the sloppy duck

Dear God,

Thank you so much for clearing my head enough tonight that I was really able to brainstorm some really great ideas for helping my kids work with non-fiction. You are awesome. Let’s hope these work!

Lucky me, I had my first official teaching observation yesterday morning. We had a huge reading test for today, and basically I was facilitating a review for all the students in my class with a Jigsaw activity. 

Well, the activity went swimmingly. My students answered each question thoroughly and with details, and most were excited to share what they found with the class. I thought to myself…”CAKE!” and both my directing teacher and the supervisor seemed pretty content with what I was doing. It wasn’t until the end, as a wrap-up before we started our center activities, when I took the floor again. “So really I just wanted you guys to go back and look through the text and know where to find certain information with the headings. Did you all find that this helped you to review?”

I gazed into a sea of faces not quite awake, until finally one of the kids said, “No. Not really.”

Thanks, guys. 

As my good friend said (who is also interning), “I would NEVER ask my class that and give them that opportunity.”

In other news, thank you JESUS for it is FRIDAY.

So during student teaching, I often find myself stuck with 22 kids and not really knowing what to do with them for 3-5 minutes. It’s too short of a time to get something started, but too long to let them kick it. Today, because everyone wanted to know how old I actually am, I let them figure it out.

I’ve lived in 2 millenia.

I’ve lived in 2 centuries.

I’ve lived in 4 decades.

Around what year was I born? And then…. figure it out. Thank goodness for being a child of the 80s.

You know, everyone is aware just how much stupid shit there is out in the world that somehow amasses millions of dollars. Just look at the toys of the 90’s and the crap we had to deal with! But the one thing that absolutely baffles my mind lately is this:

Keep Calm and Carry On.

Suddenly, all over the internet, all over Amazon, etsy, Ebay, craigslist…. I see listings that are MORE than $1 for shit with this ridiculous logo printed all over it. Really?! People are actually paying like $15 for a poster with a fucking CROWN on it and Keep Calm and Carry On? WHAT DOES IT EVEN MEAN!?

And I’m not even trying to be a downer, really. God knows that I have plenty of worthless shit lying around my apartment, and even more useless shit at my mom’s house. But I JUST DON’T GET IT. It’s not even like Napoleon Dynamite Idon’tgetit, where once you realize it IS pointless you’re suddenly in on this stupid joke. I’ve seriously seen posts where people talk about how this kept them from killing themselves, or it’s their mantra, or whatever. WHAT?

So I’ve really tried not to be opinionated about this, tried to keep my mouth shut. But at the end of the day, we’re in a recession, thousands of people lose their jobs EVERY DAY, federal loans are going out the window, and you just spent $10 on a poster with a fucking crown and words that are so basic and ordinary that if you really couldn’t think of them yourself I feel bad for your brain.

The next question is, what ridiculous statement can I put together with a random ass picture to make my fortune?

There’s just something about that Friday feeling before a three-day weekend. Face it, you’ll probably sit around in your underwear, make eight billion bags of kettlecorn and eat non-stop while watching back episodes of Real Housewives, but when you’re driving home, thinking of endless opportunity, you tell yourself, “I’m going to do something COOL and FUN this weekend.”

Figure out something exciting to make up and lie about before going back to work on Tuesday.