One of the things I thought of including in the newsletter was Paso Robles’ Play in the Park. This past September, we went as a family to watch Man of La Mancha at a local amphitheatre. For those of you who have never seen this musical, it tells the story of Don Quixote, the renowned Spaniard who fancies himself a chivalrous knight, all evidence to the contrary. Of our family outings, this was one of my favorites because the kids got to experience theatre in the informal atmosphere of a blanket on the grass and cup of hot chocolate.

Lately, this has been on mind my mind: giving my children memorable experiences. This year, I’ve seen them spending weekends with friends, going away to summer camp, and having full on relationships with people that I’m not really a part of. In short, they are on their way out of childhood and into adulthood. And where – I shudder to think – will they go from there?

In my last year’s worth of conversations, I’ve indentified a trend. I’ve noticed an underlying feeling of disenchantment with the world, a disenchantment that has the nasty aftereffect of taking its toll in the form of fears and worrying for our children who we have brought into this world. What will the future hold for them?

Funny thing about Don Quixote: it also addressed a theme of disenchantment with society – and it came out four hundred years ago. I sometimes think that maybe this disenchantment comes with being in my thirties, upon realizing a new circle of concern and circle of influence, wherein the circle of concern has really expanded and the circle of influence appears undeniably smaller. Maybe others reach this realization at earlier or later times in their lives, but as for me and my peeps, we’re feeling it right now.

There is no single answer to this disenchantment. For Don Quixote, it was the refusal to accept, and to instead treat the world as he wished it to be. I may not have his imaginative power, but I can at least move forward, focusing on the real things that are wonderful. So I’m going to go back to my newsletter and leave out all of this disenchantment and only tell people of the funny times, the good times, the happy books I’m reading, and the funny movies I’m watching. I can tell them about The Boy’s nighttime stargazing, and his self-assured description of himself as being really good at seeing constellations. And for every time The Boy shouts out another constellation (Hey, look! It’s Pegasus!), I can relive Man of La Mancha’s final song lyrics –

And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable star.

– and think to myself, maybe there’s a bit of Don Quixote’s imaginative prowess in me after all.

I am now two months past my third full year of living somewhere, which means Husband and I are about to beat our old record of three years and four months. Indeed, we’ve been together since 1999 and the longest we’ve stayed in one place is three years and four months. No wonder I sometimes feel unstable.

No regrets, though. All those moves needed to happen and all of them were fun in one way or another. The place we’re at now I hope will be the place we stay, even if it is the least cosmetically please home (according to my parents). What can I say? I’m happy to have a place to call home. For more than a couple years.

For other art projects and craft fun, see 5 Minutes for Special Needs‘ Magic Marker Monday.

For those of you with little ones who enjoy painting, fingerpainting is always fun. Probably second only to playing with mud in your best dress!

For one of my Brownie meetings, I had my little girls fingerpainting, and they loved dabbing their fingers in the different colors. With a little guidance, they all squawked out this fine-looking peacock.* And thanks to having a sink nearby, art smocks, and hand towels, there was not too much mess to boot!

Do you have fun projects with your kids, in the classroom, or with your Girl scout troop? Leave a comment below for me to see and share them over at Magic Marker Monday.

*The idea for this fingerpainting project came from the Scholastic direct-to-home Book Cluc series, “I Am An Artist.”

For my undergraduate degree, I earned a full scholarship that covered my entire tuition plus books, fees, and dorm room. Needless to say, it was *totally* awesome. I had taken my time with the application process and did my research to find the way to pay for school. I cannot say the same for my credentialing and Masters program process. I needed to enroll in school immediately in order to get the job (that I needed immediately), and I didn’t have time to apply for scholarships. So, lucky me, now I have debt.

I still have to clear my credential, which is another 5 college courses, and since I have until 2016, I am taking my time to find some scholarships or grants for which I may (hopefully) be eligible.

Please think about scholarships to pay for your college degree! For starters, you don’t want a mountain of debt when you graduate. You should also know that most student loans are held by the government and are not covered by bankruptcy protection, should you ever find yourself on that path. So, whatever else may be, you WILL owe that money. So if my message hasn’t been any clearer: focus on scholarships and avoid that whole college debt path.

And here’s a shot from the top. Sometimes, you can see the spiders hanging out at the top of the hole. Usually, they’re wolf spiders. Occasionally, they’re other kinds of spiders that I do not recognize, which is all for the best because I don’t really want to know how many Brown Recluses are residing in the yard.

So what do you need in an anti-bullying presentation? For all you teachers out there who need to address bullying in the classroom, here’s the quick n’ dirty guide to making your own Anti-Bullying Presentation:

1. Ice Breaker: Rather than open with the age old “What do you know about bullying?”, I gave out  Bullying True/False Quiz. And thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I didn’t have to create my own Bullying True/False Quiz. I used this one made by Teaching Tolerance. While I liked this one from Melissa Institute, they didn’t provide the answer sheet like Teaching Tolerance.

2. Open Forum Presentation: After filling in the Bullying True/Flase Quiz, I started my PowerPoint. We read the slide one at a time, then talked about it, using real life examples. If you don’t like making PowerPoints, I have good news for you: just like the Bullying quizzes, the Internet is rife with bullying PowerPoints. One thing I emphasize with my students when it comes to bullying is the imbalance of power. There is bullying in school, but there are also conflicts, and the two are not the same. This is a topic I have written about before.

3. We end with the “I agree to be bully free” Contract. A simple image, a statement, and a signature. Then we put all the contracts up on the wall where the remain the whole school year.

Will this end all bullying instantly? Dare to dream. The purpose of the presentation is to open their eyes to what constitutes bullying and encourages students to consider what their values are. Are they the kind of person who feels better by hurting others, or not? Are they the kind of person who stands by while others are hurt, or not? The message gets repeated every year, and I’ve noticed with every presentation, my students responses have become more open and sincere. They’re truly asking about specific scenarios they’ve witnessed and experienced. They want to know better ways to handle situations so they can feel good about themselves. They want to know what happens if they say this or do that. Who knows, maybe in 5 years, we’ll have practically no instances of bullying. But it won’t have happened by magic, it happened by setting the expectations high every year and sticking to them.

Good luck!

*Fun anecdote: The first year I presented on bullying, I presented to the whole school, down to the Kinders and first graders. At the end of my presentation on bullying one of the first graders got up and looked around as they returned to class and said, “I thought we were going bowling?” And which student said that? My daughter.

I will note here at the beginning that people blog for many reasons. I hope this article shows why I think one form of blogging may be dead already. You might say that “successful” blogging has a new definition which I’ve tried to provide here in my guest post. Thanks for reading!

The question has come up in my Google Reader quite a bit lately: people are asking and speculating if blogging is dying as an art form.

It is a question worth pondering since Technorati and other blog “hangouts” of the 90′s and early 2000′s have either gone out of business or completely revamped the way they make money. I have found that not as many blogs are publishing new content. There can be a number of reasons for this, the strongest I think being that it’s rarely instant gratification. I remember reading articles online circa 2007 that would cite enormous numbers (like in the millions) of blogs that were started in a given year. I found that exciting because it seemed the power of disseminating information was more in the hands of the people (not the newspapers). Notwithstanding, based on the death of so many blogs I once read, those blog numbers cited were most certainly not of the “staying power” genre. Instead of eliminating dead space blogs from search, Google has found a way to apply an alogrithm that sorts the dead from the living automatically. Usually this is based on the number of posts in the last year (but not always). Google applies its normal algorithm to all webpages (yes, every blog post is a webpage all its own). But these are just a few random scatterings of what blogs are to Google and/or to the internet reading public.

No one really knows why some bloggers give up and others stay at it. I do know however that “just staying at it” is also not always a precursor to having success in the search engine rank placement (SERP). It’s kind of like first round at American Idol: just because they have sang since they were babies doesn’t mean they will make the cut. Some bloggers have dropped out because they didn’t like the friends that were thumbing them up or down anymore. Others never really got a vision for what they do and so when it got difficult, they just stopped producing content. Make no mistake, blogging is not like publishing a book. Most that gets read has the life span of an ice sculpture.

Occasionally a blogger makes a name for her/himself and he/she attract a follwing that way but usually, blogs are only read piece by piece by random readers based on search engine traffic.

I never know what is going to be read on my blog yet I continue to write because it’s fun, challenging, and rewarding. For me it is like building model Corvettes. No one may ever see all of my collection but I have them on display and every once in a while someone comes in paying admission by clicking on Adsense. When I am okay with NOT being read is when I publish some of my best stuff (Ah the truth and irony of using the FORCE). I don’t think blogging (serious blogging that is) is dying. My reason is simple: I keep getting blog posts when I am searching for things online. The fact is, at least one webpage returned on the front page when I am looking for a home remedy or whatever is from a blog. I think bloggers who want to make something of their work need to branch out into promotion on Social Media and making a name for themselves through Tweeting and Facebooking. Everybody seeks to do that so all the more reason for bloggers to. I think modern successful bloggers need to read books on SEO and SERP and WordPress and social media. It’s no longer a time when we can expect to languish in quiet anonymity until we become DOOCE. Impossible. The new blogger success stories must know how to use keywords and other strategic tools (and there are some cool ones on WordPress.org!) to get their posts to the top of their topics. Oh, and don’t forget they must be proficient at writing and at creating posts of reader interest. Of course blogging can and should always be a way to gather ones thoughts, reflect, share photos and the like. Unfortunately, though, Facebook and Twitter do that much better. Blogs that truly get popular are going to be written by people “in the know” who are SEO savvy and have a more clearly defined voice or purpose than the minions (like those who have started free blogs right now as you have been reading!)

In short: To blog with authority, you must develop your skills behind the dashboard. If you prefer to post photos and statuses etc in hopes of gaining blog celebrity, this genre is now relegated to “social media” … Blogging for this crowd is the type of blogging I would say is dead (insert TAPS.mp3 here).

Many of you are aware of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to stop childhood obesity. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity affects 1 in 3 of all children and adolescents in the United States. I was just watching the movie Forks Over Knives the other night and was horrified at what is happening to our bodies right before our eyes.  So much so I tossed out all the candy and refined sugar products and re-examined what plant-based recipes I could add into the weekly regimen. The movie addresses aspects of how our diet is *seriously* hurting us. But diet is only one half to taking care of ourselves. The the other half to maintaining a healthy lifestyle is exercise.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my kids can’t get enough activity. I picked them up from summer camp, where they swam, climbed, ran, kicked, and tugged their way through a week’s worth of activities and tanning. I recall Michelle Obama saying that one of the things she and her kids do to be active is dance. Other fun forms of exercise? My kids are pretty big on biking and skating. Conveniently, BMX has just given me a fun way to add in some exciting biking before the end of summer.

USA BMX just teamed up with The Partnership for a Healthier America and Let’s Move! to provide a week of free race days to encourage kids to act healthier, ie GET OUT THERE AND MOVE!

From August 11th through the 18th, USA BMX is offering Free Race Days to new riders at participating tracks across the U.S. and Canada. They’re calling it Let’s Move! BMX Race Days, and can you think of a better way to end the summer?

So, check out where the participating tracks are by visiting the USA BMX website and head out for some heart pumping cardio action that ensures your child lives a healthy life

This is my fourth conference this school year. My school agrees to send me, and my colleagues, to various conferences like these because my school believes in supporting a teacher’s ongoing education. This is a pretty awesome stance, considering how limited school budgets are at the moment. Of course, my school is also required to spend a portion of its funding on professional development because it is in Program Improvement (PI) status.

A school can fall into PI status when their number of students passing the statewide standardized tests at Proficient or Advanced failed to increase by 10%. This means that even though our Academic Performance Index (API) went up, we still went into PI status because the number of our Pro/Adv students did not increase. This bugs me.

While I personally benefit from this perk or requiring professional development, I also find it irksome that the answer to a school falling into PI status is to require educating the teachers on how to teach Reading and Math, yet again pointing the finger at the teacher as to why a student is not performing well. This also bugs me. I love my students. I want them all to succeed. I work with great teachers, who are all effective instructors. Our students are coming to our school with basic skills not yet in place, and any instructor knows that you have to meet them where they’re at, if you hope to improve their level of independent ability. And if you want to continue a teacher’s education so they can stay on top of the latest and greatest strategies, that’s fine, BUT… why aren’t there any PI funds to help the community help itself? How about some funding to help parents read with their children every night or sponsor family days where the parents and kids go on an outing together? In addition to supporting continuing education for the teachers, it would be nice if there was a way to provide family resources to help parents take a more active role in their children’s education as well.

Hence, here I am at the ALA Conference, looking for ways the community library can be my partner in empowering families to bring education into the home. Feel free to follow along — I’ll be tweeting, as will be a huge number of other attendees Enjoy!