I’m Sorry

When I saw Jen Wagner’s post on Twitter and David Jakes’ comment last night, I felt awful. While I was not one who “wore” one of the costumes on Halloween, I did reference it in my post on 11/1 with a link to a Flickr page. Please believe there was no malicious intent on my part and I am now remorseful.

Last night, I immediately severed the link and made an amendment to the post. However, I feel that just quietly making these changes is the coward’s way out, hence this post.

David Jakes, I am sorry.

I have been given a lot to think about.

One Person’s Reality…

I spend one period a day in the library as a math tutor. Apparently no one in the entire building needed help with math today, so I spent the time chatting with the social studies teacher on duty.

She was looking at posters by Peter Menzel from the Material World series. They were thought provoking and I told her they reminded me of something I had seen recently about families from around the world and the food they eat. She hadn’t seen it, so I checked del.icio.us, but for some reason I hadn’t tagged it. A quick Google search didn’t yield much as I didn’t really know for what I was looking – so I sent out a vague tweet asking for help. Within minutes Fred responded with this.

No wonder the Material World images sparked something – Hungry Planet: What the World Eats was created by the same artists. We brainstormed as to how she could use this in her classes.

As much as she liked the new source, she was intrigued by del.icio.us. We spent a couple of minutes surfing through my tags and those of the people in my network. I think she saw the value. Her response to Twitter was more akin to shock–

This guy read your request, knew what you were talking about, and took time out of his day to respond?

Erh, yeah, doesn’t this happen to everyone? We spent some time looking through a few pages of tweets while I explained followers and following. You know all of these people? Well, only one of them so, no. Yes. Sort of.

These interactions, in a variety of ways, provided a reminder of the many different things for which I am grateful on this day before Thanksgiving –and every day.

Strange Threat

I was out yesterday for a conference and had the chance to meet my sub before I left. Despite the fact that he looked like he was twelve years old, I was willing to give him a chance. That chance went out the window when his first comment to me was, “I won’t have to actually help anyone with math, will I?”

Lovely. Where do they find these people?

I received a detailed report on two of my classes – from my trusty student aide. The sub? Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I had no idea what happened in my other sections, so I made today a work/review day. My thinking was: they need more practice, I need to see what they know and be available to answer questions, and (being honest here) it is the last full day before Thanksgiving.

As I’m detailing the plan for the class to my 8th period seniors, I mention that if they don’t use this time wisely, we can always start the next topic. Here’s the response I received , “So, you’re threatening us with learning?”

Oops. Not quite the message I intended to send.

Really Sardonic Syndication

While sorting through my RSS feed yesterday, I seriously considered to what (whom?) I was subscribing and why. Keeping the feeds that make me laugh was a given. These include the comics xkcd and Brown Sharpie (well, I laugh at the math humor in the latter).

Another great comic is Toothpaste For Dinner (see the story here about the lack of an RSS feed). Note – some of the humor may offend those with delicate sensibilities, as I learned the hard way. Anyway, this is one of my recent favorites.

There are two bloggers who make me laugh out loud every time I read them. They’ve appeared in my feed back to back just once. It was such a momentous occasion that I felt the need to mark it with a tweet (erh, not to imply that every tweet marks a momentous occasion).

The first is The PrincipalsPage. I’d love to work for him – can you imagine the yearly review he’d write? His stuff cracks me up every time. I know I’ll never think of chalk and erasers in the quite the same way again. The second blog, The Finite (fits well with the other mathy titles in the blogroll, don’t ya think?) is authored neither by an administrator nor by a teacher. This student blog makes me smile simply by showing up in my feed. Anytime I’m at my laptop laughing, my husband looks up and says, “Reading that kid’s blog again?”. Yep.

Of course I value what I learn from others in my feed and I miss the summer when I had time to work through the math challenges that pop up. These guys though? They provide the comedic relief.

What are you reading that makes you laugh?