, they are learning how to use Microsoft Word. Some students were further ahead in the workbook than others, and I got questions on how to save a file (including how to change the directory you're saving to), how to make text bold, how to change the alignment of text, how to change the font, how to change the size of text, how to insert symbols, and a bunch of other things I tend to take for granted. Considering that I've been using word processors since I was, oh, 9 years old, and Word in particular for many many years as well, assisting with this class was a breeze and I was able to answer almost all of the students' questions (other than some minor issues involving translating proofreading marks on the workbook pages into the required formatting, since I'm not familiar with standard proofreading notation). It made me realize that I have been privileged to have grown up with computers and that, while I won't be building any applications anytime soon, I actually have a level of computer skill that is pretty advanced compared to many people in the world (though I fully admit there are many other people out there whose skills are advanced compared to mine). Feeling smart about something always gives my ego a boost, so that combined with the other positive things that happened yesterday (well, positive for me...like I said, I do feel badly for the other teacher) had me leaving the school yesterday in a pretty good mood. Oh, and if you're wondering how doing this supply teaching works out with my being paid by the hour, it's pretty simple: I get paid at the occasional teacher rate for the 2 hours I'm with each class I supply for. I think this is actually somewhat better than the situation when you're a "regular" teacher; I don't think you get paid any more than your salary when you're a "regular" teacher and have to give up your prep period to do an on-call supply for another teacher, but I could be wrong.

On a very nerdy note, it also tickled me when the academic program director showed me the science education supply catalogs and told me to let her know if I wanted anything ordered...ooo, I get to order science education supplies (if the order is approved)! Ooo, Sargeant-Welch has molecular model kits that illustrate the various hybridized VSEPR orbitals! Ooo, I am sure there are lots of other exciting things in those catalogs I can use as props and in demos in my classroom! Yeah, I know my excitement over that may sound sad...but it's all in the interest of providing the best educational experience possible for my students ;).

Well, the day is a-wasting, and I have marking and planning to do before I attend a dinner function tonight. I hope you all are well...bye for now!

Brief job update: I was this close...again.

2007-11-26T19:08:00.000-05:00

I have to make this quick so I can finish my lesson planning for tomorrow, but since people have been wishing me good luck again on this one I wanted to give an update. The VP of the school I had the LTO interview with last week called a little while ago. She said I was amazing, that she didn't understand how someone "so young" could be so articulate, that all my answers were succinct and spot-on in terms of what they were looking for, and that my references were great as well. She said she wished she could offer me the job. It turns out that while they've been looking for someone for the LTO position, the same supply teacher has been working with those classes for about a week now and seems to be doing really well with the one class that has some behaviour and special needs issues in it. The school looked at that situation and thought, "Hmm, this is going really well, do we really want to try to get these students to adjust to yet another teacher at this point (especially considering the special needs issues)?" Their answer was no. This is a disappointment, but at the same time, the fact that one of the classes on the timetable was a difficult class was not mentioned in the interview, and I'm not sure how ready I am for that situation. I am not going to shut myself off from the possibility of getting a difficult class when I land something permanent, but it's not my ideal situation either. Anyway, the next batch of LTO postings goes out tomorrow, so I will keep my eyes open. The VP who called me also told me that sometimes principals will send e-mails around to each other mentioning that they have a job for "X" and asking each other if they know anyone who would be good for the job; she told me she would recommend me if anything came up. This is a great vote of confidence from someone who has never seen me teach, and I appreciate it very much.

I hope you are all well...back to the planning now for me!

Employed--part-time, but employed

2007-11-22T20:27:00.000-05:00

Well, I've done it...I finally have a teaching position, in a classroom of my very own. I got the hiring call Tuesday, visited the school yesterday, and taught my first class today--talk about having to hit the ground running! I have been hired by Yorkdale Adult Learning Centre, which is on the campus of Yorkdale Secondary School. It is one of 4 adult high schools in the Toronto District School Board. Working at an adult high school is different from an employment (and pay) perspective because their teachers are actually employees of the Continuing Education department rather than the usual Board channels for secondary teachers. This means that I am paid on an hourly basis--and only for the hours that the class actually runs. My marking and prep time are unpaid, and I do not get benefits. I am also only hired to teach one section of one course--I teach the period 1 class of grade 11 chemistry (university preparation level, for you teachers out there who know what that means) from 8 to 10 a.m. every day. The school has 4 quadmesters rather than 2 semesters, and so the classes are 2 hours long and run 5 days a week for 9 weeks. I am not sure exactly what day I am paid until, but it is sometime near the very end of January (my class' exam is Jan. 29, but the quad ends the next day, and then there are some "turnaround days" I don't understand yet). Whether or not I will continue to have a job with the school after that point will depend on the needs of the school. I do have an office (arrangements are still being made to get me an actual desk, but I have been able to squat at another teacher's desk for now), photocopier privileges, a staff washroom key, a textbook, the whole nine yards. I have over 40 students on my register, but in the 2 days I've been there I have yet to see them all. When I was interviewed for this position, the VP interviewing me said that while they would hope their teachers would honor the full 9 weeks of the class, she encouraged me to keep watching the long-term occasional postings put up by the Toronto District School Board and to continue to apply for those positions. This tells me that she recognizes that long-term occasional position comes with better pay (and probably smaller class sizes). Perhaps some people who trained to teach high school also don't enjoy teaching the adults as much as adolescents.

Pros of this job:
- I only have 1 class, 2 hours a day, and can spend the rest of my day planning, marking, and doing things I want to do.
- I only have to prepare and mark for one class.
- Only one other person besides me is teaching the class (she has the 1-3 p.m. class), so there is a lot of leeway to teach the curriculum in the way I want, so long as I teach the curriculum.
- Because I am teaching adults, and adults who are motivated to be there (rather than adolescents who have to be there), I pretty much have no behaviour issues to deal with. There can still be rudeness, complaints of unfairness, etc., but so far things are going pretty well. Perhaps they are still scared of me and I will see a change later, but overall I expect most if not all of my students will be decent human beings to me and to each other...and not having to spend time on behaviour management means more time to work with and enjoy the course content.

Cons:
- starting class at 8 a.m. (and I still have to get myself ready in the morning, scrape off the car, drive there, do any set-up and photocopying, etc.)...I am so not a morning person!
- being paid hourly, and only for my in-class time, and having no benefits
- lack of job security...I have no idea if they will still want me around when the next quadmester starts
- having to get the entire curriculum into a shorter-than-usual amount of time (the program leader suggests having the students do one of the units as an independent study unit, which I think may actually be necessary if I am going to give a good treatment of the rest of the course).

That all being said, I did have an interview today for an LTO position in grade 9 and 10 science, which would run until the end of a normal semester (so, again, the end of January) with the possibility to continue through to the end of semester 2 (so until the end of June). Who knows what will happen with that...for now, I will give my all to my grade 11 adult learners.

Joy's job journey part 5

2007-11-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

I've been getting questions about how the job hunt is going, so here is an update.

I mentioned last update that there was a possibility of my getting a position with a non-school organization teaching ESL and computer literacy to adults. I did interview for that position, and I was offered the position. However, as I mentioned in my last update, the daily pay offered was much lower than the daily rate for a supply teacher. The person interviewing me for the job assured me even during the interview that the position was mine if I wanted it, she was sure I'd be a great teacher, and so on. At the same time, though, she almost seemed to be pushing me to keep going on the path to employment with the Toronto District School Board since I think that is where I ultimately want to be, the pay is better, the atmosphere may be better and less frustrating, and so on. She seemed to indicate I would get frustrated and feel confined in this position. Advice I received from other teachers seemed to indicate that while this would be another teaching job on my résumé, it might not actually "count" in the eyes of the TDSB later should I take the job but apply for TDSB opportunities later down the road, meaning that it actually wouldn't give me the edge of experience that I very much need (and perhaps not counting in terms of my position on the TDSB pay grid as well, though that is a much smaller concern in my mind). Long story short, I did turn down that position, and decided to focus my job search efforts more narrowly on the TDSB...especially since I knew I was going to be placed on the TDSB's supply teacher list in as little as 2 weeks.

Friday, October 26 I received my Toronto District School Board employee number in the mail. That told me that my paperwork had been fully processed by the TDSB and I am finally officially on their supply teacher list for secondary schools. I've only been asking them to put me on that list since the summer, heh...

I decided to take off the week of Oct. 29 to give myself time to read over the literature they gave us at the documentation session (yes, I could have done that in the 2.5 weeks it took them to process my paperwork, but, well, I didn't), take the WHMIS test I was required to and send my answer sheet to the TDSB (also something I could have done in that 2.5 weeks but didn't), register my employee # with the automated phone system that calls supply teachers each day to tell them where they are needed, register with and get to know all the online systems supply teachers have access to, tell schools I'm interested in to put me on their priority list, read over a "classroom management" book I have (CM mainly concerns dealing with behaviour problems, though there is more to it than that) and figure out what tactics I can use as a supply teacher (much different than being a permanent teacher), put together the typical "supply teacher's toolkit" of supplies, and so on. Also, since I've been unemployed all this time and my husband works the night shift on the days he works, I've been going to sleep and waking up at hours that are, well, not the hours teachers live on, so I wanted that time to readjust my daily schedule.

Nov. 1, last Thursday, I visited the high school I attended and got myself put on their priority list of supply teachers for science and math. My OAC chemistry teacher, Mrs. Russell, is still at the school, so her and I chatted for a bit. The Science Teacher's Association of Ontario is having a conference next week Thursday through Saturday, and it looks like I will be covering for teachers at this school for the Thursday and Friday. Incidentally, both days also have a shortened schedule due to parent-teacher interviews happening on the Thursday; I'm not sure if that means I still get a full day's pay (supply teachers are paid on a daily basis), but it's nice to have some work lined up in any case.

Last Thursday I also visited the high school I did my practicum assignments at during teacher's college, got put on their priority list, and saw a couple of my old host teachers. An LTO is supposed to be coming up for one of my old host teachers, according to one of the secretaries, but she is a physics and phys. ed. teacher...unfortunately, I can do the former, but not the latter. (More on LTO positions below, for those of you unfamiliar with the term.) Still, I'm on their list of people to call for science supply jobs.

Finally, last Thursday I not only mailed off my WHMIS test and supply teacher profile (the sheet that tells them what I'm qualified to teach, what I'm willing-but-not-qualified to teach, what days I'm available and in what geographic areas I'm willing to teach), I also faxed off an application for a long-term-occasional (LTO) position. If you don't already know, an LTO is any supply teaching job where the teacher works with the same classes for 15 consecutive days or more. Getting one or more LTO positions is supposed to be a good way to get your foot in a little bit further with the TDSB in terms of getting a permanent full-time teaching position. This particular position would run from Nov. 19 until Jan. 31 (my birthday!) and is in grade 9 and 10 science.

This morning, I received a phone call from the school whose LTO position I applied for--they want me to come in for an interview tomorrow at 11! Keep in mind I have had interviews for teaching positions before (and great interviews, at that) and not actually been offered any of those positions, but each interview is still a new opportunity. Perhaps I *will* get this one. Perhaps it will lead to a permanent full-time position (either because the person being replaced does not return for whatever reason or because the added experience on my résumé and a good evaluation of my performance leads to something with that school or another). Perhaps not. Still, an offer of an interview is a vote of confidence on the part of the principal. It reassures me that although I have come up against frustrations in my job search, there are still opportunities out there for me to pursue. Every call for an interview, every prospect of employment is a breath of fresh air in my life right now, even if it does carry with it the possibility of disappointment. Don't get me wrong--I do enjoy the free time being unemployed brings, along with the freedom to go out and see friends on a whim rather than having to look after the lesson planning and marking that come with teaching. I know, though, that I enjoy teaching more. Even when all I was doing was teaching that "trial" lesson at that private school that was thinking about hiring me, or teaching a lesson at practicum, it seems that often when I've been in a classroom in a teaching role it's just felt "right." Sure, it's hard work. Sure, marking a series of quizzes on significant digits and scientific notation is tedious. Overall, though, the job search people say you gotta do what you love...and it seems that, for whatever reason, I love teaching. I'm not sure that I'll love supply teaching, but it's a step in the process, and who knows, maybe I will. Wish me luck with tomorrow's interview; I'll post again when I have something to report on how the supply teaching situation is going.

Joy's job journey, part 4 (+ feeling fantastic)

2007-10-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

I don't have a lot to report, but as I've been getting questions from people I figured I'd write an update. Of course, knowing my writing style, my "not much to report" will generate a fairly long post anyway ;).

Yesterday was my "documenting" session with the Toronto District School Board, which will lead to my being placed on their secondary occasional teacher list. These "documenting" sessions are group sessions...I'm really bad at estimating, but I'd say there were about 80-90 people at my session. All of these people are, like me, on the TDSB's eligible-to-hire list but have not yet managed to secure a full-time position. The girl who sat to my left even had similar teachables as mine--chemistry and math vs. my chemistry and physics (and enough university math courses to do the math AQ :)). The session lasted about 2 1/2 hours. The leaders for the first part walked us through information on our contract, such as our pay scale, how supplying affects our eligible-to-hire status, how many days we have to work to remain on the supply list for next year, what is considered a long-term occasional position, and so on. They also walked us through filling out some forms and getting all the documents we'd brought with us checked over and into our file. One of the leaders is responsible for processing all those files, getting us our clearance with the Board and sending us our employee number--the number we need to receive before we can start doing supply work. Because she is only one person and there are many of us to process (not just at my session, but at other similar sessions as well), it will take about 2 weeks for us to receive our employee numbers if all is straightforward with our file (which should be the case for me), so it will be at least that long before I can start making money with the TDSB (well, unless I get a full-time position before then, heh). The leader for the last part of the session told us what we needed to know about how the call system works that assigns you your job(s) for the day and how to register for it. (Unlike in other boards, where a real person calls you to dispatch you, Toronto uses an automated, interactive phone system to handle their supply work.) She also detailed what to do in the event of problems such as running late for a job, a mix-up at the school that assigned the job, and needing to book time off. All in all the session was straightforward and light. While I'd worried about it dragging on when I heard it would be 2 1/2 hours, I didn't find that it did. The only time that could have been really bad was waiting for the 2 leaders to check over everyone's documents and answer their questions individually, but getting into conversation with my seatmate made that go by faster.

Yesterday one of my friends from Woburn also told me about a position that's opened up at her workplace, teaching ESL and computer literacy to adults. The daily pay is not nearly what the daily rate is for supply teaching, but depending on how many supply calls I get per week the weekly rate could be higher (or not). Anyway, I rushed off to the post office last night to fax my résumé into there (since I moved too slowly the last time this position opened up and lost the opportunity as a result), so we'll see what happens from there. The position would only be until Christmas, after which I would go back to TDSB supply work. If this place calls me for an interview, I'll have to think more about what I'm comfortable with in terms of pay (low pay, but steady work, or unsteady work with higher pay) so that if they offer me a position I'll know whether I'll want to accept it or take my chances with the TDSB for now. Hmm, using it to broaden my teaching résumé could be good, too, though, but will it "count" in the eyes of the TDSB further down the road? Lots to think about.

Overall, I am feeling much better about my job situation than when I wrote my last post. This is partly because I am accepting that it seems many teachers I've spoken to or heard about also did not get a permanent position right off the bat...supplying for months to years is far from unusual (unless the teacher had private school or overseas experience, of course), so why should my case be any different? I'm a good teacher by all accounts, but so are many others who have been through what I'm going through now. Thanksgiving also passed recently (well, in Canada, anyway), with all its reminders of the abundance that I have relative to many other people in the world. I am lucky to have a husband that already provides for me, such that we could keep going with our current standard of living for quite a while without me having to work at all. Yes, I want to work and to help save up for some of the things we'd like to do financially (buy out the car when the lease is up, contribute in a bigger way to our church's building program, save up a down payment for our own place), but we really aren't in a bad spot right now, and I know of people even from my own teacher's college program who need to find a position to help support their families much more than I (not that I'm going to back off my job search in light of that!).

This is not job-related, but I also happen to be in a great mood today. I got a decent amount of sleep last night without having to resort to sleeping in hours and hours (due to a too-late turn-in time). It's sunny out. It's my favourite season of the year, and I was out and about in it yesterday since I walked and took the subway to the TDSB yesterday. (Love those coloured leaves, the cool-but-not-cold weather, and even the autumn rain when it doesn't make me ill.) I am feeling lucky to have a husband that reassures me when I'm having one of my spells of insecurity. The new devotional material my church has started using this week has been reminding me of important and uplifting things that I forget (not mentally, but emotionally) every now and again. Bah, I'm not going to analyze it, I'm just going to enjoy it :).

Well, I'm off...there is plenty to do in the next few days and too-little time to do it if I get too distracted :P!

Alrighty then. (Joy's job journey continues...part 3)

2007-10-05T00:35:00.000-04:00

Well, I got a letter in the mail from that private Catholic school today...turns out they will not be hiring me for that position I was very much hoping to get after all. However, it is a very nice rejection letter, assuring me that since I was asked to teach a class (what I call my "trial" lesson) I was "a serious candidate and ... possess the necessary ability to become a successful educator." (In other words, this was not one of those situations where the school already knew what candidate they were going to hire and just interviewed additional candidates to be nice and/or fulfill a quota.) It also invites me to contact the school should I be interested in being on their supply teacher list or "to do some volunteer work or coaching." I am especially intrigued by the mention of a supply teacher list, as the teacher that observed my trial lesson told me when I inquired that they cover all their absences internally and do not maintain such a list. Perhaps I impressed the school sufficiently to change that ;)...or perhaps I simply received wrong information the first time around.

My "documenting" session that will place me on the Toronto District School Board supply teacher list occurs next Tuesday. Many people attend these sessions and get processed by the TDSB all at once, as they explain how to fill out the forms, make sure everything is in order, put together your file and explain how the call process works that tells you your assignment each day. There are several documents I'm required to bring with me, including the results of a tuberculosis (TB) test. This test takes 2 doctor's appointments over 3 days--one appointment for the doctor to put an injection under your skin, and another appointment 48 hours later for the doctor to check your skin to see if you've reacted to the injection. I had the latter appointment today, and I'm sure you'll all be relieved to know that I do not have TB. Yay.

This past Monday I also sent an application package to a school in Oshawa that interviewed me back in June because they put up a new posting last week for a position exactly like the one I interviewed for (an interview which the principal told me was great even before I left the school that day, but which obviously did not result in a position). I have not yet been contacted by the school, although given how much time passed last time between my applying for the position and being invited to be interviewed it's still possible that they will give me a call. I am trying to maintain the attitude that it would be nice to hear something from them, but I won't hold my breath and won't be devastated if I don't get a call.

All in all, what this job search keeps telling me is this: everyone who interviews me and everyone who sees me in action tells me that I am a good teacher, bright, interview well, etc. The only thing which anyone in a hiring position has against me is my lack of paid teaching experience. This is a frustrating obstacle to have in my way, because it is something completely and utterly out of my hands. I am basically waiting for a principal out there to have the guts to hire me despite this lack of paid teaching experience so that I will therefore have the experience I need to secure a paid teaching position. (To be fair, I'm really waiting not so much on them to have such guts but for a position to become available which a bunch of more-experienced people do not apply for, I suppose. Hopefully those who have been hired in my place are also well-qualified, bright, etc. I'd hate to think the reason I haven't been hired is because principals have found their hands tied by unions or whatever and had to hire less-qualified-but-more-experienced teachers in my place.) Well, to that end, I do know that going on the supply teacher list is going to help me. This will give me paid experience managing a classroom of students. It's not going to give me paid lesson-planning experience, paid parent-teacher-conference experience, paid long-term-class-behaviour-management experience (well, it might if I get a long-term occasional position like a maternity leave, but I'm not sure that will happen right away; I'm sure it'll be one-day-at-a-time for a while). It's not necessarily going to give me a realistic teaching experience even in the behaviour department, since some students (or entire classes of students) act up in extreme ways when the "regular" teacher is away. However, if such paid time in a classroom is what I need to justify myself as a professional educator worthy of being hired in the eyes of those with hiring power, then so be it. Bring it on. If I can survive the daily struggles that come with being the substitute teacher, surely someone out there will see that I can handle the (different, but still present) daily struggles of having my own classroom.

Joy's job journey, part 2

2007-09-25T13:23:00.000-04:00

Remember my last post/note (depending on whether you're reading this through Blogger or Facebook) mentioned that I'm currently pursuing 2 opportunities in my search for a teaching position--a full-time possibility at a private Catholic school or supply teaching with the Toronto District School Board.

Today I returned to the private Catholic school for the 4th time (my interview was on Wednesday, and I visited the school for various lesson-prep-related reasons both Friday and yesterday) to teach my "trial" lesson. This school's hiring process is kind of like "Teacher Idol"...after your interview with the principal, you may get invited by the science department head to come in and teach a lesson so they can see you in action. I wasn't the first person involved to come in and teach a "trial" lesson, and I'm not the last...but I got an invitation. Unfortunately, the principal was not available to come and watch me teach this lesson as he had planned. The VP who is also the head of guidance came in for a very small part of my lesson...about one minute before I said, "that's all I have for you today" and assigned homework. However, the teacher who is moving to the States (creating the open position in the process) did observe me, talked with me as if I were the one who would be taking over (although he corrected himself now and then with a "...or whoever they decide to hire..."), and told me he had only good things to say about me after seeing my lesson. He told me that I am already a good teacher, and with experience will be a great one (ooo, something to look forward to, heh...that little ego boost didn't hurt my day any :)). In addition, he felt that the candidates who have already taught other "trial" lessons really didn't have their subject matter down pat, even with a week of preparation--they had trouble answering student questions, for example. HOWEVER, he thinks it is the principal and VP who will make the decision in the end...and that in the end it will come down to whether they want to go with someone who is young and has no (paid) experience but a good deal of subject matter (and thus can use the position to improve herself), or someone who has a lot of experience but maybe doesn't do so well on the content knowledge side of things. Story of my looking-for-a-teaching-job life, really. I'll post the news as soon as I hear the school's decision either way, but since at least 1 more person is coming in to teach a "trial" lesson it could take some time. This would be a really sweet position to get, if it does go through. The kids are motivated, well-behaved, and were partly admitted based on their academic ability (i.e., they're smart, too). The science department budget is a dream compared to that of public schools. Best of all, I would only have grade 11 and 12 chemistry on my timetable (I think 3 classes of each--it's a non-semestered school)! It is practically unheard of for a first-year teacher to only have 2 "preps" (courses to prepare for day-in, day-out). Whoa, slow down, Joy...you don't have the position yet, no sense getting too excited, heh :). I *would* have to learn a thing or two about what is expected of a Protestant teaching in a Catholic school, too.

On the supply teaching side of things, I got a call today from the Toronto District School Board to set up my "documenting" session. Lots of potential supply teachers are invited to this session, in which the Board collects all sorts of copies of this, that and the other thing (I count 8 pieces of paper I'm supposed to bring in with me) so that they have a complete file for you and can start paying you as soon as you start taking supply teaching work through them (yes, one of the items I'm supposed to bring is a void cheque, which to me carries a promise of being paid...a promise which is very exciting to me the as-of-yet unemployed teacher). The people there will also explain how the call system works and so on. My session isn't until Oct. 9, which is good because I have yet to get the recent TB test I'm required to bring with me :-P.

That's all I have to report for now. Hopefully all this means my days of having fun but making no money playing computer games at home are coming to an end. Stay tuned...

Update on Joy's job search

2007-09-20T15:50:00.000-04:00

Most of you know that I graduated with my B.Ed. back in June, with qualifications to teach high school chemistry and physics. I had a few interviews this summer, but the job hunt for a position in which to use my new degree has been tough. I'll give a (fairly) quick recap of what's happened so far, but the most exciting part is at the end (no, I'm not employed yet, but I may be getting closer).

In interview #1 (at the end of May), the Toronto District School Board interviewed me at the board level. As a result of my successful performance on that interview, I was placed on the TDSB's "eligible to hire" list, which principals can review online when they have an opening and select candidates to interview at the school level. Unfortunately, other than 1 request for a résumé, I have not heard anything from TDSB principals.

Interview #2 (early June) was with a high school in Oshawa, in the Durham region. I was interviewed by 4 people at once--the principal, a VP, the head of math and the head of science. The interview went very well, with lots of smiling and nodding and positive feedback. They seemed to want to keep talking to me, but after having talked with me for quite some time they all realized that it was time for the next period, and some of them had classes to teach! The principal told me even before I left that I'd had a great interview. Unfortunately, when she called me with the results, it was to tell me that the position had gone to someone who had some supply teaching experience and had been at the school before. A job search guide for teachers recommends that we ask for feedback on things we could improve when receiving calls of rejection, but, when asked, this principal reinforced that there was nothing I could have improved in my interview...it just came down to someone having more experience than I.

Interview #3 (early July) was with a high school in Uxbridge. I was interviewed by 3 people here--the principal, a vice-principal, and the head of science. I was fairly tired at that interview for various reasons, but it also went fairly well. When I brought up the idea of holding a Science Olympics event--something I think is fairly common in the greater Toronto area--the head of science seemed quite interested, and hadn't heard of the idea before. Long story short, however, the phone call I ultimately received stated that, although there was nothing I could have improved in my interview, there are quite a few well-qualified candidates out there looking for teaching jobs these days, and I was turned down for this position.

Interview #4 (late August) was with a private high school in Mississauga--a school a friend of mine has worked for before. Only the principal was present for this interview. He also had physics as a teachable, and we connected quite well during this interview (agreeing wholeheartedly on what the most difficult part of physics is to teach, for example--it's generally the motion-time graphs). I left that interview quite confident. Since this interview took place the week before classes were to begin, and staff meetings would be starting as early as the next day, he told me that I would hear a decision by the end of the day. When I received that call, I was told that I was #2 in line to get the job, but unfortunately candidate #1 had more experience. However, the principal was "very impressed" with me and told me he would keep my résumé handy in case something came up.

Interview #5 was yesterday afternoon. This interview was with a private Catholic school (i.e., a Catholic school that is not part of Ontario's separate school board) in the heart of Toronto...not quite south enough to be officially considered downtown, but certainly in a busier area than I am used to. The posted position is to replace their only grade 11 and 12 chemistry teacher, who will be moving. Only the principal was present at this interview. I went to this interview thinking I had been very well-prepared for the teaching interview process by the ones I've had so far (not to mention countless discussions with teaching friends and the material both in my coursework and in teaching-job-search advising sessions and guides), and confident in the positive feedback I'd received from those interviewers (even if that feedback hadn't included an offer of employment). However, the questions this principal asked were much broader that the usual teaching-interview questions, and I found him very difficult to "read" compared to the other interviewers I'd had. It certainly wasn't the usual process of showing knowledge of the right eduspeak "buzzwords" and watching for the appropriate reaction. I walked away from that interview feeling very unsure as to how well I'd done. The hiring process is also a more involved one at this school; while the principal did interview me, it's only the first step in the process (or at least the first step after the initial screening of résumés)...the principal told me he would pass on to the department head the names of the candidates he liked, and the department head might then call and ask if I wanted to come in and teach a lesson or two.

Today I got that phone call from the private Catholic school. I must have done well at the interview after all, because I have been asked to come in and teach a lesson so that the teacher and principal can see how they like me. I will be teaching a grade 11 chemistry class on Tuesday. I will swing by the school tomorrow to pick up a copy of the textbook and have a look at the lab and chemical storage area. Unfortunately the teacher involved won't be there tomorrow, so I'm also going to swing by again on Monday to see what else he has to say in terms of planning and whatnot (and maybe to take another look at chemical storage in case I decide to do a demonstration or lab with them). It's a big time investment, but I'm willing to make it if it will make my "trial" lesson successful and result in a permanent position.

In other job-related news, although I haven't secured a permanent position with the TDSB, I have received an invitation to join their supply teaching list. I had to fax a form to their office, and at some point they are supposed to call and set up a time and date when I can go in and be "documented" (fill in some forms, tell them the divisions I want to supply teach, find out how the call system works that tells you each morning where you're needed, etc.). If I do get a job offer from the private Catholic school, I will obviously have to decide whether I want to teach full-time with them or supply teach with the public board. For now, though, I won't get ahead of myself...I'm going to focus on putting my "trial" lesson together first, and worry about whether to accept a job offer if and when the job offer is made :).

There you go, yet another long-winded summary-of-my-life posting from Joy :). I'll keep you posted on what further developments come up in my career life as they happen.

Update on Martin's AVM condition - Aug. 2, 2007

2007-08-02T15:38:00.000-04:00

Update on Martin's AVM condition - Aug. 2, 2007

Hello, everyone. After I finish writing this update, it will be published to my blog (and from there imported into Facebook), posted to the Yahoo group dedicated to Martin's condition, and sent off by e-mail to various people (who all have permission to forward it to others in turn), so my apologies in advance if you get multiple copies, and/or if I am repeating information you already know...this is the easiest way for me to get the news out to all who are interested, including some I don't see or communicate with nearly as frequently as others. It has been quite a while since I have written an update on Martin's condition (basically because nothing happened medically speaking that I knew of since my last update and I didn't think anyone needed to receive multiple e-mails saying "nothing has changed"), so let me first recap what has gone on up to this point. (This will take a couple of paragraphs, so please bear with me.)

In August 2004, Martin collapsed at work after complaining of a massive headache and stroke-like symptoms. He was rushed to Sunnybrook hospital, where he remained unconscious. Scans revealed that Martin had two AVMs in his brain, one on each side, and that the one on the right side (the one I call AVM #1) had bled. (If you don't remember what an AVM is or weren't around for the first batch of updates to have found out, read this if you want more information: http://brainavm.oci.utoronto.ca/malformations/brain_avm_index.htm .) His condition was critical but more or less stable for a couple days, but after that time he deteriorated somewhat such that an emergency surgery was performed. This surgery removed the excess blood from Martin's brain (which was putting pressure on the brain as well as blocking the passages that normally allow draining of fluids from the brain) as well as AVM #1--the AVM that had bled (but without further digging around to remove AVM #2, as that would involve doing surgery on the other side of the brain as well and that have been too much for his brain to handle). After some days Martin eventually opened his eyes, got moved from critical care to the neuro intensive care unit at Sunnybrook (where he started talking, though he was still not fully "with it" and didn't make much sense), improved further and got moved to the regular neuro ward, improved further still and was transferred from Sunnybrook to an inpatient rehab clinic, improved further still such that he was allowed to come home in November 2004 and just attend outpatient rehab, and finally he was eventually allowed to stop attending rehab altogether.

Around this time, the medical team decided that Martin was stable enough to start discussing options for treating AVM #2. (AVMs have a 4% chance to bleed every year, so obviously it's better to be proactive and treat them before they bleed, especially if they're in the brain.) The three treatment options, if you remember, were surgery, radiosurgery and embolization (you can read about those treatment options at http://brainavm.oci.utoronto.ca/malformations/brain_avm_index.htm as well if you need a reminder/more information, but I will add a reminder that embolization is the treatment where they basically fill the AVM with a special kind of glue). Together with the medical team we decided that radiosurgery was the best way to go at that time for an AVM of that size (the AVM in question was about 2.5 cm or about an inch across at the time). Consequently, Martin received radiosurgery in June 2005. The radiosurgery itself only lasts for about 15 minutes total, but it required a whole day of prep, scans, and so on. I know when most people hear "radiation" in a medical sense they think of people going for multiple sessions, but that is not the case in AVM treatment; Martin received only about 15 minutes of highly-targeted radiation on only 1 day about 2 years ago, and that is the extent of his treatment...that is why I use the alternate term "radiosurgery" (a.k.a. Stereotactic Radiotherapy) to refer to Martin's treatment rather than "radiation." What the radiosurgery does is prompt the slow building up of scar tissue on the inside walls of the blood vessels in the AVM, such that they eventually choke off the AVM from the brain's blood supply. See, if no blood is going into the AVM, it can't bleed and cause brain damage. The downside of this treatment is that it takes 2 to 3 years for this building up of scar tissue and choking-off to finally complete, which means a lot of waiting to find out if it actually worked or not. Later that summer Martin returned to working full-time after almost a year away.

Okay, enough old news...on to new news. Now that August 2007 is here, we are just past the 2 year mark since Martin had his radiosurgery. Martin went for an MRI last Friday (at 11:30 pm, ugh...the MRI machines really must be in high demand here in Toronto, because MRIs are done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...I remember in 2005 sitting waiting for Martin and hearing the receptionist call people to confirm their 2 am MRI appointments!). The MRI appointment itself was fine, but we couldn't really tell anyone anything useful after it because the MRI technicians don't tell you anything about what the scans indicate about your condition (they must have to do scans for a whole gamut of conditions, after all, and they aren't trained to interpret the pictures, just make 'em).

Today was the day we got to find out what the pretty pictures had to say. A more junior doctor came in to see us first. He asked Martin a bunch of questions about how his walking is going, the process to get him his driver's license back (which we're not pursuing until AVM #2 is fully treated), how his work is going, whether he had any complications after the radiosurgery, what medication he's currently taking, which of the AVM clinic doctors we saw last, who did the radiation, and so on. He reviewed the history of Martin's case and checked Martin for any residual weakness, his reflexes and his vision. He didn't tell us very much (not that we expected him to) and mentioned that he would have to look at the pictures with the neurosurgeons again, but he did indicate that the MRI seemed to show that AVM #2 is almost if not completely gone (where by "gone" we mean "sealed off and unable to cause any problems").

When he was done with his examination, he left us for a time while he presumably went to consult with the neurosurgeons again, returning afterwards with Dr. Chris Wallace, the doctor who performed Martin's original brain surgery (i.e., the one to remove AVM #1). Dr. Wallace pulled up the MRI that was done in 2005 side-by-side with the MRI that was done last week. It seems Martin does have a scar in his brain where the original hemorrhage occurred, but that's really not of much consequence to us. What was more important was when Dr. Wallace pointed out a bunch of "black marks" indicating AVM #2 in the 2005 scan...and the corresponding area where they are pretty much missing in the 2007 scan. There are a few marks there that look kind of like grey smudges (Dr. Wallace said, "I don't know what this crap over here is"...comforting from a brain surgeon, but this is the humor we've come to expect from him :)), but yes, just like the more junior doctor said, it does look like Martin's AVM #2 is just about treated. It is too early to say that AVM #2 is fully gone, however. As good as an MRI is, it's still not detailed enough to confirm that an AVM is gone...to do so requires an angiogram to be performed. Because the MRI may indicate that the AVM is *almost* but not fully treated, the team is going to allow the third year to elapse before doing this angiogram...as Dr. Wallace said, we could do the angiogram now, but we may well find that it says the AVM is still there, so we'd have to do another angiogram in a year anyway...we might as well wait. Martin *hated* getting the angiogram done 2 years ago (it involves having something threaded through an artery near his groin up to the blood vessels in his head, and on its way there last time it made him feel like he got kicked in the crotch), so he didn't protest waiting another year to get another one of those done. Martin will not have another MRI done in 2008 because this year's MRI already shows so little of the AVM; he'll just have the angiogram in 2008, followed by another follow-up appointment at the AVM clinic. Incidentally, Dr. Wallace also pulled up the angiogram that was done in 2005 and showed us the old picture of AVM #2...it really showed me why an angiogram is needed to confirm that the AVM is gone, because the amount of detail in the angiogram is stunning, clearly showing blood vessels that are less than 1 mm thick.

All in all, this is good news...AVM #2 is definitely responding very positively to treatment, and Martin is almost cured! Hooray!

For those of you who are not in regular contact with us (which I suppose will be some in my e-mail-only audience, so my blog and Facebook readers will have to bear with me here), I'll also give you a brief update on what is happening with us apart from the AVM issue.

Martin's work: You might recall that Martin's loss of his driver's license for medical reasons meant that he had to take the TTC to and from work, which was quite annoying for him because it took considerably more time out of his day. After some time, however, Martin began carpooling with someone from his work, which ended up being a great arrangement. A few months ago, however, Martin found out through a friend about a job opening with his friend's company which would allow Martin to switch from fixing electronics hardware to doing more computer IT stuff--something in which Martin is very interested but has no formal training. Martin sent in an application with his friend's recommendation, and before you know it he was on the phone being interviewed by someone in New York, then on the phone again being interviewed by a team of people in England, and then heading downtown for a face-to-face interview here in Toronto. He got the job...and his new company promptly shipped him to England for 6 weeks of training! I remained behind as we did not want to spend the money for me to go over there...Martin wasn't put up in a large city, so there wouldn't have been much for us to see on weekdays (though there was freedom to travel around on the weekends), plus Martin spent a large part of each day training, and while some people wouldn't mind being left alone to entertain themselves, I generally like company when I'm exploring. Martin returned to Toronto July 22 and is enjoying his new job. Because he's in a new field in which he's not formally trained it is challenging and a little overwhelming at times, but hopefully with time he will feel more at ease in that respect. He does take the TTC to work, but since it is downtown and the night buses service the route he takes it is not nearly as much of an issue as it was at his old workplace.

Joy's life: The last update I wrote was our Christmas web page update in 2005, and since then I have finished both my Honours Bachelor of Science degree (with a major in chemistry and minor in physics) and my Bachelor of Education degree (with qualifications to teach high school chemistry and physics). This means I am now looking for a job teaching high school. While the job hunt is going very slowly at this point, I am on the eligible-to-hire list for the Toronto District School Board, which means I passed their board-level interview and am now waiting for principals to grant me a school-level interview and decide to hire me. I have also applied to positions in the Peel and Durham regions (and I have had 2 interviews in Durham, both of which went very well even though neither of them resulting in my getting the position) and I have a board application in with the York Region District School Board. At this point in the year most principals are enjoying their vacation rather than doing further hiring, so I am sitting tight for now, continuing to watch for postings and waiting for the hiring to start again in mid- to late August. Being on the eligible-to-hire list is apparently a good sign that I will have at least supply teaching work in Toronto in the upcoming school year if not a permanent position, and I know teachers get hired as late as October, December or even February. Obviously I am hoping to land a permanent contract in my own classroom rather than doing supply work, but I will do what I have to to get my career started (and start pulling my own financial weight in this relationship, as gracious as Martin is about telling me I don't *have* to work). Oh, and yes, I did finally get my G2 level driver's license, which means I am out there on the roads of Ontario driving a stick shift all by myself! It is wonderful to have the freedom to go where I want, when I want, although there are times I still walk, carpool or take public transit in an attempt to get some exercise, be a little more environmentally-friendly and avoid gas prices, rush-hour traffic, core/downtown traffic and parking fees.

That is about all I can think of to pack into this update. If I didn't cover something you're curious about, feel free to drop me a line. By the way, my primary e-mail address is changing because Martin and I are going to be switching Internet Service Providers, so please do *not* mail me at joymccourt@rogers.com or flyinghigh@rogers.com any longer. I have several e-mail addresses you may use instead; probably the easiest one for me to give out right now is joymccourt@yahoo.ca . Alternately, if you're getting this update via the Yahoo group, you probably see my e-mail address as shiny_sink@yahoo.ca , which you may use instead, although I would much prefer it if you'd use joymccourt@yahoo.ca . If you have a different e-mail address for me, it's probably OK to use it as long as it doesn't end in @rogers.com . Questions, comments, concerns? Let me know. I hope all of you are well and enjoying the summer as much as you can...even if you're not currently on vacation like I am ;). As they say all the time in England (just ask Martin),

Cheers,
Joy.

Geek vs. nerd

2007-07-25T20:30:00.001-04:00

I think between my Blogger readers and my Facebook friends we should be able to figure this out. I remember Laura telling me once that her friends at UofT together figured out what the difference is between a nerd and a geek. I think one had to do with having a high intelligence/knowing lots of stuff whereas the other had to do with having a lot of technical know-how, but I don't remember if that was indeed the distinction or which was which. I'm pretty sure it doesn't even matter when it comes to defining me, because I'm pretty sure I have a good smattering of both, lol (c'mon, my favourite university courses were the ones in quantum chemistry/physics and I play D&D...'nuff said). So...can anyone (Laura? Mira?) remind me what the distinction was, or make up a reasonable facsimile of the original definition? Don't ask me why I want to know, lest I have to explain the random ways in which my brain works when I have too much time on my hands :P. Oh, and yes, I know that the word "geek" originally had to do with a circus freak who would bite the heads off of chickens and such, but somehow I don't think that is in any way relevant to this discussion.

Officially certified :)

2007-07-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

If you go to www.oct.ca and use the "Find a Teacher" link, you will now be able to pull up my name as a fully certified teacher :). I haven't got the fancy piece of paper in the mail yet (and I don't have a job yet, either), but I am finally certified, woohoo!

Away from it all but bringing it all with me

2007-06-26T20:47:00.000-04:00

I am at the cottage this week, Monday to Friday. Today is Tuesday. Yes, that's right, I am blogging from the cottage. My parents and I are renting a trailer-cottage from West Lake Willows and it just so happens that all the cottages here have wireless access to the Internet. Considering that my husband is in England at the moment and I am relying on Messenger to communicate with him free of charge (well, once I pay for the Internet access), it is great to be able to access the 'net while I'm here. Don't worry, though, I am still making sure that I take the time to enjoy the benefits of cottage life. This morning, for example, my dad and I walked over to Sandbanks Provincial Park, which is a hop, skip and a jump from our cottage. We climbed dune after dune because I kept seeing higher peaks ahead, until eventually the way up got blocked by plants I didn't feel like fighting through. My mom and I also went for a walk around the trailer park our cottage is part of, checking out the boat launch, swimming area, the other cottages WLW rents, the privately-owned trailers in the area, and so on. I suppose our main activity the past 2 days has been taking it easy in ways we would have done at home but in a much more relaxing setting...reading, eating together, spending some time on the laptop, checking out the local towns, etc. I wasn't sure how I would like staying in a trailer-cottage due to its small size, but it hasn't felt confining in the way I thought it might. Yes, my room is barely big enough for the set of double-bed-sized bunk beds on which I sleep, but if all I'm doing there is sleeping (and sometimes reading), what does it matter? Anyway, I have some more relaxing to get into my day before tucking in, so I will sign off for now. Main event for tomorrow: Bergerons Exotic Animal Sanctuary.

The End.

2007-06-17T08:56:00.000-04:00

Water flows under the bridge
Water falls from on high
Water breaks

Washed and washed away
New-born eyes open
To the freshness of the world

My feet are washed
The day is new
And I will never ask for sunshine again.

Martin's trip so far, the joys of technology, and feeling old

2007-06-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

(Warning: this is going to be one of those über-long "Hmm, I haven't written a comprehensive post in a while" entries, sorry :). I'm in a rambling kind of mood :-P.)

For those of you who don't already know, yes, Martin touched down safely in England this past Sunday. For future reference, if you ever fly out there, plan on having your first day completely lost to travel. His flight took off here at about 9 a.m. our time and landed at Heathrow airport at 9 p.m. London time. On top of that, his hotel is not in London but in Cheltenham, which is a couple hours away from the airport by taxi (and remember he still had to retrieve his luggage and whatnot before getting in the cab). He and the 2 guys travelling with him got to their flat at about midnight...and they were to start their training at headquarters the very next morning, with the cabs coming to get them at 8 a.m.! Needless to say Martin and one of the other trainees found themselves napping here and there through their first day at work, but he is well-adjusted to the time change now.

Martin's hotel flat does not have a land line. His company has provided the flat with a cell phone, but they are only to use it for outgoing calls in the event of an emergency. Incoming calls from here are fine, but we quickly discovered that it is not worth the cost for me to call it; the quality and time delay are awful. However, we have been able to keep in touch in other ways. Each trainee was given a laptop on loan, and Martin has installed Windows Live Messenger on his. At first, this only allowed us to send instant text messages to each other. Yesterday, though, we finally figured out how to get both our headsets working with Messenger so that we could have a realtime voice conversation without the lack of quality and time delay we experienced with the cell phone. We also have a webcam here, and I was able to hook that up so he could see me, his mom, his sisters and the cats Unfortunately he doesn't have a webcam there, though (and doesn't want to shell out the pounds to get one due to the higher cost of everything over there), so we couldn't see him. Still, long-distance voice calls for "cheap as free," hooray! And Catherine was right, we do talk more now that he's in England than we do here, heh :)...

Based on the training he's been doing, Martin is getting quite excited about his new job. He messaged me the other day and said, "Remember how I told you 'I'd love a job where I could sit and compile Linux all day'? This could be that job." He has been trying to get out of the electronics/hardware work he was doing and into IT for years now. Having only his hobby experience and no formal training to put on a résumé, though, he hasn't felt confident applying for IT positions. The fact that one of our guildmates from World of Warcraft was able to help him get this job is a huge blessing to us (see, playing computer games isn't a complete waste of time, lol), especially as Martin had felt the job he was working at was a dead end with no possibility of progression. The fact that Martin will now be making more money doesn't hurt, either :).

*Reads previous blog entries*...hmm, I seem to be repeating myself a little bit...sorry. Anyway, where I was going with this was that because Martin will be earning a little bit more now, we've decided to get me something that will help me when I finally get my career started (hopefully in September...*crosses fingers*)...I am finally getting a laptop :D! Since I'm heading into the world of education (among other reasons), I'm also going to be entering the world of Apple, shelling out the extra cash to get a MacBook Pro rather than a PC. The fact that it comes with a built-in webcam and the ability to access wireless Internet connections also means that I'll be able to keep in touch with Martin even when I go to the cottage with my parents in a couple weeks. I'm not sure whether the wireless connection up there will be good enough for any WoW-playing, but who plays WoW at the cottage anyway? (*looks around with shifty eyes*...)

In other news, today I attended my public school's 50th anniversary. I went to Churchill Heights P. S. from grade 4 through to the end of grade 8. Being back there today was, well, odd. Jen and Mary-Beth and I wandered through the school at various points looking at how small everything was, trying to figure out how we fit into the desks, how we managed to do drama productions on such a small stage, how the entire school fit in the gym to watch Degrassi Street on rainy days, how everyone's instrument cases fit onto the shelving in the music room which used to seem so huge...yeah. If it were simply a matter of seeing size differences, it would be odd enough, but add to that seeing the area where some portables used to sit turned into a playground and the old playground tilled over, seeing the computer lab turned into a classroom and half the library into a computer lab (and being able to see all 4 walls of the library at once due to the way the new shelving is organized), seeing old classmates now taller than me (I was reminded at least a few times today that I pretty much grew to my adult height by the age of, oh, 11), and you start to feel old. Er, wait, I'm only 27. Okay, old*er* :). Mind you, when my former teachers found out that Mary-Beth and I have both done teacher's college and are both looking for jobs with the board, their conversations with us suddenly took on a much different tone, which was interesting to see...suddenly, we were not just former students, but colleagues. Anyway, the weather was gorgeous, and briefly catching up with the dozen or so people I recognized was good (though running into one's high school English teacher at one's public school is also odd). However, though it was a little disappointing that the promised Open Forum somehow got scrapped from the program, it was a bit of a relief not to have to stick around for the full 5 hours or whatever that the event was planned to run in order to see it. It's like they say..."nice to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there." It also seemed like just about everyone I talked to today had another event planned for this evening, including me, so it's good that Churchill decided to make this an afternoon event rather than the evening thing I usually picture a reunion being. Cheers to everyone I saw, kind regards to everyone I would have liked to have seen but who couldn't make it, and as for anyone who wanted to see me but showed up after I left, well, send me a message...that's what Facebook is for ;).

Also making me feel old is that I'm going to attend my nephew's 6th birthday party this evening. Okay, yes, 6 is not that old, but he is the youngest of my brother's 4 children. If he is 6, my oldest niece is 12. Before you know it, she'll be off to high school, then university (or college or the workforce or whatever), getting married...sigh. Oh well, at least this way she'll be old enough to babysit by the time I start having my own children, lol...

Well, I have written way too much again, so it is time to sign off. I'll post my few graduation photos when I can, but since I sent my digital camera to the UK with Martin I am still waiting for my parents to develop the film photos they took. Ciao for now...

Eligible to hire :)

2007-06-12T20:51:00.000-04:00

Today I got my letter from the Toronto District School Board telling me that I've been placed on their eligible-to-hire list! Woohoo! This means that principals in the TDSB will see my name and resume and such among the others on the list, which they browse to see who might fit the position when they have one available. Proactive people sometimes mention to principals that they are now on the list, inquire about positions, etc., but it can be a matter of figuring out whether that would help your case with that principal or whether that would just bug them and make them not want to hire you. Anyway, this is a good step, as it also tells me I can supply teach with the TDSB. I'll continue to keep you posted as my job search continues.

Back to the job hunt

2007-06-08T14:24:00.000-04:00

Well, it turns out that the school that interviewed me (and loved me) on Monday isn't going to be giving me a position after all. The principal said that I had a great interview and said she'd certainly encourage me to apply to other positions at the school. When I asked if she had any suggestions for improvement (something recommended by my how-to-get-a-teaching-job bible), she said no, it really just came down to the fact that the other person had done some supply teaching and had been at the school. In other words, if that person had turned down the job, I'd have it. Well, I'm glad that I've still been putting applications out lately even though I thought I almost certainly had a job with that school. Hopefully something else will come along. I'll keep you posted.

The story my calendar tells...

2007-06-04T19:35:00.000-04:00

Life seems to be very focused on the career path right now.

What's been happening:
May 23 - my last day of teacher's college
May 24 - my goodbye party / year-end celebration with teacher's college classmates
May 28 - husband had 3rd round of interviews with company he applied to
May 29 - husband offered and accepted new job
May 31 - my Toronto District School Board interview
June 1 - I went to get my criminal record checked so I can be certified to teach
June 2 - I had coffee with friends

Today and the next couple of weeks:
June 4 - I got a call: I have a job interview tomorrow with a high school in Oshawa! Also: running around getting stuff husband needs to take with him on his trip (see June 10).
June 5 - my interview with a high school in Oshawa
June 6 - husband starts new job downtown; I go to the passport office to pick up his rushed-delivery passport
June 9 - sister-in-law's dance recital
June 10 - husband flies out to England for 6 weeks of training at the head office of the company he's now working for
June 13 - I graduate from teacher's college
June 15 - TBA...I'm double-booked :P...
June 16 - I attend my public school's 50th anniversary

Highlights coming up after that:
July 7 - wedding #1
July 22 - husband returns from England (having missed wedding #1, which he is not happy about)
July 27 - wedding #2 *and* husband's MRI appointment (though the MRI is quite late in the evening, so I don't think that's too much of a conflict)
Aug. 2 - husband's AVM clinic appointment (this is when we finally find out--2 years after the treatment and 3 years after his initial injury--if his second, non-exploded AVM has been fully treated, whether it just needs more time, or if it needs more/different treatment)
Aug. 18 - wedding #3

Phew! Okay, so who all wanted to get together this summer? Book now :)! (Oh, and if it's me you want to see and not necessarily me-and-Martin, I do have that 6 weeks when he is away when I'll need some company...)

Our news: Martin has a new job!

2007-05-30T14:09:00.000-04:00

For those of you who haven't yet heard, my husband now has a new job! Through our vast networking abilities (read: by using headsets to chat with our guildmates around the world World of Warcraft), DH found out that the company one of our guildmates works for here in Toronto was hiring for a position that he was very much interested in, and sent his résumé and cover letter to the company through said friend. Things started moving very quickly after that. He had a telephone interview with a human resources person from the company's New York office. That led to a conference call telephone interview with 3 people from one of the company's UK offices (the headquarters, I guess; the people included someone on the technical side of things, a human resources person, and, um, someone else :)). Finally, he had to go in person to the company's office in downtown Toronto for a third interview. That third interview was this past Monday. Yesterday (Tuesday) he got the call from New York offering him a position, discussing salary, and so on. Oh, yes, salary...did I mention that he will be making more money now than he did in his current/previous job? He will be working some odd hours in his initial position, too, so that means he will also be getting extra pay (a "shift bonus") to make up for it.

He will be working at the office in downtown Toronto, and he will start there next Wednesday (June 6). Before he really gets into the swing of things there, though, the company is going to fly him to the UK for 6 weeks of training by their people over there, starting June 11! This is very exciting. Unfortunately, they are not paying for me to go over there, so I am examining our finances, travel sites, hostel information, and so on to figure out if I can afford to go see him over there for part of his training period; I'm thinking I'll probably go over there for a week or so about halfway through his time there. Oh, and renewing our passports, seeing as they've been expired for years :P. (Note to self: always keep your passport up-to-date, even if you have no travel plans...you never know what is going to happen, and it is expensive to get the I-need-this-passport-yesterday rush service!)

As for what his job will be, well, he is going to start off as a level 2 call centre tech support rep. Working a call centre may not be great, but at least he won't be level 1 (so he will hopefully not have to deal with people who think their CD-ROM drive is a coffee cup holder), and it is a way for him to get into the field (remember he's been working on fixing electronics hardware components in payphones and modems and such for the past 6 years or so, so this is a change of fields from the hardware to the software side of things). There is apparently quite good opportunity for growth within this company, too; when he had his conference call interview, it came up that either the person who'd been on the line before him or one of his interviewers had started where my husband will be starting, but had had 4 different job titles in the past 4 years, and of course his having a connection in the company already doesn't hurt. Anyway, he's excited because he's wanted to get out of what he's been doing and into the IT field for a while now, but didn't think he had the qualifications to do so (only a deep interest and hobby rather than any formal training in the field). I'm happy because he's happy and seems to have hope that there is potential for growth with this company, whereas there didn't seem to be that at his old job and he was feeling like he was at a dead end.

I'll keep you posted on how things go with my own job hunt (at this point, I only have the old news that I have my interview with the Toronto District School Board tomorrow). For now, I am happy for hubby: yay!

I don't hear voices, just music...

2007-05-18T21:27:00.000-04:00

I've been noticing something annoying happening to me more and more recently. I'll be walking along, minding my own business, when I'll overhear a snippet of a conversation, and BAM! I get a song stuck in my head related to some word in or aspect of the conversation. Sometimes the verbal input that provides the related song doesn't come from another person, either. Just a few minutes ago, I happened to catch a glance of something World Vision has sent to my husband and me for us to sign and send off to our sponsored child. I haven't opened up the envelope to see and sign whatever it is yet, but I can see the exclamation "!Feliz cumpleanos!" BAM! Into my head immediately sang the song "Feliz Navidad," which is rather annoying considering that it is now May. Other songs I have had stuck in my head in the course of not even half an hour tonight have included "Do You Wanna Dance" by the Beach Boys and a song I used to sing in Girl Guides that includes the name of various restaurants ("A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut"...c'mon, Jen, sing along ;)). Even more annoying is that I've had a song in my head now and then over the past few days which I don't know the words to, only the tune (the music video for it played in the theatre before the previews when a friend and I went to see Spider-Man 3 and I heard it again when my host teacher was listening to the radio in our office a few days ago). It's okay, I know I'm crazy, but it probably reduces my stress load, and besides, it does make life much more interesting and musical ;).

Now playing: "I Can Hear Music" by the Beach Boys...

If Error Messages were Haikus...

2007-05-14T20:37:00.000-04:00

This comes courtesy of Laura (who did not write them but found them elsewhere). I really am too easily amused :).

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Wind catches lily
scatt'ring petals to the wind:
segmentation fault

ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
You ask way too much.

First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.

With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that

To have no errors
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

2 years of waiting is almost over.

2007-05-05T22:16:00.000-04:00

I need to do a recap of some history in order to make this post make sense. Most of you know that my husband had a brain injury in August 2004 when an AVM in his brain popped. You probably also know that when the doctors were initially trying to figure out what caused that brain injury, they found not only the popped AVM in his brain but a second (un-popped) AVM as well that they knew they would have to treat one day (once Martin had finished recovering fully from the first one popping) to ensure that it would never cause Martin any problems. Martin received that treatment in June 2005 in the form of a single dose of finely-targeted radiation given over the course of about 20 minutes. The idea is that this single dose of radiation would slowly build up scar tissue on the insides of the blood vessels of the AVM, eventually cutting it off from Martin's blood flow entirely, although we were told it could take about 3 years for this process to be complete. How a single 20-minute burst of radiation continues to do work in one's body years after it was given boggles my mind (maybe effects lead to effects lead to effects, I don't know), but there you go.

Anyway, because of the length of time this treatment takes to work, Martin hasn't been monitored or called back to the hospital since that day nearly 2 years ago now (well, other than one day we had a scare and thought the AVM might have popped and rushed him down there, but he turned out to be okay that day). He's more or less fully recovered from his initial injury and gone back to work. This July, however, Martin will be back at the hospital for his first check-up MRI. A couple or a few weeks after that (I have to get the date confirmed again yet), we will be back at the AVM clinic finding out the results of that MRI and if the treatment Martin was given nearly 2 years ago is actually working. Let me tell you, 2 years is a long time to wait for results like that...and who knows, we may have to wait another year for full treatment. Yes, after a while you kind of forget that there is a potential bomb in the brain of someone close to you, and start to take it for granted that everything is indeed okay now, but the worry never fully goes away, creeping up again whenever that person is late coming home from work or seems to be feeling or acting oddly. We haven't risked his taking any plane flights, and for a while we didn't even want to risk being too far from the city and its particular expert hospitals. I know I mentioned the idea of my being a teacher in a missionary school somewhere, but I've decided to put off pursuing that until we hear that Martin has been fully treated; I will teach here for at least my first one or more years until we get that news.

It is good to be coming to the end of this two years of waiting. Who knows, though, what news our upcoming AVM clinic appointment will bring, and how it may change our lives? I still need those of you who are in our prayer group to pray us through this, as long a journey as it's been. You keep us lifted; I'll keep you posted.

My apologies for being somewhat rambly tonight; there is a lot on my mind. Have a good night, all, and enjoy some of that sunshine we're getting this weekend!

I have a TDSB interview!

2007-05-03T16:17:00.000-04:00

I just found out today that I have an interview with the Toronto District School Board on May 31. For those of you who don't know, getting hired as a teacher by the Toronto District School Board is a two-stage process. In stage one, you have to pass an interview by the school board, who will then put you on an "eligible to hire" list. In stage two, you get interviewed by the school that will potentially hire you. In other words, my getting an interview with the TDSB doesn't guarantee me a job, but it is the first step in the process and is encouraging.

Thank you to all who have been praying me through this process; it is far from over, but this is good news :).

Grown Up Survey

2007-04-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

(Got this one from Amy Ells.)

The "Grown Up" Survey
(Meant to be completed by those out of high school)

Tired of all of those surveys made up by high school kids?
'Have you ever kissed someone?'
'Missed someone?'
'Told someone you loved them?'
'Drank alcohol?'
Here are 50 questions for the people who are a little more "mature"...

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?
The car lease

2. Where was the last place you had a romantic dinner?
Boston Pizza

3. Last time you puked from drinking?
Never happened

5. Name of your first grade teacher?
Mrs. Ecker

6. What do you really want to be doing right now?
Sleeping

7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Several things came up, but after each fad had passed I went back to wanting to be a teacher.

8. How many colleges did you attend?
One college and one university...oh, plus a 3 week course at Jerusalem University College in Israel

9. Why did you choose the shirt that you have on right now?
It matches the brown pants I'm wearing, which I chose 'cuz my non-faded jeans are dirty and I didn't want to wear faded jeans to today's conference.

10. Gas prices?
Filled up yesterday at 102.5 :P

12. First thought when the alarm went off this morning?
No thought...just an unconscious hitting of the snooze button

13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?
Likely something to do with upcoming due dates and get-togethers

14. Favorite style of underwear?
Anything I don't notice I have on...I've worn comfortable and uncomfortable pairs of just about every style.

15. Favorite style of underwear for the opposite sex?
Silk boxers.

16. What errand/chore do you despise?
Anything smelly (litter box, moldy food disposal/dish cleaning, garbage/green bin, and anything involving bleach, which my nose is quite sensitive to) and vacuuming

17. If you didn't have to work, would you volunteer?
Yes...and then I'd probably put so much of myself in that that I'd still be exhausted.

18. Get up early or sleep in?
Sleep in, though it does make me feel like I've wasted productive time.

19. What is your favorite cartoon character?
She-Ra

20. Favorite NON sexual thing to do at night with a girl/guy?
Cuddle and have a conversation, maybe watching TV and drinking Martin's awesome hot chocolate...or play World of Warcraft on our his-and-hers computers as we do a quest together.

21. Have you found real love yet
I've been married 6 years, I guess I'd better say yes ;)

22. When did you first start feeling old?
When I was a substitute teacher in my church's toddlers room and realized that all of them had been born since I'd started attending that church...I think I was 20 at the time

23. Favorite 80's movie?
Labyrinth

24. Your favorite lunch meat?
Turkey

25. What do you get every time you go into Sam's Club? Or Walmart?
A Cadbury Thins chocolate bar (mint chip, if they have it)

26. Beach or lake?
Beach

27. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?
No!

28. How many people do you stalk on Facebook?
I like Amy's answer: "define stalk..." I think if my friends change something about their profile, they *want* other people to notice...

29. Favorite guilty pleasure?
Anything involving chocolate.

30. Favorite movie you wouldn't want anyone to find out about?
Nothing comes to mind...my step aerobics DVD? My favourite movies are all pretty innocent :P.

31. What's your drink?
I assume this is the usual alcohol question...I had a really good strawberry-kiwi Zinfandel at a family gathering one year. Generally some variety of sweet wine, a cooler or something fruity like a hard cider. I don't drink all that often, however.

32. Cowboys or Indians?
I don't get this question. I appreciate the culture of the Native Peoples much more than that of the cowboys...

33. Cops or Robbers?
Cops

34. Who from high school would you like to run into?
*Shrug* I'm open to running into just about anyone from there. Might be nice to see Mr. Carper again.

35. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?
Probably 680 News for a traffic report...I generally have on a CD or my iPod.

36. Norm or Cliff?
Huh?

37. The Cosby Show or the Simpsons?
The Cosby Show

39. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?
I guess this would be the person whose desk is across from my practicum host teacher's...sure, I get along with him

40. If you could get away with it, who would you kill?
No one, really. There have been times this year when I've thought the stress was enough that I wouldn't have minded if someone decided to end my life, but not really.

41. What famous person(s) would you like to have dinner with?
How about a famous chef just *make* me dinner :)...I can't think of anyone I'd like to have dinner with that I can actually see a conversation going well with. I'm trying to think of someone famous who comes across as very "normal," but I'm drawing a blank.

42. What famous person would you like to sleep with?
I can think of people who are attractive, but no one I'd want to sleep with.

43. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?
No, but I have had to put an end to fires through various other means (only one in our house that I can think of--a stovetop grease fire that was Martin's fault and that I quickly put baking soda on before he could put the water on it that he was going to)

44. Last book you read for real?
The last non-textbook book that I finished was The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan (book 2 in the Wheel of Time series).

45. Do you have a teddy bear?
Yes, but the only one that sleeps with me is Martin.

46. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?
The kitchen and living room? Nothing exciting :P.

47. Somewhere in California you've never been and would like to go?
Never been to the state...something involving the coast, palm trees, Los Angeles, visiting some friends who moved there, and a side trip to Disney. California is not on my list of travel priorities, but who knows.

48. Do you go to church?
Yes, pretty much every week, though I have to miss most of the service between a third and a half of the year due to teaching Sunday school

49. At this point in your life would you rather start a new career or a new relationship?
Career...since I am just finishing school and should be just starting my first career soon!

50. Just how OLD are you?
27

Almost there...

2007-04-24T21:56:00.000-04:00

So here's what's happening in my program for the next little while:
- Tomorrow I have class, though it'll be more like a work period once Wayne and I and some other people do our presentations and only the intermediate-senior teacher candidates will be there (since the junior-intermediate people will be on a field trip).
- Thursday I have a mandatory conference to attend (but it's at York, which is nice; no having to commute to a hotel or other campus this time).
- Friday I am on practicum...and I remain on practicum until Friday, May 18.
- Monday, May 21 is Victoria Day (though it is also the due date to electronically submit one of our assignments).
- Tuesday, May 22 the people in my program have a field trip to mulch and measure trees (and maybe plant some, too; there seems to be confusion on this point).
- Wednesday, May 23 we have a "portfolio fair" where we present our professional growth portfolios to our course directors and some visitors for evaluation. This is the last official day of our program, and indeed of the MST program in general (since York is scrapping it, at least for now)...
- ...so the afternoon and evening of Thursday, May 24, most of us MSTers are going to get together and PARTY.

We're almost there. We still have lots of assignments and planning and marking and job applications and such to worry about, but the end is in sight. Since today was our last formal class together, lots of pictures were taken, a potluck was held (complete with entertainment from some of our classmates and dances and dance lessons of several cultures), presents were given to our course directors, and the atmosphere was fairly jolly. Everyone is already talking about how sad we will all be to leave each other; some real bonding has happened in our group, and we've already mentioned now and then that at least some of us actually miss being with the group when the weekends and practicum blocks come (must be those of us who sat in the blue groups during orientation ;)). Hopefully, though, we are moving on to bigger and better things. Hopefully we will all find ourselves at schools where the staff get along just as well as we've gotten along in MST. If not, well...let's keep in touch, MSTers. Prep and marking and such may keep us busy in our first year, but there's always time for Facebook.

MST's poetry slam

2007-04-18T07:09:00.000-04:00

So...this is one of those entries where I more or less recall an event that happened, more as a reference for myself than for the entertainment of others, really. There is a little poetry scattered throughout, though, so feel free to skip around, check out the links, etc. if you like that kind of stuff.

Yesterday the intermediate/senior teacher candidates in my program had a guest speaker come in to talk about poetry in math/science/technology education. Being a big fan of poetry myself, I enjoyed the session and found it relaxing, but I do feel somewhat inclined to agree with others who wondered why that session was part of our program (which we paid good tuition money for), especially as I don't think the speaker really did connect the poetry well with the math/science/technology. Putting that aside, however, I always enjoy the opportunity to revel in the poetic for a bit; I don't usually think of using the little free time I have to do so, and given the workload my program is currently under (Atlas has nothing on us), it was refreshing to be pretty much forced to take this curricular time out from more pressing concerns and enjoy the flow of words for a bit.

Our speaker first read three poems to us. One of them has become one of my favourites..."Did I Miss Anything" by Canadian poet Tom Wayman. (The others were an excerpt from Dr. Seuss' On Beyond Zebra as well as Love After Love by Derek Walcott.)

Our speaker took us through a number of exercises. In the first, we were asked to think individually of 3 things we would take on a trip, and then each table was to come up with a consensus on 2 items we would take as a table. My table ended up taking underwear and music, despite one member's insistence that it would be more fun without the former. A reading followed of The Choice by Wayland Young, which describes a very peculiar trip taken by one particular man. We were then asked to decide as a table what one thing we would take if we had gone on that trip. Apparently music is very important to the people who were at my table, as we finally decided that's what we would take, claiming that it would get us through anything.

Another exercise was the "I am from..." poem, where we were given a series of prompt questions to be answered in the poem (which he tried to modify from its usual structure to apply more to us MST folks). I am not sure what I think of this exercise, at least in its MST form...you naturally more or less end up with a list, which I didn't find very poetic, although you are supposed to rework it until it sounds poetic (which I felt I was unable to do). Here is what I ended up with (that one mathematical bit isn't supposed to look as big as it does, but this is the only way the bit with the smallest font appears legibly):

I am from E=mc².
Are we ready to carry on?
I am from my emergent model of education.
I am from Mrs. Gorrie, grades 2 and 3.
I am from Tim Horton's.
I am from
...and the conservation of energy.

By the way, I double-dog-dare y'all to find the limit given in that poem, if it exists. It's question 36 in Varberg, Purcell and Rigdon (8th ed.) section 2.8, but VPR only gives the solutions to odd-numbered questions and even the solutions manual won't help you :P.

We were also asked to create a lie poem--something along the lines of, "I will not die, but I will turn into a rocketship and..." The speaker mentioned that some lie poems end up being very personal, that people sometimes cry when they read them aloud, etc. Yeah, lemme just say that though my eyes are good and dry, and I think it makes me angry rather than sad, there is no way I am sharing my lie poem here; as much as I would love to show it off ('cuz it's not half bad), no one who might actually understand it is allowed to read it. Some poetry is meant solely for the poet.

Our final exercise was to create something I have never tried before: found poetry. Each table was given a place to look for words and phrases we wanted to use and turn them into a poem. My table was to look for words and phrases on signs and bulletin boards around the building. We didn't use nearly all of the fragments we gathered, but after considerable editing we ended up with something like this, to the best of my awful memory:

Slackers wanted for joint program!
Limited engagement avec your belle-soeurs!
Remember to cover breathing passages;
There is no in and out exit.
Last time this year!

Actually, I am certain that I am missing at least one line, as I know we had the word "ethoi" in there, too. (Seriously, we found "ethoi" on a bulletin board posting...I think it had to do with the subject of a conference or speaker session. On a completely unrelated note, I just found out now that 1. "ethoi" probably is not the correct way of pluralizing ethos, and 2. "ethos" means something completely different than what I thought it did when we wrote our poem.)

That's all the poetry we did in class, though we did watch a film about the use of "notebook letters" throughout a school year by a teacher in Japan that was kinda neat (and a tear-jerker, at that). Hmm, actually, I think he might have read something to us as a closing as well, but I don't remember.

This is where the poetry ended for some of the people in my program, but I couldn't let it go at that. In the class that we were to have after lunch, each person was supposed to do a very short presentation (in whatever format we wanted--we were asked to be creative) about the model of education each of us has put together in our individual minds and think we will carry into the classes we will teach in September. I had thrown together a pretty boring Maslow's-hierarchy-type pyramid drawing, but I completely abandoned that and wrote the poem below to present instead. I was not the only person to present a poem, but of course my own poem means the most to me of all the poems that were presented :). With this I will close.

i come to your class
trembling a little
for i don't yet know what kind of class this will be.
which teacher will you be to me?
maybe you will be [name removed],
who taught me who knows what
but was always glad to see me.
maybe you will be [name removed]
who wished i were not in the line of sight
between himself
and those who knew the chain rule before the first day of class.

i come to your class
wondering what kind of ground i will tread
will you set for me a level path?
will you make sure i can crawl before you ask me to walk?
or will you beckon me from the sky to fly to you?

i come to your class
wondering what kind of face i will see
will you see the intelligence in my eyes?
will you see the green things growing through
the concepts you have presented to me
with your many words?
will your face match mine,
though we may stand in contrast
to the untrained eye?

i come to your class
i see that you love all the ideas the government wants you to teach me
and that you want me to love them, too
will you and i get there?
will you take the time to work through
all the filters between me and thee?

i am sure there is a safari of science
to explore, adventure through
and wrestle with
beyond these doors,
but i need you first to help me up the stairs
and turn the key in the door

i come to your class
a wick
and a small clay pot of oil
will you be the one to light the spark?
or will you carelessly knock me over
and ruin the lamp forever?

Easter Monday = spanking day?

2007-04-06T16:24:00.000-04:00

I kid you not, this comes directly from Wikipedia (see the "Central Europe" section of the Easter article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter#Central_Europe):

In the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, a tradition of spanking or whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males throw water at females and spank them with a special handmade whip called pomlázka (in Czech) or korbáč (in Slovak). The pomlázka/korbáč consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods), is usually from half a metre to two metres long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end. It must be mentioned that spanking normally is not painfull or intended to cause suffering. A legend says that females should be spanked in order to keep their health and beauty during whole next year. An additional purpose can be for males to exhibit their attraction to females; unvisited females can even feel offended. Traditionally, the spanked female gives a coloured egg and sometimes a small amount of money to the male as a sign of her thanks. In some regions the females can get revenge in the afternoon or the following day when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male. The habit slightly varies across Slovakia and the Czech Republic. A similar tradition existed in Poland (where it is called Dyngus Day), but it is now little more than an all-day water fight.

In Hungary (where it is called Ducking Monday), perfume or perfumed water is often sprinkled in exchange for an Easter egg.

I wonder how accurate this is? I always get worried when a source contains spelling and grammatical errors (what exactly is "painfull"?). In any case, I am glad that Easter Monday is not "an all-day water fight" here...that would be mighty cold.

Easter weekend

2007-04-06T14:29:00.000-04:00

(Warning: spiritual post ahead. You are free to stop reading now if that is going to be a problem.)

Here we are, at the Easter long weekend again. I remember once telling a friend that there are a number of times in the year when I make new resolutions and decide to change for the better...the start of a new school year, New Year's Day (which is just Jan. 1 for me, though if I were of one of several cultures that officially recognize a different day as the start of the new year I'm sure I'd make resolutions then, too), my birthday, anytime a new semester/term starts, when the sun starts to come out again after a long grey winter and my energy levels start to pick up again...and Easter. I remember her response was something like, "Easter? Come on. Now you're going too far." *Shrug*...hey, for me, it's true. Easter is when Christians remember Christ's atoning death on our behalf and His subsequent resurrection. When you believe that someone experienced a very brutal and painful execution (let alone the beatings, scourging and ridicule that were part of the package) on your behalf to provide you with a gift that you believe you are completely unworthy of, and when that someone is someone you have grown to love, taking time out of your life to think on that is a humbling experience. I know the joke is that nominal Christians are C&E Christians, showing up at church only at Christmas and Easter...the two happy Christian holidays. I remember my theology professor suggesting that even a lot of Good Friday services aren't left focusing solely on Good Friday, but rush ahead to celebrate Easter, which in his view was because a lot of Christians are uncomfortable with the sorrow of the occasion and had to hurry up and get to the happy ending (he said this to my class as he invited us to a tenebrae service, which definitely cannot be accused of doing this). To me, though, Good Friday is the most important service of the year. It is Good Friday that provided the sacrifice I needed to happen if I was to have hope. It is the pain of Good Friday that speaks to me the most of God's love for us. It is Good Friday that challenges me by reminding me of what Christ did on my behalf and asking me if my daily actions reflect any gratitude through service and taking the time to further develop my relationship with Him. To me, to not remember Good Friday would be like a slap in the face of the one who suffered for me. No, I am okay with including remembrance of sorrow and suffering in my devotional life. I am okay with having my walk challenged from time to time. I fully believe that I need these things. I guess the question is, what am I going to do about it this year? (By the way, I am not ignorant of the debates about whether Easter has pagan roots or is too commercial and whether Christians should even celebrate it; all I will say is that for now I am of the opinion that we can, and that the same goes for Christmas.)

Oh, I should clear up the confusion I caused Miriam earlier today. I suggested that it is actually quite appropriate that it has snowed today and will snow all Easter weekend. I was making a reference in my head to verses like Psalm 51:7 and Isaiah 1:18, although I thought there were similar references in the New Testament that would have been more appropriate for this weekend that I was apparently making up. People who look at Easter as a day of yellow chicks and baby bunnies and chocolate and part of the beginning of spring may be disappointed by the snow, but it is helping me to think of Easter in a different way. That's not to say I won't be glad to see the snow leave, however.

Have a good long weekend, everyone!

Edit: P.S.: here is a link to a Good Friday analogy I think I like: http://www.new-life.net/favrt044.htm

Public service announcement: my summer starts later than you think.

2007-04-04T06:47:00.000-04:00

Hi, all,

I've had a number of requests to get together with friends in the past "x" number of days. I will save you all the trouble now and tell you that crunch time has officially started at school for me now and I am going to have to put my exciting social life on hold to deal with it. I know, I know, I was at a concert this past Saturday...I made an exception in that case, and crunch time hadn't hit me between the eyes in the same way at the point that I agreed to attend the concert as it has since then. Anyway, I think my last day of classes is May 24 (sometime that week, anyway), and by that point I will be seriously in need of some chill time with y'all.

So, yeah, don't assume that just because school is done for most university people partway through April (or whenever their last exam is) means that I am free...I am not. I am dealing with a unit plan assignment, "learning task 2" (for which my partner and I are going to create a diary/scrapbook for a fictitious teacher as he/she grows in pedagogical understanding), a field trip assignment (for which my partner and I are going to check out the forensics lab downtown - so cool), a group presentation on a chapter in a book I don't want to read, a professional growth portfolio, my practicum binders, several sets of readings and the required responses, two final papers (one of which is going to require me to set up an interview with some teenagers on their use of computer-mediated communication and the Internet and the other of which requires me to do a presentation and summary), finding myself a job for next year, attending a couple PD activities to give my résumé a bit more punch, marking and planning lessons for practicum. It's not that I don't love y'all, but socializing is going to have to be given a much lower priority for the time being :P. That being said, I do still have to have to eat, which is how I justify attending the get-together some people from my program are going to have at Blueberry Hill at lunch today :).

Seeing as I won't be seeing some of you for a while, feel free to drop me a line...you have my e-mail and Facebook location :).

What I did in class today (a.k.a. my origami journey)

2007-03-27T21:53:00.000-04:00

Seen here are the frog I learned to make in class in grade 3, the ninja stars I learned to make at the Japanese cultural centre in grade 5, and the box I learned to make from a guest speaker that came to my B.Ed. class this past Monday morning.

How it started: The mild emotional trauma many in my program have been experiencing the last couple days led me to seek relief today during our 15-minute break in some form of sugar that would last around me a little longer than chocolate, which ended up being Starburst candies. Eating the candies reminded me of that old commercial where some chick puts a red Starburst wrapper in her mouth, then pulls a red origami crane out of her mouth a short time later...and the take-off of that Martin and I did at Todd and Lindsey's wedding (good times, good times). That and the colourful wrappers and the need to distract myself somewhat from further trauma inspired me to get folding; thankfully my course directors and professors seem to understand my need to add "enrichment" to my classroom experience ;).

Hmm, I forgot until now that I could also have made some of the boxes I learned to make in class in grade 8 (which we were to teach our grade 3 reading buddies to make as a special Christmas project); maybe next time.

Notice the neat way in which the stars fit inside the box...it's like a quiver of ninja stars. I'm so organized, I even have a place for my weapons and my weapons in their place :P. They aren't very accessible for a quick draw, though; oh well.

I think Starburst are going to return to being my non-chocolate candy of choice, since they have the same fruit-flavoured punch, chewy texture and ability to last longer around me (and therefore medicate me longer) than chocolate (which gets inhaled quickly, meaning that it really is not around long enough to serve as the medication I may be trying to use it as at the time). Also, while they lack the satisfying candy crunch factor, Starburst do not make my jaw hurt after some time in the same way that Skittles do...and Skittles do not have colourful happiness-inducing wrappers. (Oh, by the way, lest you all be worried, I am mostly joking about using sugar as medication here, though today was particularly bad at the point that I was intentionally seeking out soemething like the Starburst.)

Alright, enough procrastinating. See some of you in class tomorrow. I hope tomorrow's speaker from Environment Canada is better than the lady from a different organization who talked to us about climate change :T.

Send me?

2007-03-24T11:42:00.000-04:00

This post is really intended for my praying friends...not that y'all can't read it to see what's going on in my head these days, but three-quarters of you will probably think I'm crazy :). Well, I'm okay with that ;).

Martin and I were at a banquet last night that SIM (Serving in Mission) Canada puts on every year. I am on the missions committee of our church and was invited to attend by one of our missionary couples, along with Martin and another committee member. I remember even in high school I had thoughts about perhaps working in Africa one day. Martin didn't seem to have feelings that way, though. I knew I wanted to be a teacher, so I kept going with that path as it seemed to fall right into place for me, leading to my acceptance into teacher's college for this 2006-2007 school year and the success I've enjoyed in that program so far (not that it's been an easy year, let me tell you). I'm training to teach high school, and my teachable subjects are chemistry and physics. Anyway, some days before we went to this banquet, Martin asked me if I thought it was some recruitment thing for the mission...and asked questions and made remarks indicating an openness to being involved in missions that I have never heard him express before. Anyway, we went to the banquet last night, which included not only the dinner but a singer/pianist duet performing some songs and some speakers. On our tables, among other things, were sheets listing teaching positions that were in urgent need for the mission's schools around the world for the 2006-2007 school year. I didn't notice it at first, but the wife in the missionary couple that had invited us picked it up to show me and joked to me I'd have to be careful or I might get convicted and decide to teach at one of those schools. These schools partly exist to teach the children of missionaries (often fondly referred to in church circles as MKs - missionary kids), who attend as boarders. If the schools shut down (whether due to a lack of teachers or other circumstances), apparently the missionaries often return home (i.e., to Canada or the States or wherever home was before they became involved in missions), removing them from the field. Well, I looked over the sheet, saw some math and science teaching opportunities, saw Martin looking over it, too, and kept it in mind. Today I looked at the website for the mission, clicked on the link listing urgent needs for Ethiopia, and noticed that there is an urgent need for several teachers there for the 2007-2008 school year, including at least one opening in chemistry and physics. I asked Martin if he wants to go to Ethiopia; he said, "Maybe we should!" However, I had to explain that it might not be a salaried position (and I've confirmed that by clicking through a few more links); we would have to raise support, and that scares him. Heck, it scares me...the 2007-2008 school year is not that far away, and being on our church's mission board means I know there is no additional funding available from them at the moment. And Martin does not have a university degree, so he probably would not be a teacher and something else would have to be found for him (which I don't think would necessarily be that hard; maybe he would be a dorm parent, or maybe something else unrelated to the school would come up). Is this everything falling into place to call me to this opportunity? It seems too uncanny. What will our families say? Does the mission want a first-year teacher doing this? Will Martin's medical condition interfere, or will the MRI in July show that he's all cured and the second AVM is no longer a concern? Well, if Martin is okay with it I'll put in an inquiry and we'll see what happens; perhaps this is nothing, and I will teach here in Toronto for the rest of my life, but I think I would be remiss if I didn't at least ask for more information. This may end up just being dropped without any further mention by me, but this is what is on my mind right now. Friends, please pray. Thanks for listening.

Stupid file formats...

2007-03-18T13:08:00.000-04:00

This is the part of the show where Joy asks her blog/Facebook readers for help.

Sooo, any of y'all know of a free (legal - i.e., without scamming a program off some p2p network) way to change a .wmv Windows-Media-Player-format movie into something I can stick on my video iPod (like a .avi or a .mov)? All my Googling only turns up programs I'd have to pay for...I downloaded a trial version of one program, but it put an obnoxious fluorescent green watermark right across the screen for the entire duration of the newly-made movie. I'm not really willing to pay for something to do this at this point as I'm not needing to transfer a lot of files, but if there is a free way to do this then I'm all ears.

Oh, and no need to inform me on how to change Windows-Media-Player-format audio into something I can use with iTunes; I've already figgered that one out. It's only the movies I'm concerned about at this point.

The tax man cometh...hooray!

2007-03-10T20:27:00.000-05:00

You know what I love about being a student? Tuition tax credits. I finally took the time today to sort through all our various bills, pay stubs, and other financial paperwork, and to file most of it. Some things have been sitting around unfiled since May, yikes! I use a spreadsheet and Quicken to keep track of it all, so all the bills have been paid in a timely fashion, but I tend to be lazy when it comes to actually getting the physical documents into their respective file folders. Anyway, I also finally took the time today to install the new version of QuickTax for the 2006 tax year and to input all the information I had on hand, and I am very pleased with the number that shows up in the area that shows our expected refund. It's also really nice to see the amount of tuition tax credits I still have left over from this year (and previous years, even after I transfer the maximum amount of it them I can to my husband) that will carry forward to be used against the tax I'll probably have to pay next year (when I'll hopefully be much more gainfully employed than I am currently). Unfortunately, I know I won't be able to enjoy the refund for long--part of it is earmarked to help pay off more of hubby's student loans, part of it is promised in bond form to be part of our church's building program fund, and we do have to top up our bank accounts a little as they've gotten lower than I like them to be due to some excessive spending lately. However, we have been getting increasingly frustrated with our refrigerator, so perhaps this refund will provide some cash for a big new toy in the kitchen...that would be nice. I know I'm eventually not going to like this time of year so much, since my not being a student any more will mean the eventual drying up of my tuition tax credits, but hey, I'll then probably be making more $ year-round than I am now, so I'll have that $ to spend...and having more $ will also mean we'll be giving more $ away and thus increasing our charitable donation tax credits, too.

Oh, for those of you who know about what's been going on at Martin's work: they had the vote on the new contract today, and they are not going on strike after all--they accepted the new deal, although it is still a pretty crappy one. Andrew and Mira, Martin and I still have to figure out if we're going to join you for the Jars of Clay concert, but it's a relief to know finances won't be the deciding factor.

I'd better run as I'm helping to run the service at our church tomorrow (I'm on the world outreach committee, and we run a World Outreach Sunday a few times a year where we focus on our missionaries and our call in a special way) and I have to remind myself of what I have to do. Have a good night, y'all!

I will remember you...

2007-03-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

I just had a nap. I don’t know if I had some deep dream or something, or if maybe it’s the Battlestar Galactica episode I watched before my nap interacting with the openness that the subconscious state brings, but I find myself awake now and in a reflective mood.

Part of the Facebook experience is seeing your friends list grow, finding a place to communicate with the classmates, coworkers, family members and other miscellaneous people who brighten our lives (MSTers, this includes you, you special teacher folk you) as well as a place to reconnect with and recognize those who have shared our life experiences in the past (this includes all you people I haven’t seen since the Ice Gardens, Tyndale, Woburn or even CHPS). I think part of the reason Facebook has taken off to the extent that it has is the warm fuzzy feeling people get from looking at their friends list, and the significance they get to feel when someone adds them as a friend, saying, “I remember you!”

However, I don’t think I’m the only one who sees gaps in her friends list. We’ve all lost people along the way. Hmm, that sounds morbid, and there have been those we’ve lost in that final kind of sense—for example, I flipped through my high school yearbooks recently to find one of the other teacher candidates who is working at Agincourt C. I. with me (Connie Lam, class of 2002), and was reminded by a tribute page of the passing of Vish, who was not a personal friend of mine but may have been one of yours—but that is not what I mean. I’m talking about the girl who made it clear to me (though never directly in words) at one point in high school that she no longer wanted me around, for whatever reason. I’m talking about the friendships I started to see as more-than-friendships and pushed too far, losing friendships I valued as a result. I’m talking about those friends who moved away and I failed to keep in touch with in the way I wanted to in the midst of all I busied my life with. I’m sure there are other categories, but that’s a sampling of what I mean.

Such passages are a necessary part of life; I can’t imagine trying to keep in touch with all the people I’ve ever met. Such losses are still sad in their own little way. Let’s take a moment at the beginning of March Break (for those of us who get to experience it, hooray—sorry, that was irrelevant, but I'm happy to be on vacation :)) to remember those we’ve left behind. I’m raising my glass; here’s to you.

Okay, enough of that; hubby wants to watch some TV with me now. Catch y’all later.

Bring on the Break!

2007-03-09T06:28:00.000-05:00

Woohoo, March Break starts today! I still have to do some teaching between now and then, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. If my grade 10 applied science students are good, they will get to play Motion Bingo today (they create their bingo cards from a provided list of words from the physics/motion unit, then we take turns drawing cue cards that have those words on them), complete with sugar-filled prizes. My grade 11 university-preparation-level chemistry students are doing presentations today of posters they've created on municipal and home water treatment. They get 20 minutes to 1/2 an hour to finish up their posters and consult with their groups before doing their presentations, and then they do all sorts of group, self and peer assessments and take notes from each other's posters. All in all, it will be an easy day for me...intentionally so, because it seems like every teacher I've talked to is burnt out at this time of year, and we student teachers are feeling it, too. Thankfully, we have our ways of getting the students to learn while still giving ourselves a break :).

My plans for the Break are fairly unspectacular; sleep, apply for teaching jobs, read the novel I bought yesterday (The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan - book 3 of the Wheel of Time series), get a haircut, go for my physical, wash the car, spend the gift certificates I haven't had the chance to since my b-day or even Christmas (new clothes! woohoo!), hope that Reitman's will still exchange the too-big pants my husband got me for my b-day, and generally get caught up on this, that and the other thing (housework? what is housework? student teachers have no time for it, whatever it is). Oh, and teach Vacation Bible School from about 9 to noon every weekday. Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to be taking a break from teaching; I guess I'm some sort of teaching addict.

Yikes, look at the time; I'd better run and get ready, because I have to beat Photocopier Lady to the punch this morning if I'm going to do all I want to do with my students...

100 questions

2007-03-07T21:59:00.000-05:00

One of my Facebook friends posted this and I'm in the kind of lazy mindset to do something like this now, so here goes...

1. How old will you be in five years?
32

2. Who did you spend at least two hours with today?
My host teacher and my husband.

3. How tall are you?
5'5.75" :)

4. What do you look forward to most in the next six weeks?
March Break, baby!

5. What's the last movie you saw?
In the theatre? Epic Movie. It was amusing (though definitely not epic).

6. Who was the last person you called?
No clue who I called last on the land line...on my cell, it was my mom, on Saturday, to clarify details for a family get-together we had that day.

7. Who was the last person to call you?
My husband. He was bored at work and I had a prep period at practicum.

8. What was the last text message you received?
Some marketing message from Rogers, despite the opt-out reply I sent to the last one following their instructions :P.

9. Who was the last person to leave you a voicemail?
I think it was my dentist's office :P.

10. Do you prefer to call or text?
Call...less subject to misinterpretation, and, if they're available, so much more immediate.

11. What were you doing at 12am last night?
Sleeping.

12. Are your parents married/separated/divorced
Married.

13. When is the last time you saw your mom?
Sunday.

14. What color are your eyes?
Blue.

15. What time did you wake up today?
Wake up, or get out of bed? My alarm was set for something around 4:30 a.m. :(.

16. What are you wearing right now?
Sweater, grubby sweatpants, slippers, housecoat. I was dressed up for practicum earlier today but got "comfy" as soon as I came home.

17. What is your favorite Christmas song?
That's a tough one...probably Silent Night.

18. Where is your favorite place to be?
At home.

19. Where is your least favorite place to be?
Right now, I'd have to say outside in the cold.

20. Where would you go if you could go anywhere?
Going back to Israel for a visit might be nice. We didn't visit Eilat when I was there and I think I'd like to check that out, besides going back to some of the spots I liked when I was there in January 2000.

21. Where do you think you'll be in 10 years?
Hmm, I think I'll have had some kids by then and that they'll be in school. I'll probably be teaching. I'm taking things as they come these days and am not thinking that far ahead.

22. Do you tan or burn?
Burn :P.

23. What did you fear was going to get you at night as a child?
Ghosts. Slime-based ones that would interfere with the electrical system. If I had a dream where I flipped a light switch and the lights didn't come on, that meant it was a nightmare and the ghosts were after me.

24. What was the last thing that really made you laugh?
I don't remember :(...I am easily amused, but my memory is fleeting.

25. How many TVs do you have in your house?
1

26. How big is your bed?
Double. Not like we use even that much of the surface area :).

27. Do you have a laptop or desktop computer?
Desktop...but I can dream...we are seriously considering exploring the Mac world when we get our next computer.

28. Do you sleep with or without clothes on?
That changes from night to night based on a whole host of factors (do I have the energy to put night stuff on after taking day stuff off, how cold is it outside, does my bedmate have a fever, and, um, other factors that I'm not going to tell you about...)

29. What color are your sheets?
Navy blue

30. How many pillows do you sleep w-ith?
1, but sometimes I steal the corner of Martin's after he gets up.

31. What is your favorite season?
Fall.

32. What do you like about fall?
Crisp-not-cold temperatures, the changing colours, autumn rain, leaves blowing around in the wind, kicking my way through piles of leaves that have accumulated on the sidewalk and haven't been raked yet (this is how I stay young, lol...I also puddle-jump in the spring).

33. What do you like about winter?
Um...hmm...Christmas, my birthday, and my anniversary...and fresh-fallen-not-dirtied-by-cars snow is pretty, from *inside*. Actually, when I experienced the first real snowfall of packing snow this year I actually got pretty excited, I guess because of memories of snowballs and snowmen and snow forts and snow angels and tobogganing and...but really, I am a cold weather wimp :P.

34. What do you like about the summer?
I have no classes and it is warm (and since it's warm I'm more inclined to do enjoyable outdoor things like go see attractions, go for fitness walks, go on short trips with Martin and/or friends, etc.)

35. What do you like about spring?
Its arrival signals the end of winter (yeah, I know, I'm pretty down on winter, lol). Puddle-jumping. New flowers. The return of birdsong.

36. How many states/provinces have you lived in?
1.

37. What cities/towns have you lived in?
Scarborough.

38. Do you prefer shoes, socks, or bare feet?
Shoes, unless I'm at home.

39. Are you a social person?
Surprisingly, I think I'd have to say "yes" now. I like being around people who like me :), and I like to laugh with other people. I start to feel isolated and unliked if I haven't got together with others for a while. However, when tired I still recharge through times alone rather than by getting together with others, and I do protect my alone time, so I'm still classically an introvert.

40. What was the last thing you ate?
Pancakes. For dinner. Yup.

41. What is your favorite restaurant?
I think still Red Lobster, but I haven't been in forever :P.

42. What is your favorite ice cream?
Laura Secord's French and Frosted Mint. Mmmmm.

43. What is your favorite dessert?
I like dessert, period, and I like to mix it up. Anything involving chocolate and/or ice cream is usually (but not always) a sure bet, though I do also enjoy things like apple crisp (with french vanilla ice cream).

44. What is your favorite kind of soup?
I've had this thing for Italian wedding soup in recent years.

45. What kind of jelly do you like on your PB & J sandwich?
I do not like PB&J...only PB...and it's got to be smooth Kraft peanut butter.

46. Do you like Chinese food?
Yes.

47. Do you like coffee?
I don't even like the smell.

48. How many glasses of water, a day, do you drink on average?
If I fill my water bottle and keep it with me, generally 4. No water bottle...no water.

49. What do you drink in the morning?
Milk. Chocolate milk on the rare occasions we get it when we go shopping.

51. Do you sleep on a certain side of the bed?
My left (as I'm lying in it). That's the side my clock radio is on and opposite to the side my husband's clock radio is on.

52. Do you know how to play poker?
Sort of...I didn't do too badly at Texas Hold 'Em during our B.C. field study, but I think that's because we all sucked :).

53. Do you like to cuddle?
Yes, unless I'm preoccupied with trying to get stuff done.

54. Have you ever been to Canada?
I have hardly ever been out of it.

55. Do you have an addictive personality?
Depends what you call an addiction. (chocolate? cola drinks? wasting time on the Internet and generally staying up too late when I know it's going to hurt me the next day?)

56. Do you eat out or at home more often?
Home.

58. Do you know anyone with the same birthday as you?
Yes, including 1 Facebook friend.

59. Do you want kids?
Yes.

60. Do you speak any other languages?
No, though I understand more French than I speak if the pacing isn't too fast.

61. Have you ever gotten stitches?
Yes...chin, wrist and fingers (I was not trying to kill myself...I used inappropriate force with a stubborn window :P).

62. Have you ever ridden in an ambulance?
Yes, when we worried that Martin was having another brain injury "incident."

63. Do you prefer an ocean or a pool?
Pool...warmer and zero seaweed. Mind you, I've never swum in the ocean, just lakes and the Dead Sea.

64. Do you prefer a window seat or an aisle seat?
Window.

65. Do you know how to drive stick?
Yes, that's all we've got, and Martin says I'm amazing at it :).

66. What is your favorite thing to spend money on?
Food. If I had more of it I would buy more clothes...got to build that professional teaching wardrobe up, after all ;).

67. Do you wear any jewelry 24/7?
Yes, my engagement and wedding rings.

68. What is your favorite TV show?
TV? What is that? I guess Buffy. There's really nothing I watch on a regular basis anymore; I waste time in front of the computer rather than the TV screen.

69. Can you roll your tongue?
Yes.

70. Who is the funniest person you know?
Hmm...not sure.

71. Do you sleep with stuffed animals?
No, just Martin.

72. What is the main ring tone on your phone?
The one that came with it...some kind of salsa thing.

73. Do you still have clothes from when you were little?
No.

74. What red object is closest to you right now?
Some long-overdue thing I was supposed to send my sponsored child. Whoops!

75. Do you turn off the water while you brush your teeth?
Yes.

76. Do you sleep with your closet door open or closed?
How full are the hampers?

77. Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees?
Um...probably the bees.

78. Do you flirt a lot?
I hope not...I be married an' all.

79. What do you dip a chicken nugget in?
Honey, BBQ sauce, or sweet & sour sauce. Usually honey.

80. What is your favorite food?
Does chocolate count?

81. Can you change the oil on a car?
I've never tried...I would need guidance and probably someone with stronger wrists to do any wrenching/unscrewing required, but I'd be willing to give it a shot.

82. Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket?
No. The one time I got pulled over, it was because, according to the cop, they thought my engine sounded noisy. I still don't understand that one.

83. Have you ever run out of gas?
No.

84. What is your usual bedtime?
Sometime between 10:30 p.m. and midnight.

85. What was the last book you read?
As in completed? The Great Hunt - book 2 of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

86. Do you read the newspaper?
If one is handy, I try to flip through the entire thing.

87. Do you have any magazine subscriptions?
No.

89. Do you watch soap operas?
No.

90. Do you dance in the car?
Depends what you call dancing...I've been known to bounce, wiggle and sway the odd time...but mostly I just sing along.

92. Who is in the picture frame closest to you?
My husband and I on our wedding day :). Sitting unframed beside it are pictures of Laura & Andrew and Karen & Dan on their wedding days.

93. What was the last note you scribbled on a piece of paper?
"2735 40"...notes relevant to the Rime Age in realMYST.

94. What is your favorite candle scent?
Vanilla, I think.

95. What is your favorite board game?
Scrabble.

97. When was the last time you attended church?
This past Sunday...but I taught Sunday school, so the last time I heard a sermon was the week before that (unless that was the week I was sick...well, I'm generally there weekly, anyway).

98. Who was your favorite teacher in high school?
Mr. (now Dr.) Seshadri. Wah!

99. What is the longest you have ever camped out in a tent?
Probably about a week. It was in Girl Guides or Pathfinders. The details are fuzzy.

100. Who was the last person to do something extra special for you?
My husband. He made me a whole teapot of After Eight hot chocolate last night (then brought me 2 mugs of it right away) when I was feeling overwhelmed with stuff I was trying to get done.

open

2007-03-02T21:20:00.000-05:00

In my post titled "musing..." on Feb. 27, I mentioned a poem titled "open" that I wrote August 11, 2004, the day my husband finally opened his eyes days after sustaining a brain injury. I've decided that that poem is worth re-posting, so here it is for those of you who never got the chance to read / hear it the first time around. Enjoy.

-----
open

Here I stand, beside your bed.
I watch you sleep, watch you dream.
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
Your neck swells in a swallow--
such a simple sign
bringing such peace;
you are awake enough to feel the tube in your throat.
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
Scarce did I know
how precious you are to me
As I see my life, my all
being kept alive by fluid lines and vacuum tubes.
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
Now folding shirts is so much more
than a daily chore
Every crease speaks of love.
This place will be ready to welcome you home.
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.

There you stood, beside his bed.
You saw my sorrow, my longing. You said,
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
My neck swelled in a swallow--
a sign of holding back,
"keeping strong,"
strong enough to keep the faith, but still feeling the pain. You said,
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
Scarce did I know
how precious we were to you
You are our life, our all
keeping us alive with every breath and loving beat. You said,
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
Now our prayers are so much more
than just religious chores.
We return our thanks to you.
You have always been with him, healing in love. You said,
Open your eyes, my love.
Open your eyes.
And my eyes were opened
along with his.
I see him, I see you
and there is light.

This is PD?

2007-03-02T19:40:00.000-05:00

Today I experienced my second Professional Development Day on the teacher's side of the equation. Being on the teacher side of the equation means that a PD day is not a day off but rather a day you're paid to come in and learn something (well, I would be paid if I were a "real" teacher...obviously as a student teacher I don't get that privilege :P).

The first PD day I experienced this year, back in November, was run on the theme of "student success"...one of the current edubabble hot ideas out there. It focused on differentiated instruction, learning disabilities, multiple intelligences, Bloom's Taxonomy, meeting the needs of specially-identified students (those with IEPs, if you're up on the edubabble), and so on...essentially, helping all students succeed in some way. (By the way, just because I call something edubabble doesn't mean I disagree with it, but the theory of teaching does definitely have its own language.)

Today's PD day theme was "teacher success." Here is what the structure of the day looked like:

nutritious breakfast provided by the nutrition committee
session by a former principal of my host school: he taught all of us how to juggle (first by balancing peacock feathers, then juggling scarves, then bean bags, all in a very pedagogically proper progression)
nutrition break in the staff room
choose-your-own-workshop time, with sessions available on:

investments
Powerpoint
the fitness machines (treadmills, etc.) available in the weight room
ping pong (not learning about it, but playing it)
badminton (playing it)
auto maintenance
getting a free manicure from salon professionals brought in by the principal

session on "healthy choices" by a guest speaker who founded a particular weight loss program for men
lunch - this was not brought in, but a list of restaurants recommended by one of the VPs was provided and we were encouraged to check one of them out with other teachers
1.5 hours in the afternoon set aside for the various departments to run their own sessions. The science department head didn't program anything for us but allowed us to do what we wanted. (I helped clean out the chemical storage room with 3 other teachers, including the former head of the department who is now retired but covering a long-term supply teacher position. Among other things, we set aside for proper disposal probably about 8 containers of moth balls -- naphthalene -- as they are now a banned substance in schools. After that, I did some of my prep for my grade 10 applied science classes.)

Looking back over the day, there were aspects of it that I did enjoy. The juggling session was a lot of fun and was surprisingly a bit of a workout, though I'm still not sure what the point of it was. I did learn a little bit at the auto maintenance workshop, but I was amazed at how much my limited knowledge was an improvement over some of the other female teachers who attended (at least one of whom had never read her owner's manual and had no idea how to check the oil, let alone that you're supposed to do it on a regular basis). I gladly volunteered to help with the chem storage room because that is part of the job, after all, and I wanted to see the kinds of procedures that would be used (mind you, I thought we would be doing more actual cleaning up of spilled chemicals, stuff left in open, unlabelled containers, and so on; just handling closed bottles like we did really didn't educate me about the safety of the thing, but it did still all need to be done). I can also see that there was value in trying to educate us about living healthy lives, even if we'd heard much of the information before and really are capable of eating healthily and exercising outside of school time. Overall, I'd have to say I was disappointed in this PD day compared to the last one I attended. You win some, you lose some, I guess, even in terms of the PD activities that taxpayers' dollars go towards funding.

I suppose the weather that we had here in Toronto deserves mention, too. This morning was an annoying one for me, but not because of the weather. Today was the last day that I could hand in a particular assignment for York. Problem: it had to be submitted in hard copy (not by e-mail), and today was a practicum day. This meant driving from my home all the way out to York early in the morning, then driving back to my host school which is normally only a 10 minute drive from my house (if that), all the while hearing the radio tell me time and time again that it was a dangerous time to be out and about and that I and everyone else should stay home. Oh, and guess what, I was the first person to park in the driveway last night, my mother-in-law and one of my sister-in-laws both parked behind me (Martin and I rent my MIL's basement apartment), both of them hadn't planned on going anywhere today and all our cars were covered in the results of last night's freezing rain. Thankfully both my MIL and SIL were generous enough to come out and clean their cars off and move them for me when they realized I had to go out in today's conditions (I was going to do it myself, but it was sooo much easier this way)...it was a real family effort, with Martin (who took the day off work) chipping in as well. It is true that I stalled 4 times trying to back out of our driveway (apparently the snowplow came by 2 minutes after I finished heading down our side street, grr). However, once I got to the main roads there were no issues...like I said, the radio kept telling people over and over to stay home (and not to even walk outside in case a power line fell down and the amount of water on the ground would lead to anyone within 10 metres being electrocuted), and people must have been listening because I hardly had to share the highway with anyone compared to a regular day. As long as people stayed out of the left lane (which was sometimes flooded) and drove at a reasonable speed for the conditions, all was fine, but I am glad there weren't more people out there to contend with. It's always kind of weird being back at York after a practicum block (or, in this case, in the middle of one), but it felt kind of homey this time as well. (Thankfully the parking garage only charged me $2 for the short time I was there; I would have been much less happy this morning if I had been charged my usual rate.) I was amazed that the trip back from York to my host school took pretty much the same amount of time as it does on a day with perfect weather, and I only arrived at the PD day 10 minutes late (which didn't matter as we were in the middle of the breakfast buffet portion of the day anyway). I suppose it was an adventure of a day, but nothing a Young Drivers graduate couldn't handle ;).

Other MSTers, did any of you have a PD day today? Were your PD activities more worthwhile than mine were? How many students did those of you who had to teach end up with? I'd be interested in hearing what all you folks did today. By the way, weektwoisdone weektwoisdone weektwoisdone...

The best-laid plans...

2007-03-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

One of the classes I'm responsible for teaching this practicum block is a grade 9/10 split class. It is a science class run at the "essential" level. When I was in high school, we had advanced, general, and basic level classes; now those levels are called academic, applied and essential (well, they are at the grade 9 and 10 level; grades 11 and 12 have their own designations for the levels). In other words, my essential kids are the ones who supposedly can't even handle the applied level science course. I say "supposedly" because my host teacher and I feel that the students in my class have been mis-placed. It is easy for us to say this because there is a total of 3 students in this class, so we get to know them pretty well.

Anyway, this "essential" class is the one I still had to plan for when I got home from my sanity-inducing time out with friends last night. I had some resources from my host teacher and was reminded by him that any essential class really is a literacy course, regardless of the subject; I just had to put it all together and wrap in any ideas of my own that I had. I think the lesson I ended up planning was a good one, and I even managed to include a literacy activity from some Ministry of Education resources and my way of doing the water current/electrical current analogy that is suggested by the curriculum and that I incorporated into a York assignment earlier this year. I was kind of nervous about the lesson because it was going to be
the first time I actually taught these students (my block has been going on for a while, but they've been doing research on a poster project my host teacher assigned before my block started), but I could see it going well.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans. At the start of first period, my host teacher received a package he'd ordered for this class a while back: a kit for these students to assemble a working electric motor as a group. He seemed keen on having them start that today, so I went along with that (he did eventually give me the choice as to whether to do this or not, but you could tell the motor thing was what he wanted, and it was a great idea anyway). Okay, lesson plan out the window. Then we actually went to the classroom when it was time for class, 2nd period. Remember I said we have 3 students in this class. Well, 3 students were absent from our class today. Motor idea out the window for today, at least. The students had a poster due today, too (which made me wonder if they all skipped because they weren't done, but my host teacher doesn't think they'd be like that), but I guess they'll just have to bring them in next week, seeing as tomorrow is a PD Day.

That is my story about how an entire class skipped on me. Then I ran a lab with my 3rd period class, cleaned up after it, waited after school for 20 minutes for a student who said he'd show up and never did, and drove home in the worst snow I've driven in yet (but that was fine thanks to my Young Drivers skillz :)). The end. Oh, the exciting life of a student teacher :).

friends = cures for anxiety :)

2007-03-01T06:22:00.000-05:00

As many of y'all are aware, I have been quite busy with school (both practicum and my own assignments) this year. Many of y'all are also aware that I generally find this time of year to be quite difficult -- my motivation is usually close to nonexistent, I whine a lot about having to do anything, I do not get nearly enough sleep and I generally start voicing a belief that humans should have been created as hibernating beings. Whether this is due to the lack of sunlight in the winter, the cold weather that I am very sensitive to (and living in a basement apartment that is not heated quite enough due to cost-cutting measures upstairs doesn't help much, though I fully understand and support said cost-cutting measures), the fact that I've already been inundated with way too much schoolwork since September, just some attitude problem I need to fix, or some combination of said factors, I'm not sure...but I know that I've been suffering from whatever it is in recent weeks because there have been times when the stress of how much I need to do combined with my perfectionism have led to larger than usual bouts of procrastination, an at-times-paralysing anxiety, and some pretty lackluster lesson plans.

However, I wanted to thank everyone who came out to Jen's get-together at Jack Astor's and Dairy Queen last night. I know it was Jen's get-together, but it did me a world of good. You all saw the sugar-and-readiness-for-stress-relief-induced giddiness I had at Jack's (I'm glad that most of the people who were at the table last night have seen me in other, much more level-headed contexts and thus were hopefully not too scared by said giddiness ;)) followed by what I thought was the beginning of a sugar crash a little before I left Dairy Queen. Sitting down at my computer after I got home, though, I didn't feel like I was on a sugar crash. Rather, I was struck that I actually felt a sense of sanity, clearheadedness, and calm that is unusual for me at this time of year. Practicum planning no longer seemed like such a big deal. I felt more "normal" than I have felt for a while this winter. Now, sugar alone hasn't seemed to do the trick for me in the past (I had another day this week that involved a lot of Twizzlers, cinnamon hearts, and Coke, and I think in that case all the sugar just made me more anxious). This means the cure must have been being giggly and giddy with my friends (or at the very least some combination of my friends and sugar ;)). Thanks for being there last night; it was fun times and just what I needed right about now. I've also taken a couple steps to restore my spiritual life, which is helping immensely in this area as well, but that is a whole other story...

musing...

2007-02-27T20:50:00.000-05:00

Public service notice: please don't be expecting me to post my poetry on a regular basis. I think the last poem I wrote (before the one I just wrote and posted, that is) was "open," which was written on the day that my husband finally opened his eyes after sustaining a brain injury, being in a coma and having his eyes closed for about 6 days. (His eyes did not stay open that day, and this was not the same day that he gained consciousness, but it was still very special at the time.) That was August 2004. This is February 2007. If you want to read another poem of my writing, I can send you stuff from my past; for fresh stuff, you may have to wait a few years.

weave

2007-02-27T19:55:00.000-05:00

dear dangling thread,

    the tapestry has changed so much since the time you were pulled away,

even since the time I cut you off,

trying to pretend you did not exist, had no place in the pattern

yet there you are.

I have seen great cords emerge,

wrapping all my life around them;

such that this is no longer just a tapestry, but a song.

(is it this music

that seems to be drawing you in?)

    do not think i do not see you hanging there;

the knowledge of that loose end has unravelled my pride.

(grating dissonance; will you not simply be gone?)

now and again, you have woven your own tapestries in my head

when i could not help but rest from my own weaving,

leaving the loom untended.

    i see the new pattern i have brought to pass;

i am happy with it, i say.

can i truly be happy with such a work?

knowing how easily you would be seen

were the weave hanging with its other side to the wall;

can i live with such a proclamation of artist's failure?

dear dangling thread,

    do you fit the new pattern?

a slip stitch here, and how the themes could flow into one another, and the first transformed;

what a masterpiece this warp could bring about.

but i have seen how the second theme has flowed from the sky like water, like rain;

do i dare risk the onset of drought?

are you part of the flow?

(theme. variation. theme?)

[with thanks to T. S. Eliot, with maybe a little Robert Frost on the side.]

What I've been up to since high school.

2007-02-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

[To my few faithful non-Facebook readers on the regular dreamin-again.blogspot.com blog: please pardon this digression. I am making this post for Facebook reasons. But hey, since many of you haven't known me for the entirety of the history I'm about to describe, you get to learn more about me this way, too :)!]

Seeing as I have people on my Facebook friends list whom I have not seen in person nor talked to since, oh, high school (give or take), I've decided to use this post to share my summary of what's been going on in my life since we graduated from Woburn C. I. I originally wrote most of this for my life bio on classmates.com, but the fact that classmates.com requires a fee (which I am not willing to pay) for pretty much anything other than just seeing names and Facebook is free leads me to believe that Facebook is the better place for this profile to be. Alright, on with it...

Right after high school: I had planned for a long time to do a year of Bible college before going to university for my career degree. I went to Tyndale College (formerly Ontario Bible College, now Tyndale College University) for their Leading Edge program, which gave me a One Year Certificate in Christian Studies. It also included a 3 week trip to Israel and a one week inner city missions trip to Camden, New Jersey. This was all a great experience. I graduated with that certificate in 2000.

Working and wedding bells: I left my former job as a cashier at Lansing Buildall (now Rona Lansing) in September 2000 to begin working at the Scarborough Town Centre location of Black’s Photography (which I left in May 2003). In the 2000-2001 school year I worked 4 days a week and took the first and second Hebrew classes at Tyndale two days a week; while I wasn't going to do my career degree at Tyndale, I didn’t think I could handle full-time school and planning a wedding/getting married at the same time. I married Martin McCourt on January 27, 2001, exactly 5 years after we started dating.

My first degree, and a speed bump on the road of life: In the 2005-2006 school year I completed an Honours B. Sc. at York University (I don’t want to hear the York jokes...I went there for specific reasons and I happen to like York) with a major in chemistry and minor in physics. I worked as a research assistant for one of my professors from May 2003 through to the end of August 2005, gaining some experience I could take into the real world if I decided to pursue a job in the sciences. This position included a three week field study on Saturna Island (a tiny little island with a population of about 350 between Victoria and Vancouver, B.C.)...a great experience that included seeing whales in the wild 6 times, up close! I was originally supposed to graduate with my B.Sc. in June 2005, but Martin had a brain injury August 2004 and so I was only able to handle part-time studies in the 2004-2005 school year. How much life can change with just one phone call. The Lord sustained us through this situation, though, and Martin is up and walking around unassisted and back to full-time work and all.

Between degrees: I worked at the Ice Gardens at York University this past summer...I was a little exhausted after completing my B.Sc. and needed something low-key for my summer job (I didn't think I could handle doing research this summer with the state I was in...my brain wanted a break :)), and this fit the bill nicely. For various reasons to do with Canlan Ice Sports taking over the place I no longer worked there in August, which gave me a nice break before school started.

Current life stuff...back to school, in more ways than one: At this point I am pursuing a career teaching high school (my teachables: chemistry and physics), and am in teacher's college at York for the 2006-2007 school year. It is a lot of work. Really, though, I've been working towards being a teacher for so long (picking up whatever volunteer opportunities I could get along the way to give me experience towards getting into teacher's college and making sure this is what I really wanted to do) that this is just the next step in the process. It is good to feel that the process of realizing this goal is coming to an end and the plan is starting to come to fruition. The process will be complete when I finally get a teaching job, but then begins the lifelong task of becoming an ever-better teacher (and who knows what from there...teacher librarian? guidance counselor? principal? Minister of Education? one step at a time...), learning much from my students along the way. Martin and I still attend Wishing Well Acres Baptist Church at Pharmacy and Sheppard.

Keeping in touch: Jen McCauley also attends our church now and we still get together fairly often. Andrew Luft used to be on my bus home from York once in a while and I saw him occasionally at Woburn in the early part of 2006 as we were both doing some volunteering there. Cherylyn Dickson and I used to take the same bus to and from York as well, where she was working on a law degree last I heard, and apparantly we can still giggle as much as we did in grade 5. I've met up with Rika at York and have run into Andrew Steventon twice there as well. Then, of course, there is Facebook, where I'm sure many more people from my past lurk than I'll ever manage to reconnect with.

Interesting fact: when Martin and I got married, Matt, Jon and Rachel Blair became my second cousins! Small world...

Future plans at this point: completing my B. Ed. and getting my teaching certification, teaching for a while to help save up a down payment for a house, moving out of where we're renting now, and probably having some kids (the dream Martin has had twice about us having triplets is a little scary, though), probably going back to work at some point after the kiddos are born but maybe not. Still, who knows; life has much in store for me yet, I'm sure!

The genetics of autism?

2007-02-18T22:12:00.000-05:00

"Canadian researchers have led an international team in the discovery of a chromosomal region containing the genes that cause autism, a finding considered a breakthrough in the effort to better understand the condition." You can read the article here.

Think you can spell?

2007-02-16T17:33:00.000-05:00

I only got 16 out of 23. Try it. http://books.guardian.co.uk/quiz/questions/0,,1303707,00.html

Help, I'm fashion-impaired

2007-02-12T20:47:00.000-05:00

When is the usual time to shop for prom dresses? I've never actually been to a prom/formal/semi-formal, just weddings, so I'm looking forward to the night out in May. (By that point, those in my program will have really deserved it.) Hubby has said he will come along; not sure how much he will enjoy it but he's my man and the one I want to dance with :). The fact that there is a chocolate theme to the prom doesn't hurt things any (y'all know my sweet tooth :)). I'm looking forward to having a little bit of fun with my fellow MSTers...and wishing it weren't so far away (especially as that means I still have several classes to go between now and then).

Cop confusion.

2007-02-07T14:37:00.000-05:00

I drove to school today. Since I only had a half day of classes, I knew the 401 wouldn't be too busy for my commute home. I made my way out of the parking structure at York and began to head down Keele (which also wasn't very busy) towards the 401. Driving in the curb lane somewhat north of Wilson, I notice that a vehicle is parked on the side of the road in my lane with its hazards flashing. Okay, no big deal, I check my left and note there is a gap I can change into. I signal and move over. I am now directly in front of a police car, but no big deal. I get past the vehicle, check to make sure the way is clear, signal and change lanes back to the right. I come to a red light and stop. Hmm, the police car is still behind me. That's interesting, but still no big deal. The light turns green and I make my way through the intersection. Hmm, the police car is now flashing its lights. Am I really being pulled over? That's never happened before...do they just need me to clear the way so they can proceed to an emergency? Well, I signal, check my right, pull over to the right-hand side of my lane and stop. The police car stops behind me. And sits there for a while. Are they waiting for a break in traffic so they can carry on to the emergency? Doesn't seem like it. I guess I really have been pulled over, though I haven't a clue why; I haven't been speeding or doing anything reckless...maybe a taillight is out? Well, I guess I'd better get my license out of my wallet. Oh, look, the curbside door of the police car is opening. I roll down my window as the policeman approaches. We exchange greetings. He tells me, if I understand correctly, that the reason they pulled me over is that they thought my engine sounded noisy. He asks me for my license, ownership and insurance. I already have my license out; I quickly get out the other two items from the place I know they are in the glove compartment. He asks me who Martin is; that's my husband (whose name is on the ownership and insurance slips). He tells me he'll be with me in a minute and returns to the police car for a little while (not nearly as long as the wait before he came up to the car the first time). While he is gone I shift the car into neutral, set the parking brake and put on my hazard signals (oops, should have done that before, I guess, but whatever...I was stopped, had my right signal on, and had a police car with flashy lights behind me to protect me). On his return, he hands me back my license, insurance and ownership and thanks me; I thank him, put the items in a handy holding spot, cancel my hazards, shift back into gear, release the parking brake, cancel my right signal and put on my left (to signal that I'm now going to pull away from the curb), and drive off, cancelling my left signal shortly.

Okay, so I got no ticket, and not even a warning. The only problem was that my engine was apparently noisy. I did not have to cry, make excuses, or mention that my husband is related to several cops as well as the current chief of police, or point out that of course my engine sounded noisy right off the line from a red light...I drive a stick and didn't exactly get the chance to smoothly accelerate to the sweet spot of cruising along at the speed limit in 4th gear. So now I am wondering why I really got pulled over. Is it because:
- my engine really did sound noisier than should be expected for a standard transmission even before I got pulled over--perhaps even before I changed lanes to be in front of the cop car--and they were just concerned about the safety of my vehicle (and thus me and those around me)?
- the cops didn't like me getting in front of them when I changed lanes? (I don't think I cut them off...)
- maybe cars like mine have been stolen lately and they just wanted to do a random check to make sure the car really was mine?
- they saw one earbud of an iPod in my ear (I removed it before the policeman approached my car the first time, and he did not mention it) or the other earbud hanging and thought that I was driving distracted?
Who knows. And did I not get a ticket or a warning because:
- the policeman saw on closer investigation that I drive a stick and that's why I sounded noisy?
- he was just concerned and just wanted to inform me about the problem and it wasn't an offence in any way (though I think if you are truly driving a car that is unfit it is a problem with them and can be taken off the road, though I'm not sure if it's an offence even then)?
- he realized my husband is related to several cops, and maybe even the current chief of police?
- he saw I wasn't an aggressive person who would rashly dart out in front of his vehicle and swerve from lane to lane?
- he did pull me over because of the earbud or because I got in front of him when I changed lanes, but couldn't find anything to charge me with?

I don't seem to have any strikes against me after this incident, though I will see if others think my engine sounds noisier than it should (I really don't know what it should and shouldn't sound like, but it sounds okay to me), too. I'm just a wee bit confused. Anyway, looks like I survived my first pulling-over. Hopefully any future pulling-overs will be as incident-free as this one. *Shrug*...

You sure you want to stock this?

2007-02-05T18:29:00.000-05:00

I was at Wal-Mart yesterday. I needed to get laundry detergent, which took me to the household section. Turns out the laundry detergent is stocked across the aisle from the paper towels. Several packages of one particular brand of paper towels (may have been toilet paper, actually, but who cares) were strewn across the aisle. After I got my laundry detergent and started to head out of the aisle, I notice one large word printed on the sides of all the packages of fallen paper towels. Perhaps it was the brand, perhaps not; anyway, the word was "cascades." That made me grin. I almost pointed out the irony to a random lady stranger who was in the same aisle but thought better of it.

Edit: yup, it's a brand. http://www.ctgebiz.cascades.com/home.aspx?LanId=2

Feelin' the love :)

2007-02-03T08:40:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to thank those who came out to Dairy Queen Thursday evening for a little belated b-day get-together for myself. I didn't call up everyone I knew because after a while I got worried about overwhelming DQ with all my guests, so my apologies if you didn't get an invite (I also didn't want to bother those who lived downtown or out of town). I did realize upon arriving at DQ that it would not have been a problem--we had the whole place to ourselves, since I'm one of the few people who wants to eat ice cream in the kind of temperatures we've had...though there were people who came and went at the pick-up counter, we were the only ones taking up seating space--but by then it was too late.

Since none of you who came back to my place to watch Pirates of the Caribbean II were able to stay until the end of it, let me warn you (in case you decide to rent it to see what you missed) that it has "The Empire Strikes Back" syndrome--that is, none of the plotlines get tied up and it is obviously meant to be continued in the next movie. ("The Empire Strikes Back" is the 2nd movie in the original Star Wars trilogy and leaves viewers unsatisfied because all its plotlines are meant to be tied up in what was the 3rd movie in the trilogy, "Return of the Jedi." Now, of course, the addition of 3 movies that happen before what used to be the 1st movie in the trilogy has turned "The Empire Strikes Back" into the 5th movie and "Return of the Jedi" into the 6th--confused yet?--but the fact still remains that "Return of the Jedi" is the much more satisfying of the two to watch because it finally gives closure to the plot.) I think I knew that a 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie is being made, but I did not expect the 2nd movie to be left as open as it was. I hope they stop at #3 and don't keep stringing us along. At least this sequel was actually good, unlike most of the other Disney sequels I've seen. (Lion King 1 1/2? Come on.) Anyway, according to Wikipedia for the 3rd Pirates movie "Disney has announced a global release date of May 25, 2007," so it's not that long before we'll hopefully get some closure to this whole Jack Sparrow thing.

Well, I am off for a while now; I have an 11:30 meeting and then at 3:30 I'm being picked up to go to the party my family is giving for my b-day. The celebrations just never end :). Have a good one, y'all...

Another day, another year...

2007-01-31T14:04:00.000-05:00

(No, you don't get to see my baby baby picture because my scanner is permanently broken...but I do like this picture of me at 2 years old :).)

Sooo…today is my birthday. 27 years ago today at approximately 8:11 a.m. I first breathed the air of this world on my own. Or the stork dropped me off. Or I got picked out of the cabbage patch. Or something. I am an aquarius (both sun/star sign and ascendant...and since your ascendant is supposedly about the face that you present to others, I guess astrologers might say that with me what you see is who I am...but what do they know) and a monkey (you knew it all along, didn't you?). I am also cold...I think I'm going to go make myself some hot chocolate now.

What has happened in the past year of my life? Let’s see…I finally graduated from York University with my Honours B.Sc. with a major in chemistry and a minor in physics. I nervously applied to three different teacher’s colleges and was accepted by two; I started my B.Ed. at York in August. I failed 2 road tests and passed 1, gaining my G2 and the freedom of being able to drive myself pretty much anywhere pretty much any time I wanted. I got my first job that didn’t result from any networking (and my first job that I remained at for less than a year, but I knew going into it that I only wanted it for the summer). I tried to become a runner; that didn’t work out so well. I saw my first Toronto Rock game. The first anniversary of my husband’s radiation treatment came and went without incident. I borrowed money for the first time ever for school (though through the government’s Lifelong Learning Plan, not OSAP, since OSAP turned me down again this year). I learned a little bit about how to belly dance. I celebrated my 6^th wedding anniversary with the love of my life. I attended meetings, classes, and conferences. I taught Sunday school classes. I ate, breathed, showered, played Scrabble and World of Warcraft and did laundry. I ate chocolate. I joined Facebook. I started on the path of the professional that will hopefully see me teaching my own classes next fall. Phew!

One of the things that has come to mind at times in this year's studies is how privileged I have been throughout my life. I really have not had many struggles or severe ones that have stood in the way of my achieving my life goals. I have been privileged with a loving and believing home to grow up in, great teachers, an educational system that met my needs, volunteer and paid experiences that taught me much and prepared me for later experiences in life, a husband who loves me dearly, enough money from my summer jobs (or, for my current year, through Martin) to put me through school without resorting to working during the school year, the societal "white privilege" I and my fellow teacher candidates learned about in our Foundations class last year (besides the privileges that come with being in the socioeconomic class I am), somehow missing out completely on any false impressions that girls can't succeed in the sciences, somehow managing to continually impress people who interview me for things like jobs and teacher's colleges even though I really don't see anything extraordinary about myself, and I'm sure there are many other factors that I have forgotten to mention. I have led a blessed life. There have been times this year (if not before) when I have asked myself if teaching really is what I want to do. I have been reassured that every teacher asks himself or herself that, especially at particular times of the year. I have been reassured that there are times when I am absolutely sure that this is what I want to do. I also try to keep in mind that as far as I can tell, God has pretty much paved me a smooth path leading right up to this time and place in my life; I really don't have any feeling that I am anywhere other than where I am supposed to be in terms of what I am doing with my life (as much as I know I am far from perfect in other areas--my character, my interactions with others, my spiritual life, my fashion sense--but that is a separate issue). Life has not been without its struggles (my husband having a brain injury in 2004 being only one of them, but the most pronounced). However, it is nice on my birthday to have some sense of contentment in the midst of the stress. To borrow a phrase from my high school vocabulary, "life is good," and it is reassuring at this junction in my life that I can feel that way. One day, the career and the house and the kids and the retirement plan will come. For now, I will be happy to be on the road that will eventually lead there.

Alright, seriously, I'm needing some hot chocolate, or maybe I'll try that decaffeinated Earl Grey tea I bought a couple shopping trips ago. I'm going to enjoy some World of Warcraft on my birthday and then I think I will actually try to get something productive done before suppertime so I can go out tonight a little more guilt-free (but we'll see how the gaming goes first ;)) :). Maybe I will also review my notes from this morning's fun workshop on fun demos that can be used to teach physics and see if I can make myself any more educational toys other than the 2 coat hanger things I came home with (my fellow MSTers will know what I'm talking about). I've never actually flown a kite on my chilly winter birthday before; perhaps the napkin kite will be my next project (the demonstrater said his took him 4.5 minutes to make, after all).

Happy end of January, everyone! Summer is a-comin'...

6 years of bliss :)

2007-01-27T06:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, pardon the horrible lighting in the photo, but you get the idea. As of today, Martin and I have been married 6 years! Many of you know that we also dated for 5 years before we got married, so that makes 11 years together, yikes! Yes, life with Martin is still good; I am a lucky girl to have this person in my life who looks after me in so many ways and puts up with me in so many others. The traditional 6th anniversary gift suggestion listed on all the tables I've seen is "Candy/Iron." If you are my friend (or recognize a Godiva box in a photo when you see one), you don't have to guess which side of the equation was exactly suited to my interests :). There are 3 sprigs of blue & purple orchids in there along with 6 roses (one for each year) that were much longer before I cut them down to put in the vase. As for what I got Martin, I went with the contemporary 6th anniversary gift suggestion of "wood"; I used the TreeGivers organization to arrange for a tree to be planted in our honour somewhere in Ontario. Good for the environment and a clutter-free gift Martin would appreciate to boot.

I am off to an education conference today (runs 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m.), and then I think Martin and I need to go on a date or something. Happy weekend, everyone!

You know you're from Scarborough when...

2007-01-26T19:52:00.000-05:00

Having just discovered that Arlene has a blog, I am going to shamelessly steal this from her ;) (it's on her "randomness" page).

-----

YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM SCARBOROUGH WHEN:

You're familiar with neighbourhood names like: Agincourt, Malvern, West Hill, Warden Woods, Cedarbrae, Tuxedo Court, Bay Mills, and Wexford.

You lock your car doors when you drive, and only roll the window down if the tempature is over 30 and you absolutely have to.

You perk up every time SCARBOROUGH is mentioned on the news but it's usually related to some crime story (i.e. murder, robbery, drive-by-shooting/stabbing

etc.)

You know what the "SRT" is.

You often hear music (or just bass) coming from someone else's car across the street when you are stopped at a traffic light.

LADIES: A guy has tried to "pick you up" at the bus stop, ON the bus or the RT train, at Kennedy Station, Scarborough Town Centre or even while you're in your car stopped at a traffic light.

GUYS: You have, or you know of a guy who has tried to pick up girls at the bus stop, on the bus or the RT train, at Kennedy Station, Scarborough Town Center or even while a girl is in her car stopped at a traffic light.

You often refer to SCARBOROUGH as SCARBERIA; SCARLEM; SCOMPTON; SCARCITY. (and if you wanna be crude...new ones include: SCARLANKA, SCARBLACKISTAN, SCARBADOS)

No one speaks English on the bus.

You consider anything north of Steeles Avenue as "BUSH".

You consider anything east of the Rouge River as "BUSH".

You've learned how annyoing police helicopters are, even though they're there to help you.

You don't mess with kids who go to Lam, Leacock, Eaton, Bethune or Porter.

You're probably been covered in the Scarborough Mirror for something.
You love to mention other parts of Toronto (i.e. Jane-Finch, Regent Park, Flemingdon Park, Parkdale, Rexdale, Weston, St. Jamestown, etc.) and talk about how they have a higher crime rate than SCARBOROUGH.

You are familiar with these streets: Vic Park, Markham Road, Kingston Road, McCowan Road, Warden Avenue, Morningside Ave, Kennedy Road, Pharmacy Ave.

You LOVE to shop at the "Dollar Stores" scattered throughout SCARBOROUGH.

There is an Ontario Housing complex in your neighborhood.

There is a Chinese restaurant or a Roti shop in your neighbourhood.

Scarborough Town Centre was "the place" to hang-out when your were a teenager.

Stitches is the hot spot for teen girls to shop!

You hate it when NON-Scarborough people refer to it as the ghetto.

You know the Scarborough Bluffs are there, but never bothered to go see it.

You sadly realize our proudest accomplishment besides supplying 50% of the T Dot's crime rate, is the Barenaked Ladies.

North York pisses you off.

Mississauga pisses you off.

NON-MALVERN PEOPLE: You refer to Malvern as the East Scarlem ghetto.

MALVERN PEOPLE: You are PROUD of Malvern but still refer to it as the East Scarlem ghetto.

Your bike has been stolen at least once.

Your car has been stolen at least once, or you know someone who's car has been stolen.

You refer to Agincourt as "Asian-court"

There are more Guyanese people here than in Georgetown, Guyana.

You are able to distinguish the ethnicity of a driver just by looking at his/her car (i.e. If you see a car with Hello Kitty or other stuffed animals in it, then you know its probably someone of Hong Kong descent OR if you see a car with tinted windows, gold or chrome fender trims, and a crown air-freshener, then you know its probably someone from the Caribbean) and you sure as hell know that when you see a "sooped" up 1993 honda civic hatchback there is either an italian or a greek or a tamil drivin!

You HATE Mel Lastman because you think he ignores Scarborough, BUT you still voted for him.

Even though you only live about 15 KM from Downtown Toronto, it still takes you an hour or more by TTC and at least a half hour by car to get there. Not to mention rush hour.

People involuntarily back away when you say you're from SCARBOROUGH.

The TTC buses run EXTRA SLOW here.

You're proud that Scarborough is more diverse than most small countries.

You say you're a PROUD CITIZEN OF SCARBOROUGH, but deep down inside you kinda wish to move out to Markham, Richmond Hill or Pickering.

My fundamental problem

2007-01-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

I think I know what my fundamental problem is: much of the time, I am lazy. Even the best organizational system in the world is not the cure for laziness (though the better the system, the better I can take advantage of my non-lazy moments), so I have to figure out a new tactic. See, if I'm lazy, I may have a great to-do list (or, in GTD terms, an amazing Next Actions list), but if I'm not tending to those items on a regular basis rather than playing video games, I will still run into the problem that the day before something is due I'll suddenly have to hit panic mode and stay up until the wee hours of the morning trying to get done things that should have been done ages ago. This time of year I always find particularly bad in terms of flagging motivation; I don't know if it's whatever you call a mild version of SAD (since I'm sure Mira would tell me SAD is a clinical disorder that seriously interferes with one's life, not just mild winter blues) or feeling a little burned out from the pressures of the school year I've had to face to this point or what, I just know I'm not where I need to be. I do know that when I do get myself moving around, regardless of the time of year, my energy level goes up. As I start to get things accomplished, I get the energy to accomplish more (provided it's not in the wee hours of the morning already). It all comes down to that starting moment, that first firm decision (as in something I make and follow up on, not make and then say, "but later") to fight against procrastination.

You know, when I started writing this blog entry, I was going to ask you what you do to fight against your own laziness/procrastination/lack of motivation, but I can see now that I know what the answer is for me. I am going to keep having fun for, oh, another hour or so (unless I get bored of WoW before the hour or so is up...thankfully I've learned how to get the timer function working in WoW again that will count down from a time I set and alert me when my self-imposed time is up), and then I'm going to sit down and do some GTD stuff to get an idea of what all I have to work on. Then I will do at least 3 things that are on my list; maybe 2 or 3 simple things and something requiring a bit more time (perhaps a reading or marking some lab reports). However, if you do have tips for beating procrastination, I'd love to hear them; perhaps my other readers can gain some insight from them, too.

By the way, Martin and I will be celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary this Saturday, hooray! I am attending an education conference in the daytime (partly for my own professional growth, but admittedly partly to give my résumé some more "oomph"), but hubby and I will be sure to do something to celebrate after I get home. We'll definitely do dinner. I'm thinking we may see a movie, too. Has anyone seen "Freedom Writers"? I've read good things about it, and it is about a teacher making a difference...or is that too career-related for a date movie ;)?

Alright, less blogging and more WoW-playing until it's time to start GTD. Later...

Getting in sync

2007-01-24T17:11:00.000-05:00

This is a test, this is only a test...I'm making a new post on my blog at http://dreamin-again.blogspot.com/ . With the way my Facebook settings are set up, this should get imported by Facebook and become a note on my profile. Let's see if this works...

Post 111!

2007-01-18T07:36:00.000-05:00

I'm back at Agincourt today. I'm switching host teachers, too. So far, I've been working with grade 11 physics and grade 12 chemistry classes, both at the "university preparation" level (so it's the 11U and 12U classes I've been working with). The teacher I'll be working with today (for the sake of those who went to Agincourt: it's Mr. Frank Behrend, though I don't know how long he's been at Agincourt) does have some 11U chemistry classes, but according to one of my previous host teachers he wants to hang onto those. I will be working with only his grade 9 and 10 classes, at least at first. There are 3 sections of the grade 10s. They are all at the "applied" level, which was called the "general" level when I was in high school (as opposed to what was then called "advanced" and is now called "academic"). Ok, so 3 sections of 10P science. I'll also have one section that is made up of grade 9 and grade 10 students and is an "open" course at the "essential" level. "Open" means the curriculum is not one that is government-designed...depending on the course, it may be designed by the school board or the school or a group of schools. "Essential" means, well, they aren't even at the "applied" level. When I observed a class that combined both essential and applied students at Woburn last year, it became clear that the essential students, at least (if not some of the applied students as well) don't just need instruction in the subject matter...they need instruction in how to come to class prepared (not forgetting your binder, textbook, pencil, paper, etc. in your locker) and so on. I hope I'm not sounding negative towards the students; I'm just trying to describe the reality that I will probably face with these students.

Overall, this is going to give me a lot of good experience. When I was working with the 11U and 12U classes, I was working with students who had chosen to be in those classes. See, diploma guidelines require the students to complete the grade 9 and grade 10 science courses, plus either one senior science (giving them lots of choices, since at these levels they can choose chemistry or physics or biology or earth and space science or even, at some schools, to continue with generic "science" courses that aren't divided up by discipline) or a tech course (i.e., auto shop or some such thing) at any grade level. This means that when I work with the grade 9 and 10 students from this point on, I'll be working with students who don't necessarily want to be in that class. This will give me more experience learning to engage the students in the material, and probably with "classroom management" (what one author calls "getting the buggers to behave") as well.

I know this is good for me. I know it will be great preparation for my career and will look good on a résumé as well. I know they're just individual human beings whom I should not view with labels over their heads like "essential," "applied," "brat," etc. I know some of them will make me very proud and love teaching. That doesn't mean I'm not scared :).

Bye-bye tags

2007-01-12T16:40:00.000-05:00

I'm getting rid of the element that used to be part of this blog that would show what categories I'd tagged all my entries with. I'm not used to tagging entries and keep forgetting to tag them, and then I had a million tags when I did because I talk about a lot of different things, so I've decided to just nix them. Hope you're not too disappointed.

Hooray for the weekend!

The government does not need your financial info by e-mail.

2007-01-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

From one of my online friends: "This scam is very believeable, but it's fraud so don't fall for it. Read the info at the Canadian Government website: http://www.fin.gc.ca/fraud_e.html"

It's coming.

2007-01-11T12:43:00.000-05:00

Yep, that's right, my b-day is coming up. I'm not going to make a big deal of it this time around (like I ever do) because between family gatherings for it and homework I'm going to be pretty busy. The weekend before it is tied up already anyway (conference Jan. 27 followed by celebrating anniversary with husband) so I'll have to reserve the weekend after for family and for doing an assignment that is due the Monday after that weekend. However, if anyone would like to go to Dairy Queen or otherwise go out for dessert on the day itself (Wed., Jan. 31), let me know. No pressure whatsoever, however.

I said I wouldn't...but I did.

2007-01-11T07:51:00.000-05:00

- I bought, read and am in the process of implementing the system outlined in Getting Things Done by David Allen.
- I joined Facebook. If you are on Facebook, look me up and add me to your friends so I don't look like a loser with no friends. If you're not on Facebook, join and look me up and add me to your friends anyway ;).

I'm back at practicum today...and I have to leave soon, so bye!

If only math were really that easy.

2007-01-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

Getting stuff done

2007-01-05T08:21:00.000-05:00

Favourite spam e-mail subject line from yesterday's spam: "miffed drinking fountain". Oh noes! Beware, the drinking fountain is miffed!

This morning I decided on sitting down at my computer to deal with 5 things from my e-mail inboxes. So far, I have:
- e-mailed our church secretary to confirm that I'll do the prayer for the bread this coming Sunday
- ordered a plastic canvas pattern for my mom that she wants
- updated a piece of Palm software (Bonsai) I want to start using again to organize the to-do lists that overwhelm me (let's just say I had another one of those nights last night where I found it very hard to get to sleep with all that was swimming through my head)
- ordered QuickTax and Norton AntiVirus 2007 using special offer codes that supposedly give me discounts and such (I order these through the Intuit.ca website every year)

Not sure what the 5th thing is going to be yet; I have to go back to my e-mail after I finish doing the Palm software update (i.e., actually dig out my Palm from my purse and sync it up--going to do that after I finish typing this). I also wanted to listen to "Come, Now is the Time to Worship," but didn't like a bunch of stuff on the CD that I have that on, so I imported that and some stuff from some other praise CDs into ITunes, made a Praise playlist and then set up a Party Shuffle using that playlist as a source. Wouldn't you know, "Come, Now is the Time to Worship" was the first song that popped up in that Party Shuffle, with no need for interference on my part, the next song was another that I wanted to listen to but didn't bother to see if it was on the CDs I imported ("We Will Dance," which the Egginton sisters sang at my wedding), and the next was another that I wanted to listen to ("Light the Fire Again"--that's what's playing now). I'll put these all on my iPod later.

Yeah, like I said, I had a pretty hard time sleeping last night with a lot of things I wanted to do running through my head. I should know that trying to organize one's life solely by lying there thinking about it and not writing anything down is a bad idea, since it doesn't actually get the clutter out of your head, but I did it anyway. Thought about getting up to get my Palm and use the aforementioned Bonsai program but didn't actually do it. In my overwhelmedness though I did come up with a prayer for the bread for communion this Sunday and wrote it down so it wasn't totally a lost cause :). And God did touch my overwhelmedness when I let Him. I have a tendency to get overwhelmed and very stressed out very easily, and I always have. I'm trying to find ways to deal with it, but I think it will be one of those things that will bother me for the rest of my life and I'll just have to recognize it for what it is and put my coping strategies into place when I do recognize it cropping up again (and hopefully put some preventative strategies into effect as well so that paralyzing overwhelmedness doesn't crop up as much, as often or as powerfully, too). First, though, I have to develop some new coping (and then preventative) strategies. I am almost tempted to check out a book I've heard a little about called Getting Things Done, but really I know that is like, in Flylady's words, looking for a magic pill that will instantly make all my problems go away. It's not like I haven't read books and otherwise researched organization methods before. I know I probably already have all the tools in my head I need to tackle this stress problem I have; I just have to take the time and intentionality to experiment and find what works for me. Heck, it's probably just a matter of doing something consistently, rather than off and on now and then. Anyway, I have some ideas I'm going to start with, pulled from various systems and various thoughts I've had off and on. I'll let ya know how it goes.

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T10:34:00.000-05:00

Last night my mother-in-law and I were both home with no plans for New Year's other than keeping ourselves entertained, so we rented 3 videos and watched them back to back. She provided dinner and popcorn and drinks, I provided chocolate, and the videos took us until 11:56 p.m. to watch. Then we channel-surfed the various New Year's celebrations being broadcast on the TV. After that, I think she pretty much went to bed, though I did hear her walking around now and then upstairs after that; I stayed up for a bit to see some virtual fireworks go off in WoW and then to read my book for a while. I went to bed about 3:30 a.m. but one of the cats was yowling loudly on and off for a while thereafter so I'm not sure when I went to sleep. Anyway, I was feeling a lot better already while watching videos last night, though my nose was still stuffy when I went to bed; feeling a little better this morning, too (the strange sleep pattern and lack of a full night's rest might have set me back a little, but not too much). I think I'm close to kicking this cold, which is nice. Today I'll be off to see my parents and brother and sister-in-law and nieces and nephews for my family's "Christmas"; apparently at least some of my nieces and nephews are still sleeping and Martin hasn't yet returned from Amy and Irek's so my mom has decided to move our dinner up to 4 p.m. (it was originally going to be a late lunch kind of deal but looks like we'll eat our own lunches now and get together for dinner instead). Ah, more rest, hooray! I hope you all had good celebrations and/or good rest last night and that the new year will bring much you much joy. Hopefully this will be the year in which I become gainfully employed, as scary as that is...

Happy New Year, everyone!

Another lazy day

2006-12-31T12:57:00.000-05:00

Being sick with a cold does sidetrack one from seeing people (because you don't want to make them sick), exercising, and doing a lot of other things that require even a normal amount of energy. However, I am enjoying a lot of time on the computer (mostly playing WoW), and when our Internet connection was down for a little bit yesterday I also started reading some more again (and continued to read when the connection came back up, and was tempted to bring the book to bed when I had trouble sleeping for a while). I think it's very fitting that on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day I'm reading some more of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I'm only on book 2 (The Great Hunt) at this point; it's been a while since I read book 1 (The Eye of the World) but the details are more or less coming back to me (the important ones, anyway). I do like a good fantasy book. Oh, I'm getting a lot of rest, too; been a long time since I slept until noon like I did today (I was awake for a little bit earlier today, just didn't get out of bed). Thanks to those of you who sent your well-wishes to me through Martin when he was at church today. Hopefully I won't have to put up with this cold for too long as there are more productive things I'd like to do with the rest of my week.

Stay healthy, everyone! And have a happy new year!

Unnnngh part 2

2006-12-30T13:27:00.000-05:00

Apparently my brother and his wife do a lot of shopping through http://www.christianbooks.com , and they have e-mailable gift certificates, so I don't actually have to leave the house to finish my Christmas shopping, hooray! I've found a ride for hubby up to Amy and Irek's, too (and maybe back, depending on whether hubby wants to stay overnight or not, but surely someone will give him a ride home regardless), and he has indeed made the cookies we're going to take to my parents' place on Jan. 1, and he also picked up pop while he was out getting cookie-making supplies, so I don't have to do that, either. Even the gathering at my father-in-law's has been postponed. Looks like we have the night off...a good thing when one is sick.

Time to load up my warlock and get her some more levels in WoW...

Unnnngh...

2006-12-30T10:31:00.000-05:00

You know what they say about the best-laid plans. I'm sick. I've made the necessary phone calls to get myself off Sunday school duty and to give my regrets that I won't be going to the New Year's get-together at Amy and Irek's (but I still think Martin should go, and so far he is planning on doing so; like the rest of us, he doesn't spend nearly enough time with his friends, partly because everyone is so busy) so I don't make everyone at church and everyone at Amy and Irek's sick. I still need to get presents for my brother and sister-in-law (and to fill out my gifts to my parents a little more) and I still need to get cookies baked for Monday and to get pop for Martin to take to Amy and Irek's. I also still need to go to the Christmas gatherings at my father-in-law's and my parents' places. I am going to try to delegate the cookie-making to Martin, but as I am the driver in the family I still need to go out today to get those presents and the pop, but I'm going the gift certificate route for the presents so it shouldn't be too big a deal so long as everyone knows how to drive out there today (being sick doesn't make for great reaction times :-P).

Oh, look, there is snow outside! That's pretty. I hope that doesn't cause any problems on the roads; it's late enough in the day that everything should be cleaned up by now. Wish me luck with my errands and at my father-in-law's tonight...

Christmas is not over.

2006-12-29T08:41:00.000-05:00

I actually already listed my plans to continue Christmas in a comment on Mira's blog already, but for the sake of recording them in my own blog...

Today (Friday, Dec. 29): start the process of baking Christmas cookies (from Mira's gingerbread recipe)
Tomorrow (Saturday, Dec. 30): finish baking cookies; have Christmas dinner with father-in-law and stepmother-in-law and hubby's siblings
Sunday, Dec. 31: teach Sunday school at church in morning; go to Amy and Irek's for some ice skating and other New Year's stuff and stay overnight
Monday, Jan. 1: return from Amy and Irek's; go to my parent's place with the cookies I made to celebrate Christmas with my family.

After that I guess I have to start marking again and otherwise getting ready to resume classes and such, including working on my cover letter, resume and portfolio as interviews with school boards will be starting fairly soon (January, maybe, and definitely February). Vacation was nice while it lasted but I guess I wouldn't want to be lazy all the time :).

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

Hubby and I have opened our stockings and presents already. Hubby is playing WoW using the new 19" flatscreen monitor I got him (with his money...but s'ok :)). I am about to install the software that I can use to transfer music and phone contacts and so on to my new Sony Ericsson Walkman cell phone that hubby got me. In a while we'll go upstairs to exchange presents with at least my mother-in-law and the sister-in-law who still lives here...hopefully my brother-in-law and other sister-in-law will come over, too, so that we can do our exchange with them at the same time. Then we will trek off to Nana's to see my father-in-law's family. Not sure if we will also be popping by my father-in-law's house or not, but at some point we'll come back here before we head off to dinner at my hubby's uncle's place with my mother-in-law's family. Then we will come back here and I will fall into bed exhausted...but hopefully happy :). Yes, the day has become highly commercialized and I have to admit that my mind is much more on the presents and the busyness than on the Christchild. Hopefully next year school won't go so late and I will have time to put myself in the proper mindset :(.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Random blogness.

2006-12-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

Near the top of (almost) every Blogger blog is a button or a link on one side or the other that says, innocently enough, "Next Blog." Have you ever clicked this link? Today, while feeling bored, I did. Yes, I explored a bit through the random blogs of others. I came across blogs in other languages. I came across blogs offering me a credit card. I came across the story of a lady beginning to enjoy her retirement, her grandchildren, and so on. I also came across this public service announcement for women revolving around the sacredness of a man's bar of soap. It does seem more or less geared towards women who are married or otherwise living with men. Anyway, it amused me.

Hmm, I have a holiday break coming up. Methinks it is time to reactivate my WoW account...for a month, anyway.

"You might be a teacher if..."

2006-12-14T22:33:00.000-05:00

This is a forward I just got. It's really geared more to teachers of younger children than to high school teachers like me, but still lots that's applicable.

-----
YOU MIGHT BE A TEACHER IF...

* You want to slap the next person who says "It must be nice to have all those holidays!"

* You can tell it's a full moon without looking outside.

* When out in public, you feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behaviour.

* You can 'hold on' until after lunchtime yard duty.

* You can go to the loo, take a phone call, have a conference with a
colleague, tend to first aid and have a cup of coffee in 20 minutes.

* You check for spelling and punctuation errors in every piece of writing
you see.-

* You walk around shopping centres wearing face paint, stickers and a daisy
chain, and don't even notice the stares.-

* You look 50 before you are 30.

* You can't pick a name for your unborn child as every name
reminds you of a student.

* If you can't get your friends to listen to you, you put your
hands on your head or clap or flick the lights off.

* You rate the educational value of cartoons.

* You count your life in periods of ten weeks (depending on term
length).

* You can't go anywhere without thinking 'what a great place for an
excursion!'

* You cringe at the way bank tellers grip their pens.

* You don't know the date, but you know it's day 5, week 4, term 4.

* You believe the staffroom should have a Valium salt lick.

* You believe that unspeakable evil will befall if someone says "gee, the
kids sure are mellow today."

* Meeting a child's parents instantly answers 'why is this child like this?'

* You believe in the aerial spraying of Prozac.

* You get a warm inner glow when just one child says "thank you for helping me."

The sound of music...

2006-12-13T23:12:00.000-05:00

I went to my host school's senior Christmas concert today. (The music dept. decided to have a junior and a senior concert rather than the "marathon" concert they've apparently had in the past; today's concert ran 7 p.m. until 9:30 p.m. as it was, with a 10-minute intermission partway through, so I'm glad they've switched to the two-concert format.) I realized at this concert that I still love music - live choirs, stage bands, orchestras, wind symphonies, and chamber groups, A.C.I. has it all, and they were all good. I need to get out to see the TSO or something again sometime. I should get myself some jazz CDs ('cuz I still love the stage bands, apparently, even when I don't know anyone in them). I should pull out the classical albums that I do have and listen to them more (but then, I do most of my listening to music in the car these days...bringing my "the most relaxing classical album ever" CD into my driving probably would put me to sleep and would not be a good idea...but I think I have other CDs that could work). I doubt, however, that I will ever go back to playing music, though I have fond memories of the times when I did do that (flute, keyboard, recorder, clarinet, bass clarinet, piccolo, guitar, viola...I've tried them all). I just hate practicing, and I don't think I could ever bear to put a reed in my mouth again . Perhaps when I start learning how to organize my time better and life settles down more (will that ever happen?), I will join the church choir again. I'll have to see.

Anyway, I am actually going to get some rest now...and then get up and do some more practicum planning :-P. Thankfully tomorrow night I won't have to plan anything for Friday's practicum as my 3 classes on Friday are writing full-period tests (which my host teacher is preparing). I still have lab reports to mark, a "quest" (it's a long quiz or a short test) to put together and some assignments to do for York, but, seeing as they are not urgent, for one night at least I will let myself get some rest rather than worry about such things as those. I am back at York next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday...and hopefully after that I can get my Christmas shopping done, yikes!

Good night for now...

My first practicum evaluation

2006-12-13T17:53:00.000-05:00

Today was, for me, the day that strikes fear into the hearts of student teachers everywhere: the Site Visit. My course director from York came to see me teach and to flip through my practicum binder. I knew going into this that my course director has been happy with all the work I've done in the program so far, and my host teachers have been pretty happy with all the work I've done at A.C.I. so far (they've also been working on the formal evaluation of me that they're supposed to submit by the end of the week and have shared their evaluative thoughts with me--they're all quite good), but when my York life is about to intersect my A.C.I. life things get a little intimidating. Due partly to some procrastination on planning for this intimidating lesson and partly to getting lots of other things done/organized, I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. this morning planning my lesson (which isn't actually too bad compared to some planning/marking nights). When I went to bed, I checked what time the alarm time was set for. Satisfied, I went to sleep.

I woke up just after 7 a.m. this morning. This is not the time I had intended to get up (apparently I checked what time the alarm was set for but didn't actually turn the alarm on). However, I was able to work with this time frame because I knew what I was going to wear today and had my planning pretty much done and the things I needed to take with me pretty much in one place; I just dressed, gathered my things, threw my hair into a banana clip, threw on some face powder to deal with the shiny greasiness, brushed my teeth to deal with the morning breath, and drove myself to school unwashed and unfed and planning to buy lunch from my home form at school (it's a "Christmas Cheer" fundraising week at A.C.I. to raise $ for Agincourt Community Services and my home form has decided to sell food--though our food buyers were both absent today so they ended up not selling today after all). Oh, I also did a quick e-mail check to make sure I wasn't missing any last-minute message from my course director telling me he'd decided not to visit after all...guess he really is coming.

At A.C.I., I did manage to get done pretty much everything I wanted to before class, including creating an overhead on the photocopier (though the first photocopier I tried to do this on broke down on me--@#%$!), setting up a spot for my course director to sit with my practicum binders and a copy of my lesson plan, preparing all the equipment and chemicals for a demo I did for the students, preparing some writing for a note the students would take from the blackboard, looking over some questions I wanted to assign them to work on in groups and making sure the answers given for those questions by the textbook (and the teacher's resource) were correct (though I didn't get through all of them). My course director took a bit of time to show up at the beginning of the period (my host teacher ended up escorting him to our classroom from the main office), so I and the students waited until he arrived. One student asked if I was nervous; I told her, "I'm just teaching," and wasn't really that nervous; I also asked if she was nervous!

Overall, the lesson went well, and the class behaved well for me (my course director even made a note of their good behaviour and attentiveness). When my course director called me aside to discuss the lesson while students worked on their group work, I mentioned being pretty happy with the lesson, but that there were a couple things that we've discussed at York as being very important to lessons that I didn't think I'd included and that I knew I had to work on. Well, it turns out I did actually include some of those elements (yay!) and that my course director knows those elements have to be worked in around the culture of the school and may or may not get into every lesson. I got a glowing written evaluation; a couple things to think about more were mentioned to me (and others to my host teacher separately) but overall my course director was quite pleased. He had come to observe my period 1 class (8:45 a.m. - 9:55 a.m.) and I had 2 more periods after lunch to teach the same lesson, so it was nice to know off the bat that I was on the right track...and having my evaluation in first period kept me from stressing about an upcoming evaluation any longer than first thing in the morning. Incidentally, the student who'd asked if I was nervous also asked how I did after my course director left (he had to leave earlier than the period had quite ended because he had 2 other people to see today, one for some type of "crisis"), so I told her I'd done well and that this was a good class...probably partly because in first period they were too tired to act up :)!

Anyway, I have to go as I am going to see my grade 11 and 12 students play in A.C.I.'s senior Christmas concert tonight, but I wanted to share part of what happened in my day today. Thanks for listening.

Pre-emptive hoax strike: entering PIN # backwards does NOT get you the police

2006-12-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

The following is a new hoax that's going around:

----------
I just found out that should you ever be forced to withdraw monies from an ATM machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse. The machine will still give you the monies you requested, but unkown to the robber, etc, the police will be immediately dispatched to help you.

The broadcast stated that this method of calling the police is very seldom used because people don't know it exist, and it might mean the difference between life and death. Hopefully, none of you will have to use this, but I wanted to pass it along just in case you hadn't heard of it. Please pass it along to everyone
possible.
----------

Like I said, it's a fairly new hoax, but it's a hoax none the less...see http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp . Thank you for being responsible and not passing on the hoax to others.

I'm in!

2006-12-09T15:06:00.000-05:00

I've finally been given the link to make my blog into a Blogger Beta blog. The old blog wasn't perfect and this new beta blog isn't perfect, either, but I think I will stick with the beta version for now. I don't know how to get the "recent comments" feature to work with this new version (I tried just copying and pasting the code into the html section of a text block, but I guess the things the code makes reference to for the old version aren't the same in the new version and so the behaviour it produced when I tried to use it was very odd), so that will have to be scrapped. You'll just have to check for yourselves whether the number of comments at the bottoms of the entries has gone up or not (if you want to read other people's comments), just like I have to do on your blogs (for those of you that have and update them and that I check) :-P. I do like the ability to add labels to your posts right within Blogger; I'd tried doing that through del.icio.us before, but it got cumbersome. I've only added labels to November's posts so far but hopefully I'll get them all labelled eventually.

I got the car serviced today; first time I've been the one to take the car in, so I took hubby along for moral support and to help me know what to do. Our dealership owns the Country Style next door, so we got free hot chocolate (well, the coupons were actually for hot chocolate, which we don't really drink; we bought donuts to go along with our hot chocolate, too). There is a lot of comfortable seating at our dealership as well as TVs to watch and computers on which you can surf the Internet and bookshelves with a variety of books on them, so it's easy to keep oneself entertained...though I did find it annoying that someone seemed to be watching something on TV that must have been like American Idol because it involved a lot of singing and a LOT of annoying, screaming, probably teenage female fans. Anyway, although my car took about an hour and a half to get the servicing it needed this time around (oil/lube/filter, 55 point inspection, tire rotation and balancing), I was comfortable and was able to finish marking the quizzes my students wrote on Thursday.

Just before we went to the dealership I bought a new copy of Eragon so hubby would have something to entertain him, too; he wanted to read it anyway since the movie is coming out next week, and I can't find my original copy anywhere and didn't have time to borrow it from anyone else prior to our car service appointment. Hubby seems to be enjoying it so far. I am looking forward to the release of the movie next week, though the trailer seems to indicate to me that some things have been changed from the book. I wonder if all 3 books are going to go to the screen? I wonder if it will take longer for the 3rd book to come out because of all the movie-making? Anyway, not bad for a homeschooled kid to have his first novel gain such popularity as well as a Hollywood production.

Well, I am going to go continue enjoying the weekend now (I suppose I should do some more marking at some point, too). As Brom would say, "May your swords always stay sharp."

Another one of those "get to know you" forward things

2006-11-27T18:04:00.000-05:00

I've been tagged with a "getting to know you" forward again, so here goes...
-----
Just a little something to help begin to get you in the holiday spirit!!

Welcome to the 2006 Holiday Edition of 'Getting to Know Your Friends'!
Everyone has time for a few moments of fun! It's only 20 questions so don't
be a scrooge!!! You know the drill. Forward, copy & paste, change answers
and be sure to send back to me. Enjoy!!

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot chocolate...partly because of my chocolate addiction, partly because the thought of drinking eggs just grosses me out (I also avoid raw cookie dough because the thought of eating anything with raw eggs in it scares me). Plus the After Eight hot chocolate is heavenly.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? If Santa Claus existed, the elves would do the wrapping for him. But he doesn't, and I do all the work except for the presents Martin buys me unless I conscript him to wrap others.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I think I would like coloured better if a lot of people didn't seem to be colorblind when it comes to putting together their coloured light strings. When people pick one or two colours, colours are fine...so long as you don't, say, go with a red-and-green scheme but then decide that substituting that one missing red with a pink is "good enough." No, it's not, sorry. But it's harder to screw up an all-white lighting scheme.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope.

5. When do you put your decorations up? Hubby's birthday is Dec. 1 and sister-in-law-who-lives-upstairs has a b-day Dec. 8, so I don't want to put up decorations before then, and I figure waiting a couple days after that is a good idea, too. In practice, the decorations go up when I have time and feel like it.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Whaddya mean, excluding dessert? I live for dessert! Okay, well, if I have to play by the rules, then I'd have to say stuffing--but only certain kinds.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? I really don't remember that much. Maybe when I won that colouring contest and Santa came to my apartment door with the prize. I think I was in grade 1.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't honestly remember. I was pretty young. I do remember my entire grade 1 class wrote letters to Santa and sent them off...and I was the only one who didn't get a reply. I do know I mentioned God in my letters to my teacher now and then, so maybe I mentioned Him in my letter to Santa and whoever writes the replies didn't know what to do with that? Maybe I just got overlooked? Who knows...but yes, I am still bitter!

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Sometimes.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? I've posted a pic of the tree and nativity set setup we've used the past 2 Christmases. The picture also shows that in 2004 I also hung stuff off the storage closet doors that are in the middle of our basement apartment, but that turned out to be a pain in the butt and I don't think I did that in 2005. We use the mini tree so that we don't trip over it in our small space, but we have used part of a larger tree in the past. Hubby is somewhat of a Christmas humbug so I decorate the tree myself these days, though we do snuggle and enjoy the lights on the tree at various points and various days once it's done. Oh, we also have a little box that you plug the lights into that makes the lights blink in time as it plays Christmas songs. I grew up with it, got it from my parents and we still enjoy it.

11. Snow... love it or dread it? It is very pretty...when you're inside...and so long as the cars haven't yet driven through it and dirtied it (or as long as you don't look at the roads). I hate shovelling, having to walk through it when no one else has shovelled, and driving in it, and I hate the cold, so I can only enjoy the snow at limited times.

12. Can you ice skate? Yes, but not well, not fast, and not backwards.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I guess that would have to be my engagement ring. I've had a lot of really nice gifts, though.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? It be (the time when we remember) Jesus' birthday and all the amazing events surrounding that, as well as the reason He was born. I love the candlelight Christmas Eve service at my church, when we are able to attend. I do enjoy the family times, too.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Oh, I do get to talk about dessert! My favourite holiday dessert I've ever had was a President's Choice ice cream that was vanilla (or similar) ice cream that had candy cane pieces and a fudge crackle in it. Yum! It was a tradition for a while when we had dinner at my brother's in-laws' place, until they were no longer able to find it; I think we found something similar after a while, but it wasn't the same product.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Um...I like presents. And opening up my stocking. And the candlelight Christmas Eve service, when we are able to go.

17. What tops your tree? A star.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving? Tough call. I would probably like giving more if I knew better what to get people and my gifts were better-received.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? I'm not sure. I like Silent Night.

20. Candy Canes... yuck or yum? I like 'em. They're better in ice cream accompanied by a fudge crackle, though, or with their flavour put into Second Cup's candy cane white hot choclolate. I really am a mint chocolate kind of person.

That's it from me. Next!

Anonymous poem I like re school

2006-11-24T22:06:00.000-05:00

The following poem was shared with me today and I like it. Unfortunately I can't get the spacing to work out here, not even in the "Edit HTML" mode, but I guess that's okay :-p.

-----

Did I Miss Anything

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

Hooray for the weekend!

2006-11-24T17:05:00.000-05:00

I think I mentioned before that I was on a practicum teaching block (as in I was only at my practicum school and not at York at all) from Nov. 2-15 and then at STAO (which was at a hotel out near the airport at not at York at all) from Nov. 16-17 (well, STAO went until the 18th but we weren't required to go on the Saturday, and by that point I was tired enough and felt I'd gotten enough out of the conference that I saw no need to attend the third day).

This whole week, however, I've been back at York. If you remember back to your school days, you may remember that the majority of the time you were away from school for some time, you usually had things due when you came back, such that times like winter holidays and March Break weren't really holidays or a break so much as an extended time at home preparing to hand something in on your return to school (or procrastinating during the entire holidays/break and then staying up way too late and working way too frantically on your project on the last day/night before school was to start again). Such has been my experience this week...complete with the procrastination. After all, practicum kind of ran like this: wake up, do all the morning stuff like showering and dressing and eating, get to practicum, photocopy if necessary, teach/observe/mark/whatever I'm doing during school hours, spend some time at the school after classes debriefing with the host teacher or attending extra-curricular activities or photocopying resources for the next day, go home, nap for an hour, eat dinner, and then plan the next day's lesson. I suppose if I was more on the ball with the lesson-planning thing there would have been some time in there to work on my own assignments, but at this early stage (when I'm still learning how to put a lesson together such that it can be taught in one period and not five and the kids won't fall asleep and I won't, either) lesson planning takes some time. At first, it was no big deal that I wasn't working on my own assignments; I had a couple weeks. However, when little got done even on the last weekend before my own classes resumed, I knew I was in for a rough ride this week.

Sat., Nov. 18 - My mother-in-law's birthday was on the 17th, but she had youth group obligations that night so we (as in my husband and his siblings and I) took her out to dinner on the 18th instead, then spent time together as a family. Earlier in the day I had to prep for the Sunday school lesson I was to teach the next day. Hmm, but I think I did some housework, too. I know I was occupied for quite a while in the morning with something but I have no idea what.

Sun., Nov. 19 - attended a Sunday school teacher's breakfast (where Mark fed wonderfully way too much good food as usual), taught Sunday school to a class that wouldn't cooperate, came home frustrated, started doing research for one of my assignments (a presentation I did Wednesday), and took some of this research with me to a dinner with the extended family for my mother-in-law in Newmarket, where we spent the rest of the day. I did the driving there and back, giving me some more much-needed highway experience. I hope I didn't scare my mother-in-law too much.

Mon., Nov. 20 - back to school! Nothing was due today, but we were told today about something that was due the next day and we were totally unprepared for...a 5 to 10 minute presentation on some resource or idea we picked up at STAO. Oh, and you're being marked, and here's the rubric. Aaah! Panic! I stay up late preparing this presentation as well as a one-page reading summary for another class (for which I also had to do the reading).

Tues., Nov. 21 - do presentation to a small group of my peers (and we all expressly stated we were going to be nice in our marking of each other) and hand in one-page reading summary. My peers loved my use of LEGO (including the little people) in my presentation. They wondered how close I live to my parents that I was able to get my old LEGO from them. No, actually, I do have my childhood LEGO and Barbies and Cabbage Patch doll and Pound Puppy (among other things) here in my current home...my parents have been gradually giving me some of my old stuff that I guess my nieces and nephews no longer play with at my parents' place. I wonder if I should get rid of the Barbies. Blah, I digress. Today I stay up late working on my presentation on adolescents and religion for my "The Adolescent and the Teacher" psychology course.

Wed., Nov. 22 - do presentation to about 25 of my peers on adolescents and religion...it is part of my group's larger presentation on moral development (the other 3 people in my group do their parts on adolescents' moral behaviour in competition and cheating, the role of the peer group, and whether morality can be taught; I also do the conclusion and play the part of a girl at age 8 and age 15 in a skit in the peer group part of the presentation where I first say I'll never smoke and then turn around and smoke after all). Get a little unnerved by a presentation by 4 of my other classmates on adolescents and promiscuity, but calm down some after talking further with one of them. Get bored out of my skull by my "teaching the intermediate and senior sciences" course in the afternoon, and the fact that I've had very little sleep lately doesn't help...actually have to visit the washroom at one point to splash cold water on my face in an attempt to keep myself from nearly nodding off at various points in the class...it works for about 10 minutes. Stay up very late working on an 8 page (double-spaced) paper due the next day.

Thurs., Nov. 23 - print off 8-and-a-half-page-not-including-references-list-or-title-page paper and upload its file to my school's FirstClass system so I can edit it in the education program's computer lab at lunch. Edit it in pencil on the bus ride to school. Attend more boring "teaching the intermediate and senior sciences" course in the morning; instructor not happy about our attitude from the day before; this morning does go better than the previous session. At lunchtime, rush to the education program's library to find its computer lab occupied with a class. There are only 8 computers in the library outside of this lab and they are all taken. Ask a classmate who is finished printing his paper if I can borrow his laptop to edit my paper. He connects me to the school's wireless internet system; I type in the pencil edits I'd done; I manage to commandeer one of the 8 non-computer-lab computers from a classmate once I'm done editing so I can get onto the library's network and print my paper off their system (since I can't print it straight from the laptop). Go to class not having been able to grab any lunch, but at least I have crackers in my backpack. Hand in 8-page paper that I am more happy with now than I was with the unedited version before I got a couple hours sleep early this morning. Stay up a little to work on a 4 page (double-spaced) paper that is due the next day, but this one doesn't take nearly so long as I am pulling information for it from 3 assignments I've already done (including the presentation I did Wednesday). I manage to go to bed by 11:45 p.m.--not bad at all--but of course I'm already really, really tired from having to stay up all the previous nights.

Fri., Nov. 24 - hand in 4 page paper on my theory of adolescent religious development. I am pretty happy with this paper. Once I hand it in, all I want to do is go home, but I stay because I'm really not a class-skipper...plus the class is going to go for drinks and lunch at the end of class and I really need that release and to be a little bit social. Class ends and I go to Blueberry Hill (or just "The Hill" now according to one of its signs that I guess keeps getting too many letters stolen to keep the long name up there) with some of my classmates (when everyone finishes trickling there in dribs and drabs, we finally have about, oh, a dozen of us there). I have a pound of honey garlic wings, fries and a Pepsi while my other classmates have other various kinds of pub food; some have beer and some do not. I do not because I drove to class today due to an errand I have to run after class and after lunch (well, I hate beer anyway, but if I hadn't had to drive afterwards I might have had a hard lemonade or something). I knew the night before and this morning that driving maybe wasn't the best idea due to how tired I am, but I am totally fine in the morning. On the drive back, with lots of food in my tummy and the sun shining in just the wrong way for my tired eyes, things don't go as well as I want them to, but I manage to get to my practicum school and home in one piece. Oh, yes, I stopped by my practicum school to pick up some marking that I'll be doing this weekend. My host teacher for the classes in which I'm doing this marking is not there today so I don't have to spend time talking to her, and I don't go see the other host teacher because I don't teach her class until Tuesday, so I can go see her Monday. I go home and sleep. Then I get up and write this blog entry. I'm not planning on doing anything more productive today other than grocery shopping, which we will do soon.

I am so looking forward to going to bed tonight. My whole class was dreading this week because of all that we have due, and prior to this week I sometimes mentioned to my classmates, "If we can survive that week, we can become teachers" (because this week could be the hardest thing we'll experience this year...as far as we know we'll never have this kind of convergence of assignment due dates again, plus next semester is longer so the due dates get more spread out). Well, the week is over and we have survived...let me tell you, there were a lot of glasses clinking in toasts to that at "The Hill" today. Well, the Pepsi fountain pop wax cups didn't clink so much as "mush," but still :). Now for three more weeks of practicum...which will seem almost relaxing in comparison. I just hope I can recover enough before Monday hits and I have to start teaching again!

Some things are just worth re-sharing.

2006-11-23T21:49:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I linked this before in this blog or in my old blog or just by e-mail, but one of my classmates was looking at this sometime this week and I just had to go and look it up again. Depending on what you did in your free time as a kid and the era in which you grew up, you may or may not "get" it, but for those of you who will...enjoy.

My official entry into science teacher geekdom...and all you ever wanted to know about chocolate

2006-11-18T10:29:00.000-05:00

Gaze in wonder at two of the items I picked up over the past 2 days at the STAO conference. (STAO is the Science Teacher's Association of Ontario, and I was required to go to this conference as part of my teacher's college program.) These are not the only items I picked up from the conference (and I picked up a whole host of ideas besides the physical things I picked up), but they are the ones I'm going to focus on today.

So let's talk about the mug.
I purchased the mug for $8. There were also mugs depicting caffeine (some with one of those negatory circle-with-a-line-through-it symbols superimposed on it, with "Decaf" written above it), but since I'm not a coffee drinker and am instead hopelessly addicted to chocolate I thought this was more appropriate for me.

The molecule depicted on the mug is theobromine. If you break it down to its roots, "theobromine" means "food of the gods." (You may or may not notice that there is no bromine in the molecule...the "bromine" part of the name comes from the Greek word for food, broma.) Theobromine is what I call "the active ingredient in chocolate" and I've known about it for a few years now. Wikipedia tells me that "it is a mild, lasting stimulant with a mood improving effect" and "is one of the causes for chocolate's mood-elevating effects." Did you say chocolate? Bring it on! Oh, remember that "food of the gods" thing? Well, another source tells me that "In Aztec society chocolate was ... reserved for priests, warriors and nobility," and the version of hot chocolate that they had (which was bitter, unlike our hot chocolate) "was a sacred concoction that was associated with fertility and wisdom ... [and] was also thought to have stimulating and restorative properties." The presence of theobromine in chocolate is also why chocolate is poisonous to dogs and cats, who metabolize it much more slowly than we do. It has its downsides, but not many...you can read about them (and more about theobromine) in the Wikipedia article here if you're concerned.

By the way, you may have heard of the idea that eating chocolate releases the same chemical in the brain as orgasm. Well, I've just done a quick survey of some information available on the web (thankfully, Googling "chcolate orgasm chemical" does not immediately yield the gross kinds of sites I thought it might) and it seems theobromine is not the chemical responsible for this idea. There is apparently a whole host of theories out there as to why chocolate is craved by and produces pleasure in people. Here are some (see list of sources at the end of this post):

It's chemical:

chocolate is like marijuana (has to do with anandamide)

chocolate is like sex (has to do partly with phenylethylamine...which is also found in roses! Incidentally, while doing this "research" I came across these chocolates which are supposed to contain a high level of phenylethylamine and guarantee orgasm...yikes! Scroll down past the ads if you want to read that entry on someone's blog.)

chocolate gives you good feelings such as those like you have when you're in love (involves tryptophan leading to production of more serotonin)

chocolate takes good feelings you already have and keeps them around longer (thank you, N-oleoythanolamine and N-linoleoylethanolamine)

chocolate otherwise chemically produces/maintains good feelings (hooray, bioactive agents that interact with many of the processes already mentioned plus act as stimulants and lead to the release of dopamine! Hooray also for endorphins!)
chocolate cures deficiencies: "women crave chocolate prior to menstruation because it contains high levels of magnesium. Women experience magnesium deficiency prior to menstruation," and this deficiency "can exacerbate pre-menstrual tension," so they eat chocolate to make the problem go away. "Similar cravings during pregnancy could indicate mild anaemia, which chocolate's iron content may help to cure."

It's psychological, since the chemicals involved are present in quantities that are too low to make an impact or are destroyed by various digestive/etc. processes before they could reach the brain (e.g., one source claims that "you would have to eat 25lbs of dark chocolate at once to [produce enough serotonin to] achieve the same effect" as getting "'stoned'" on marijuana):

the "aroma, texture, sweetness and psychological associations [people have] with chocolate" are more responsible than chemical factors

"women crave chocolate because they have turned it into a nutritional taboo ... because it's loaded with fat and calories"

It's both chemical and psychological:

"chocolate's sensory qualities, chemicals, cultural values, social values and hormonal influences all play a role in chocolate cravings. It is the complete chocolate bar that people crave. Not one single chemical or quality can be solely responsible for satisfying a chocolate craving."

There does seem to be some confusion in the information I've seen on the 'net so far on this subject...e.g., one article will say that "bioactive agents" in chocolate lead to the release of dopamine in your brain, whereas others will say it's the phenylethylamine that accomplishes both. Maybe both do, maybe one source has it wrong, who knows. I'm not interested enough to go check the literature ;).

Oh, there is also mention in my sources of ways in which chocolate is good for you. One source even claims that "even the saturated fat in cocoa, stearic acid, appears to be benign and unsaturated-like in its effects on our vascular system, so it doesn't contribute to atherosclerosis, as far as is known." Of course, there is also mention of ways in which overindulging in chocolate is bad for you. Lalalalala...not listening! Let's move on.

Okay, what about the other item in the photograph?
The other item in the photograph is one that I obtained for free from a booth the Ontario Science Centre (OSC) had set up at the conference. I wasn't originally going to go to the OSC's booth, but when I saw that other people from my program had this item, and heard that they had obtained it from the OSC booth, I had to go and get one...and when I told others in my program that I was on my way to get one, they immediately jumped on the bandwagon and ran to go get one, too. Mad props to the first blog-reader here who can post a comment telling the others what this item is...if no one guesses correctly by the end of, oh, let's say Wednesday, I'll post the answer.

Maybe I'll tell you about the fire-breather I saw, too.

Man, I love a good science conference :).

Some sources:

Wikipedia article on theobromine
Excellent BBC article on "The Science of Chocolate"...follow the links in it to see all the parts
"Is Chocolate Physiologically or Psychologically Addictive?" - a student paper was written for a course at Bryn Mawr College
Women & Chocolate
"Can chocolate affect your sex life?"
Article on theobromine at chemistry.about.com
"Chocolate: more than an obsession - recipe"