"Anonymous" Teachers

I follow a LOT of teacher blogs, and a LOT of teachers on Twitter, and it's interesting to look at the differences between the ones that are "anonymous" and those that choose to reveal their identities.

Going all in is risky business, so props to those of you who take that full on. All it takes is for one parent/community member/school board member/whathaveyou to take issue with something you post, and it may very well be career-ending. Going "anonymous" gives you a little more freedom, especially when you need to share a less than sunshiney story about your classroom.

I keep placing "anonymous" in quotes because hopefully we all realize that there is no such thing on the web. Sure, I do all of the common sense things - don't give my full name (or use students' real names), edit my name and face out of pictures, edit students' faces out of pictures, so on and so forth. But, realistically, if someone really wanted to, they could find the real me.

And sometimes being the small world that it is people just stumble onto you. I've had people who have subbed for me find this blog ("I recognize those monkeys! And the stencils on that wall!"); I've had students say "Hey, I saw folder holders that looked exactly like these on Pinterest !" (though luckily they didn't follow the pin to my blog); it even turns out that my current boss's sister is a FACS teacher who reads this blog. And I know that this doesn't just happen to me - one of my favorite blog posts this year was when two bloggers I follow met serendipitously at JCrew - Sneaker Teacher and Roxanne from Books That Heal Kids.

We should all be careful, whether using legit names or not. At the same time, there are several posts and tweets (tweets especially) I read every week that are absolutely laugh out loud hilarious, but things you would NEVER say if your real name was attached to it. We all need people to be that brutally honest at times, because teaching is not all rainbows and kittens. It is hard. It is frustrating. It is overwhelming. And heartbreaking, and maddening, and infuriating. And the only people who get wanting to pull-your-hair-out-and-scream-and-cry-but-you're-too-exhausted-so-you'll-just-slink-away-and-find-an-alternative-to-the-copy-machine are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get why you're so excited in August after what happened last year are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get how much you still love that kid six and a half years later after he lifted a ball of yarn from your classroom and weaved it up and down the staircase blocking everyone and creating a total fire hazard are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get how sad you still are five years later that that same kid didn't survive that car accident are others who have experienced the same thing.

So "anonymous" or not, do protect yourself, but do continue to share what's real - the good and sometimes also the bad. We all need to know that there are others out there who get it.

Ah, Young Love

Here's a discussion I overheard in the hallways of our local community college. To set the scene: Boy is trying to hit on girl who clearly isn't interested. Girl begins to lose patience.

Girl: How old are you?
Boy: Twenty. How old is you?
Girl (with attitude): Twenty four.
Boy: What dat mean?
Girl: A lot. Goodbye.

Poor guy was crushed, but I had to cheer for her to be smart enough to walk away.

Protect Your Handiwork

Here's another tip from the department of the obvious, yet took me a while to figure out that I actually needed to implement this procedure. I have these beautiful stand mixer covers I made for my kitchens, which were constantly getting mucky because the kids would just toss them wherever. I tried to get them in the habit of placing them on top of the microwave and out of harm's way, but to no avail - and somehow even those that followed through still managed to muck them up. So I started requiring that at the beginning of any lab involving the stand mixers, the covers had to go into a box by the ingredient table as soon as they were taken off of the mixers.

Problem solved. After the first lab with this new procedure, I never had to tell them again, someone would always remind the rest of the class to do it. Including me when I forgot to set a box out. Such a simple thing, but it works!

Milk Cartons, Time, and Space

Piggy-backing on earlier posts about organizing your ingredients table and making egg cartons more manageable, here's a tip for milk: save a couple smaller containers. Having representatives from several kitchens waiting around for the gallon jug not only uses up precious time, it's a spill waiting to happen. I divide the milk up into the smaller sizes so that more people can use them AND spills are much less likely.

Note: make sure the kids know you are reusing older containers, so they don't squawk about the old dates.

Great One Minute Video for Foods/Nutrition Classes!

Last night the hubs treated me to a movie date ("Mockingjay!"), and one of the pre-film promos was this fantastic Weight Watchers commercial that would be perfect for Foods/Nutrition classes in so many ways! Where I would most likely use it would be at the beginning of the year, when we analyze the different reasons that we eat and the various influences on what we eat. However, it would be great to use when discussing snacking, emotional eating, eating habits, eating disorders... any number of things! Check it out here:

Note: if the embedded video doesn't work for you here, you can follow this link to view it on YouTube.

Healing Hands

This particular post falls under the category of “Taking Care of You.” This time of year our hands tend to get really torn up: between the extra cooking and baking of the holidays, making homemade gifts, and constantly washing our hands to fight the inevitable attack of teenage germs (not to mention all the usual hands-on work of our jobs AND the cold weather), probably none of us are worthy of hand model status at the moment.

Over the years I’ve tried all sorts of lotions, tried wearing gloves whenever possible, tried getting someone else to do all of the work (kidding… maybe…), but none of these ever seemed to make any impact.

Until I tried Aquaphor:

Note: I am not getting any money from Eucerin, sad to say; I just really think this is a helpful product. This stuff WORKS. It is an ointment, not a lotion (think Vaseline), so it has a different feel and a different consistency than lotion. However, I’ve found it absorbs almost as quickly as lotion, is non-greasy, and works so much better. Not only does it heal hands, but it also acts as a kind of sealant. When I remember to use it about half an hour or so before doing a lot of baking, at the end of the process my hands are significantly less dry than when I don’t. A container is more expensive than regular lotion, but I've found that it lasts much longer, so the money spent evens itself out.

So, if you too are a hand abuser fighting dry and chapped skin, give it a try – I saw a dramatic difference within my first week of using it, and I’m confident it will also make a difference for you!

And Eucerin, some coupons would be really nice!

Uncle Ben's Responds

Hey, Uncle Ben's actually responded to my objection from Friday!

Gah! Why We Need Home Ec, Part 3

That is NOT A DRY MEASURING CUP, Uncle Ben's!

You can't measure the importance of teaching them to cook? How about the importance of teaching them to measure? And shame on you Food Network Magazine for printing this!

Cheesecake in a Jar

This is a quick and easy lab that the kids just love, the serving size is perfect for class, and you get to use Mason jars!

Recipe:
4 oz cream cheese
1/2 c powdered sugar
4 oz Cool Whip
Fresh fruit, sliced or canned pie filling
Graham cracker crumbs*
Melted butter*

With mixer, beat cream cheese with powdered sugar. The fold in whipped cream. Layer in dessert glasses with crust mixture and fruit. Chill overnight.

*Note: We've made graham cracker crust before, so I make them calculate the ratio of crumbs to butter and come up with the amount they'll need for the three or four people in their groups. Math, muahahahaaaa...

Aren't they adorable?

Yum!

This lab can fit in to your curriculum in several places, and is one that doesn't take much time. The kids liked having their own individual dessert to eat, there were no leftovers (and thus no waste), and several have since used a variation of this for party treats!

The jars I picked up at WalMart, and to their disappointment the kids did not get to keep them. With my emphasis last year on experimenting with individual serving sizes for labs to reduce waste - and budget-stretching - I kept them for future single-serving projects.

Hint: keep the box flat that the jars come in to store them in your cabinets. You don't want to have to go pulling out 20 some jars every time you need them, as opposed to two flats!

Dumb Choices When Teaching Sex Ed

Well, since I brought up the topic of sex ed yesterday and discussed one of my recipes for success, today I'll share one of my biggest fails. I'll start by saying as many times as I've been through these units, I've actually never had any trouble with immaturity, inappropriateness, etc - I think this is primarily because kids don't want other kids to think that they are immature. As such, these particular class sessions tend to be more civilized and mature than most.

I've always had the policy that you can ask me anything - after all, if they don't ask me, they're probably going to ask their friends who actually know even less than they do. You open yourself up to all sorts of crazy things, but I'm not the type to become flustered by anything they have to say or ask.

There are, however, times when on the inside I'm thinking "please oh please oh please don't let anyone have overheard that" and "why oh why oh why did I open this can of worms." This used to be complicated by the fact that for three of my years teaching I had constant adult traffic coming in and out of my room, because kid you not the office to the Business Manager, Director of Building and Grounds, and Director of Transportation was accessible only by walking through my classroom. Which meant a constant parade of administrators, bus drivers, accountants, school board members, parents, etc were strolling through the room at any time.

So here's my story. We are beginning to learn about conception (for a great ice breaker, see yesterday's post), so we begin by going over the basics of anatomy, both male and female. We get to the point where we learn that women are born with all of the eggs that they are ever going to have, but men are constantly producing sperm. No matter how I set this up, without fail a conversation ensues on what happens when that sperm begins to build up. It is unavoidable.

And this particular year, for no real reason that I can think of now, I decided on the fly to try to avoid the m-word, and simply stated "Sexual activity does not have to involve another person."

The SECOND that phrase was out of my mouth I knew EXACTLY what was going to happen.

Immediately after I said that, a boy asked "So what, like a pig or something?" And chaos erupted.

"EWWWW!" "Who would do that?!" "Whaaaaaat???!!!" and then the inevitable "Mrs. C, do people really do that?"

Great. This is exactly what I wanted to discuss today. So I come back with yes, there are some people, it's called such and such, and by the way it's illegal.

"Why is it illegal? You own the pig!" And then a kid who I swear has never in his life written a paragraph that made any sense came back with the admittedly clever turn of phrase "Yeah, how come you can make your pig into pork but you can't pork your pig?"

Inside my head: make it stop, make it stop, make it stop... And then a girl chimes in "Wait, can you get the pig pregnant?"

And now I'm thinking REALLY? And I make a statement about DNA compatibility, etc, and how no, humans cannot get pigs pregnant.

And then comes my next mistake, which is one of automaticity: any time you say something to the effect of "no, you can't get pregnant from..." "you have a lower risk of pregnancy when..." etc, you automatically follow it up with something to the effect of "but that does not protect you from diseases." It's a good practice to always remind them that pregnancy is not the only risk associated with sexual activity. And so I made that statement.

And a boy SHOUTS out "YOU MEAN THAT IF I HAVE SEX WITH A PIG I CAN GET PIG HERPES????!!!!!!!"

At that precise moment a school board member was about three steps inside the room. He stopped dead in his tracks, raised his hands, and with a horrified look on his face pulled a 180 and made his escape. He did not come back. Ever.

And I was left to answer the question about pig herpes. Which went something like this:

"I don't really know enough about pigs to know if they actually carry the herpes virus, but obviously the risk of some kind of infection increases with this kind of activity. Leave the pigs - and all other animals - alone. If the pressure is getting to you, find a private space, lock the door, and fly solo."

To which they all nodded their heads in agreement that yes, that did seem like the more logical way to go about things.

And a girl said to me "I bet you wish you had just said that to begin with."

Amen, sister.