Blogging: My First Love is Also My Current Love
Mamacita says: Facebook, Twitter, and PInterest are taking up much of my former blogging time, but you know something. . . . popular and fun and useful as other aspects of social media might be, my first love is also my current love: blogging.
I am one of the old-school bloggers. My archives go back to April 2004, and by blogging/social media standards, that’s practically ancient.
I go to conferences mainly to meet up with other old-school bloggers. Oh, I love meeting the newbies, too – we all begin everything as 
newbies – but my heart beats with love at the very thought of the other old-timers, the bloggers I’ve known and followed for years. I’d list them here but they know who they are. I only hope they know how precious they are to me.
Whether I’m speaking or just attending, blogging conferences are necessary for my soul.
My clients are precious, also. I give them my full attention, and I hope I give them exactly what they need and want. I also hope they let me know pronto if I don’t.
This blog is not a client blog, although several clients have “discovered” me here. This blog is where I talk about my own “stuff,” and if that is of interest to others, more the better. (SQUEEEEEEE….)
Blogging saved my soul alive, but that is probably another story. Someday, perhaps I will have the courage to tell it. Some of you already know it, and your support has meant the world to me.
Those of you who have encouraged me along the way will be precious until the day I die. Possibly even after that.
Blogging has enhanced my life. It has enhanced my teaching. It has enhanced my social media work. It has enhanced me.
I think it would do the same for you. Give it a chance.
Blogging is far more than keeping a diary of what you had for dinner. That might have worked for Samuel Pepys, but these days people save that stuff for Twitter. 🙂
We had chicken/cheese enchiladas for dinner tonight. Interested? I thought not.
Blogging gives us a look into other people’s lives, and allows us to become acquainted, really acquainted. Blogging lets us share, and help, and like each other and, sometimes, even love each other, and I don’t necessarily mean the romantic or creepy kind. Blogging is the village that everyone needs.
I met some of my best and dearest friends via blogging. So can you.
What are you waiting for?
You Are More Important Than A Piece of Paper
My students tend to get stressed when it’s quiz or test time.
I want to tell them not to worry so much, so I think I will do just that:
Dear students:
It’s just a piece of paper. No piece of paper will ever be as important as YOU are. Relax. Breathe deeply. Stand up and stretch when you feel the need. Go get a coke out of the machine, and maybe a Snickers bar, too. Chocolate won’t hurt your test; I’ll be grading it myself and unless it’s so soiled I can’t read it, who cares?
Sometimes a little sugar might be just the energy boost you need. Get up and walk around the parking lot for a few minutes; clear your head. Look at the trees behind the college. Watch the squirrels. When you come back inside, take a few deep breaths, pick up your pencil and begin again.
Read carefully; you KNOW these things. I know you do. I’ve heard you talk about these topics for a month now and you KNOW them. Don’t let your fear of the test itself overcome the knowledge in your head. Don’t let a piece of paper take you down. USE the piece of paper to prove your knowledge of these things. Let the piece of paper encourage you to express what you know. You are the boss of this piece of paper. This piece of paper cannot defeat you. This piece of paper WANTS you to master it. You can.
Inside your head, where dwells your actual self, is a universe of wonder. You’ve got what it takes to succeed in life. You can do it. The piece of paper is just you showing me that you understand little increments of cool stuff, one sheet at a time.
Is this registering with you, students? Don’t let the dread of a quiz or test get between you and that piece of paper. And remember this, because it’s very important: a test itself is never as awful as the dread of it beforehand.
I’ve heard many of you saying this already: “That quiz wasn’t hard at all!” Well, guess what: it was supposed to be hard. The reason why you didn’t think so is that you KNOW THIS STUFF.
Yes, you do. Shut up.
Polymers in the Writing Lab
Mamacita says: Yes, it’s true. I use polymers in my writing labs. I also use all kinds of science in my reading labs. I’ve done this for many years. And guess what: this WORKS.
Here’s the thing about learning: everything is connected to everything else. As soon as a student understands this one little point, things change.
Today’s lesson instantly connects to yesterday’s lesson, and last week’s lesson, and that lesson in first grade when you didn’t understand a word but now you do, and it happened all by itself. Or did it. . .It’s like we woke up one morning and suddenly something we didn’t understand before makes sense. We spend our lives connecting the dots, and if we do it right, we’ll have a far cooler end result than the horsie or duckie we ended up with on those preschool sewing cards.
Everything we learn and know is so ready, so EAGER, to connect to new things, and to each other. Every student in my labs is smart, and ready to learn new things – perhaps not in conventional ways, but I have NEVER been accused of being conventional (I consider this a compliment.) and ALL are ready to learn, whether they realize it or not. In my experience, people who learn best in unconventional ways are the creative ones, the thinkers, the ones who DO things, and often the kinds of things that are going to save us all. I love this kind of student. All I have to do is keep tossing out potential fascinations.
That’s my job. I throw fascinations in people’s faces. Sometimes I lightly toss them. Sometimes I barrel them into a student’s face as if I were chucking a cannonball at him. Sometimes I see a fascination drifting by and I blow it around the room and make sure every pair of eyes follows it, even for just a few seconds. I’ve been known to use vocabulary that some might deem, shall we say, unconventional, at times.
The things we learn while laughing, we almost always remember. Well, I do.
Mundane things are mundane only if we are content to let them be mundane. Old dogs CAN be taught new tricks. There’s no such thing as boredom unless we choose boredom.
Polymers can illustrate these things.
I like to put a few pinches of dull, hard, multi-faceted rock-salt-like WaterJelly Crystals in the bottom of a clear glass bowl. This represents a thought. Or a personality. Or an idea. Or a single word. Or anything you want it to represent. These things remain the same as long as nothing more is added.
So we add something more, and before class is over, we get jewels. A bowl full to the very brim, of jewels. Soft, yet strong. All the colors of the rainbow. We started with a few pieces of what looked like nothing. We added one thing. ONE THING. Now we have a bowl full of wonder, capable of doing all kinds of useful things. (Ask my students; they can tell you!)
Today, we used Insta-Snow to demonstrate that often the addition of one single simple thing can INSTANTLY transform a little piece of learning into a really big deal. A few pinches of plain white salt-like powder in the bottom 
of a bowl, a little water, and HOLY COW, the stuff rises up before our very eyes and overflows the bowl and covers the table with white fluffy coolness. . . you know, just like our thoughts when, more often than we realize, one simple additional thing makes a simple thought explode with wonder.
Last week we used a different polymer. I had my students take these home 
and asked them to report to me what they observed.
Let’s just say that it’s a good thing I had the students dump these little polymers into a glass or bowl before adding the water. They’re the size of large shooter marbles now.
Some connections are made instantly. Some connections take a little more time. This is easily illustrated with various polymers.
And, all of these things being polymers, they’ll last pretty much forever. I’ve got polymer Christmas decorations that are over four years old now, and because they’re sealed up, they’ll never shrink. Let your polymers dry out again and you can reuse them for years. YEARS. Store them in baggies or in Tupperware. Polymers are so easy.
There are too many cool things about these polymers to mention in one post, long as it already is, but here are two I want to stress:
Firstly, polymers are harmless. They aren’t food, but if you eat them, they won’t hurt you. This means you can include your young children in the fun without worrying about what could happen if they taste a polymer. Nothing will happen, that’s what happens. Polymers are 100% non-toxic – totally harmless.
Secondly, polymers won’t hurt your carpets. If you have a spill, just let them dry and shrink down and vacuum them up. They won’t hurt your carpets, or your dog, or your children.
These polymers are so versatile – science, art, any other part of the curriculum, sensory projects, crafts. . . there are few areas where polymer products can’t be an enhancement. They’re inexpensive, too – especially when you consider that they last virtually forever.
This is not a paid or sponsored post. This is what I do all day. Don’t you wish you were me? I LOVE my job!
Next up in writing lab: “I’m dumping this on your head.”
You have been warned, students.
