Repeat performance...

In case anyone is wondering, we just got to have an awesome repeat performance of yesterday's mealtime antics this evening. And, it was literally exactly the same except this time after the dad stormed out, the little guy got to have chocolate dessert provided by his wimp-out mom! I just want to scream, "HE'S PLAYING YOU!!!!" (Oh, and during all of these exchanges, the 9-year-old talks only in a baby voice.)

Good times.

My head might explode.

I could seriously make a Love and Logic video with what I just witnessed...

I just watched a 9-year-old exert complete and utter control over his parents...AND WIN!!! And, this was one of many similar instances. So, as a Love and Logic person, I just have to share this story.

For those not familiar with Love and Logic (www.loveandlogic.com) I will quote their website.

"Love and Logic is a philosophy of raising and teaching children which allows adults to be happier, empowered, and more skilled in the interactions with children. Love allows children to grow through their mistakes. Logic allows children to live with the consequences of their choices. Love and Logic is a way of working with children that puts parents and teachers back in control, teaches children to be responsible, and prepares young people to live in the real world, with its many choices and consequences."

It is a theory where parents create choices (or teachers) in which they would be equally happy with either option while the kid feels like they have some control. So, a non-example would be, "Do you want to eat peas or a piece of cake?" Duh. What option is the kid going to choose? A better option would be "Do you want peas or carrots?" or "Do you want your peas on the side or on top of the other food?" Two choices that are equally likable to the parent. The example that Love and Logic always gives is this, "Would you rather carry your jacket or wear your jacket?" The command, "PUT ON YOUR JACKET!" often just results in a power struggle.

In a classroom this can look like this, "Do you want to write with pen or pencil?" "Do you want me to choose your partners or do you want to choose?" "Would you rather do this on lined or unlined paper?" Simple, easy things like this where whichever option the kids choose, the teacher is happy with the outcome.

Love and Logic allows parents and teachers to avoid power struggles. And, it is about logical consequences. "Don't like what's being served? Bummer. I guess you'll be hungry this afternoon." You're never going to let the kid actually go hungry long term, but a logical consequence of not liking what's on the menu is that you're stomach might growl a bit. Sad day. Maybe I am cold and unfeeling and if I had kids I would think differently, but it is hard to sit and watch a 9 year old have complete control over the family. The rest of the family often only eats what he likes most of the time too just so they can avoid scenes like today.

Now, I know I'm not a parent and I know that when you are a parent, you think that people without kids don't know anything about parenting. While this is likely true, however, teachers without kids, have an advantage, in my opinion. And, as a Love and Logic devotee, I can recognize when someone needs Love and Logic...and badly!

That brings me back to my story...

Every day the youngest child in the family comes home for lunch. This is fairly typical in France, and, his school doesn't have a cafeteria at the moment because it is under construction. As I've said before, he is an extremely picky eater, but today really took the cake.

We had Turkey Cordon Bleu today for lunch which is a turkey breast stuffed with ham and cheese, battered, and baked in the oven. As soon as he walked in the door and made a dissatisfied face at what we were having, I knew it was going to be a rough lunch. He wouldn't eat it, which is not very surprising. So then the yelling begins. I just sit there while both of the parents first try to convince him that he likes it, then cut it up for him, then straight out yell and threaten while he just sits there pushing the food around his plate. Some version of this happens pretty much every single day at least once...sometimes with dinner too!

After several agonizing minutes of this, he just sits in front of his plate. The mom gets mad and storms out. The dad gets mad and storms out, and I was clearing the dishes while he just sat there. Well, here's why he does it: if he holds out long enough, they ALWAYS give in. As soon as the dad had stormed outside, the mom let him have his giant daily bowl of plain yogurt with about a whole cup (and this is not an exaggeration at all) of sugar on it. OF COURSE he isn't going to eat the healthy option when he knows that if he just throws a fit and holds out until everyone is angry, they are totally going to just let him have what he wants. As an outsider, I can totally see this happening every single day. I think today he even had a little secret smile as soon as the give-in occurred because he knew he'd won.

I know that really, I don't own this problem (as my mom would say!) but it is hard to sit through this several times a day since the yelling and screaming is really unpleasant for everyone involved. This is a really sweet, loving family until mealtimes come around. And, the youngest kid is a sweet, loving boy until he takes control and sidelines every meal with his pickiness. Love and Logic would just say to buy them a book or CD but they don't speak English and that's not an option. Plus, I think the mom might just always give in as she has a hard time putting on her big girl pants when it comes to things like this. She is convinced he is going to starve to death at school during the afternoon. Ironically, if he had just held out until after school, the kids are allowed free reign on a giant basket full of sugary snacks and they literally stuff their faces around 5 pm every day with about 5-6 cookies, several pieces each of toast with nutella, and lots of chocolate. Is it any wonder that mealtimes are a major issue on a daily basis?

I know I am being super judgmental since I am not a parent, but the teacher in me wants to TEACH but I just can't...and voilà...a blog entry. I ordered her the cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld that hides vegetables in foods kids like so hopefully that will help. I've been told by others with picky eaters that it is really helpful!

So, I will just sit here and say nothing because I am not sure I can explain Love and Logic in another language, and it is not my problem. But, I think I am enough of a fixer, and I've been living with this family for about 6 weeks now that I want to help them since they all seem so miserable about this. Oh, Love and Logic, you need to start making materials in every language- there are people around the world who need you!!

So, that's that. Just going to keep all these experiences in my back pocket should I ever have a super picky eater, or a kid in a classroom who adamantly refuses to do anything. (I should say in case I have a kid like that...again...because I've had many!)

Sometimes it is great to be a packrat...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Normally, I protest this holiday, but these cards were just too cute to pass up! My mom saved any extra cards when we were kids and so now we have some excellent 80s-90s cards!

I'm going to make some heart-shaped cookies for the boys to decorate when they get home today. Maybe we can write on them in English to practice our words!

Lots of good plays on words with Valentine cards!

Very fitting since I'm in France!

This one is the best. Has to be from about circa 1985-ish.

My brother was a California raisin for Halloween around that same year! Awesome.

FOCUS! FOCUS! FOCUS!

Found out that I have until mid-April on my warranty and that I can't live without my computer for two weeks while in France. So, I'll wait to get it fixed back in England. I'm cyberdependent...it's true.

I have just read the first half of the book Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker and I think that I am ready to be back in a classroom!! Schmoker argues that we have gotten utterly ridiculous in terms of the volume and breadth of our state and national standards and that we need to cut them to 40-50% of their current levels and focus on the truly essential ones. More on this later…but most importantly, he thinks that in every class, regardless of content, we need to focus on the following four standards or habits of mind: (Page 38). Not only do we need to focus on them, but they should be central to every instructional decision in the classroom and to how we view the standards.

1. Reading to infer/interpret/draw conclusions

2. Supporting arguments with evidence

3. Resolving conflicting views encountered in source documents

4. Solving complex problems with no obvious answer

He argues that all of these require students to have a deep level of content understanding in order to complete them, and so even if we are cutting the amount of content standards, we are doing students a great service. They will have opportunities to think deeply and really understand content instead of just having a few facts committed to memory that they then forget quickly.

When I think about “preparing students for adulthood” in a democratic society where everyone has the opportunity to vote, these four habits of mind, are crucial. From a science perspective, many of the issues students are going to vote on in the future have a scientific background, so of course they need to have a conceptual understanding, but more importantly, they need to have the skills listed above. Life is about “solving problems with no obvious answer” most of the time and if we are not preparing students to do this in school, what are we doing?

Most of his arguments focus around having embedded, authentic literacy practices in every classroom almost every day. This means that students are truly engaged with a variety of texts and that teachers are providing opportunities for reading, discussions, and the four “new standards” listed above on a regular basis. He also stresses that teachers should be modeling and doing think-alouds about how to read text and how to annotate in order to infer/interpret/draw conclusions, etc. There is so much information constantly coming at people (I think I heard somewhere that the amount of information in the world doubles every 40-some days or something like that!) that unless they have the skills listed above, they won’t be able to survive and thrive in the modern world. So, bye-bye canned programs…hello real instruction!

**(On a quick aside- at my school in England, I was observed doing a think-aloud and lots of modeling and a gradual release lesson on how to read scientific text, and I was told that it was a waste of time! That was definitely not the school for me!)**

Schmoker talks about how focusing on these four habits of mind, while also focusing on only 50% of the standards, allows students to really learn and that teachers can slow down, include many checks for understanding, and ensure that all kids are truly understanding. How many times have I heard people say, or said/thought it myself, “Well, I taught it. If they didn’t get it, that’s not my fault because I taught it.” HA!

Ummm, yeah, it is my fault if I “taught” something and my students didn’t “get” it. I always was shocked in college courses when a teacher would grade on a curve so that a 45% was an A or something like that. Even then, before I was a teacher, I used to think that if students were doing that poorly in your class, maybe the teacher should do a little re-evaluation of their teaching practices.

I am sure that many teachers and standards-writers reading his book will be mad that the implications of it might be that people might have to give up their “pet unit.” Well, (and this is probably why I wouldn’t be a good administrator…not tactful enough) if you are doing a unit just because it is interesting to you, and not what is good for kids, then you shouldn’t be doing it. He talks about how to determine what standards should stay and which should go (page 47).

Endurance: Will the standard provide students with knowledge and skills beyond a single test date?

Leverage: Will the standard provide knowledge and skills that are of value in multiple disciplines?

Readiness for the Next Level: Will the standard provide the students with essential knowledge and skills that are necessary for their success in the next grade level?

He says that schools, departments, and teams need to sit down and go through the processes of cutting down the standards to a manageable, focused, and essential level. I’m glad I won’t have to be the manager of that, as I can see that being a tough process where many people will be upset. I’ve been to plenty of meetings where teachers just sit around a bitch about everything so I’m glad I don’t have to be the facilitator of the “cutting down the standards” meetings!

So, basically, reading this, just made me really excited. I hope this is the way the pendulum is going to swing. I think it should. It makes me even more excited to be out of a system that is just driven by exams to the exclusion of everything else.

I think Schmoker is dead-on. I also think that this is what PEBC has been saying for a long time. If you are reading this and not familiar with PEBC (the Public Education and Business Coalition- www.pebc.org) they are an amazing organization based around the ideas encapsulated in Schmoker’s book. (At least so far in the first half, so I hope I’m not jumping the gun by saying this!) Any school that has had the opportunity to be involved with PEBC will likely be ahead of the curve here in terms of what Schmoker is saying…it won’t be earth-shattering information to them!

If you aren’t an education person and you’re reading this blog…sorry…I am isolated from my professional colleagues in my current situation and have no other mode for discussing this great book. But, any teachers out there…read it!

Last entry for a bit...Mac stores are slow!

Figured I should update because I am going to have to be Mac-less for 10 days while I take mine in to get repaired AGAIN. Stupid edge is cracked AGAIN but I want to get it fixed for free while I still have the plan. I'll have email/FB/skype, etc. just not blog updates!

Today I spent half the day in a French school with a science teacher. It was really fun and just reiterated to me how being a teenager is more biological than cultural (again with my vast knowledge of three cultures but I still think this anyway!)! I spent time in two biology classes while they were performing an experiment to look at the rate of oxygen production in their study of photosynthesis. That was my French word of the day- "taux" for rate. Also, I learned "slope" (pente) as in the slope of a line on a graph. It is great that math and science are really their own language because even though I missed some of the words, when she wrote the equation for a line on the board (y= mx +b) and then reminded them how to find the slope, I knew exactly what she was talking about even if I missed the French.

The kids all gasped with excitement when she told them that I was a science teacher visiting from the US. It was totally cute.

Please notice the shaggy haircuts and the hoodies. This could be any American high school!

I won't get into the whole edu-babble of talking to the teacher about how she plans, etc. But, for those who know me professionally, you know I asked all of those questions and struggled through in French to find out about objectives, planning, curriculum, and assessment. Why oh why am I such an edu-nerd??

A few little things from the morning:

- Just when I was looking around and remarking that nobody was sneakily using their phone, "pierced nose girl" looked around slyly, got out her phone and began texting covertly. This is just a reality in schools. Maybe we can figure out a way to embrace it. Like maybe, you could have silent work time and the kids could text you their questions or something! :)

-Many of the girls also have the "super side part" like our girls did at CBMS where they part their hair way in the back and then wrap their bangs around their forehead to the other side. If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about.

-There was a nice, friendly relaxed atmosphere in the classroom which was really enjoyable after my crazily psychotic, 32-kids-in-the-class science class last semester. There were 17 kids in the room because they split them if half once a week for lab practicals which are called "TP- Travaux Pratiques." I will have about 14-16 kids per class in Düsseldorf and this will be kind of hard to get used to but amazing!

-As soon as the teacher wrote the equation for slope on the board, all of the kids groaned and said "This is science class, why are we doing math?" WOW! Some things are the same everywhere!

In other news...such as my French housewife life at the Manoir....

Last week and weekend, Steff and I got crazy with the projects. She has had all of these things she's wanted to try and now that I am here and she has somebody to do them with. And, we decided to brave it and make some American food for them to try. I should say "American" food because I made chili but I'm not sure if you can call it chili since I couldn't add garlic and only a tiny tiny tiny speck of spices because they think all food is too spicy that I make!

We also did a lot of Manoir chores, shoveled lots of pony poo, created a compost pile, and this week we'll be stripping wallpaper. Or, "wall-a-paper" as my dad says.

Léo got to ride around on Madonna in the corral! Her baby, Apache, was freaking out and running all over the place while this was happening but Léo was really excited!!!

French Super Bowl Party! I made red chili and white chili and beer bread. Everyone (except the picky picky picky picky Léo) ate it and liked it! For my bowl, I had to dump half the bottle of cumin so it could have actual flavor.

My giant, fattening American dessert.

Apple Cobbler from the Land o' Lakes website so you know it was bad!

But, delicious and even Picky McEatsnothing ate it!

We made Chestnut Jam. After all was said and done, I didn't really like it.

These are chestnuts after you peel them, twice. It was actually really annoying.

You have to remove the shells (which made my fingers bleed!)

Then, you have to boil them and remove the inner peel.

I don't think I'll ever be making chestnut jam again. Plus, it tastes weird.

And, we made homemade yogurt. Chocolate.

It was easy and Steff has a yogurt incubator!

So, this week I will go back to the school two more days! Should be fun!

Few more pictures...Dinard...the retreat of the English

Last Sunday, my delightful French family took me to another town nearby called Dinard. Dinard was a vacation spot for the filthy rich during the 1800s- especially the filthy rich from England. So, there are giant mansions all over that are all boarded up for winter, because apparently, they are just too big to heat in the winter, so nobody lives in them. To me, they all kind of looked like haunted houses, or like the house in the Lemony Snickett movie, but beautiful nonetheless.

Here are a few pictures. I bet it is especially nice in the summer when it is warm!

VIVA LA FRANCE!!

View of Saint Malo from Dinard. They are just across the water from each other.

Giant cliff-side houses in Dinard right on the beach.

I just like trees because I'm a nerd.

Lemony Snickett house?

Apparently, all of these little islands have restaurants but they are only open in the summer.

More beach.

Apparently, Alfred Hitchcock spent a lot of time in this town. I can maybe see some of his inspiration in this house. Beautiful, yet a little spooky!!

Back to being a French housewife...delightful!

I am back to house-wifey duties but just had to share a bit from my trip back to England last week, which, as it turns out, was life-altering! Who knew?

On my way back to England last week, I had a four-hour layover in Paris so I decided to do a little sight-seeing. As I said before, I just about missed my train because I decided to take a boat cruise of the Seine. Mostly, I had to do something where I wasn't carrying around my heavy bags and I could get out of the wind! The boat cruise was pretty cool and the girl who worked on the boat spoke FIVE LANGUAGES: French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It was amazing! Every time she would make an announcement, she would do them in the order I just listed. And, they were announcements explaining the history of the area we were passing on the boat, not just telling people to sit down...so she had really speak them!!

Notre Dame. (Not pronounced like the one in South Bend!)

Think I saw a hunchback hanging out of one of towers, but it could have just been my eyes as I hadn't really been sleeping much in the lead up to the job fair!

Yep. Had to take a self-portrait. I love that the Eiffel Tower was originally considered a giant eyesore but is now the symbol of Paris, if not France in general!

So now I am back in Dol and I am glad to be back. I love the family I am living with! They are so nice and we laugh a lot. My French is improving, I think! And, for the first time this week, I was able to actually appropriately use the past-conditional tense (I would have done...) which is really hard for me because my brain doesn't want to think that hard! I am calling that progress because before, I was saying stuff like "Yesterday, I go to the store." which sounds really dumb but I had forgotten how to conjugate verbs in my 12 years of not studying French.

Last week there was a full moon and I took this picture from my bedroom window of the Dol Cathedral with the moon rising next to it. Super cool!

One of my favorite parts about living here is seeing how much teenagers are the same the world-over (in my vast knowledge of only three Western countries, of course!)! Last week I went clothes shopping with Steff and Steven, who is about to turn 12. We went to a Quiksilver store in Saint Malo and what made me laugh so much is how exactly the same teenagers are between France, England, and the US. Steven only wanted certain hoodies (of course they were the most expensive!) and choosing the exact right pair of skate shoes was really important. He could be transplanted straight into Con Ball and fit in perfectly with the little skater kids there! And, most importantly, he has the Justin Beiber hair swirl! It drives his mom nuts but he refuses to let her cut it. This is the exact same haircut that all of my CBMS kids had (Devin, anyone??) as well as many of my English kids! I just really enjoy that snotty little teenagers are snotty little teenagers wherever I've been and that makes me feel like I will definitely be able to relate to the kids at my international school!

I wasn't really worried about relating to them but it is good to know that they will probably all wear skate shoes, hoodies in crazy colors, and have the Beiber-swirl! Although, they will be crazy rich as it costs about $18,000 per year to attend the school, so that will certainly be a different clientele than what I am used to! But, one of the things that they did say was that there is always a section of the school that is relatively transient due to the nature of the parents' jobs. I have dealt with this before (granted, often on the opposite spectrum of the socio-economic scale) and so I think that new kids will feel like new kids, regardless of how much money they have. It is always scary and unnerving to be at a new school- I did it when I was a kid, and so I can relate to them on that account.

January is a big time for sales in France. In fact, stores are literally only allowed to use the word "sale" (Soldes! in French) at certain times of the year that are approved by the government. They can have price reductions but can't actually use the word "sale." How's that for state control? The Republicans would go ape-shit over that one! :) So, because of all of the sales, Steff has been doing a lot of shopping for clothes for the boys. I tag along and saw the item below. I had to take a picture because they were so hideous!

WHO WANTS SHORTS LIKE THIS? How would one walk?

These are women's shorts...not gangsta shorts...no thanks!

This week I returned to France and my housewife duties increased! It has been a really fun week of household tasks which are extra fun because I'm in a French Manoir! I really love the family I am living with right now and in fact, will probably leave all of my stuff with them this summer up in the attic which used to be the maid quarters back in the day! It is freezing up there so I can't imagine how much it would have totally sucked for the maids.

I learned to make a soufflé this week which was pretty much like a giant ball of cholesterol and fat! It had 8 eggs in it (which we have from the chickens in the backyard!), and was good but, a lot of work and maybe not worth the work because really, it was like a fluffy omelette.

Eggs from the backyard chickens. They are hilarious and I could easily pass time just watching them run around the backyard because they "crack" me up. (Ba dum bum!)

The amount of yogurt consumed in France is amazing!

This is the yogurt for ONE WEEK for my family!

At the grocery store they have a huge wall o' yogurt that has like 50 different brand and flavors.

I am also being the dinner chef for the next week so I planned 7 dinners that the picky picky eaters in this house would eat and shopped for all of the ingredients for a week. We only shop on Thursdays (double points on the card...see...things aren't really that different from place to place!) and so I had to get everything I needed for the week! I like unemployment when it means I can leisurely cook meals that someone else is paying for! :)

Our homemade apple jelly

Steff and I took the apples from the "cave" in the basement that were from the neighbor's farm this fall and made apple jelly. I'd never made jelly before and we had to use this special contraption that extracts the juice and then we mixed with with copious amounts of sugar. It is delish but was a lot of work for not much jelly- we only got 1.5 jars! I am learning lots of cooking related French vocabulary!

Chou-fleurs

Since many of their friends have huge gardens or farms, someone gave my family 5 huge cauliflowers (chou-fleurs). They don't like cauliflower so I'll be eating it for the next week in as many different ways as I can think of. Tonight's option: Curried Cauliflower Soup.

Cider Bottle

Alcoholic apple cider is a specialty of the Bretagne region- they have tons of apples. The region just to the east is known for Calvados, an apple brandy that my dad always adds to stuffing at Thanksgiving. So, my housewife project of yesterday, which took me about 3 hours, was to wash 30 cider bottles inside and out. They were from a flea market and SUPER dirty. Then, we will get them filled for only 1 euro each and have a ton of cider. We were laughing that if this was truly a "manoir" there would be a staff to do this job instead of us!

Every meal's cheese tray!

Since we have cheese at the end of every meal (just a little piece, not like a giant slab although I could probably eat a giant slab if I let myself!), I had to show our cheese tray! Every week, Steff tries to buy different ones so that I can try a giant variety! They are ALL really good but occasionally I get a whiff of cheese that smells like this cheese shop my dad and I went into on our trip to Denmark where I had to wait outside because I just couldn't do it.

I will be here for the whole month of February and a bit of March so I can't wait to find out what other fun domestic skills I can acquire during my stay! I have yet to see a French recipe that didn't include copious amounts of butter and cheese so still unsure of how the French remain thin. I doubt the butter and cheese will cause me to become thin like the French...oh if only! At least they have put an elliptical machine in the cottage for me so I can workout everyday while I'm here. Good thing!!!