middle school

I’m in ED 300 this quarter, which means I have to get 45 hours of in-classroom observation done by the end of the quarter.  I’m at SLOHS on Tuesday mornings and I go to Laguna Middle School on Thursdays.  I’m trying to get the most out of my experience, so I started taking notes during Mr. Wittman’s class this morning.  

Now, Mr. Wittman is a straight-laced 30 something eighth grade english teacher at Laguna.  He has green plants in the window of his classroom and has posted inspirational quotes on bright paper around the border of the classroom walls.  Such quotes read, “No man is an island unto himself,” and “Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”  He rides his road bike to school (which, might I add, is the exact same bike that my dad used to ride before he upgraded last summer) and holds a commanding presence in his classroom, standing before his students in impeccably pressed pleated khaki slacks.  

These are the events that unfolded in Mr. Wittman’s class on  Thursday, January 29, 2009.

I sat in Mr. Wittman’s class, pretty bored since he wasn’t really teaching.  I sat in a back row desk and tried not to yawn as I watched the students interact.  Suddenly, Mr. Wittman stood up, walked to the white board and asked the students to define the word “clause.” A student answered promptly and gave a good example.  Next, Mr. Wittman asked for an example of an independent clause.  Here’s the discussion that followed:

Mr. Wittman:  Who can give me an example of an independent clause please? And make it at least PG rated. (I choose to believe that he meant to say AT MOST PG rated….)

Lauren:  I am hungry.

Will: He said AT LEAST PG rated….I am hungry….FOR BLOOD!!!!

Mr. W:  Good.  Now add another independent clause with a conjunctive adjective.

Will:  I am hungry for blood; THUS, I eat a cow!

Mr. W:  Right.  Can someone else give me another example?

James:  Jimmy vivisected a squirrel…..

Mr. W: ;Consequently, he was expelled from school.

Katie:  What does ‘vivisect’ mean?

James: To dissect when its alive!!!

Tess: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Jimmy vivisected a squirrel; consequently, HE WENT TO HELL.  Mr. Wittman!  He went to HELL.

Mr. W:  (doesn’t bat an eyelash) Separation of Church and State.

Samantha:  Do they get numbed first?

Jack:  Of course not!  It’s not a human!

Mr. W:  …and that’s how you make a compound sentence.

———–

I was dying to burst out in laughter.  Jr. Highers are too funny!  Sometimes, life is just so funny you have to record it.  This was one of those humorous moments.  I sat and transcribed the events so that I wouldn’t forget them, and could later relay the story to my dear sweet Brook (We like to take notes of random teacher commentary that we find hilarious).  I was just coming off the brink of bursting out in giggles in Mr. Wittman’s class when a student named Megan looked up at the board.  About 10 minutes had passed, and the students were back to drafting their biological research papers. Megan takes a look at the white board, gasps, and asks, “What does vivisect mean?” James was only so kind as to give another definition.  Megan then almost yelled, “WOW.  That sentence is inappropriate!  Can I erase it?”  Matt, another student then retorted, “It’s not inappropriate, it’s SCIENTIFIC.”

I have a huge respect for Jr. High teachers.  They’re great people.  I tried to stifle my giggles for the remainder of the class, but it was real hard.  I kept looking at the Webster’s Dictionaries placed under each desk.  They are all numbered (for clerical purposes, I’m sure), but most numbers have been scribbled over with a fat black permanent marker that reads 69.  

Ah, Jr. High.

january 21, 2009

I’ll admit it….I’m in a majorly procrastinating mood right now.  So here I sit, procrastinating in the Mac lab on the second floor of the Cal Poly library.  I decided to do a little photo journalism to help you understand what’s going on (thank you photo booth!!!).  This is my procrastinating face, I’m pretty sure:

I should be writing my Spanish essay on bilingual education.  Oh well.

In other news, I am wearing a Veritas Forum shirt for the 5th time this week…I hope I don’t smell like B.O. too badly:

Also, my backpack, endearingly dubbed “Old Faithful,” is on its last leg.  The zipper is crazy and causes the contents of the pack to spill out all over the place at least once a day.  As much as I love her, I’ll admit its an inconvenience.  Sadly, there is a tear between the canvas and the leather bottom.  

It is quite sad, because she’s been my faithful companion since 4th grade, before I even went to school.  I used to load up my New Adventure Bible and 3 ring binder for Community Bible Study in Old Faithful and go off to homeschool Bible study.  Nice.  I do love her, and I will miss her when she must finally be laid to rest:

This is how excited I am for Porn Nation tonight:

You should come.  Also, I’m excited because it says ‘Porn’ on my shirt…a promotion for the event.  I had better stop this photo booth madness…the other guy in the lab is starting to look at me like I’m crazy.  Maybe its because I keep kissing my backpack.

Happy Wednesday everybody.

jocko’s

Tonight my parents and sister came to visit from Bako.  My dad was pretty stoked to take our fam to a quality steakhouse in Nipomo.  It’s called Jocko’s….and let me just say: Bakersfield has nothing on this place in terms of okie-ness.   When we got there we parked in the back, and walked around to the front of the restaurant.  On the way in, we stopped and admired the 20+ slabs of red meat cooking on the outdoor grill.  My dad’s excitement grew.

There wasn’t a whole lot of room to sit and wait for the hostess to prepare our table, so we went into the bar area to find a place to sit.  In my usual hardcore style, I ordered a Shirley Temple.  I admired the dark-stained wood panelling on all of the walls in the bar area, and was even more impressed that each individual panel of wood bore its own genuine cattle brand.  Now we’re talking.  I also couldn’t help but notice the attire of the clientele in the bar…Let’s I felt a little out of place in my dark jeans and Gap crew neck shirt.  I probably would have felt much more at home if I was wearing a down coat with the arms zipped off, like the girl across from me.  Or maybe if I had a black bra on under my white shirt or a flannel plaid shirt I’d feel better. These styles seemed to be pretty popular in this joint.  On second thought, maybe it’s my lack of peroxide blonde hair that made me feel out of place.

We sat down at our table and I immediately took notice of the lack of table cloth.  But no worries, there were some great paper placemats that did the trick great:

Please note the martini on the Bull’s tail.  Is that just weird to me?  Also…they have the word “genuine” spelled “Jenuine.”  Awesome.  I’ll also let you know that that’s not the only grammatical problem on the place mat.  From my seat, I also had a prime view of the meat cooking outside on the grill (my Mom’s pointing at it):

I ended up ordering a BLT, since I had more than my fill of red meat at Firestone in SLO last night.  Bad choice.  The bacon strips were seriously a quarter of an inch thick.  They might as well rename it a “HLT.” That’s Heart attack, Lettuce and Tomato.  On another point of interest, the history of  the restaurant was given in great detail on the back page of the menu.  I learned that it’s a family business that started as a saloon in the 1800s.  I was really enjoying the stuff I was learning about the restaurant and the Jocko family.  I was slightly caught off guard by the last line of the “history” which read: As our sign says out front, COME IN AND MONKEY ‘ROUND.  What?  What does that even mean?  What do monkeys have to do with Nipomo, the Ag community, steak, or the Jocko family?  I will continue to ponder this for a while.

For your consideration….the Bull and Martini image once more:

I hear that the steak is real good.

ps- if you are a woman over 5′6″, you may have trouble fitting into the bathroom stalls. My knees practically hit the door when I was sitting in there.

friend

Had coffee with a good friend today. It was a much needed catch up on each other’s lives. It was refreshing. And good.  

I have serious beliefs that coffee shops and good conversation go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Movie Theater

Last night I went to the Edward’s Cinema in Bako, to the late showing of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with my friends Megan and Brandon. It’s an interesting movie, and I would recommend it if you have 10 dollars and 3 hours to burn.

Anyway. We sat down in the mid-sized theater around 9:30 so that we would be sure to get some good seats. We were about 5 rows from the top, just to the left of the center of the stadium…these were prime seats. Just to the right of me was a middle aged woman saving the seat on either side of her. I found this acceptable because the theater was filling up quickly. I even heard a couple a few rows down asking some people to scoot towards the center so they could have two seats together. I was glad we had arrived with plenty of time to spare…ahead of the crowd.

The movie began, and I was pretty enthralled. 10 minutes in, my cell phone vibrated in my lap. I looked down to see that Alyssa had sent me a reply to an earlier text message. About 2 minutes later, she sent another quick text and I, not really thinking through the situation, started typing out a quick reply to her. As soon as I had begun the message, the woman to my right tapped my shoulder and said in a near regular volume voice, “Do you mind? Its really dark in here and your phone is really bright!”

I felt awful. I felt like all of those Sprint commercials about “silencing your cell” at the beginning of the previews were suddenly aimed directly at me and my beaming phone in the theater. I was a movie wrecker! I turned my phone over in my lap so the screen was facing my thighs and starting scheming on how I could properly apologize at the end of the movie.

As the movie wore on, I still felt horrible about the cell phone incident. Then, I noticed something interesting. The woman who had asked me to stop texting was stretching out into the two seats adjacent to hers. She was reclining in three prime theater seats, right smack dab in the middle of the packed theater!  She proceeded to rearrange herself for maximum comfort at least 5 times over the course of the lengthy movie, and bumped my arm off the rest a few times.

My first instinct was a furious judgement. I thought to myself, “Who the heck does she think she is…telling me to stop texting and then bogarting 3 whole seats! Lame.” Then after a few minutes my fury melted into pity. She was sitting all alone. Bummer. No one to sit next to. When you go to the movies alone, there’s no one to digest all of the epic moments with afterward. The movie ended around 12:45 and I did apologize at the end of the film.

By the way, the girl seated directly in front of me was texting on her iPhone frequently…and her LCD phone screen is about 4 times the size of mine. She didn’t get a reprimand from the theater Nazi.