Era after Era

As soon as this post is written, I'm going to watch Legend of Billy Jean, thanks to our new Netflix account. I'm going to watch it from this thirty-something persona, which intrigues me and makes me cringe at the same time. Then, it was all I could do not to blast Pat Benatar and cut off all of my hair, invincibility and rebellion permeating each thought. Maybe it should just remain iconic in my memory. Celebrity Apprentice with Cyndi Lauper instead? Great, the other celebrities are trash-talking another 80s icon. 

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Recently, a colleague asked to borrow something that required some digging, and as I searched, I discovered one of those photographs, the ones that shake your current reality. Is that really me? I remember that girl. Later, I heard a song that unleashed more nostalgia than any picture could ever unharness. The song was from the same era... an era that was about as desolate as they come, but one contrived of enough convolutions for me to implore...

"Come down and waste away with me."

Invincibility entangled with insouciance... a lost era. 

Being an adult is a mixed-blessing.

First-Year Brainstorming

After lunch yesterday, we visited Half Price Books. I picked up a used copy of the NWP's publication Because Writing Matters. I've taken a few notes including:

"...Teachers still receive little instruction in teaching writing. Elementary school teacher training focuses on reading methods, and only a handful of states require a course in writing pedagogy for certification. Writing can support learning in all disciplines, including science and math, but relatively few high school instructors in those content areas have been exposed to research-proven, effective strategies for using it" (p. 17). 

As my research explores the writing conference as a potent tool to improve student writing skills, I need to find out how teachers learn the appropriate protocols, dialogue, strategies. Possible sources may include mentors, student teaching experiences, professional reading, university courses, and the big one... common sense. I also need to find out which states have the writing course requirements. 

If there are multiple sources, there are multiple strategies. 

"If teachers within the same school have distinct or unexamined expectations for good writing, it can be confusing to students and a source of misunderstanding among faculty" (p.15). 

However, after reading Brenner's students' pieces, some of which are heart-breaking, I have a participatory action research project in mind, too. I would just like to stay clear of that relationship in mainstream media where the white teacher works to save the inner-city kids. If it's participatory action research, the participants and the researcher enter into a collaborative relationship in which they both pose the questions to be pursued and work together to gather the data to respond to these questions. "It entails a cycle of research, reflection, and action" (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). 

Look at this overgrown mess back in November. In January and February, it all turned grayish brown and lay lifeless like ignored road kill.

This is March! I extracted all green shoots from the pebbles by hand. There's a variety of vegetable seeds buried in the garden. My fingers are crossed. Those are strawberry plants on the bottom left and right corners. I also planted morning glories and sunflowers along the fence. I'm hoping to have vines creep along as they did in our back yard near our clubhouse on Jeff Davis Pkwy. I was amazed by how they greeted each day with such élan and shortly thereafter retired into their own. Sunflowers remind me of my mom and of Julio's garden on Murat St, the lively, chromatic setting of Kane's childhood. 

Reggie approves of spring.