BulgingButtons

Not bad for a fat girl


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Busy, Busy, Busy

hi_so_busyMy life these days, recent past and near future:

1. Principal’s day. He deserves a day of his own. Our principal is terrific, and one day out of the year to acknowledge it doesn’t seem like quite enough. In his honor, the kids wrote poems about him and illustrated them. Then they shared their heartfelt greetings on a giant shirt and tie shaped card that one of my fabulous colleagues whipped up. Well done! The same colleague (or a different one, they are both so incredible and do so much that I can’t keep track) even bound all the poems into a book. How cool!

2. Meet writing friend and be amazed by her creativity and her kind and honest heart. She is a breath of fresh air.

3. Go to pot luck graduation party. Mingling isn’t my strong suit, so I stayed pretty much put, but I did really enjoy the conversations I had.

4. Bake bread. For the King Arthur Service learning project, of course.

5. Work on Sunday. For five hours. Good thing I adore the women I work with.

6. Prepare for more testing. Tomorrow is the LAST one. I think. I hope. Yeah, it is.

7. Make art. With the students, of course, for the art walk, of course, which is on an evening that I have another obligation, of course.

8. Prepare something nice for the classroom volunteers, even though I forgot to invite them to the tea when everyone else got invited. Oops.18ix7mf81enazjpg

9. Prepare something nice for Mother’s Day. Oh yay. Macaroni necklace, anyone?

10. Do something fabulous for our wonderful front office staff, since apparently we (as a school) missed the proper day for that (we hang our heads in shame, those two wonderful women deserve better).

11. Bring a delicious dish for tomorrow’s pot luck. Or stop at the store and bring something they’ve made.

12. Work some more next Saturday. Yep, I really do love those girls.

13. Make a scrapbook page for the school nurse (she’s retiring). Shhhh, don’t tell her!

14. Prepare my manuscript (part of it, anyway) to send out to my writing group. This will be the first time I’m sharing it with them. Gulp.

Oh, and continue to do all the regular stuff, like teach and do laundry and go to the grocery store and spend time with my family. Yep, it’s all good. Summer’s coming, I can handle this!


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In Honor of May the Fourth (Star Wars Day)

I know I’m not the only who always loved this scene and was sad that it was cut in the remastered version of Return of the Jedi. Enjoy the innocence of the original Ewok Dance Party. And no, I’m not really that much of a Star Wars geek, but I do love those fuzzy little guys.


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Baking as Entertainment

Today I have a task, I am to bake two loaves of bread. It’s part of a service learning project that my school is doing, in conjunction with the good people at King Arthur Flour.

From the King Arthur website. I hope mine look this good!

From the King Arthur website. I hope mine look this good!

When I first heard about this project, I was interested, but not overly enthusiastic. I’m not much of a bread baker, so I wasn’t exactly rushing to sign up. Then things changed. Then Nate the Baker showed up.

A little back story: King Arthur Flour company (which is owned by its employees, by the way) does this incredible service learning project with schools across the country. They provide not only flour, but bread baking kits, for kids to make bread. There is enough to make two loaves, one to keep and one to share. The second loaf is brought back to school and donated to feed the hungry.

Neat project, right? But there’s more. In order to get the kids enthusiastic about participating, and to teach them about bread baking, King Arthur sends a baker to school for an assembly. I know what you’re thinking, “Gee, how exciting, watching someone bake bread.” I was slightly skeptical myself, but I’m here to eat my words. It was probably one of the best school assemblies I’ve ever been to, and as a long time teacher, that’s saying something!

Not only did Nate the baker demonstrate the technique for making the bread (with his two student assistants, the Diva of Dry Ingredients and the Lord of Liquid Ingredients), but he engaged the entire audience and brought in lots of science content, as well as developing vocabulary. There was pizza dough twirling (and drops on the floor… oops!), cinnamon roll cutting (with dental floss!), and bread braiding (it’s NOT like your hair). This man was not only a born showman, but a top notch educator. I imagine he’s a pretty good baker, too.

We all left enthusiastic about our gifts of flour and other baking supplies, and dreaming about the fresh, delicious bread we would bake. I’m excited to make mine this afternoon, and I’m really looking forward to being part of that long line of bread donors tomorrow. What a wonderful experience for our students, thanks to this generous company.

I will be a King Arthur Flour customer from now on.