Monday, October 27, 2008

Snow in October

Brr... It is cold.

Checking the weather incessantly has weaved itself into my daily online routines. I check it before I finalize my preparations for the day, before I leave any building, before I sleep, and any other time in between. The warning since yesterday was that I should be expecting sudden freezing and flurries (snow but not exactly the type that would stay on the ground an accumulate).

And it did snow! Fancy that! Even before Halloween! Colleen and I were out for a drive yesterday and it started snowing as we made our way back to the car with our groceries at Woodman. Today, it was coming down like rain during class earlier and I was walking back to work with snowlike residue on my coat. Yup! I am getting my coats out and don't be surprised if I do pull out my long coat. I am so ready for gloves too!

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Thank you for your prayer and support. After another weekend of procrastination, I am breaking the norm when I turned on my computer and found out Skype was working. I called home and spoke to Su-Anne, mom, and my grandparents, waking them up bright and early. I stayed up and finished up what was due today. I also checked my mid-terms grades for my classes and thank God I am doing ok. I pray that I would only do better and catch up with my work. There are many things that are bottled up in my head waiting to be blogged... I will get to that when I am all caught up with my workload. Have a great week ahead!

Friday, October 24, 2008

Wanted by Inspiration or Force---MOTIVATION---Reward: One Happy Bunny

Dry and wilted is how I feel of late. I am fighting off thoughts that would plunge me into the catergory of being depressed, but I have learned that it is not my call.

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Friday again. I guess my spirits will be lifted today. I was all dolled up for my reading buddy this morning. Unfortunately my spunky redhead was absent today, but I was not dissapointed with my time spent with Leslie. She is an ambitious reader and I am so proud of her when she spotted words like "emancipation." Good girl.

The reason I was specifically dolled up today was because it is FOUNDER'S DAY at Judson University. This was one of the RARE occasions when all roomies of 307 was present for chapel. B, Nem, and I was paying our dues as cultural ambassadors as be carry our flags in the processional, and Colleen was in the choir. I must say the 4 of us were dressed to impress. Anyways, chapel was good and it was packed. (Yes, the many rare occasions when professors are decked in their robes and many students were present since they will receive double credit hours for this day.)

I sang my heart out at the chosen hymns. I needed that. How I missed my days of choir and voice lessons. The choir then did a presentation of "Worthy is the Lamb," to me that was Handel's Messiah chorus No.53. It was strange hearing it in English and although the choir was good, I thought TCI's choir was WAY BETTER. We have life, we have good coordination, and I could hear the differences in why we sounded better under the wisdom of Tenda-sensei. I will be blasting the Messiah Commemoration CD made in celebration of TCU's 20th Anniversary when I get back to my room.

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Have you ever experience an immediate answer to prayer? I know I have some good ones. Well, this can be argued but I have just been thinking about how I miss having good guys around. Don't get me wrong, I love my roomies and my classmates who are nothing but wonderful, but I do miss having people around me who know, accept, and love me just the way I am and spoiling me in the gentleman/guy-kinda way. To my surprise, Mr. H, a classmate from Children's Lit, made an appearance at Financial Aid within the same hour those thoughts were running in my head! He is a dying breed of young men the world suffers. His momma brought him up right in being a gentlemen among the college students I have seen here. I think we only spoke, maybe 3 times since the end of August, but he came in today with no specific Financial Aid reasons just to say "Hi!" Bless his heart. That was sweet and it kinda made me feel good after facing social suicide at the Volkman lounge opening on Wednesday night.

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I sincerely hope that this weekend will be a good one as I battle my homework. Yep... I am still swimming. Half of the semester has gone and 7 weeks left to the end of the semester. I seriously need motivation in finding joy these days. Do pray for me that I will be able to get through this rough patch.
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Ending on a lighter note....
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SUNIL!!!!

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Do you think Trump could do this??????

THE NEW SURVIVOR SHOW

Have you heard about the next planned Survivor show? Three businessmen and three businesswomen will be dropped into an elementary school classroom for 6 weeks. Each businessperson will be provided with a copy of their school district's curriculum, and a class of 25-30 students.

Each class will have five learning-disabled children, three with ADD, one gifted child, and two who speak limited English. Three will be labeled as severe behavior problems. Each businessperson must complete lesson plans at least 3 days in advance with annotations, and modify, organize, or create materials accordingly.

They will be required to teach students, handle misconduct, implement technology, document attendance, write referrals, correct homework and tests, make bulletin boards, compute grades, complete report cards, document benchmarks, communicate with parents regularly, and arrange parent conferences. They must also supervise recess and monitor the hallways. In addition, they will complete drills for fire, tornadoes, or shooting attacks. They must attend workshops, faculty meetings, union meetings, and curriculum development meetings, just to name a few. They must also work extra hard with those students who are behind and/or learning disabled, and strive to get them and the two non-English speaking children proficient enough to take the national achievement tests. If they are sick or having a bad day, they must not let it show. Each day, they must incorporate reading, writing, math, science, and social studies into the program. They must maintain discipline and provide an educationally stimulating environment at all times.
The business people will only have access to the golf course on the weekends, but on their new salary, they will not be able to afford it anyway. There will be no access to vendors who want to take them out to lunch, and lunch will be limited to 30 minutes. On days when they have recess duty, the business people will be permitted to use the staff restroom as long as another survival candidate is supervising their class. They will be provided with two 40-minute planning periods per week while their students are at specials. If the copier is operable, they may make copies of necessary materials at this time, provided they have not used up their allotted number of copies.
The business people must continually advance their education on their own time and pay for this advanced training themselves. Moonlighting at a second job or marrying someone with money can accomplish this. The winner will be allowed to return to his or her job.

Who still thinks teaching is easy?

Friday, October 10, 2008

My Reading Buddy

"Hey Suemae, you are gonna have a long day today, ya?"

"Yup... I need to be at school to read to my buddy, then get back on campus to work all day, and will head out to the conference at 4:30. Will be back late tonight," as rubbed shampoo into my hair.

"And you have class tomorrow morning, ya?"

"Yup... 8 to 12." Crap! I do have class. With all my homework due on Monday with a mid-term that I am falling back on my readings... How would I cope?
*** (-__0 #) ***
I jumped out of the shower and tried not to let the busy schedule get to me as I prepared. Well, no matter how crazy things get, I look forward to see CJ.

As a part of my Children's Literature class, we are participating in a reading program with the neighborhood school. We have a reading buddy in the 3rd Grade whom we will spend 30-minutes every week to read to, with, and by. I have a spunky red-headed boy and I think he is just wonderful. The purpose of this class is to get us exposed to more children's literature and see how it interacts with real children. The kids at the school are from high-risk family and some even have immediate family members who are involved in gangs, etc.

I love reading with CJ. Just half-hour of my time does wonders for both of us, and it sure reminds me about my days of English tutoring. He is a very smart kid to me. I was touched that he practiced books that were slightly above his reading level, and long books too! He read to me "Click, Clack, Moo" our last time, and today, "David Gets in Trouble." I reckon he loves fun books so I read to him "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More" and we read "Curious George" together.

He is an excellent reader to me. Not perfect, but persistent. He was flexible to indulge in my whim to read Curious George which he did not practice reading before, and although
it was LONG and a few difficult words were present, he plowed on, sound the words, and we had a great time with sidetrack stories too. I guess my time with CJ will be my oasis in this mad semester. I can't wait till next Friday!

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Sleepy and Distracted Thursday

... (laughs) It is more like I am sleepy everyday of late. Somehow I seem unable to get any good rest or sleep these days. I could hardly get out of bed every morning since Sunday and that has been costing me my hours at work. Grr... I will be short of maybe 5 hours this week!

My homework pile has mutated into this grotesque and annoying beast. I have no one to blame but myself for procrastinating. Contrary to what everyone thinks, I can be a slob at times and without the OC organizing, I am just lost. I stayed up till 3 last night just to organize my homework and now I have an idea of the work that needs to be done. I talked with Dr. D yesterday and he said "Still swimming is good... Don't sink. Keeping one nostril out of the water is still ok."

Apart from the regular excuses, I am unable to do one of my assignments as it bugs me whenever I tackle it. An article for my Assessment for ESL class was due last Saturday but I had not been able to find the time since I went for the Basic Skills Test that day. After that, whenever I pick up the paper, I am simply challenged by the enormous burden of understanding the need for bilingual education. I sat down for 4 hours but still could not produce the needed response paper. The friendly RA came over to study and I ended up bouncing my thoughts off her for an hour. 2 days and a lunch conversation about the topic with my ESL focus supervisor later and I still am struggling with the paper.

And then of course, I am so ready for the semester to be over. Plans for Christmas and winter break has taken form and I even had a grocery list done for Christmas Eve, Christmas, Mom's Birthday, New Year's Eve, and New Year's dinner! I could even tell you the menu!

Well, there is just so much that needs to be done now. For today, let me just concentrate on getting through the day. I aim to squeeze at least 3 hours of work, play catch up and house-keeping during my practicum at Westminster (ooh, I need to get that Bulletein Board done soon), finish up all of my lesson plans for Middle School (5 more and an overview), and hopefully tackle my ESL workload. Hmm, I think the laundry needs to be done too...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

We are insane to be doing this...

It is 1:14AM and we just got back from shopping at Woodman's. Nem is planning to go on the Master Diet and needed to get stuff for her 10 day dietary supply. Since all of us will be joining her in some form of weight reducing regime, we decided that this will be the last night for solid food to go into our system. (Well, I am cheating with fruit intake as I could not afford to look sick or pass out when I am doing my practicum and readings at the schools.)

The menu at the moment are eggs, guacamole and chips, prata, rice, and possibly pasta.
Man! A carb fest! ... and it sure feels like a Friday!

Monday, October 6, 2008

My Favorite Children Authors

My assignment for my Children's Literature class week ago was to read an autobiography of a children's author. The assignment was a challenge at first for I had trouble thinking about children's authors. I thought of my favorite authors like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, but I was looking for someone more focused on writing for children. My mind turned to the things I love and what I could remember. I couldn't really decide on one, thus I picked three and did some research on all of them.

*click for more information

Some conclusions can be drawn immediately from my choice. (It is kind of scary as the choices reflect who I am to a great extent.)
  1. They are well known and considered as classic children's authors. (I am a sucker for the classics.)
  2. They were all English writers. (Hail the right use of the language and grammar! It reflects my educational background too.)
  3. These authors had their share of life challenges and produced what I think are the best books of all times. (Inspiration and encouragement.)
Although it might seem far fetched, but I reckon some of my boldness, wittiness, and thirst for adventure and life were greatly inspired by these good people. At the end, I brought two authors to class and narrowed down on Beatrix Potter (a dead giveaway as I love bunnies).

Beatrix Potter. Written and Illustrated by Alexandra Wallner

Beatrix Potter: The Story of the Creator of Peter Rabbit by Elizabeth Buchan

Beatrix Potter by John Malam

Who are your favorite authors? Care to share? I would love to learn from you.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Outburst

I can't believe it is already the end of Wednesday. Where did my week go? Where did September go? I have been plowing forward with my head buried in the semester madness that I hardly have time to breathe. Yes, I am whining and complaining; however, it is not in bitter or negative connotations. I just wished I had more time and need not worry about money so that I can give my best in everything I do.

I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. It is rather overwhelming but it is my passion. I guess what I want is for people to give me a little credit that I am doing my best. I know it seems self-centered and that I crave for attention. I little pat on the back saying, "You are working so hard. Keep up the good work. I have faith in you that you would do good." I would like some of that in the physical realm of human beings, but knowing mankind, it is better for me to look up and ahead for it instead. I guess I am like a dog; a rub on the head and throwing me a treat for being good would be nice.

Maybe I am just being a big wuss. Maybe I just need to plan my time better. So... I am not that special. Time to stop the whining and just keep swimming.

Negatives chi aside, I am having fun with my class of boys I am observing. I get to hang around 15 really adorable 5th graders every Tuesday and Thursday. I can't wait to start teaching. It is the energy in the classroom that fuels the passion. I have been to Westminster Christian School twice now and simply love it. I guess I would use this as my oasis. The other course requirement I am looking forward to is for my time with my 3rd-grade reading buddy at Gifford School beginning next week.

I look forward to Fall break as it would give me time to catch up with all the work I am supposed to do... but before that, there is Mid-term.... WHOOPPIE!!!!