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This week’s challenge was to bake bread. I was finally able to get to baking on Friday.  I used this recipe, but modified it some by using some maple syrup and stevia instead of molasses and using all wheat flour instead of a mix of white and wheat.  I was a little worried that the yeast wouldn’t work, even though I just bought it the other day.  I think I was afraid that my water was the wrong amount of warm.  When the dough was ready, I kneaded like a maniac.  It was more physically challenging than I thought it would be, but I think that’s because the dough was dense from all the wheat flour.  I had to wait about an hour and a half for the bread to double in size.  I was impatient and I kept checking on it.  It seemed like all of the sudden, it really had doubled in size!  That was kind of exciting.  The yeast had worked!  Now, all that was left was the baking… and the eating.  I thought I would use up some sunflower seeds I had, so I sprayed the dough with olive oil and pour them on (they all just fell right off later, but nice try).  It smelled so good while it was baking that I thought I should bake bread every week.  It wasn’t too hard, just lots of waiting.  Once it was done, Dan and I dug right in.  The warm bread was awesome with some natural peanut butter!  Then, I was inspired to make some butternut squash and vegetable soup just to dunk the bread in.

Deceptive sunflower seeds

Ah, bread.  It’s just one of those givens.  It was nice to make it myself and know what was in it and what went into making it.  It’s only been two days and it’s half gone.  That’s a good sign.

Yesterday, Dan and I spent the day at Easton Town Center at the AMC Best Picture Showcase.  I decided to do a review of each movie on video.  So, today, I spliced them together for your viewing pleasure.

P.S.  The last clip was taken in the car and I didn’t realize that it was totally black.  You can still hear my voice though!

This morning, Dan and I got up and went to Stauf’s for awhile.  I worked on school stuff, and Dan was doing his regular work.  Around lunch time we came home.  I did a bit more work, then needed to run to to campus to drop off some papers and work out.  There’s this one street on campus, where there are lots of crosswalks and yield signs.  It’s right in the middle of campus, so there are always students criss-crossing the street and, as a driver, it is very slow going.  Over time, I’ve noticed that there are three types of street-crossers.  The typical street-crosser looks up at the car to make sure the car is going to stop and then sort of half waves and hurries across the street.  A second type of street-crosser, the passive aggressive type, just walks right out into the street, sometimes on a cell phone, sometimes not, almost challenging you to hit them, but still walking briskly and in a hurry.  The third type is my favorite type.  They stare at the ground, and walk slowly across the street, barely realizing that they are standing in a place of some danger, a place where walkers really don’t belong, a street (!).  The one I saw today was so slow about her pace, that I thought that she might actually enjoy being in the street.

I started to think about these three types of street-crossers.  I think I’m mostly the first; when I was younger I was the second, but never have I been the third.  Although I kind of like the idea of the third.  It reminds me of this quote from Gloria Anzaldua:

Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a state of constant transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants.

The street is a borderland of sorts, a place dividing up where “pedestrians” walk.  The street is a place where pedestrians shouldn’t be, or should only be for a short amount of time in certain places (crosswalks).  The street is only safe for cars, not people.  Even the term pedestrian is sort of strange.  One who travels on foot… we’re all really pedestrians, but we are restricted in this space made for one who travels by car.  The arbitrary boundary of the street is constantly in transition, cars coming and going, people hurrying or putzing through the crosswalks, some even darting, forbidden, outside of the designated crosswalks.  So, those ones who don’t acknowledge that they are in a borderland, who wander freely, enjoy the forbidden nature of the street, a place that’s not for people on foot, I kind of like them.

One time when I was walking downtown, there was a man, clearly out of his mind, who began to play a sort of hopscotch in the middle of High Street.  He was jumping on one leg, trying not to land on any cracks.  Cars started coming, but he paid no attention.  It could have been ugly, but instead, cars slowed to a stop, watching, in awe.  It makes me wonder what we’re so afraid of, in those borderland spaces.  What happens if we stay in the borderland for awhile, disregarding rules of typical behavior?  What if we discovered that instead of getting hurt, you might find that you change the borderland in an unexpected way?  What if the borderland changed you?

The past two days have been really busy.  I’m tired, but I wanted to share a couple tidbits of good news.  First, I got this email today:

“I got your contact information from your article in the February 2010 NSTA ScienceScope.  I notice you are a former middle school science teacher working on your doctorate.  Western Illinois University is currently looking for an Assistant/Associate Professor in Science Education at the Elementary-Middle School level.  I am attaching our position announcement.  If you feel you meet the qualifications I would encourage you to apply for the position.”

Nice, right?  I’m not the perfect candidate for this position, nor does the timing line up (I won’t be finished with my degree yet), but there are two good things about this.  1) Faculty members read the teacher journal I like to write for and 2) one of them read it and thought it was good enough to look me up to send me this announcement.  Yay!

Also, I met with the professor I worked with on that article that got rejected.  We brainstormed what we could do and we think we’re going to get more feedback and rewrite, but she also asked if I wanted to help collect data (conduct interviews) from teachers in a local school district!  She has a contract to work on their technology plan and she wants to see what teachers need and want from technology.  This is a good opportunity to get some field experience and I’m pretty excited about it.  But, I’m also still really tired.  Night!

Just a few questions for today:

Do you care about educational policy (things like standards, accountability, charter schools, vouchers, teacher quality, etc)?  If so, what would you want to know more about?  What would be helpful for you to know more about?

I did a bunch of work today and attended two classes that I hadn’t been to in three weeks (conference plus snow days).  In my educational philosophy class, I’m working on a paper and I thought I’d post the introduction here to see if anyone wanted to give feedback.  Enjoy!

‘I never let my schooling interfere with my education’.
Mark Twain.

Education is important to humanity; education, that is, in its broadest sense.  Here’s how wikipedia puts it: “Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual.”  This definition, constructed by collective wisdom on a mostly open piece of new media called a wiki, is at the heart of the concept of school.  School does present a certain sort of education, and we tend to conflate the two, but by this definition, you can receive an education by watching television, helping your dad fix a car, apprenticing with an artist, etc.  With the current proliferation of the internet and resulting “new media,” people are participating in a form of education, once again, in new ways in new venues with new tools at their disposal.  New media, according to wikipedia, “is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies described as “new media” are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulatable, networkable, dense, compressible, interactive and impartial.”  Of course, not everyone is able to participate (so I might not use the word “impartial” in my own definition), but I have hope for increased accessibility alongside a healthy skepticism that people will be able to live without it for much longer.

As a doctoral student in an Educational Technology program, I have been looking closely at new media and its interactions and effects.  New media, in my mind, is more than anything, a learning mechanism.  A state-sponsored school is also a learning mechanism.  These two entities function in very different ways and with different sets of regulations (or lack thereof).  My interest then, in this paper, is to compare the educational possibilities present in new media and in state-run schools with regard to the ideals of liberalism and multiculturalism.  I posit that the values of liberalism and multiculturalism are better served by the capabilities of new media than by state-run schools.  I also argue that the values of liberalism and multiculturalism do not necessitate state regulation and, therefore, our philosophy and practices of education should be more open to collective experimental play; new media can serve as an aid to this process.

This week’s challenge was to pray everyday for a week.  I grew up Catholic, so prayer for me as a kid meant a few different things.  It always meant “talking to God,” but there were different circumstances where it occurred.  Of course, there were the normal prayers during mass.  We also would pray the rosary at various times, but I remember it most after confession. And then, we always recited the meal-time prayer (all holding hands of course). Here it is in case you’re curious:

“Bless us, Oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord.  Amen.”

It looks funnier written than it sounds to me.  Anyway, I would also pray at night before bed, using this one:

“Dear God, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep and if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.  God bless… (I would list all of the family members I could think of).”

I don’t know if that last part was traditional, or if my parents added it on or what, but that’s what we did.  This one also looks pretty morbid now that I write it down.  It sounds like you should be afraid to die every night, yikes!

As I got older, I would do the same things, but I would sort of talk to God a little more, ask for help, say thank you for things, etc.  When I prayed in high school, I remember thinking that it was important to have equal amounts of asking and thanking.  I also remember, that I would always pray after I turned the lights out and was snuggled into bed.

This week, as I made a dedicated effort to pray every day, I noticed that my habits have changed only a little.  I skipped the thoughts of death and went straight to “Dear God, Thank you for today… ” followed by a series of thank yous and please help mes, and then God bless every member of my family, noting specific things for ones that had them (like health problems or whatnot) and then I also added the widowed dads that I read about earlier this week and a friend of mine at school that lost a family member, finishing with a big Amen (although I must admit that I think I fell asleep one night as I was going through the list of family members… I was tired).  The good thing about taking a few minutes before I went to sleep, was that I felt like I got out of my own head for a little bit and thought about others.  That’s hard to do with only 24 hours in a day and a to-do list ten miles long.  The other good thing is that I was able to be thankful for the good parts of my day.  Usually my back is already all tensed up and ready for the next day.  By the last night though, I started to think that my prayer style seemed kind of dull and list-y.   Not that there’s a “right way” to pray, but I wonder if this is how other people pray?  Am I a type-A pray-er?

Diddling on my computer as Jeff, Dan and kids play Wii.  Thought this was interesting… if you click on the image, you’ll go to the website from whence it came.