Dog Sitting. The Neighbors Said To Me, "You're Lucky They're Not Human Beings." They Are Raising Little Ones

I've been dog sitting for a colleague this week while she's in Michigan with family and working through the challenges that life often presents to us. It was the least I could do to show my support and appreciation for the human being that she is.

Many have tried to convince me that I should have two dogs, a playmate for Glamis, and it would be so much easier if she had an everyday playmate.

This is true. Unless I'm talking on the phone, Glamis and her friend, Scout, are totally independent doing what dogs naturally do: wrestling, pulling toys out of each others mouths, eating each others dog food, contributing to the same hole to be dug in the back yard (if we both take part, he won't know which one of us did - um, I saw both of them collaborating together), and craving attention.

When I settle in my chair to work, I now have two fuzzballs jumping in my lap, licking my face, and placing paws on my keyboard.

The neighbors saw me double fisted and walking the dogs yesterday and they asked, "Did you get another?" in which I responded, "No." I did acknowledge that the two run through the house playing almost every second of the day and it's nice not to be noticed unless I'm on the phone. They were quick with reply, "Oh, I wish our kids were this way. You're lucky they're just dogs."

Then Daylight Savings Night, Saturday, I finally gave in and let the two mongrels in my room because they were whining high pitch shrills outside my bedroom door. Normally, Glamis is okay sleeping downstairs. Exhausted, I opened the door and they ran into the room. At first, it was WWE wrestling on the hardwood floors until I finally yelled, "Get on the bed. Enough with the nails."

They jumped up quickly.

Then, it was an evening of who could push in closest to me, kidnapping my pillows and hogging the blankets while claws dug deep in my skin in resistance. I tried to kick them off the bed, but they weren't having it.

I see the benefits of having two, but I'm unsure I could handle it - they prank each other, tease each other, whine at eat other, bark at each other, and play so enthusiastically that I'm afraid for my belongings. The mud, the dog hair, and the nose prints on windows - well, that come with the territory, too.

They're damn cute, though...when they're resting.

Training Jedis - That is the Call of K-12 Educators and Yesterday Was a Celebration of Many Communities Supporting the Profession

My sister sent me a photo of my nephew and God Son while he participated in a Jedi training exercise at Disney. I will always remember the scene when the Dark Force swept into the training camp for young Jedis and wiped out "the force" because it was a threat to their nefarious desires (which is a metaphor for the larger democracy that the United States has been allowed to experience in its experimental, yet fruitful, mission in global politics).

Teaching. It's preparing Jedis for the future through offering them the superpower of mind, body, and soul. It is offering them all the force that we can so that they are prepared to face any violence, any evil, any hate, any discrimination, and any cruel darkness that might want to persuade them to turn from the light. The point of the Star Wars films are to remind us that in all of our hearts, darkness also exists. We hope we fight for the good...the light. In Star Wars terms, it is the unification of many: Ewoks, androids, Wookies and even humans. It is a unification of those who believe in a safe Empire for all....a unification of diversity.

Same is true for Lord of the Rings as many unite against the Orks and Sauron. We are stronger together. Divided by fear, we are weakened and wiped out.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I participated in the

Vicki Soto 5K to provide support and scholarship to school aged children and their teachers. In total, over 4,200 runners participated in the race and stood in memory of a classroom teacher and the young children who lost their lives during the Newtown tragedy. It was an event to stand up against hate and violence.

Similarly, I attended the the Daniel Trust Foundation fundraiser for offering mentorship, scholarship, and academic assistance to hardworking, dedicated youth who happen to live in impoverished communities where the resources are few. Daniel Trust and Vicki Soto Foundations are investing in teachers and youth to make the world a better place. They are, in this sense, investing in Jedi training and offering support for the youngest warriors to be able to fight the ugliness likely to be experienced in a world of human beings. We are not at a place of interacting with other planets, but if that day comes, teachers will be just as important. We teach tolerance and civility, not the ugliness of division and hatred.

I am entering my Sunday feeling hopeful that good triumphs...I have to remember this from yesterday's experience. I'm hoping the force will be with us. I want the force to be with tomorrow's children, too.

Revisiting A Theory About How and Why We are All Evolving Into ExtraTerrestrials (BRC Phone Home)

As a senior in high school, I became obsessed with the idea that one day I might be kidnapped by extraterrestrials and brought to another galaxy for experimentation. I read Whitley Strieber's Communion, and met a woman who worked at Estee Lauder in the mall (across from my shoe section) who convinced me that "her" species lived among human beings and they were scientists making observations on primitive forms of themselves. She said that we were planted on Earth so that her kind could study the evolutionary process of how they came to be. It sounded intriguing, and I began to think that as we became more and more hooked behind screens, we would likely develop larger brains and bigger eyes. We wouldn't need ears or noses as much, as our futuristic selves would rely on visual stimulation.

I feel like I'm turning into an alien now.

I wake up, am behind screen, go to work, get behind more screen, come home, and return to more screens, and go to bed thinking about the screens I've been behind all day. It is constant light being thrown at my brown eyes and when I look away, I see stars and flashing lights.

After 14 hours, though, I begin to get batty. So much font, so much text, so much illuminated communication and processing of the world. It has taken over way too much - even beyond the ways of yesteryear when I first came up with my harebrained hypothesis.

Still, I do believe there's the chance that I might one day be beamed up to another world for questioning, and after Tuesday's election, I am thinking it might be a good day to take me away. Depending on the results, I might be able to say, "Here's what I think happened - here's where this particular experiment of earlier versions of ourselves truly failed. It's all random, and no one could have predicted this year's election, but there's much to be learned by the behaviors of human beings in the freest nation on our planet. We tried. We really, really did try. But in the end, we're animals. I'm sure you already knew this."

Then they can inject me with a serum and toss me to the side (or I can visit my friend, Charlie, who had experiences with anal probing back when I lived in Kentucky).

Education, Community, Culture, Support, and Vocabulary - a Digital Project with a Special Partnership

It's not always easy to run a service learning course after school, because transportation and the arrangement of kids is a little rough. We've been successful, but Mr. King, an ESL teacher in Bridgeport, and I have had to think of other ways my students at Fairfield could be of language use to his beginning English learners who are just arriving. We decided on a 'Big Word' project that would introduce one THICK work for his students to learn, but also an introduction of students in college: their educational history, cultures, communities, and philosophies.

Yesterday, my students presented their mini-digital projects that can be sent to their partners in Mr. King's classroom. They've met face to face, and now they can meet electronically, where Mr. King can show a video a day and teach the English they are hearing and the Big Word being presented.

My students hope, however, that Mr. King will find the way to have his students create brief videos of their favorite word in their own language. We used Adobe Spark, online, and it took only a short while to put together a video story. We modeled the work from Pechakuchas, 20 slides and 20 seconds of talk per slide --- sort of like TedX haiku.

I'm excited to see what comes next. 

Yeah, I Know It Was Monday Night, But I'm Just Getting Around To Thinking About It Now.

I thought I was clever. I stored leftover bags of food (over 250 bags of Goldfish, Pirate's Booty, and Popcorn) in my basement in anticipation of Halloween. Feeling a little wary, I also bought 6 bags of Skittles and Starbursts just in case. Last year, we had a few kids on a Saturday night, and my friends and I made a party about it. This year, however, it was a madhouse. Actually, it was a parade. The first kids came around 5:30 and it was a steady flow until 8:30.

Every time I sat down to concentrate on my laptop to get work done, Glamis would whine in her perch in the bay window, leaping towards the front porch with excitement that we had guests. This exercise exhausted her and by 7:00 she when upstairs and grimaced, "I'm out. You take care of these fools."

What caught my attention this year was two-fold. (1) I was rather excited so many people participated in the bizarre American tradition. It make me think that individuals are feeling safer about American than I have been feeling lately - with all the hate in this political campaign, I figured people would be cautious to protect their kids. (2) There seemed to be a lot more adults, not dressed, also walking up to the door trick or treating. I'd ask if they were collecting for a kid in a car or someone who was shy and they would respond, "No. It's for me."

Hmmm. Maybe they were grocery shopping. I thought it was strange.

I remember my father cut us off from trick or treating at a young age. Then, I thought it was strict, but now that I'm an adult I think, "Good for him." The number of teenagers coming around in the later hours was rather abundant. I could hear them screaming the entire way and I thought, "Um, shouldn't you be working?"

Different times, I guess.

For the young ones, though, it was a fabulous night. I love seeing the kids dressed up and hearing from everyone, "Oh, we always look at your house to see if your dog is in the window. It's so great to actually get to pet her." Glamis was very much a part of the distribution of candy/snacks until she through in the towel as if stating, "Screw these people. They're not bringing anything to me."

And I'm thinking Monday night is a bit much for Halloween. Just what everyone needs to kick of the start of a work week - an evening of more work toting your kids around or working the door. I didn't even dress up this year: too overwhelmed and exhausted to keep up with the idea of festivity.

But I participated, and that counts most.

Writing To Learn and Inquire Through Difficult Texts. Inspired by a Philosophy Educator at a Community College

On Monday, I visited Housatonic Community College to show teaching support for Ed Fians, a philosophy educator who participated in the 2016 Invitational Leadership Institute of the Connecticut Writing Project. Ed has one of those minds we all wish we had and his creativity, innovation, thirst for truth, and inquisitiveness for ideas leaves most he interacts with inspired.

He participated with CWP-Fairfield because he wanted to tune the writing instruction he offers his non-traditional students, especially in a tough course on ethics. During the summer, he worked on a Woulda/Shoulda scenario, where he wanted to design a prompt that would get his students interacting with difficult texts as they apply decision making to scenarios of choosing right or wrong.

After the 1.5 hour observation, I said, "I'm totally stealing this for my graduate course on teaching writing." Why? I couldn't believe the engagement of his students: youth fresh out of a wide variety of high schools, mothers returning to school, career men trying to advance their intellectual knowing, English language learners improving their English, and workers wanting to find the next step for their life. If it is in the world, it was in his class.

And Ed Fians was teaching Foucault - Panopticism, of all things, where the students read about the plague and the history of prison systems. He had the students write in, "Would you rather live a life under total surveillance 24 hours a day for safety, or live free for ten years, no surveillance, but knowing you would only live ten years?" His students, like my graduate students, were divided about 60/40 on what they would choose. The debate was a precursor to the reading.

In my observation, I acknowledged that he had 100% engagement the entire time and I asked him why this was. He said, "It's the writing. I changed that this year. The students expect it, they get personal with it, and it helps them to connect to the texts we're exploring."

I decided I would do an experiment with my graduate students by offering the same prompt and giving them a selection to read (this is a Developmental Reading course for pre-service teachers). Gallagher notes that writing to learn means we have youth think through the difficult texts we assign. He speculates that a first reading will offer limited comprehension, but a second will bring a little more. He acknowledged that writing about the learning, however, emphasizes even more comprehension. This worked for 11 of my 12 students. They write their way into understanding the text.

I asked my graduate students what writing has to do with inquiry and knowing. They speculated a number of ideas, and then a French teacher said, "Writing is everything for knowing." Everything was my answer, too. From there we brainstormed projects for the course and tuned the questions we wanted to ask to guide students towards written outcomes that were pertinent to their writing objectives for students.

I owe a round of applause to Ed Fians for bringing summer learning to life and implication to the classroom - National Writing Project implication. When his students left they said, "Professor, why aren't we writing our way out of the room today?" He's created a culture of effective practices. He ran out of time, but they expected it.

"Writing," said Ed. "Writing is the secret. The engagement comes from the prompts. It takes more time away from my direct instruction, but the benefits far surpass any other way of doing this work."

In the classroom, K-12 students are expected to push difficult reading onto kids and to scaffold ways for them to interact with such text. Most simply assign. For Ed's students, and for my graduate students, however, a text isn't a text with new ideas until there's opportunity to write about and with the them.

And there it is. I'm kicking off my Wednesday with a bit of an Ed Fian-inspired jig. I want everyone to have the opportunity to take his class.

Every Time I Get Surrounded By Negativity, I Jump Into The Need For Positivity. Sometimes This is Challenging

I tend not to jump into the bandwagon of daily affirmations and quotes to live by, because the comedian in me, tends to find loopholes in such mentality, cracking me up and finding the opposite  to preach. Maybe this is my way of staying on my toes and trying to keep two feet on the ground.

I am thinking back to back-to-school kicks-offs in Kentucky when motivational speakers were hired to do district PD to get everyone ready for the challenges ahead.

There were challenges. Many. The happy-go-lucky spirit, though, did little for when this Bambi encountered Godzilla as I tried to empty the ocean with the fork they gave me.

Still, I've always been one to stop and list positive accomplishments in times when everyone seems frazzled by the world being reported around them. That is why I appreciated the community support of many in-practice teachers, agencies, Bridgeport residents, and administrators who quickly brainstormed the incredible work that was going on in support of a district that too often gets in the news for all the negative reasons. In a matter of seconds, 20 individuals listed the following ways that organizations and universities are contributing positive energy into local K-12 schools. Listed by these collaborators were (and I will leave it as is, before heading into work for the day).

• ·      Fairfield University College of Arts and Science Poetry For Peace tradition
• ·      CT Mirror and Fairfield University Collaboration, MLK Essay Contest
• ·      Fairfield’s GSEAP partnership with Cesar Batalla
• ·      Fairfield University Athletics Partnership with CWP-Fairfield for Literacy4Life
• ·      GSEAP Turnaround Partnership with Columbus K-8 School
• ·      38 Bridgeport youth with a Fairfield University scholarship
• ·      Bassick High School Senior Fridays at Fairfield University
• ·      Cesar Batalla’s Jessica Baldizon and Bassick High School’s William King will present workshops at National Writing Project Annual Meeting and National Council of Teachers of English
• ·      Tauck Family Foundation – Collaboration of Funders
• ·      OCT 19: PSAT/SAT preparation – College Board Ready Assessment
• ·      University of Bridgeport  – enrollment in UB’s graduate school, working with diverse populations (Reading and Educational Leadership)
• ·      Sacred Heart University’s Horizons and summer enrichment program: 200 students from BPS and BCS for math, science, social/emotional, and physical education with the goal od increasing math/reading skills.
• ·      Literacy Clinic at Sacred Heart University: tutoring, literacy consultants
• ·      Classrooms without Walls at Sacred Heart University: 4^th and 5^th graders from Madison Elementary and Trumbull to build skills and positive social interactions.
• ·      TSTT – Tech Conference at Sacred Heart University 11/3/16 Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Teachers Tech Conference
• ·      University of Bridgeport’s STEAM Project – Dr. Nancy DeJarnette received grant from CT Space Grant Consortium to train Pk-8 teachers in building STEAM (Science, technology, engineering, arts and math) (in collaboration with Discovery Museum)
• ·      University of Bridgeport Mentors in Roosevelt School 
• ·      University of Bridgeport Weekend workshops for science teachers
• ·      GEAR UP SAT Prep Classes on Saturdays (60 students) – hosted at University of Bridgeport
• ·      GEAR UP College Boot Camps: Common App, FAFSA, Essays
• ·      GEAR UP parent/student out of state college tour in Western Massachusetts
• ·      Parent Leadership Training Institute
• ·      RULER: Parent training, district success, community trainings
• ·      Apple Schools
• ·      Turnaround Arts
• ·      Restorative Practice workshops
• ·      OSS Pilot
• ·      Claytor Academy
• ·      Bridgeport Public Education Fund: MAACS College Grads and Alumni Group
• ·      Bassick/St. Vincents College Collaboration
• ·      HCC/Manufacturing Partnerships
• ·      1^st Day BPEF Books to all 1^st Grade students.
• ·      BPEF Inspiration Awards and Teacher Recognition
• ·      Daniel Trust Foundation’s Youth Council
• ·      Fairchild Wheeler Engineering collaboration
• ·      BHEA’s coordination of Student Service Resources for District through coordinating directory.
• ·      Housatonic Tutoring Program
• ·      United Way’s Youth Summit: 300 volunteers, 1,800 youth, 85 committee members – Port of Opportunity

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