It's Back to School Time

     My favorite part of going back to school was setting up my classroom and the smell of new supplies.  The anticipation of new students and getting to know them and what made them tick.  This of course was before all this common core stuff. When you could teach what was required but at your own pace and in your own way. Everyone did not need to be on the same page in every classroom across the district.  I could spend more time on the Civil War and less on the War of 1812. More time on Women's Suffrage and less on the Era of Good Feelings and the Monroe Doctrine. I could use my knowledge to judge when it was time to move one and when it was time to delve deeper into topics based on student interaction and reactions to what we were studying.

     Do I miss the start of school? Sometimes. I miss setting up the classroom and the greeting of students on the first day, but I do not miss the meetings, the paperwork, the daily hassles that teachers have to deal with when they have severe behavior problem students who have never learned manners and appropriate behavior in prior years of schooling or from their parents. I also do not miss the parents who do not accept responsibility for their children and blame everything on the teachers, who are not at fault.

     Last year I was at school for the first student day and I really did enjoy that. I was filling in for a new math teacher who was hired the day before classes started and had to have time to move to Anchorage and get all his stuff in order with the district. I spent two weeks in his room and enjoyed starting the year off with a group of seventh graders.

     This year I am not subbing on the first day of school, but I already have a job lined up before the end of the month. I will be teaching English for a week.  I look forward to it.

     Today when I was out shopping I heard a mother tell her son that they needed to start shopping for school supplies. I would certainly hope so since school starts for students next Wednesday.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

     It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood was my thought this morning as I looked out the kitchen window this morning. The trees are green and the birds are singing and today teacher's are back at work.

     Even after three years of retirement, this being the fourth year my husband went back to work and I did not it feels good to be off today. Yes, I still was up or at least awake before he left the house, but I did not have to hurry off to sit through a day of boring inservices listening to people drone on about ethics, infectious diseases or as we often referred to it the hand washing lesson, child find, and the newer ones on suicide awareness and gender and race equity which are so boring and never really change.

    Today my plan includes sewing, and a haircut. I may run to Joann Fabrics for some shape flex and fleece, but beyond that my day is mine. The only other thing on the agenda is cooking dinner and I am thinking of trying a new recipe for baked cauliflower to go along with some baked sweet potatoes.

     In past years this was always the day I caught up on letter writing, and did applique work, or hand stitched down bindings to stay awake.  I also would work on lesson plans and pass notes like most students use to do back in the days before cell phones and email. <:>/ 

     If the sun comes out or the rain holds off I may even decide to take a short bike ride, but  for now I am sitting sipping my tea and enjoying watching the birds play in the trees out my back window.

    

Baked Asparagus, Leek and Goat Cheese Bites

I made this recipe tonight for dinner and though it was good it needs some work. I found it on the Williams and Sonoma website.

Choose a soft, crumbly, fresh goat cheese with a hint of citrus to highlight the onion-like leeks and earthy asparagus in this dish. The freshest whole-milk ricotta available will provide these eggy mouthfuls with the creamiest, lightest texture.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 tsp. unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
• 6 asparagus spears, tough ends trimmed
• 1 leek, halved lengthwise and rinsed well, white and light green portions finely chopped
• 2 oz. fresh goat cheese
• 1/2 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
• 1 egg

Directions:

Preheat an oven to 300°F. Generously coat the cups of a 12-cup miniature muffin pan with butter.

Thinly slice the asparagus spears crosswise, keeping the tips whole. Set the asparagus tips aside.

In a sauté pan over medium-low heat, melt 2 tsp. of the butter. Add the sliced asparagus and the leek and cook gently, stirring often, until just softened slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl and let cool.

Crumble the goat cheese into another bowl. Add the ricotta cheese and egg and mash together with a fork until well combined, then mix in the cooled vegetables. Divide the filling evenly among the prepared muffin cups. Bake the “bites” until puffed and lightly golden on top, 20 to 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut each asparagus tip in half lengthwise. In a small nonstick fry pan over low heat, melt the remaining 1/2 tsp. butter. Add the asparagus tips and sauté until just tender, about 1 minute. Transfer to a small bowl.

When the bites are done, transfer the pan to a wire rack. Run a table knife around the inside of each cup to loosen the edges and let cool slightly. Invert a large plate or tray over the muffin pan, invert the pan and plate together and lift off the pan.

Arrange the bites on a platter or individual plates and top each with an asparagus-tip half. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 12 bites; serves 6 to 12.

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma New Flavors for Appetizers, by Amy Sherman (Oxmoor House, 2008).

It needs more spice so I plan to add some hotshot pepper and garlic and instead of using a muffin tin, use little baking dishes and simply divide it into two servings and then adjust the cooking time. I might also add in some basil or thyme as it needs a little more flavor.  We shall see. I am thinking I will try it again this weekend with my modifications.

They were not bad, just bland.

Today I Almost Shot the Locate Man

I came home from a nice relaxing massage and was  in the kitchen getting myself a snack before going on an errand to find a background fabric to match an odd color background of my main fabric. While looking out the back window over the sink I noticed something or someone moving  around in the backyard behind the shed and in the area of the tall pine tree.
It made me very nervous. I checked that the alarm was set to STAY and grabbed my 9 mm, and made sure it was loaded.

I walked out on the deck and yelled, "Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my back yard?" By this time the guy was up along the side of the addition and between it and the deck. That made me even more nervous.

His back was to me and when he heard me he quickly turned around. He took a couple of steps back when he saw my gun, and said "Please don't shoot me, ma'm. I am here doing a locate for GCI, so they can dig up your yard to put in new cables." I actually think it was for ACS, since that is our internet service that we have been having troubles with.

I apologized to him and explained that he had scared me.

He told me that a neighbor woman of his had someone break into her house and she shot at them with her gun and missed. He recommended she get a different gun, a 9 mm like mine.  He also told me there were no hard feelings. Women need to protect themselves. He was glad I did not shoot first and ask questions after.

Vegetarian Lasagna

Tom and I love this dish.  I have been playing with several different recipes and think I finally hit on the one that works best for us. It makes about four to six servings, so we have dinner and lunch out of it.

Ingredients:

1 small to medium spaghetti squash = roughly 3 cups of shredded spaghetti squash.

1 - 2 small to medium or medium to large zucchini = roughly 3 cups of shredded zucchini.

15 ounces of ricotta cheese. I buy organic.

2 cups of shredded mozzarella. I like to shred my own and buy organic.
You can also save some to sprinkle on top after cooking or during the last few minutes of cooking.

1 tsp to 1 TBsp of hotshot  or black pepper (We like it spicy, so I add more.)

You will need a baking dish that is 9 X 5 and about 2-3" deep.

Before putting this dish together you need to have prepared the following in advance:

Clean and bake one small to medium spaghetti squash.  After letting it cool, scrape out the insides and set aside to use in the lasagna.  To bake I cut mine in half, scrape out the seeds and then set cut side down on a wire rack over a cookie sheet with water in it.  After baking at 350° for roughly 30-45 minutes, until you can pierce the outside with a fork, I let it cool, cut side down, until I can easily pick it up and scrape the inside out. I then let it drain for a bit so that it is not too watery. It really works great if we have spaghetti the night before and I cook a large spaghetti squash and use the left over for lasagna. You need roughly 3 cups of shredded spaghetti squash.

I shred one to two small to medium or medium to large zucchini, and let it drain in a strainer for awhile.  I also pat it with paper towels to remove some of  moisture. (I am thinking I may bake it for a few minutes next time to see if I can get more water to drain before putting it in the lasagna. You need roughly 3 cups of shredded zucchini.

I also make my own sauce, another reason I like to have spaghetti the night before.  I will share my recipe in another  post, but you need roughly 2-3 cups of sauce.

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Directions:

Smear some sauce in the bottom of the dish, just enough to coat it lightly.

Sprinkle one third of the shredded zucchini in a layer in the bottom of the dish.

(Here you have a choice. I prefer to layer the spaghetti squash and then the ricotta, but you could do it in reverse.)

Sprinkle one third of the shredded spaghetti squash in a layer over the zucchini.

Using one third of the ricotta cheese dab it over the squash and then smear it around lightly so that it is pretty evenly layered.

Sprinkle some of the hot shot or black pepper on the ricotta cheese.

Sprinkle with one third of mozzarella cheese.

Layer one third of the sauce over this

Repeat twice.

Bake 45 minutes, sprinkling the saved mozzarella over the top during the last five minutes of cooking or after removing it from the oven. Let sit for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Because there are no noodles to absorb the excess liquid due to using squash, it is helpful to have bulb syringe to remove some of the excess juice before cutting and serving, if you do not have one you can use a spoon to remove some and then once cut and served, tip the plates slightly to let the excess liquid run off before serving.

The extras keep well over night in the refrigerator and make a great lunch when reheated the next day. We never have any left over for freezing so I am not sure how it does at freezing, but please let me know how it works out if you try freezing it and reheating.

Sorry there are no pictures but I forgot to take any when I made this a couple nights ago. I will try to remember to update with a picture next time I make it.

Response to "The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom"

This is my response to /the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom that I stumbled across on Facebook.

Josh I can truly understand whatyou are saying,. I retired after 27+ years of teaching. I was tired of jumping through hoops and playing games. Tne amount of paperwork kept increasing and the time to teach seemed to be shrinking due to the increase in hoops. Too much time is spent having to parent students because their parents do not parent. 

More money is spent on sports than in the classroom and parents and community members are more likely to raise an uproar over a cut to hockey or football than teacher cuts or elective class cuts. Many parents get more upset over a snow day than a failing a grade because heaven forbid they have to find a babysitter. Parents do not come to conferences and even if thy do they talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. Kids who do not have money for basic school supplies come in wearing $100+ shoes and have money for the junk food machines or the latest phone, which many teachers cannot afford. I had students who asked me for change for a hundred dollar bill and they were surprised I did not have change as I was a teacher I made the big bucks. HAHA! Big buck, I wish. 

The community does not realize the money we put out for recertification, classes to recertify, and for classroom supplies. They seem to think it is all there and that we don’t really work that hard as we get summers off. They have not been there when we are at school at midnight making copies or grading papers or writing IEPs for special ed sudents, or at home doing many of these activities. They seem to think our job is SO EASY. 

Cuts raise class sizes which make teaching more of a wrestling match as we have to deal with crowd control rather than teach. I have been in 6th grade classrooms with 36+ students where you had to ask students to stand up and push in their chairs so you could get to the student who needed help. I have been in classrooms with 35+ high school students many of whom were hyperactive boys with no room to move so they are bothering everyone around them and I have spent more time trying to deal with behavior issues than I have trying to teach them to write a sentence. Students who are highly gifted and students who are so severely handicapped they need constant one-on-one care crowded into small rooms with inadequate heating, lighting, and too few textbooks do not make for a good learning environment. It simply becomes babysitting. 

Last year my husband had a class of students who simply wanted to play. They were interested in learning, or doing anything that could be considered work. They came to school simply to socialize and play. These were 8th graders. They were so far behind in school that they have no hope of getting a diploma and graduating and will probably drop out. 

It is sad to see how the future of our country has been hung out to dry with all the cuts to education. We are failing our country and our kids. Our governments, country, state, and city need to wake up and see that they are not helping our kids, they are hurting them. I think we need to institure a uniform policy, and allow corporal punishment in some cases as well as fully fund education and limit class sizes in all grades to 20 students. We also need to stop all this social emotional learning garbage and go back to a more rigourous and basic curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic with science, art and music and stop all the crap about we will hurt their feelings. I also think we need to tighten the reins of welfare but that topic is for another day.

I know that many of you know there was more to my decision to retire, including health issues, but waht I have said above is also true.  Yes, I continue to sub but it because I care about the students and want to help those I can. I do believe they are the future of our country and I would like to help those that I can to be successful contributing citizens to our society and to the future of our country, but our govenrment and the lacsidasical ideology of many members of our country is contributing the downfall and the destruction of our civilization as a whole.   As I said welfare and robbing the rich or rather middle class to pay the poor is getting to the point where there will soon beno middle class.

Bandwith Issues Learning Experience

After much frustration for my husband regarding my computer eating up too much bandwith, he discovered the culprit. He was searching through my computer looking at the sites I surf the most and he discovered that one of my often visited sites The Toothfairy Quilter eats up lots of bandwidth because she does not archive her pages so that only one page at a time shows, which until today was the same with mine. Now that I know why my pages eat up so much bandwidth I now have my blog set so that only one page shows at a time instead of a chain of pages going back to the beginning of my blog.

My husband says this makes a huge difference in the amount of bandwidth that my computer uses. I have now changed my blogs to all reflect this and it has solved some of the issues we were having.

For those that want to make this change go to  your SETTINGS: POSTS AND COMMENTS and set the following at 1. Mine was set at 7 which I am assuming is the default.  Now that it is set at 1 I am not hogging all the bandwidth when I am on my own blogs and updating them.

Posts 

Show at most ?

on the main page

Hopefully this will help others who are experiencing similar issues.