Spring into Saturday: Jam-Packed

Some Saturdays require you to spring into stillness.  This Saturday was not one of them. This Saturday was jam-packed hence my usually late Saturday post.  We started the morning with a "fun"run. I've reached the age where fun and run just rhyme for me, fun isn't the appropriate adjective to describe a run.  I just move because I have no other choice. I don't hate it. I accept my current state. The run was for a good cause,  funding a scholarship for a student at my high school. My kid was awake at 6:30 with the anticipation of it.  She and a friend "ran" it.  I walked although the most fun parts were when I put the chase on my kid and her friend. No way did they want me passing them.  We were done by 9.  We enjoyed breakfast together. I then ran a ton of errands.

Later we headed the siren's song as she and I went to see matinee performance of The Little Mermaid. We had orchestra seats.  Up close and amazing our first time in the pit.  She was worried as she had read that it had bad reviews.  We weren't disappointed.  It was our 3rd show since October.  We went to the ballet Dracula in October and then saw Wicked in January.  We are luck to live in a city that has great arts opportunities. We are planning to see Matilda in May.

Sunday will require some stillness. The beach, however, is calling me name and I have book club.  I need to resist the ocean's call and get ready for non-stop week ahead.  That's how I perform best. It's easy to get side-tracked by all the fun.  Hope you had an amazing Saturday too!

Food for Thought: U-Pick Central Florida

With the spring weather in Florida amazing right now, I encourage everyone to get outside and visit a local u-pick. Can't do it this weekend? Any weekend will do as it depends upon what produce you want to eat.

 Strawberries? Head to Pappy's in Oviedo. Strawberries are typically available from December to March/April. At Pappy's you can quickly pick ten pounds or a flat of strawberries. You can also pick up local honey or my favorite, strawberry field onions. Bring cash and arrive early. On a weekend they pick out quickly. I like to freeze them. They make for delicious smoothies. I also have made sorbet and haven't tasted anything better than fresh strawberry sorbet.

Blueberries? Although you can pick blueberries at Pappy's in May, I love the Southern Hill Farms experience in Clermont.  With ten varieties of bushes, you can indulge in the all you can eat as you pick. Like the strawberries, I freeze the blueberries.  They both make great ice-cubes in my water and help me sneak in a fruit too. On a weekend, they have music, food, crafts, and hayrides.

Peaches?  Yes--peaches aren't just a Georgia thing. Last May we discovered that Uncle Matt's a producer of organic juices, mostly oranges, has local farms growing peaches.  Again delish! A May thing, but all you can eat. Florida peaches aren't large, but boast the the most gorgeous flesh-sunset. I still have one frozen pack in the freezer. I am thinking about making a peach crisp with it. Though, again I love putting them in my water.  You have to follow them on Facebook to find their picking times as they have a community of local farms rather than one large dedicated farm.

On my u-pick bucket list, finding a place with blackberries.  I do have a secret source where I forage wild blackberries, but would love to pick more to freeze.



What you u-picks do you recommend in your area?

Vocabulary Rant

WARNING! If you are my daughter, please stop reading this now!  Otherwise, please continue.

It was so simple when my kid was in elementary school.  She used to get wordlists and draw pictures. She loves to draw.  It would really help her remember. I loved her pictures. Now she's 13 and she routinely gets vocabulary in her science class.  I understand that there is a ton of academic vocabulary in a content class, part of my day job is working with biology teachers.  All year my kid has been doing faithfully doing the sentences and writing definitions as part of the routine homework for each unit in this high school science class.  It's homework. I am glad that her teacher chooses not to use class time to do this.  It should be an easy A. It's predominantly copying.  She needs the terminology so she can navigate the text. I get it.  But it shouldn't take three hours to write ten sentences.  It shouldn't.  That led to our Tuesday night heated-discussion.

At 5:45 pm, I told her to go ahead and do the sentences. I went and worked out.  I checked in again at 6:45 and then weren't done. We had dinner and again she proceeded to "work" on her sentences. By 9 pm with this routine of check-in and out, she still hadn't completed her sentences.  She griped, "Mom, when in the world am I going to use the word embryonic in a sentence and when am I going to use isotopes in a sentence." Yes, I know you are thinking about that.  Both of these terms really lent themselves to images in my head. I shared some sentence possibilities. Her dad came out with jokes, "I'd rather have isotopes than mice-o-topes."  I thought that might be a clever approach.  Being 13 she didn't entertain either idea and just dug in and wrote sentences embedding the definitions as context clues in the sentences. I didn't really tell her what I really thought.

I know professionally that this is the least effective way to learn vocabulary. I certainly don't share this with my newly minted teen since I have plenty of other battles to fight and don't need to give her any ammunition.  In my first year of teacher twenty-four years ago, I too employed this list, define, sentence practice.  I unfortunately wasted class time doing this, once a week, every Thursday like clockwork. With a classroom full of ELL students, they certainly needed more words in their head.  Later in my practice I realized that I was asking kids to define a word they didn't know with a bunch of words they didn't know. Fortunately, we spent a lot of class time reading independently.  That was my antidote to the list.

If you are reading this and you are my age, you probably did the same thing.  We had word lists growing up. I remember having low grades in sixth grade because I refused to do the very thing my kid has to do now with her word list.  I also remember having to do this vocabulary workbook in middle school where we had to fill in the word to the definition, do synonyms/antonyms and sentences aka a fill-in-the-blank workbook.. I know you are shaking your head, yes, I had to do this too.  What really shaped my word knowledge was my reading life.  Just as I know it shapes my kid's and every other kid's word knowledge.

So I bite my tongue.  It's tough being a teacher's kid and I judiciously choose what battles to fight. My kid loves her science teacher. My kid works harder for teachers she loves and embraces those subjects more passionately. Her teacher has animals, a rat and a snake. My kid has always wanted to have a teacher with class pets.  Her teacher challenged her students to solve real problems with their science fair project.  My kid did just that.  All practices I value.  In the long run, I know it won't harm my child to copy definitions and write sentences, especially for homework.  When she finally sat down, it actually took ten minutes for the ten words.  Ultimately she is learning vocabulary in one of the most important ways, reading-widely, deeply, and daily.

  

Eye-Spy: Signs of Spring

Flowers are in abundance here in Florida.  Our climate is a little bit different than the rest of the United States.  We started picking strawberries in December, our best tomatoes are in season right now, and blueberry and peach season will finish in May. Corn should be in season soon too. My family tries to eat in season and locally, especially hitting up the u-picks. I'll post about the best places to U-pick for my Friday post.  I started Eye-Spy on Wednesdays as a way to share what I saw during the week as well as have a way to write on my long-work Wednesdays.    I don't have any of those pictures of those crops to share yet so enjoy my weekend flower pictures.  Sadly I don't know their names. If you do, feel free to let me know!      Enjoy  my signs of spring.                 

                       

Fortunately, Unfortunately My Workout

I took a bunch of nature photos this weekend
 so I could have one each day for my Slice Posts
this month.

When the writing is tough, I pull to a formula of sorts. This post is inspired by Remy Charlip's Fortunately.  I have written in the past with this format and it helps the words flow.   Enjoy!

Fortunately I got to workout tonight!

Unfortunately, when I got there my trainer said, "No Weights-All Week!"

Fortunately, I had the courage to say, "Should I just go home?"

Unfortunately, he told me to do my thing and stay!

Fortunately, I did.

Unfortunately, he was not leading our workout tonight.

Fortunately, they were guest trainers from another state!

Unfortunately, they may never have to lead me again.

Fortunately, they made us start by running two laps.

Unfortunately, almost 47 and plagued with tendinitis that is not how I warm up.

Fortunately, as people blazed past me, I felt comfortable doing my thing aka warm up walking/jogging.

Unfortunately, they were assigning groups based on when we came in.

Fortunately, they were heterogeneous groups.

Unfortunately,  they were groups of 3 for competitive games against other teams.

Fortunately, my group members were actually my workout compadres who know me well.

Unfortunately, they made us add another person, a stranger.

Fortunately, she ended up being cool.

Unfortunately, there were more laps.

Fortunately, I still did my thing.

Unfortunately, I did more running than I wanted.  

Fortunately, I have plenty of ice and ALEVE and crutches if needed at home.

Unfortunately, we got a point for our team for every set we completed.

Fortunately, my skill-set for other rep components made up for my running speed.

Unfortunately, we had 60 total minutes of sweating!

Fortunately, the 60 minutes of amazing ended.

Unfortunately, I will be back on Thursday to sweat again.

Fortunately, my trainer will be back.

Unfortunately, I am icing as I write.

Fortunately, I will be back on my feet moving again.

Monday

Another photo from our family foray
 in to the flowering gardens
at the UF/IFAS Extension in Orlando.

Today is the kind of day that I don't feel like writing, but it's kind of like working out, I don't have a choice not to do it (at least that's how I speak to myself in my head).  It was a long day of moving at work and although my image is a looking toward the sky, my topic is a little more earthbound aka my shoes. A little mundane, but for most teachers, our feet take a beating. As I sit here with my legs elevated and my ankle on ice with a round of heat next. I can't stop thinking about my feet and my favorite shoes!  Here are my top three for work and my special sock recommendation *thank you Erin Dorso for that).  No- I don't get kickbacks, just comfort!

1. Dansko-  I love the backless clogs and like to wear them in "winter" months with socks.  I know as a brand they are pricey, but I kept seeing how other professionals who are constantly on their feet moving (surgeons and chefs) wore them. As a shoe investment, I love that you can bring them to a cobbler and get them re-heeled or re-inner soled.  Their lastiness frankly outlives my desire to wear them, but they are so comfortable on my twelve hour days. The brand has added more attractive shoes as my daughter would say, but the sturdy clogs are my favorite.  There is an artist who paints them and I have been thinking about asking my husband to paint one of my pairs. 

2. Adidas Cumulus or Nimbus running shoes, both of which are apropos with my cloud image.  I supinate like crazy which means my foot rolls outward when I walk or run.  I rotate between two pairs at a time, mostly for working out.  I do, however, put them on for work days like today when I know that my work mileage will exceed my normal daily  mileage due to testing.  Did I tell you our campus is 35 acres?  Did I mention we testing around 1900 students today for our two hour state writing test and it was all on the computer?  Non-stop troubleshooting and movement.  Fortunately I had a hot new pair of Nimbus to wear and that made the day more fun and foot-tolerable. 

3.  My newest addition, FitFlops.  If I had written this post last March, it would have stopped a two.  But last May I discovered the comfort of the FitFlop.  Again a little pricey, but three of my five pairs were gifts from a really good friend. They are perfect for Florida weather where it rains almost every day in the summer. Some of these styles are jazzed up and appropriate it for work.  I already have some converts too.

4.  My go-to socks- Balega's.  They are expensive and my daughter has developed a taste for them too. I can't  begrudge her. As I ask myself, if I wore better shoes\socks in my youth, would I have the issues I have now?  I mean in my day we played basketball in Chuck Taylors!  I still love Chucks, but they hate me at this age. Balegas have a little compression and padding in all the right places plus they retain their shape over time and abuse.  

What are your go-to work shoe favs?

Sunday Seven

Signs of Spring at the UF/IFAS in Orlando

The Sunday Seven is devoted to uncovering gratitude from the week's passing.  

7.  The Slice of Life Story Challenge is back and pushing me to write.

6. Co-workers who dig in and do the work before we test 2200 students on Monday.  Yes, that's not a typo.  2200 students on computers writing for 120 minutes.  

5. Workout compatriots cheering each other on to do one more squat, push press, push-up, crunch, burpee or lap.

4. The privilege to work with curios engaged students who want to be English teachers.

3. Arriving home on Friday to find all the laundry and I mean all the laundry washed, folded and put away. Thank you husband!

2.  Flowering gardens at  the UF/IFAS in Orlando open to the public from dawn to dusk daily.  

1.  Gorgeous Florida spring weekend weather so I can enjoy the outdoors with my family.