Sunday, April 08, 2007
i love my roomies!
rita, jill, and i are the roomies for my new condo… the bachelorettes version 4.0. now that rita moved out to balboa jill and i are gonna have to go visit her out there. darn! we -have- to go out to the beach to hang out… =)
anyways, here are the pics of my roomies =) compliments of jill’s camera
i love ‘em!
yay for craigslist!
when rita moved to the beach she took the tv with her… so for the past 2 weeks we’ve been watching tv off jill’s 14inch tv, which is definitely hard to watch when you’re in the kitchen one room away. jeopardy was especially hard to watch cuz i couldn’t read the ‘answers’ on the screen.
so last night when i looked on craiglist there was this ad for a ’32" SONY FD Trinitron WEGA Television w/ remote - $175‘ right here in redlands!
i picked it up today!
how fun! i’m so excited and watching from my kitchen right now!!
Thursday, April 05, 2007
teacher-student dilemma
recently i’ve discovered the education wonks, a blog that reports on teacher-student interaction that makes the news.
this particular post hits home, if only because i have a student who has mooned an entire class and thinks it’s her right to be at that school and no one can do anything about it. it hits home because i understand the position of the school, and i applaud their guts in standing up for common decency and not letting any student get away with anything. the message that they are sending is loud and clear - they will not tolerate this behavior. it’s a message i wish our school could send our students.
the student who is suing the school? breaking the rules and acting inappropriately in class somehow gains him the right to sue the school? the sad thing is, i’m scared he might win. and the students will continue acting in whichever way they want because the law protects them from being disciplined.
how are teachers and schools supposed to enforce their rules when there are so many laws protecting the students? you can’t even fail a student who comes to class with no intention of taking notes and/or participating if you don’t provide a pencil and paper for him everyday, since he has a right to a -free- education. failing him would be a violation of his rights because you did not provide the pencil and paper to make it “free”. in my opinion he should have to work for his free education (and by work i mean try - take notes, participate, attend every day, etc) but we are expected to spoon feed it to them because it is their right to learn without spending any money (or time or effort, it seems).
not all the students are that way, and i have a great bunch. it’s just that when our hands are tied and we for whatever reason cannot enforce our own rules, we create an environment that allows the students to say, “boooyah! look what i did! what are you going to do about it?!?!? i’m gonna call my mom!” and then their parents come in and argue and save them from their own consequences.
and yes, that has happened before.
may the school win the lawsuit.
Monday, April 02, 2007
drinking outta a plastic bag
a couple of weeks ago my student had a 2-liter bottle of soda and i was dying of thirst so i asked if i could have some. we couldn’t find any cups and so i found a baggie in the kitchen and made him pour some into there, after which i bit a hole in the bottom and drank my soda that way. all the students stared at me and the next thing you knew, there were 5 students trying to drink outta a bag too!
they were like, “how’d you think of that?!?!” and “i never would have thought of that!”
and i told ‘em, “what?!?! the rest of the world drinks stuff this way! you can’t take the bottle out of the store because they don’t really recycle, they just refill the bottles.”
anyways, while in mexico, i ended up drinking the coconut juice outta the bag so that they could cut up the fruit and give me the meat while i was drinking, and i thought of my dear sheltered students at home who have never seen this before. this picture is for you guys:
and then after this we decided to go atv-ing on the sand dunes. this was the most fun ever! you HAVE to go try it! kilometer 38 on the highway 1 to ensenada!
Sunday, April 01, 2007
what happens in mexico, stays in mexico
so susan and i are both on spring break....
susan
y yo
we first stopped at pacific beach in san diego and saw the dolphins swimmin’ south. got a few pics of that but you couldn’t really tell that they were dolphins in the pics, so instead i’ll just post the pic of the beautiful sunset that we saw
the next morning as we were headed into mexico, we saw this sign. why are there three sss’s in the name of that city? ssso weird....
on the road to ensenada
where we saw these boys playing ‘futbol’ near the carnival cruise ship
and susan enjoyed her caramel filled churro
as did i!
under the shadow of this extremely huge 50mx22.5m and 250kg flag
our room is just down the street from all the nightlife and we have a view of the beach too!
and the only thing we’ve had to eat all day was tacos. fish tacos, carne asada tacos, and more tacos. oh, and the churros, of course. but then, more tacos =) they’re so tasty here!
and that’s all for tonight…
gnite!!!