I've always been kind of skeptical about the whole "pointing and mocking" part of the Great and Spacious Building of Lehi's vision. I mean, I've never been mocked for being a Mormon. Not even close. In fact, when I was at a school Christmas party in Canada (a Catholic school), there was wine. One of the other student teachers was tasked with serving it. His line went like this: "Red or white? Red or white? Molly, Sprite?" He didn't care that I didn't drink, he only cared that I was comfortable and got what I wanted. So cute.
I've figured it out though. I know what the great and spacious building is. It's the Internet.
No one ever mocks me in person. That would be rude. People don't want to create an awkward situation or make others feel bad. They are polite; we move on to less divisive issues like sports and politics. The Internet is not in person. No one feels bad about accusing Mitt Romney of going to hell because he's a liar or talking about how Mormon's aren't Christian and are going to hell or the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales and anyone who believes them is an idiot holding on to guns and religion or all Mormons are racist or WEIRD UNDERWEAR or Mormons still believe in polygamy or Mormons are idiots online. As Romney has been more in the spotlight, there have been more articles written about him. Then, people comment on these articles. Some of them apparently believe their calling in life is to mock Mormons/Christians/non atheists. It's the Great and Spacious Building. You were right, Lehi.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Soccer girl
One of Zane's (I think) former clients runs a soccer program for the Tinys of the world. Well, we have a Tiny! So, we decided to sign Sabrina up for this soccer program.
It was so, so perfect. They started out just kicking the ball from one side of the "field" to the other. Then their was a "water break." Then a few other drills, well interspersed with snack breaks. The program provided snacks, in the form of a baggie divided in two with grapes in one side and goldfish in the other. The best part? The division was made by a clothespin made to look like a butterfly! I bet you can guess how Sabrina took that. (Mom! A butterfly!)
The last few minutes was a "game." It featured Lance's son and Mari's son tackling members of the opposite team -- or their own team, who cares? --, repeated and deliberate own goals, and Sabrina running behind the group of kids, only three of whom even touched the ball, laughing her head off at how fun this was. A perfect day.
Oh, and the most adorable soccer girl in the world, and possibly the universe. Also, her little bro. Evidence? Here you go.
It was so, so perfect. They started out just kicking the ball from one side of the "field" to the other. Then their was a "water break." Then a few other drills, well interspersed with snack breaks. The program provided snacks, in the form of a baggie divided in two with grapes in one side and goldfish in the other. The best part? The division was made by a clothespin made to look like a butterfly! I bet you can guess how Sabrina took that. (Mom! A butterfly!)
The last few minutes was a "game." It featured Lance's son and Mari's son tackling members of the opposite team -- or their own team, who cares? --, repeated and deliberate own goals, and Sabrina running behind the group of kids, only three of whom even touched the ball, laughing her head off at how fun this was. A perfect day.
Oh, and the most adorable soccer girl in the world, and possibly the universe. Also, her little bro. Evidence? Here you go.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Kids of God
Sabrina has been asked to say the scripture in Primary next Sunday. Her first assignment! I'm having her say the scripture I once said in Primary. It's short, and therefore perfect for a 3-year-old. I asked her this morning to say her "Blessed."
"Blessed is a peacemakers. For they. Shallbecalled. The kids...What is it?"
Me: "The children of God."
"The children of God."
I kind of like "The kids of God." Has a nice ring to it.
"Blessed is a peacemakers. For they. Shallbecalled. The kids...What is it?"
Me: "The children of God."
"The children of God."
I kind of like "The kids of God." Has a nice ring to it.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Domesticity
Yesterday, Marilyn gave us some strawberries that were -- let's say past their prime. So today, I went to the car cart store (Sasha: cah caht! cah caht!), aka Valley Market, and got some pectin. And made freezer jam! Yum! It was so super easy I can hardly believe I've never made it before. Then I finished the ice cream (there was NOT that much left, Zane! Stop being rude! I'm supposed to look like this, I'm pregnant!) with freezer jam on it. Soooooo delicious. Sasha liked the jam too, but his was on a PB&J.
Sasha was in a really good mood today. Zane had to get up early and take Spencer to school, so he was up with the little kids too. Sasha came into my room and crawled up next to me, snuggled under the covers, and said "sleep." This was pretend sleep, of course, because right away he jumped up and said "Bird! Fly! Tweet! Tree!" Yes, that IS practically a sentence. Practically. Later, I was doing a dictation downstairs and heard crying a few times. I ignored it and it went away, and I was very pleased that they worked out whatever it was on their own. However, there is a bite mark that's Sabrina-sized on Sasha's face, so maybe my selective hearing DID have a downside. Nah. Still, he's been sweet and cute today, which is frankly a change from yesterday. Phew! He has 35 days to become perfect, self-entertaining, and able to make his own PB&J. Bets, anyone?
Sasha was in a really good mood today. Zane had to get up early and take Spencer to school, so he was up with the little kids too. Sasha came into my room and crawled up next to me, snuggled under the covers, and said "sleep." This was pretend sleep, of course, because right away he jumped up and said "Bird! Fly! Tweet! Tree!" Yes, that IS practically a sentence. Practically. Later, I was doing a dictation downstairs and heard crying a few times. I ignored it and it went away, and I was very pleased that they worked out whatever it was on their own. However, there is a bite mark that's Sabrina-sized on Sasha's face, so maybe my selective hearing DID have a downside. Nah. Still, he's been sweet and cute today, which is frankly a change from yesterday. Phew! He has 35 days to become perfect, self-entertaining, and able to make his own PB&J. Bets, anyone?
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Waiting for Superman: Review
Last night, on Netflix, I watched Waiting for Superman. One might think it's about dang time, since it's a heavily discussed documentary about my profession. One would be right. In my defense, though, it hasn't been streaming on Nextflix until now, and I'm inherently cheap about stuff like that.
There were quite a few things I agreed with in this film. For example, the biggest problem I think we have in education is bad teachers. And we can't get rid of them. Just at Snowcrest, the junior high Zane and his family went to, there was a math teacher who had a stroke and lost her short-term memory, and a science teacher who lost so many assignments that Victoria, the only non-ADD member of the Froerer clan, had to get a paper signed every time she turned in an assignment, as proof, since the teacher was almost guaranteed to lose it! And were these terrible teachers fired? No. The math teacher is STILL THERE, and the science teacher was removed after a year's fight by Marilyn, my MIL. But: she was moved to WEBER HIGH (because who cares about the quality of science teachers in high school, right?) where LANCE got her the next year. Needless to say, Marilyn quickly got him changed to another science teacher despite the almost iron-clad rule of not changing kids' teachers.
These terrible teachers should be fired. But we can't fire them. Why? Union rules. Even in Utah, a right-to-work state, it's virtually impossible to fire a teacher. The movie said 1/57 doctors lose their license, 1/97 attorneys, and 1 in 2500 teachers. And honestly, it's almost 100% because the unions protect teachers who are terrible. Terrible as in they have no short term memory, lose every assignment they give, read newspapers in class, only teach grammar in a social studies/English class, watch movies two times a week, have no classroom control, and so on. Unions protect these teachers, and are destroying all respect for the profession of teaching.
The movie suggests charter schools are part of the answer, since they are not bound by the union rules. They can get rid of teachers! They can lengthen the school day and year! Seems awfully commonsenseical. It followed about five kids whose parents wanted better for them, and tried to get them in the high-performing schools. Two got in. The others? They're still going to "dropout factories." When some of these kids didn't get in, I lost it. I was seriously sitting at the kitchen table with Netflix on my laptop, bawling. Of course, I'm pregnant. But still, education should be about the children, and, as Michelle Rhee said, it's become all about the adults.
How would I fix education? I know you were all waiting with bated breath to hear my solutions. Okay. First, you'd be able to fire teachers because they were bad, not just if they sleep with students! Now, teachers get tenure once they have taught for 3 years. At three years you barely don't suck anymore! Tenure = gone. A "bad teacher" is identified by administration, fellow teachers, parents, students, and test scores. I can tell you the bad teachers at my school. Students, too, are really good at identifying them. And don't think students will just say a bad teacher is one they don't like. There would be some, but mostly they will be honest about how much they learned in a year. As far as testing goes, it's a relatively simple matter to organize the data so you can see if a student gained a year of progress under a teacher. If a teacher's students mostly did not, especially over a few years, curtains! Find another job!
Second, pay teachers differently. Yes, maybe merit pay for great teachers, but I was thinking more about supply and demand. We have a shortage of math and science teachers, and a veritable plethora of English and history teachers (of which I am one). I am a great teacher, in my humble opinion. I'd be a great junior high-level math teacher, too. I found out I'd have to take TEN classes to get my math certification. SO NOT WORTH IT. But if I got another $10,000/year to teach math? Suddenly, I'm enrolled at Weber State for two classes a semester. Hey, I'd make the cost back in a year! Then you'd have great teachers more evenly spread out among the subjects, partly because we've have more options, and good teachers would get hired and bad ones fired. How about that?
This is very long, and if you've made it this far I'm impressed. I just have one more thing to say. Our schools need improvement. The best way to fix a school is to get good teachers and get rid of bad ones. Let's figure out a way to do that!
There were quite a few things I agreed with in this film. For example, the biggest problem I think we have in education is bad teachers. And we can't get rid of them. Just at Snowcrest, the junior high Zane and his family went to, there was a math teacher who had a stroke and lost her short-term memory, and a science teacher who lost so many assignments that Victoria, the only non-ADD member of the Froerer clan, had to get a paper signed every time she turned in an assignment, as proof, since the teacher was almost guaranteed to lose it! And were these terrible teachers fired? No. The math teacher is STILL THERE, and the science teacher was removed after a year's fight by Marilyn, my MIL. But: she was moved to WEBER HIGH (because who cares about the quality of science teachers in high school, right?) where LANCE got her the next year. Needless to say, Marilyn quickly got him changed to another science teacher despite the almost iron-clad rule of not changing kids' teachers.
These terrible teachers should be fired. But we can't fire them. Why? Union rules. Even in Utah, a right-to-work state, it's virtually impossible to fire a teacher. The movie said 1/57 doctors lose their license, 1/97 attorneys, and 1 in 2500 teachers. And honestly, it's almost 100% because the unions protect teachers who are terrible. Terrible as in they have no short term memory, lose every assignment they give, read newspapers in class, only teach grammar in a social studies/English class, watch movies two times a week, have no classroom control, and so on. Unions protect these teachers, and are destroying all respect for the profession of teaching.
The movie suggests charter schools are part of the answer, since they are not bound by the union rules. They can get rid of teachers! They can lengthen the school day and year! Seems awfully commonsenseical. It followed about five kids whose parents wanted better for them, and tried to get them in the high-performing schools. Two got in. The others? They're still going to "dropout factories." When some of these kids didn't get in, I lost it. I was seriously sitting at the kitchen table with Netflix on my laptop, bawling. Of course, I'm pregnant. But still, education should be about the children, and, as Michelle Rhee said, it's become all about the adults.
How would I fix education? I know you were all waiting with bated breath to hear my solutions. Okay. First, you'd be able to fire teachers because they were bad, not just if they sleep with students! Now, teachers get tenure once they have taught for 3 years. At three years you barely don't suck anymore! Tenure = gone. A "bad teacher" is identified by administration, fellow teachers, parents, students, and test scores. I can tell you the bad teachers at my school. Students, too, are really good at identifying them. And don't think students will just say a bad teacher is one they don't like. There would be some, but mostly they will be honest about how much they learned in a year. As far as testing goes, it's a relatively simple matter to organize the data so you can see if a student gained a year of progress under a teacher. If a teacher's students mostly did not, especially over a few years, curtains! Find another job!
Second, pay teachers differently. Yes, maybe merit pay for great teachers, but I was thinking more about supply and demand. We have a shortage of math and science teachers, and a veritable plethora of English and history teachers (of which I am one). I am a great teacher, in my humble opinion. I'd be a great junior high-level math teacher, too. I found out I'd have to take TEN classes to get my math certification. SO NOT WORTH IT. But if I got another $10,000/year to teach math? Suddenly, I'm enrolled at Weber State for two classes a semester. Hey, I'd make the cost back in a year! Then you'd have great teachers more evenly spread out among the subjects, partly because we've have more options, and good teachers would get hired and bad ones fired. How about that?
This is very long, and if you've made it this far I'm impressed. I just have one more thing to say. Our schools need improvement. The best way to fix a school is to get good teachers and get rid of bad ones. Let's figure out a way to do that!
Monday, April 9, 2012
Hunger Games
Spoiler alert! If you haven't seen Hunger Games but are going to, I give away some plots points here. But if you've read the book, you've been spoiled anyway.
Zane took me on a date (probably our last for, I don't know, a year or so) a few weeks ago to see Hunger Games. I loved the first book, liked the second, and was highly disappointed in the third. I mean, come on, why did you kill EVERY character I liked, with the exception of Katniss and Peeta? Oh, and Gale. But I didn't really care that much about him by the end, either. And a de facto Hunger Games for the army? Lame. ANYWAY.
Overall, I really liked it. I was absolutely bawling during the reaping. Since becoming a mom, this sort of thing is so painful to watch and imagine. By "this sort of thing" I mean thinking about a child (my child) in trouble that I can't do anything about. I can shut down my imagination PDQ when NPR starts talking about a 3-year-old dying from a shrapnel wound in Homs or when I hear about the child soldiers in Uganda who are kidnapped after being forced to kill their parents, but when it's there on screen it's harder to ignore. Boy, this paragraph is a real downer. Onward!
Some people have complained that the hand-held camera that recorded the early deaths at the Cornucopia was distracting and, well, lame. I liked it, though. Who wants to see the actual deaths of these kids? Zane pointed out that it's bad enough to see adult-on-adult violence, but kids? Nope, don't want the details. Fuzzy images are more than enough.
I also liked the District 11 revolt. This was in book 2, but fits well here. I can just imagine the despair of who I assume to be Rue's father when he sees his baby girl die on the big screen. Oh, this is the other part that had me bawling. Glad I live far enough away from my students to know none of them were in the audience with me, because this was not an I'm-the-adult-in-control moment. No, it was not. I can see how Rue's death could be a spark to the rebels.
The book is written in first person, and there is a fair amount of exposition that goes on in Katniss's thoughts. That doesn't translate well to a movie. I liked how they gave you that information by showing the gamemakers and Haymitch's machinations. That worked well.
The one thing I really didn't like was how the film portrayed Cinna. He was only my favorite character in the book, or at least vying for first. But in the film he was little more than a background character, not the awesome, gifted, sympathetic man who would help create the Mockingjay. They tried, kind of, but failed.
So. I liked it. I do think anyone who hasn't read the book won't like it as much, but it was true to the spirit and text of the book, with just enough changes to make it a movie instead.
Zane took me on a date (probably our last for, I don't know, a year or so) a few weeks ago to see Hunger Games. I loved the first book, liked the second, and was highly disappointed in the third. I mean, come on, why did you kill EVERY character I liked, with the exception of Katniss and Peeta? Oh, and Gale. But I didn't really care that much about him by the end, either. And a de facto Hunger Games for the army? Lame. ANYWAY.
Overall, I really liked it. I was absolutely bawling during the reaping. Since becoming a mom, this sort of thing is so painful to watch and imagine. By "this sort of thing" I mean thinking about a child (my child) in trouble that I can't do anything about. I can shut down my imagination PDQ when NPR starts talking about a 3-year-old dying from a shrapnel wound in Homs or when I hear about the child soldiers in Uganda who are kidnapped after being forced to kill their parents, but when it's there on screen it's harder to ignore. Boy, this paragraph is a real downer. Onward!
Some people have complained that the hand-held camera that recorded the early deaths at the Cornucopia was distracting and, well, lame. I liked it, though. Who wants to see the actual deaths of these kids? Zane pointed out that it's bad enough to see adult-on-adult violence, but kids? Nope, don't want the details. Fuzzy images are more than enough.
I also liked the District 11 revolt. This was in book 2, but fits well here. I can just imagine the despair of who I assume to be Rue's father when he sees his baby girl die on the big screen. Oh, this is the other part that had me bawling. Glad I live far enough away from my students to know none of them were in the audience with me, because this was not an I'm-the-adult-in-control moment. No, it was not. I can see how Rue's death could be a spark to the rebels.
The book is written in first person, and there is a fair amount of exposition that goes on in Katniss's thoughts. That doesn't translate well to a movie. I liked how they gave you that information by showing the gamemakers and Haymitch's machinations. That worked well.
The one thing I really didn't like was how the film portrayed Cinna. He was only my favorite character in the book, or at least vying for first. But in the film he was little more than a background character, not the awesome, gifted, sympathetic man who would help create the Mockingjay. They tried, kind of, but failed.
So. I liked it. I do think anyone who hasn't read the book won't like it as much, but it was true to the spirit and text of the book, with just enough changes to make it a movie instead.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Happy Easter!
Easter: Christmas, or not Christmas? Today we went with the "not Christmas" option. A few little presents and not to much concern about getting up early. Sasha sadly woke up at 6:30, and at 6:50 he came into our room from the TV room, where he was deposited in desperate hope of a little more sleep for his parents, with candy. Then Sabrina woke up, and the hunt was on! The Easter Bunny had hidden candy all over the front room! Sadly, she forgot that really only Sabrina would be finding candy, and she didn't need to bring enough candy for four people. Ah well. Somehow, I'm sure it will get eaten.
Last night we also decorated eggs. Sasha was hilarious, pointing and saying "egg, egg." He wanted to hold them while he colored on them with crayons, but I figured that was a bad idea, hard boiled or not. Then he chose the color. Sabrina also got into the coloring, dying, and stickering of eggs. She keeps asking to eat them, but I think she'll be sorry the eggs themselves are not pretty colors and tasting like candy. Just a hunch.
For breakfast, I made pancakes. Sabrina, of course, wanted pink pancakes. So I obliged, because I am a sucker -- or the best mom ever. Take your pick. Anyway, I also made a bunny pancake (circle with ears). The round pancakes I called "eggs." Because otherwise they wouldn't be festive, duh. Sabrina said the prayer this morning, and I reminded her to thank Heavenly Father for Jesus today. She's still working on the whole resurrection concept. So she did. She thanked Heavenly Father for Jesus and the Easter Bunny. It's a start.
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