Warning: Teacher talk ahead...

So, ya'll know I'm a teacher.

This is my NINTH year in the classroom.  NINE YEARS.  I would be a freshman in high school if my first year had been first grade.  Ho. Li. Shit.

Anyway, in nine years of teaching I have learned that talking about teaching is boring.  It's a fact.  People want to hear two funny stories about how dumb/funny/crazy/ your kids are and then, they are bored.

They don't want to hear how many schools don't have working water fountains, or how many kids carry blades to school in their gums 'cause their scared, and they don't want to hear you complain that you don't have paper to print attendance sheets on.

Bo.Ring.

I get it.  I'm bored with it too.

Now, what I LOVE to talk about is even more boring than the blades, water fountain, paper thing.

Instruction.  Oh, instruction, I could talk about you all day...if only someone else wanted to talk about you too.

How DO you get kids to understand the meaning behind the syntactical structures at play in the opening of The Bluest Eye? How do you convince some 10th graders to look past the slow moving first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird to get to the juicy story? How do you sear the rules of semi colon usage into the brains of fifteen year olds who are literally so full of energy they can't get in or out of their seats without knocking it over?

Magic.

I am rolling out something brand new this year.  It was a scary change.  All my old lessons-out the window.  My classroom crutches, pulled out from under me.  But, today, it paid off.

Project based learning is the newest trend in education-I went to a training on it over the summer and was completely overwhelmed. I realized that if I was going to implement it in  a real way, I would have to change entirely my way of teaching.  I wasn't sure I could do it.

So what is it?  Project based learning functions around the idea that students don't need to be taught, they need experience.  So, rather than do traditional lessons covering the skills/content that needs to be covered by a certain date, teachers create a large, AUTHENTIC project, the completion of which would expose them to all the skills and content required AND force them to master those skills and content in order to complete the project.


Kids come into my classroom, sit down at a computer, read through their agenda, confer with their collaborative team (with whom they've created a professionalism contract), and get to work.  I have created an online classroom with resources, rubrics, assignments, their grade book, and a communication system in place to support them.  They submit all their work online.  They share all work with their team via google docs...

Today, my work was observed by not only my direct supervisors, but by network leaders.  They stayed in my 90 minute class for 60 minutes and watched as I did not teach.  My students were 100% engaged for 100% of the time.  At one point, an observer asked, "Do they know you're here?"  I said, probably not.  They weren't working because a teacher was hanging over them.  They were working because the work was authentic and meaningful.

The discussions that arose were deep, thoughtful, and productive.  The work they accomplished was exemplary.
At no point did I address the whole class.

I have never seen my supervisor smile so much.

In a debrief after the class, my students told the observers, "Ms. Camille has taught us about real responsibility.  We RUN to her class."

I almost cried.

Today was a very good day.

Bikram Yoga...

I first tried Bikram in June.  And I actually went 4 or 5 times before I began traveling for work and couldn't get into a studio for a class.

I went back this Saturday.

It was incredibly tough, but I felt so great when that 90 minutes was up...

Haven't heard of Bikram?
It's a 90 minute yoga class in a room heated to 105 degrees and 40 % humidity.  The creator, Bikram Choudhury, refers to the studio as the "torture chamber," and he may be right...You will sweat.  I have never sweat so much in my life.  Like, when I bend down to touch my toes, so much water goes up my nose it hurts---that kind of sweat.

Bikram is different from other types of yoga in that it is the same 26 poses every class.  It is consistent and you can really measure your growth from class to class.  When I tried yoga in the past, I was frustrated by not knowing what was coming next, learning new postures every time and never feeling like I mastered any of them.

Now, understand that I am TERRIBLE at Bikram.  I had to lay down in dead man's pose right after standing bow (pretty early in the series).  I almost threw up whenever I had to do any pose that required me to back bend.  I honestly think my first class was EASIER than this one.

What's interesting is that even when you are laying like a dead body on the floor, trying to keep the banana you at 4 hours ago for potassium so you wouldn't get dehydrated from coming up in front of everybody, you are also trying to figure out when you can come to your next class!  Something about it feels good...

I walk out of Bikram feeling invigorated.  And I always sleep through the night after a Bikram class, which for me, is a pretty mean feat.



By the way, I have been secretly getting back in the running game.  Couch to 5K week one complete, I am now on to Week 2.  I think Bikram will help balance the tightness I get in my legs from running.

Namaste People!

Good morning, America: How are ya?

My students love to go through my iPod at school. They are always shocked that I have so much hip hop. "Yo Miss! YOU listen to Lil' Wayne. Wait, AND BUSTA?" (By the way, "YO Miss" is pretty much how I am referred to all day. I sort of love it. I even though about naming my blog, Yo Miss.)

They also are happy to see I like some of the indie rock bands they do: Tegan & Sara, Phoenix, Neko Case, etc.

Inevitably, they end up asking the question, "What type of music did you listen to as a kid?"

The answer: My mom is a folk singer. So-Folk Music.

Yep, I was born and raised with folk in the background. I knew Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, old Bob D. A lot of the music I heard was music my mom wrote. The best/worst part? Not only did I know this stuff, I had to learn to sing it, too.

Every folky knows the harmony's where the money's at! So, if you are a lady folk singer with a daughter with a competent voice-well, my mom ain't no fool.

So maybe I knew nothing about the Velvet Underground until college. So there were some holes in my rock history education...How many of you know all the verses to the Battle of New Orleans?


One obsession that came out of my folk upbringing is a deep love of Train songs. Elizabeth Cotten's Freight Train is my favorite song of all time. I love the rhythm of train songs, I love the mournfulness of them, I love that they always seem to strike the right chord between wanting freedom and being homesick.

When I discovered Feist's cover of Train Song (featuring Bon Iver here, but recorded with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab) a couple of weeks ago, I was immediately a fan.




What do you think?

a strawberry shortcake 'puter...

...was all I ever wanted as a child. (well, I also wanted a Nancy Reagan red power suit for my first day of kindergarten, but that's another blog post.)

But, 'puters were expensive, especially back in 1986.

I did get to use my grandfather's Commodore 64 whenever I wanted, which was pretty much the pimpest computer of its day.

Still, I yearned for a glorious pink computer made with love by my favorite cartoon character Strawberry Shortcake, just for me.


Ask and you shall receive.

At 31, I have finally been given the Strawberry Shortcake computer of my dreams.

I thought about naming her Strawberry Shortcake (in my heart, that is always what she will be), but feared the name was too juvenile for a woman of my maturity.

I have named her Margaret Atwood.

My five year old self does a dance every time I pick her up!

San Diego is sort of magical...

Check out my view as I landed at the San Diego airport!


The weather has been amazingly gorgeous...75 and sunny. All. The. Time.



Why don't I live here?
- Posted from my iPhone

Love Story By John Frederick Nims

My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break

Green Smoothie!

So, I am not a spinach eater.

It's embarrassing, I know.  Especially, since spinach is a crazy superfood that keeps you skinny, prevents heart disease, cancer, ugliness, etc.

I have seen the recipes for "Green smoothies" for a while now, but never thought they were for me...I also never thought my blender/bullet thingie could actually liquify anything.  Everything I tried to make came out chunky and weird.

Well, consider me converted.

One of my favorite bloggers Greenlitebites.com posted a video of how to make a green smoothie, and she had the same blender as me!  She also insisted she couldn't taste the spinach.

My recipe includes:
as much baby spinach as you can squish into your blender cup (usually 2-3 cups for me)
a banana
teaspoon of honey
teaspoon of vanilla
2 tablespoons of nonfat plain yogurt

Heres the trick.  Pick up your blender and shake it.  Yep.  I shake the living hell out of it until all the baby spinach that I crammed in there comes loose and gets liquefied.

The final product looks gross, but tastes awesome.  Best of all, I am squeezing 3 cups of spinach a day into my diet.

I'm pretty awesome.  Just sayin.