spring snowboarding
Rossin and her many talents
#squad
furniture making (mostly all B’s work)
new shoes
an outfit from last week
cardigan: uniqlo – shirt: madewell – jeans: f21 – shoes: vans
Super Tuesday!
I just got back from my first ever caucus. A weird experience all around since I’m used to a primary system in California and New York. Both B and I were in a perpetual state of amazement while there.
I wore my voting shirt today to school under my sweater and reviews were mixed. I got a lot of “that’s a sick shirt miss” along with advice on who to vote for (mostly for Bernie due to his free-college tuition stance). Some students were confused though and thought ‘sucka’ was ‘suck a’ (2 words). They all wanted to know what the rest of my shirt said. Hmmmm. Does this make my shirt inappropriate?
glasses: warby parker – sweater: banana republic – tshirt: mnkr – belt: gap – skirt: j.crew – tights: h&m – shoes: franco sarto
Existential Crisis?
I just finished a 3 day Science as Thinking institute through PEBC. It was amazing and I learned oh so much about inquiry and how to foster real, valuable, scientific thinking in students. Actual learning through teaching for understanding. We were given this brilliant book and I’m in the process of devouring it. The institute was all Expeditionary Learning stuff without actually calling it Expeditionary Learning. That ‘rigor’ that was so elusive and confusing to me before? I totally get it now! That ‘discourse’ that was so forced before? I know how to make it more authentic and natural now! If you’re in a school that values quality professional development and a budget exists for PD, I would recommend checking out PEBC – they run institutes for all the core subjects.
I’m in my 7th year of teaching science. I learned how to teach through an intern program. It was trial by fire (literally – some kids lit a fire in my room one day). I developed some very bad ‘survival’ habits to lesson planning those first 2 years. In my credentialing program, I learned that ‘inquiry’ meant doing labs (science teachers, you know what I’m talking about) and having students predict and explain through modeling real word phenomena. Lastly, I make my kids take notes, and my assessments this year are unit tests. Shock horror. All joking aside though, I am very seriously reconsidering what I am doing as a science teacher. What are my kids actually learning?
I’m feeling the need to scrap everything I do and start from scratch. This past week has been somewhat soul shaking (a little dramatic, maybe?) for me. I may be in the midst of a yet another teacher existential crisis.
New additions to my closet and a glass of wine are helping me weather this crisis tonight. I have a new coat! This Madewell City Grid Coat was on super sale and I justified the purchase by rationalizing away the fact that I have my favorite Arcteryx and another similar coat (but none of them are warm and black!) already hanging in my closet.
glasses: warby parker – coat: madewell – cardigan and blouse: uniqlo – jeans: 3×1 – boots: franco sarto
Take It Easy
I have a new Friday sweatshirt and motto: Take it easy. The kids loved it – “I see you miss” while giving me a head nod, the kind where your chin leads the rest of the head upward knowingly. All day I had that Eagles song stuck in my head and I was constantly humming the tune to myself.
This phrase reminds of my dad. It was his automatic goodbye phrase when guests left. Our house in San Francisco is on a huge hill and there are three flights of steep stairs that lead up to the front door. People would always grip the hand rail in fear of those stairs while my sister and I would go up and down regularly in roller skates. We would all say just “bye” or something in Chinese and my dad would always just jump in with “takeiteasy”,so fast and all as one word. As a kid I was so confused by it, and it didn’t even click in my mind what he was saying until I was about 10. English was not my first language, and American idioms were not common at home. Now I know – take it easy!
This sweatshirt is actually supposed to be a dress. A dress for whom, I’m not sure. Granted, most dresses on me are automatically too short. But this doesn’t even come close. Forever 21 mini-dresses = shirts (with pockets!) on me.
glasses: warby parker – sweatshirt (dress) and jeans: f21 – shoes: vans – necklace: my mom’s – watch: pebble
Penny for Thoughts
As a teacher with friends who are also teachers on Facebook, I come across heaps of articles about teaching or about teachers. Here are some of my favorites:
The Atlantic – I Lie About My Teaching Oh lord yes. Some days I’m in the middle of class and I actually think to myself “I really hope no one comes in and witnesses this hot mess” as more than half of the kids are totally disengaged and I’m floundering from table to table trying to get them back on track. Then other days I wish I had video evidence of how “lit” my classroom is with learning.
nprED – Making Science Teaching More Than A ‘Backup Plan’ Teaching Science was definitely not my backup plan, it was my first plan. I think (and I do not have the stats to back this up at all, it’s pure conjecture) a lot of people who go into teaching as a back up plan end up leaving teaching within a few years because, teaching. is. really. hard. work.
The New Yorker – Stop Humiliating Teachers I hear a lot of “I would never be able to be a teacher, I don’t know how you do it” from the same people who say “schools these days don’t properly prepare students for the real world”.
Huffpost Education – Listen To the Teachers Who Stay (written by a respected colleague!) The flip side and an inspiring call to keep fighting the good fight. I need to read this every spring, when I start to flip flop on possibly leaving teaching and figuring out a ‘backup plan’.
Lots of compliments on my outfit today. “Miss, you look really nice today” and “those are some bad ass designer shoes Miss!” They’re not designer, they are fast-fashion, and everything here is old. The skirt was 50¢ from a thrift store and the sweater is from about 4 years ago. Yay for ‘shopping’ the closet!
glasses: warby parker – sweater: urban outfitters – belt: gap – skirt: thrifted (no tag and I suspect it was a server’s uniform skirt at one time) – boots: zara
Ease
This was me this morning. By the end of the day, even with a multiple-sticky-note overflowing to-do list, I embodied this. I was nearing the 10th hour or working, so I called it a day. That’s all I have to say for today folks. I’m a bit burned out and really distracted by old Dresden Dolls videos on youtube right now.
Good thing I am already in lounge clothes that blends in with my couch! This dress is basically a big t-shirt, which works well for both work and for lounging. Winning.
dress: f21 – cardigan: jcrew – tights: uniqlo – boots: madewell
Crowd Sourcing?
Today many of my kids discovered the wonders of a shared document with editing rights. Many of them have never used that feature in Google Docs before, and it seemed to be especially fun when it’s projected for the whole class to see. My biology class is in the midst of writing a lab report for the first time. When I took an informal poll, only a hand full of students in my honors sections knew what a lab report was. So I created a template for each section and shared it with all of them. As I was showing each period how they needed to create a copy of the template, the edits started rolling in. Without fail, it happened every single period. What else could I expect?
Someone replaced the heading of “introduction” with “hola my hombre”
Someone else typed in the name of his friend sitting in front of him and tried blaming it on the friend.
Some one else added in rows and rows of random letters.
Then some one threw in the word “bitches”. I felt my eyes grow big and my blood pressure rise. That kid promptly got a stern talking to with time to reflect on her behavior.
I pointed out that we could all see a cursor with their NAME as they type, and the edits still kept coming. I showed them how I can see who wrote what, and revert back to a previous version, and the edits still rolled in paired with hysterical laughing. Teenagers.
This is a new shirt from Madewell. It was on super sale in the store, and the only size they had was XS. So fingers crossed it doesn’t shrink in the wash! It’s double layered, warm, and with interesting details. I feel a little bit like a cowgirl farmer in it because of the buffalo checks. 
glasses: warby parker -cardigan: uniqlo – shirt: madewell – belt: gap – jeans: f21 – boots: steve madden
Treat Yo Self!
After months of debate with feelings of yearning mixed with guilt, I bought myself a new computer. Our school got a hard-to-staff bonus this past December, so that finally pushed me over the edge into “treat yo self” territory. My last iMac lasted me 7 great years, but is now so old nothing works well. It won’t even restart without freezing up! Oh hai, new iMac!
While at the mall to pick up this new beast, B and I stopped into Banana Republic in search of new button down shirts for him. He found nothing and I walked out with three new sweaters for about $20-$30 each. Treat Yo Self. Of course, I had to wear one of them the very next day.
sweater: banana republic – belt: gap – jeans: uniqlo – boots: madewell – necklace: from my mom – watch: pebble
Zen
I’m determined to “zen it out” this semester. How? By doing fun stuff (and not stressing over the details)! This past weekend was a three day weekend. I went snowboarding. I cleaned the house (boring!). I had brunch with an amazing group of friends. I went climbing at a new gym. I cooked a kick-ass sunday night dinner type meal, on a Monday. It was a good day weekend.
I even broke myself out of the jeans + sweater rut I’ve been in at school all this month and broke out an *actual* skirt to wear. Amazing. This skirt has been collecting dust in my closet for close to 5 years now. I think it’s been reborn as a winter staple and I’m going to wear it all the time, starting now. I’ve seen at least 2 other colleagues with the same J.Crew “city mini” in different colors this past month, and that inspired me to go rooting around for mine. I’m happy to shop my own closet.
glasses: warby parker – cardigan: uniqlo – t-shirt and tights: h&m – belt: gap – skirt: j.crew – boots: franco sarto
Happy New Year!
Happy 2016! This will be the year I turn 36, and hopefully a whole lot more will happen than just that. I have a bucket list for 2016 and it includes: climbing my first 14er, traveling all over Australia with B for the first time together (I’ve been once, before we met), hiking the trail between Aspen and Crested Butte, spending summer time with my family, taking a girls trip with my two best friends from SF, and helping B make us a new dining table (he’s already made us an incredible outdoor table and a mud room bench from our old fence!).
For New Year’s Eve, B played “mixologist” and we threw a cocktail party for our friends (mostly fellow teachers). There were drinks and noms, and we had a great time. Unfortunately, it was freezing outside (single digits!) and we have a shoes-off house so fashion was not well documented. Here are some photos of us having fun anyway because you know, teachers have lives too!
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Teachers Have Lives Too! 
