no snow in NYC yet. Today is half day for me b/c mac has an appt.

ION, I was deemed to be a fit parent in my one month post placement review. Only 3 more reviews this year!

Okay, here's the whole un asterisked story:

[link]

You must read the comments! Choice quote:

There’s only 1 ‘Return’ and it’s ‘Of the Jedi.’

That is a fascinating article about praise. I think it may affect our teaching strategies, although we do that to a certain extent. We used to tell our students that a given task was easy; that they could do it. But then they'd get frustrated and angry when it wasn't easy for them, so we realized we needed to switch. Now we tell them that it is a difficult task, but they can do it anyway. When they succeed in their efforts, we try to point out the process to them so that they can recognize it and apply it to future attempts.

Last night, for example, was a stellar one. We got a whole passel of rowdy boys, but I looked up about halfway through and they were all individually working. I forgot I'd put one on a scale exercise, but he was still plugging away when I got to him. When it's a bad class, I tend to tell them what they've done wrong at the end, but last night, I told them what they'd done right, and that when in the future I asked them to buckle down and work, their behavior that night was what I meant.

Hopefully that adds to the discipline and real work skills that they need.

ION, yay, msbelle!

Okay, here's the whole un asterisked story:

Dude, someone needs to learn how to count their asterisks! Not that I really have anything else to do this morning other than think up derogatory three-letter words ending in 'e'.

Not that I really have anything else to do this morning other than think up derogatory three-letter words ending in 'e'.

Seriously! It's either that or think of how cold my toes are (but how I'm too lazy to go upstairs and get another pair of socks)

My friend suggested "hoe"

I was thinking along the lines of "effing bee" like when you're in fifth grade and want to call someone a fucking bitch, but can't quite bring yourself to do it.

Not that I had that problem, personally.

Jared Leto is a t*lentless douch*. Or so I've heard.

Well, considering what a froot loop in eyeliner Leto's been lately, I figured that word could've been anything.

ION, I was deemed to be a fit parent in my one month post placement review.

Well, YEAH!

Well, considering what a froot loop in eyeliner Leto's been lately, I figured that word could've been anything.

Absolutely.

Crap. My family and in-laws are now under a blizzard warning (NE Indiana). They're looking at 10-15 inches of snow with blowing and single digit temperatures. Glad I decided to come home on Sunday night rather than yesterday or today.

Don't know how many people follow the news from Utah, but we made the BBC news with this last night. Gunman killed five, wounded several, was killed at a local mall.

[link]

What's shocking me is not that this happened, but that people are surprised it happened. People in this area seem to think that the nasty bad things can't get them here, and it blinds them to things--until an 18-year-old packs up his armory and goes to the local Hard Rock and environs and opens up.

People are fixating on the trenchcoat he was wearing and are consoling themselves that he was obviously one of *those* sorts, like Columbine, so they can continue to ignore the angst of their own "average" kids. That's what frustrates me, local people get smacked in the face with full-bore reality but they quickly tidy it out of the way so they can get back to their sanitized daydream about what they think the world is like. Until the next eruption of reality.