Back to the school I subbed in for art last week, about four doors past in fact in 4th and 5th grade row.  It was another day with no break for specials, not even computer lab like Tuesday.  The morning consisted of a large language arts block with a reading from their Treasures reading book and some guided reading.  I made an error in the guided reading- I was supposed to have the second group read their books while the first group read and discussed their book with me.  I read this note as I was passing out the books after the first group finished- whoops.  So we read the book together.  Well, in the end neither group got to the next part so I left them on even footing.  That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. 🙂

Following language arts we had time for social studies before lunch.  They are using a book called History Alive! and we learned about the Bill of Rights.  In reading earlier the students read out of the book, but this time I was told to read to them so I did.  They ended the morning with working on review sheets for the chapter which they would finish for homework.  Lunchtime.

The afternoon began with math.  My job here was to go over the work they did for homework and turn it over to the teacher from across the hall who would come in and teach an enrichment lesson.  Kids as always enjoy coming up to the board so we did that when we could.  Unfortunately I went over by about ten minutes- why am I always so slow when it comes to teaching math?

The rest of the day was recess and speeches.  I got to listen to the kids introduce famous people, living or dead.  The teacher brought in a podium, but a few students were a bit on the short side so I had to scrounge around for a makeshift step for them using a couple of books and an overturned storage bin.  The books were underneath to prevent them from breaking the bin when they stood on it.  They seemed to have some well-written speeches which I presume were graded already, so today was more about the presentations.  What is probably the number one area needing improvement in giving speeches?  I didn’t look this up but I would guess eye contact as that is what most of them struggled with.  They tended to read right from their papers.  The first student who actually seemed to have decent eye contact ruined it by having his arms in front of his face because he had decided to rest them on the podium.  There were a few though who did a good job on eye contact though.  They also did quite well on volume.  I could easily hear and understand most of them.

That was pretty much it.  I was hoping to see a student of mine from church there as he was only two doors down but our paths never crossed.  I did mention it to him today when I saw him.  So, that brings us to…

Saturday was the day that the theatre collaborated with Moonlight Productions to make the movie version of one our plays from a few years ago.  This is the first time I have been involved in such an endeavor but have sat through a few acting classes in which we discussed the differences between live theatre and film.  Going in, I knew that there was going to be stops, starts, and the possibiility of some jumping around in the script.  I actually thought it quite ambitious to think that we could shoot the film in one day.

Some of the actors from the stage version of The Clinic could not make the filming; however, the talent that was recruited assumed the roles quite nicely.

When I had posted about a friend who is going to be making her feature film debut,  I had forgotten about the possibility of filming The Clinic for Jay’s production company.  Hopefully, this will help him to get a film submitted to film festivals to help his company grow.  Chris has already gotten the screenplay, which was adapted from his stage play, submitted to a festival in Arizona.  However, the deadline for film submission is the end of April.

I actually felt for the people who had to sit there and watch those in scenes and await their turn.  While I was in the scenes that were shot, most of my dialogue and craziness have yet to be shot.  Most of the cast agreed that we should have had time to rehearse prior to filming.  I would agree with that sentiment but it was difficult enough to find a time to meet that fit everyone’s busy schedules.  I, for one, had a great time participating in a new medium.  I have been on film before but during live broadcasts so this was something entirely new but very exciting.  Chris was very humorous in his role as director using the clapper and forgetting to say “cut” when he needed to stop the scene (Scene C3; Take 259, etc.  HEHE)  I’m sure with the multiple cameras running, there will be plenty to have on a blooper reel.  I just hope that the film is good enough to help get Jay’s name out there.  Wrapping up next Saturday.  Hopefully, we all can look over the script and become more familiar with it and get through smoothly but I am confident that it will BE GREAT!!!

After we got back from our trip to New York City a month ago, I did a bunch of research about September 11, 2001.  I guess seeing the World Trade Center site in person piqued my curiosity about some of the details of that dreadful day.  Some of the websites I found with information about the disaster were intriguing, and I’d like to share them – they are the stories of survivors of the World Trade Center.  But I warn you, the following depictions are very graphic, very disturbing, and most of all, very tragic.

John Schroeder of Engine 10

Witness Accounts from inside the north tower

Preschool in near-city district at a different school than the other times.  Tho other school had two near-identical classrooms- the teachers are truly a team there- and the students were English-speaking.  You know where I’m going with this one…  I arrived, and the principal was acting as secretary and signed me in.  Headed to the classroom and what is the first thing I see?  Everything in Spanish.  The one school got the English-speaking kids, this one got the Spanish-speaking ones.   Most did know a little English, and unlike another class I was in in another district, let’s just call it one-school district for the number of schools I was usually called to sub in toward the end of last year which is tied to the reason I didn’t re-sign up with them this year, this time I had an assistant working with me who could speak Spanish, so I didn’t have too much of a problem.  The morning and afternoon were similar in schedule to the other school.  I think they run off the same schedule as pre-k is a special progam in the district.  They had some start-of-day work, calendar time, centers (which included a lot of play centers), song time, wrap-up, and take them outside to the playground to wait for buses.  The morning was actually a little different than the afternoon.  The primary students (K-2) were preparing a musical show for Thursday night and the preschoolers were given their own bit for it by doing three songs of their own.  Two were counting songs (the duck with five chicks and one runs away, leaving four, then three, and so on, and a similar one with frogs jumping in the water- glub, glub!) and the third was a weird version of “Singing in the Rain”.  The other two had some movements the kids were given to do, but this song has them in the song ala “Hokey Pokey:”  thumbs up, shoulders back, knees together, butt out, tongue out…  All given one at a time and added on to the rest so by the end it’s a true video-moment seeing the kids doing all of that.  Those of you with kids might know the song I’m talking about.  They also practiced these songs during the song time.  For morning, the rehearsal took the place of the start-of-day work and caused centers to be shortened. even though we only stayed to do our songs and then left.

Right after calendar was read-aloud time.  In Spanish.  With a tape (whew…)- I only had to hold the book up and turn the pages.  Apparently the title was funny- I just wish I knew why, but I forgot to ask the assistant.  I read Spanish about as well as I speak it.  For my center, they worked on making ducks with construction paper.  The outlines of what to cut out were already drawn for them so they just had to cut them out and glue them on in the right spot.  I added a 3-D element by folding the beak, feet, and wings so they stuck out.  As par for course, there were things glued upside down or lopsided, or even in the wrong place.  Most did fine though.

At the end of the day, they went outside to the playground.  This was the easiest part- just watching them to make sure they didn’t get hurt.  After this, I had to strap in a bunch of students in the bus.  They put their seatbelts on, I had to tighten them.  For about ten kids each in the AM and PM.  One also had additional gear to attach him to the seat which fortunately I had seen before in the mentally impaired classrooms I’ve worked in so I knew what to do with this.

Again, thanks to the help of the assistant I survived the day.  Next up, 5th grade then 8th grade social studies.  Tomorrow.  Three posts is enough for one day, for me at least… 🙂

Tuesday I was in the same district, but got to sleep almost an hour later.  I headed the same way in the morning, but turned off at the middle school corner to continue on northward to hometown-district’s northernmost school.  I checked in and headed to class.  The big difference in subbing for elementary versus middle school, besides the size of the students, is the lesson plans.  Most of the time in middle school I teach some or all lessons more than once, occasionally six times.  In elementary school however it is one class so there are a lot more plans.  Lucky me (not) I arrived on the no-specials day.  At least, no specials that gave me a break.  This was their computer lab day, so that at least was an hour I didn’t teach, but I still had to be there to help.  They learned about a website with books online, and when I say that I mean thousands of books- current and fully illustrated, in dozens of languages, accessible like a library.  Some even had audio tracks so they could listen as the stories were read to them.

Trying to remember the rest of the day- I worked in elementary again Thursday in hometown district and have fresher memories…  Ah yes, the math lesson was fun.  They had a test for half the period, and then I taught part of the next lesson.  What was fun was teaching them about standard units of measure.  We started off with a non-standard unit- how many 2nd-graders long is the room, then how many of one second-grader.  The answers were slightly different- 8 second graders, but only 7 2/3 of the one student.  I reminded them that if I chose the shortest student to measure the room, the number would have been higher and if we measured using a teacher, it would have been lower.  So then I introduced the yard by covering the last few inches of the meterstick (most metersticks have inches printed on the other side, and a meter is longer than a yard) and they estimated the the length of the room in yards before we ran out of time.

If I can recall any more good moments this day I will add them, but for the most part is was really a standard day otherwise with guided reading groups, social studies, silent reading, lunch…

Monday: Industrial technology in hometown district.

In near-city district, only 7th and 8th grade take this class- I think this year the teacher at one of these schools only teaches for four periods.  What does he do with the rest of the day?  In hometown district all three middle-school grades take this class.  The other two districts I’m in don’t have 6th graders in junior high (they don’t call it middle school) so…

Anyway, I arrived at about 7:30 and headed across the hall from the office into the IT room.  Dropped my stuff and looked for the plans.  Dug around a bit on the front table- there were the seating charts, buried, but no plans.  Hmm.  Open his office door, looked, no plans.  Right then.  Fortunately I knew he had an assistant so I shrugged it off for the moment, though last time I subbed here the assistant was gone too so we watched videos all day.  In other words, there was still a chance everything could go wrong.  Ah, there she was walking in, and sure enough she knew what we were doing.  Because she was there, the students would work on their projects or modules.  For 6th grade, their work was enlarging drawings of cartoon characters by using a grid, which they had to draw themselves on the large sheet of paper.  Tweety Bird, Marvin the Martian, Woody Woodpecker, Dumbo, Pink Panther, and more could be seen all around the tables.  Students had to carefully draw the character making sure every line was in the correct grid box.  It was interesting tho see the different ways students accomplished this.  Most outlined then filled in the details starting at random spots, but there were a few who worked from top to bottom, filling in everything for one row before moving to the next.  Several I couldn’t tell as they were far enough along that they were going over it in marker or even coloring.  I was called on to do spot checks when students felt they were ready, so I had to compare their drawings with the originals and let them know if I saw something that wasn’t right.  The second period of this I actually had a line at one point waiting to be checked.  As it turns out, 6th grade hands for the most part still aren’t attuned to finer writing as most looked no better than I with my poor fine motor control could draw, but there were definitely a few exceptional ones and I said so.

7th and 8th grades were on modules.  That meant that pairs of them were in different areas doing different things like building roller coasters and other objects with K’Nex; working on computers on audio engineering, electricity & magnetism, and more; working with woods or plastics; and a number of other things.  This time my job generally worked like this- I would see a help light on, go over to see if I could help, then ask the assistant when I couldn’t answer the question.  Seriously, I last worked with plastics and woods when I was in high school or lower, and I just didn’t have experience with the software they use.  I think out of a couple dozen help calls throughout the day, there were maybe three I didn’t have to refer to the assistant- not that I should really call her that because today I was the assistant and not a very good one due to lack of experience.

During the middle of the day the regular teacher came in with several people from administration.  Apparently he was trying to get the computers updated as they were about seven years old- a difficult proposition for this economic climate.  I wish them well in this.  Following the last class chess club came in, but I had no part in that so I bid them farewell.

On to Tuesday…

I just finished the almost 570-page novel Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski.  It took me months to read this mega-novel; especially because I only read at night before bed.  There are some nights when I can’t read at all because I’m just too tired (and this book was heavy – both physically and emotionally – for reading late at night!).  Some nights, I only read a few pages, and then there are times like the night I finished the book – when I actually went to bed around 10:30 just so I could stay up reading for over an hour – and this is how I finally finished the story.

Edgar Sawtelle is an amazing book – it’s almost indescribable.  It took me a few chapters to get into the book however, mainly because of the author’s extremely descriptive writing style.  I wouldn’t say it was boring in the beginning, but the narrative is very detailed, and it took awhile to get used to as well as for any actual events to take place.  Once the action began, though, it didn’t let up, and I was hooked.  It’s one of those books that I looked forward to ending my day with and one I was sorry to finish.  Surprisingly, this is Wroblewski’s first novel!

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is set in the early 1970’s in rural northern Wisconsin over one summer.  It follows the life of a mute boy on the brink of manhood who is forced to grow up really quickly due to a set of tragic family circumstances beyond his control.  Edgar’s family has been breeding a special breed of dog for generations, and they do more than just breed the dogs.  Almost from birth, the dogs are very meticulously trained.  The book has been compared to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Although I’ve never read Hamlet, I read a summary, and the stories do sound as if they have similarities.  The descriptive nature of the novel paints a beautiful picture of the Sawtelle’s farm and the countryside beyond.  There are some very well developed characters as well.  That’s as much as I’m going to describe of the story because I realized I’m not doing it justice.  I wouldn’t want to turn off anyone just because I’m writing an unintentionally bad review.  I loved the book; I really did – I’ll go into that more later.  For now, here are some of the raving comments the novel received – most notably from author Stephen King, who knows a thing or two about story-telling himself!

I flat-out loved The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. In the end, this isn’t a novel about dogs or heartland America, it’s a novel about the human heart and the mysteries that live there, understood but impossible to articulate…. I don’t reread many books because life is too short. I will be re-reading this one.”
—Stephen King, author of Duma Key

The most enchanting debut novel of the summer… this is a great, big, mesmerizing read, audaciously envisioned as classic Americana…. Pick up this book and expect to feel very, very reluctant to put it down.
— Janet Maslin, New York Times

Nothing quite compares to my experience of reading The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This debut…. is one of the most stunning, elegant books I have ever read…. what can deservedly be called a great American novel.
— Lisa Jennifer Selzman, Houston Chronicle

I am completely smitten…. The most hauntingly impressive debut I’ve read all year…. Edgar might be silent, but his story will echo with readers for a long time.
— Yvonne Zipp, Christian Science Monitor

Overall, a great read, a book I highly recommend.  Be warned however, that The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is not for the casual reader.  I think that for one to truly enjoy this book, he or she has to be a dedicated reader –  someone who truly enjoys reading and has the time to devote to it, for reading this book is an experience.  If you are at all interested in reading the book, then stop reading my review now because there is something I must add that will be somewhat of a spoiler.

*SPOILER ALERT-SPOILER ALERT-SPOILER ALERT*
DO NOT READ BELOW THIS LINE IF YOU INTEND TO READ THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE!
CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED!

The ending SUCKS.  As much as I truly enjoyed reading the book, the ending came close to ruining the experience for me.  Not because of death, but because of the way it’s handled.  The book ends rather abruptly, and I felt abandoned and ditched as a reader.  There isn’t any closure.  The main character, Edgar, learns and grows so much during the course of the novel, and he takes us readers with him.  But his knowledge isn’t shared with any of the other main characters, mainly his mother!  And his personal growth is also rendered pointless.  And then there’s the very last chapter, seen through the dog Essay’s point of view, which I just didn’t understand AT ALL.  What was Essay’s choice?  I just didn’t get it.  And I know I’m not alone.  It really says something when you do a google search for ‘Edgar Sawtelle ending” and all that comes up is a bunch of complaints from readers.  That being said, I think it’s still worth it to read this book – it was that good where a terrible ending didn’t ruin it.  But it came very close, and I was VERY disappointed when I first finished the book.

Strange isn’t it, melancholy is such a lovely sounding word for pensive moods or depression. A good word for any vocabulary. This feeling of melancholy is not such a lovely feeling. The early Anglo-French word originally meant ‘Black Bile’. This is from a ‘humor’ secreted by the spleen or kidneys that control or influenced our emotions.

For various reasons, that feeling of melancholy is upon me today. More a pensive state than anything else. I’m in a position with no solution. Being a guy, I have the innate desire to ‘fix’ things. Somethings just can’t be ‘fixed’. So the feeling of melancholy on me.

I guess that is life.

Ok… so this news is only a few weeks old, but the premise is so outrageous that I am surprised that no one else has posted it.  It seems that a woman in Germany has filed for divorce from her husband of 15 YEARS. Why you may ask?  Some Hollywood marriages last mere hours so this would seem like an eternity.  It seems that Mr. Christian Kropp of Sondershausen Germany has a slight problem with cleanliness.  It is NOT that he is a slob and insists upon not ceaning up after himself, but he is apparently a bit TOO neat.  One day, the obsessive compulsiveness went a bit overboard.  One of the walls in the house did not meet with Mr. Kropp’s white glove treatment so he did what any sensible, well-intentioned man would do: he knocked the wall completely down.  Here is a rather amusing reaction to the incident:

Guys get a bad rap in the culture as a whole. You can’t turn on the television without seeing men portrayed as incompetent morons who wouldn’t be able to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide unless there was a woman there to help them out. Anybody who has ever spent any time in a dance club would observe that the dysfunction is pretty much spread equally between the genders. While this is true, men are the ones who are most often portrayed as lazy, slovenly, and the type of critters that would happily wallow in a mud hole if given the chance. With that said, it is odd to see a man get a divorce because his wife believed that he was way too clean.

Christian Kropp of Sondershausen, Germany is a bit of neat freak. Like many of the guys who are the basis of home improvement shows, Christian excels at cleaning, various household chores, and rearranging furniture. While many women may find this a charming trait in their mate, some also may be a bit intimidated by a guy who invades their sphere of competency; especially if he has better taste then his female counterpart. Mrs. Kropp apparently put up with this for a while, but called it quits on the marriage when her hubby decided to demolish and rebuild a wall that he couldn’t quite bring up to his standards with any cleaning products that were on the market.

While this may have been vexing, it should not have been completely unexpected. Mr. Kropp’s addiction to cleaning may have been unusual, but it was eventually going to collide with the hardwired male trait to take things apart. She is lucky that he didn’t take a chain saw to the entire house and start the whole thing over from scratch.

I wonder if he lifts the toilet seat when he is done or squeezes the toothpaste from the bottom of the tube.  Hopefully, the two can find happiness again elsewhere.

Our almost 5-year-old Sammie is the firecracker of the group.  She likes to be the one to stir things up, and she sometimes has some crazy ideas.  My mom sent me an email with the following video and a message:  “I’m surprised Sammie hasn’t tried this.”

I can’t imagine what those poor parents were going through.  First I’m sure horror and panic set in as they worried their little one would get injured or stuck in there – notice they wisely killed the power to the crane game.  Then, once she got out, they were probably extremely embarrassed!  I half expected to see them spank her little butt when it was the only part of her sticking out!  Not that I condone spanking really, but you know how extreme relief often gives way to anger, especially when kids are involved…  I’m certainly glad it was their problem and not mine.  I know I will not be showing this video to Sammie nor any of my kids for that matter – they don’t need any more “good” ideas!