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Twitter Updates for 2008-07-12

Blair — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:59:59 +0000

Watching Ninja Warrior with my bride… #
Hanging around the house working on the blog…. maybe even POSTING…. #
@davidrussell Check this out when you get a chance… http://tinyurl.com/6fxbb7 #
Jumping in the shower before I go run a couple of errands with my girls… #
Just saw a red VW bug that made me think of Scott Luck. I’m glad I get to see him and other old friends tomorrow afternoon… #

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-11

Blair — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 05:59:59 +0000

@davidrussell Dude, I am just proud she is on an Apple. Do you think Bybo secretly takes credit for converting us? #
4219 days of marriage… and she can STILL surprise me. In good ways, that is… #
Mmmm… Bagel Bites for lunch… #
Going to meet my baby mama at House of Java… Coffee anyone? #
@davidrussell Are you gonna be where I can call you this weekend?
I might need some advice about editing some some WP themes #
Heading to Blockbuster… Hoping they have season 1 of Arrested Development #

Twitter Updates for 2008-07-10

Blair — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 05:59:59 +0000

Frustrated. Completely and utterly frustrated. #
hanging out with my three girls #
What’s for dinner? Trying to decide… #
Picking up burgers from Joe Mama’s #

A Teaching Meme

Blair — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:53:36 +0000

I will post a delayed wrap-up about Paris in the next day or two. In the meantime, I offer the following. I wasn’t tagged by anyone because none of the teachers I know blog, and I don’t know any of the teachers whose blogs I read.

1. I am a good teacher because… I genuinely care about my students. I don’t get out of bed every morning to go teach English, I get out of bed to go teach students.

2. If I weren’t a teacher, I would be… the co-owner (with my bride) of the neatest little coffee shop around. It would actually be three connected businesses. On the left would be Miranda’s scrapbooking business. In the middle would be a coffee shop / cafe, and on the right would be a bookstore. Miranda’s scrapbooking part would be called Scrap a Latte, and the rest would be called Cafe Diem.

3. My teaching style is… a manifestation of my own ADD?

4. My classroom is… waiting to be declared a federal disaster area? Seriously, I figured out years ago that I spent more waking hours in my classroom than any other place. As a result, I have painted and decorated three different classrooms in order to get away from the institutional decor. One was black and white, the other ended up with a pretty cool faux finish and a HUGE mustang head (as in from floor to ceiling), and now I am in a room where the walls have been painted white but I have one focal wall that is a cool shade of blue, and another wall with different sized rectangles in varying shades of blue and green. (I also have hundreds upon hundred of my books in there. What can I say? I am an English teacher!)

5. My lesson plans… are due at 8:00 on Monday morning. Sometimes, I even have them done by then.

6. One of my teaching goals is… possibly not related to my teaching, but I really want to complete my doctorate.

7. The toughest part of teaching is… motivating the unmotivated.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is… when the light bulb goes off. Well, that and one other thing that I had a professor mine mention this week. He voiced what I have always felt. Dr. Dyal said, “We know that as teachers, all of the students aren’t going to like us… some of them hate us. But some of them… they really love us.” And you know what? Some of them really do.

9. A common misconception about teaching is… that teachers only work nine months a year and we are off by 3:00 every day.

10. The most important thing I’ve learned since I started teaching… college is not everyone. When I first started teaching, I thought all of my students should go. Now, I realize that further education and training is important, but for some people, a trade school would provide better opportunities.

Bell Italia!

Blair — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:08:03 +0000

I can’t believe today is finally here. After thirteen months of planning, today has arrived. In a matter of hours, I will be getting on a charter bus and leaving for Italy.

The bus will take thirty of us to Atlanta where we will meet my buddy Pooch. We will board a flight this afternoon and take off at 4:30, heading to Frankfurt. After a transfer, we will fly over the Alps into Milan where we will land tomorrow morning. There we will meet our Tour Director, Roberto, and the Canadian group that is joining us for the trip. Tomorrow night, we will meet Gunter and her mom in Venice.

I hope to be able to keep you updated from Italy… I suppose it all depends on whether or not I find any internet cafes.

Ciao!

The Holiday Inn at Destin ROCKS

Blair — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:06:05 +0000

Miranda’s mom Vicki is giving us a bunch of stuff… furniture, household items, and who knows what else. I told Miranda I didn’t even care if we wanted it…. if her mom offers, we take it. Heck, we can always just have a garage sale! (Seriously… we are keeping it all. Her mom has great taste and mad decorating skillz… I am all about her hand-me-downs. And, yes, I just spelled skills with a “z” ’cause that is just the way I roll. I am cool like that. Do not mistake my misspelled word for ignorance. As I tell my kids, “When you know the rules and choose to break them… that is called creativity. When you break rules because you don’t know them… that is just called ignorance.”)

So, to get all of this cool stuff, we went this morning and rented a U-Haul trailer. As we pulled out of the Jet-Pep parking lot, Jordyn took a look behind her and exclaimed, “Dad… that thing is following us!” I don’t think she was entirely clear on the concept.

And now we are in Destin. We had lunch with Vicki and Jerry, and now we are hanging out at the Holiday Inn on the beach. Mind you, the Holiday Inn is on the beach. The Andress fam is inside where we are nice and warm. Chloe is napping, and Jordyn is losing her mind over in the kid’s play area.

This place caters to families in a huge way. We are staying in one of their KidSuites, which is basically a slightly larger than average room with some cool redecorating. Miranda and I have a queen bed on one side of the room with all of the basic amenities. Instead of another queen bed, there has a been a section of the room walled off with a partition that stops about two feet before the ceilin. Inside, there are bunk beds, another TV, a dvd player, and a Playstation 2. Yep, the kids get their own room within a room.

Tomorrow, we will go and help clean out a storage room. I am not even sure what all we are getting, but if it will fit inside a U-Haul 6′ x 9′, I am taking it.

Bad, Bad Blogger

Blair — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 21:54:01 +0000

I shall offer no excuses. I shall not tell you how busy I have been, nor shall I tell you that I have maintained a 4.0 since enrolling at AUM. I won’t even mention that I am probably working harder at teaching in my tenth year of teaching than ever before. I won’t even think of telling you that I have been swamped with details of taking 33 people to Italy in just six weeks whil trying to organize a tour to Paris and Madrid for the spring of ‘08. And I won’t talk about how when free time is limited… I would sometimes rather spend time with my family than on the computer.

Nope, I am not going to mention any of that.

Instead, I will just say I am a bad, bad blogger.

Greatest Headline EVER

Blair — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 19:15:53 +0000

I refuse to put it here, because you wouldn’t believe. You have to click here to go see it. And a big thanks to Earl for finding this first.

P.S. - Coming soon: a site redesign and some more rgular updates. Woo-hoo!

Aren’t You Glad You Weren’t Quoted for this Article?

Blair — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 13:26:24 +0000

I Have A Dream

Blair — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 00:57:46 +0000

During the past year, we have lost Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. As I thought about the death of Mrs. King, I remembered a piece I wrote several years ago when I was still teaching in Montgomery. Let me know what you think.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification,’ one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 28, 1963

For those of you who don’t know, I teach high school English in Montgomery, Alabama. This fine city located right in the middle of the buckle of the Bible belt has quite a place in the history books. In the not so distant past, Montgomery seemed to be at the center of the civil rights controversy. Rosa Parks lit the fuse on a rather explosive situation when she refused to give up her seat after a tiring day at work. There is now a street in town named for her. (Maybe that was the city’s way of apologizing; I’m not sure.) George Wallace, the governor referred to by Dr. King in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech, was not just a governor of Alabama; he was THE governor of Alabama. No other person dominated Alabama’s political scene during the twentieth century as he did. Famous (even notorious) for many things, he will be remembered by many for his stand in the doorway at the University of Alabama, refusing to allow minority students to enter. Governor Wallace ruled from Montgomery, the former capitol of a nation, the Confederate States of America. In fact, I teach at a high school named for the first president of that country, Jefferson Davis. Montgomery has an intriguing history, even if it is a history that evokes both pride and shame.

So here in Montgomery, at this high school named for the president of the Confederate States, I had an epiphany last year during the month of February. In the middle of Black History month, I found myself sitting in the lunchroom at my usual table. Sitting behind me, I heard a group of students laughing and carrying on as only high school students can do. I turned around to make sure that the laughter and fun were not being had at someone’s expense and noticed something.

Perhaps I noticed this because February is Black History month, or perhaps because I was preparing to teach To Kill a Mockingbird, but I couldn’t help but observe that the group sitting at the table behind me consisted of ten or eleven African-American students and one single Caucasian. I must point out that these students were not assigned their seats. Students at JD are expected to sit at certain tables assigned to their particular class, however they do have the freedom to choose which classmates they join for lunch.

Corey decided on this day to join some of his friends for lunch… friends who are like him in many ways. Though they may have grown up in different homes with different parents and have different backgrounds, many of their experiences have been the same. They have grown up within the same culture, listened to the same music, watched the same television shows and movies… their experiences have been largely the same. These students do not know what segregation is like. Though they have grown up during a time when prejudice still exists, they have not grown up during a time when a student can be denied entry to a school based on the amount of melanin in her skin.

Corey and his friends have learned a lesson I try to teach my students each year. I have asked students if they pick out their socks based on the socks’ personality, moral fiber, and character. Of course, they always tell me no, that they pick socks based on the color of the socks in question (that, and the state of cleanliness!). Most of my students are amused by my statement. I then point out to them that judging a pair of socks based on personality, moral fiber, or character is about as smart as picking a friend because of the color of his skin. At this point the laughter usually stops and is replaced by thoughtful glances.

Dr. King had a dream. I can’t help but believe that if he was able to see Corey and his friends that afternoon in February, that Dr. King smiled at the sight. As he looked down at a table full of young African-Americans laughing and talking with their friend Corey… also known to some as George Corley Wallace, III, I am sure that Dr. King was smiling. And you know… considering the way that Corey’s grandfather’s views changed, I bet he was smiling, too.