SUMMER SCHEDULE=10 hour days= 4 day work week

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my summer work schedule. We work 10 hour days, 4 days a week. During the school year, I often work 10 hours a day....the truth is, I usually work longer than a 10 hour day. But during the summer, our central office shuts down on Fridays....and I can take off work if I want to and not feel bad about it. Of course I was up this morning at 6:30 working even though it is Friday.... I wasn't at the office, but I was working. It's nice to know that I can slip away when I want to...I can walk outside...look at the butterflies, water my flowers, put on a load of laundry, cook grits and toast for breakfast, and read my favorite blogs without the pressure of feeling like every moment should be consumed with work. The sun is shining...the laundry is tumbling....the cicadas are singing.....my husband is snoozing....it's gonna be a GREAT day.

PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW

Today was a big day. A day designed to provide Professional Development focused on the teaching of writing. It was a day of many, many blessings:

1. A tremendous design team worked tirelessly to design an experience that included a key note speaker and break out sessions, along with a Scholastic half price book fair...and Dodge Learning Resources of Atlanta sold professional texts and picture books.

2. Katie Wood Ray--keynote speaker extraordinaire. One of my favorite professional authors on the teaching of writing....was in our district...working close up and personal.... She was dyno-mite today.

3. Teachers and literacy coaches volunteered to design and present break out sessions. I was so very proud of these individuals. It has been so much fun to observe the professional growth in these adults over the last few years. The participants loved, loved, these sessions.

4. Teachers volunteered their time, attention, and personal resources to attend the event today. I do not take this lightly. It is summer! Teachers from districts around the state attended! College students attended! Graduate students attended!

5. So many people helped me today.....my cup runneth over with appreciation and thanks for the many contributions given freely and thoughtfully to support this work.

It is difficult to find words that are adequate to say "thank you". I am truly very blessed.

More Summer Reading

Tribes

by Seth Godin

This is a book about leadership and community. It's inspirational and a quick read. It left me wanting to do more to connect others. Godin explained that people want connection, growth, and something new. He wrote that people want change. I disagree with Godin on this point. I've worked with many adult learners and I know that all people do not want change, some people may want change, but not all people. Nevertheless, I do agree with Godin's beliefs about human beings needing to belong. Godin suggested that one of the most powerful survival mechanisms of a human being is to be a part of a tribe, to be connected, and to contribute to and take from a group of like-minded people. Additionally, he explained that humans want to belong to many tribes and that if it is made easy and we have the tools, we'll join many. There are so many new technological tools that can help us lead tribes. Facebook, Twitter, Ning, and Meetup are just a few. He encourages all of us to step up and become leaders; to use the newest forms of technology to unite those with common interests.

http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/

The Wisdom of Crowds

by James Surowiecki

I'm reading this book because my superintendent has referenced it several times. It is probably more for the business world. Surowiecki suggested that chasing experts is a costly mistake. We should put together groups of people and ask them. He offers multiple vignettes chocked full of examples of how time and again, large groups of people are right. One example that stands out in my mind is from the famous TV show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When the audience is asked for an answer, it turns out they are right 91% of the time! Surowiecki gives examples in sports events, with Google, polls, and decision markets. He explained the value of diversity within a group and cascading. It's a good book and a definite must read if you are trying to encourage and foster collaboration in the workplace.

Summer Reading

The Glass Castle

On our trip to Alaska, since I was the co-pilot, I had time to read. My daughter told someone that leaving home without books would be worse for me than leaving home and forgetting my suitcase. She was right. I rarely leave home without a book and if I do, I feel like I've lost something. Two people suggested that I read The Glass Castle within just a few days. Both said it was a "must read". They were right. The Glass Castle is a memoir by Jeannette Walls. It details her harsh yet passionate childhood. She once hid that her parents were homeless and that she lived a childhood that few are able to escape. She now writes with surprising affection of her love of her parents. Those who read it will be touched.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m233QKFTE79AHO

The Talent Code

Last fall, Victoria Bernhardt worked in our school district. She had just begun reading The Talent Code. She shared a few snippets and recommended reading it. Since I'm an Amazon one-click purchaser, I came home that night and ordered it. I started the book and was very engaged by the text. I was so engaged, I pulled the original research cited in the book and worked it into one of my chapters in my dissertation. The book spoke to me on many levels. Coyle writes about specificity of language....feedback.....and the power of errors and learning from them. Mistakes can be blocked out of our minds---or---they can be seen as information to be used. "It's not the mistakes that are good or bad, but rather our reaction to them" (Coyle). It is this reaction, something that occurs within 0.25 seconds (some might even call it a reflex) that is a measurable quality and an accurate indicator of potential according to Coyle. Coyle explained that picturing our mistakes is like a navigation point....literally, inside the brain, neural circuits that help point you in the right direction. I wish everyone who teaches children would read this book. I believe understanding the power of specificity of feedback to children could revolutionalize our instruction.

http://thetalentcode.com/

Pulling versus Pushing Information

I’ve begun to think about something that I’ve heard George Thompson and Phil Schlechty discuss: The difference between information being pushed and pulled by students. I began noticing that as we passed through each state and Canadian Providence my own personal inquiry level increased. I saw the corn in the fields and I wanted to know so many things:
1. How much corn do we produce in the United States?
2. How much corn does each state produce?
3. Who do we sell it to?
4. How much money do the farmers make?
5. How many things are made from corn?
6. What are the other major crops in the area?
7. What are the schools like? There are so few towns and the area is sparsely populated. Along the way my husband noticed a sign where a school system was advertising a 4-day school week.

As my own personal inquiry increased, I became aware of my desire to “pull” information. It was at this point I started thinking about designing lessons for students based on an experience similar to our trip. I've just begun to design the lesson...Here are some of my first thoughts....The goal is to design a cross-curricular lesson that students would enjoy so much that they would continue working on the project beyond the school day and walls. Students would learn important information about the United States, Canada, history, geography, science, math, and English-Language Arts.

Problem to Solve: I want to travel from Dalton, GA to Fairbanks, Alaska. I have a child your age. Determine the best route to take. Be prepared to defend your rationale.
Include the following:

Sites to visit---why should we go? What will we see and do?
Places to eat and spend the night
Expected cost based on travel. How many miles will we travel? What type of transportation will we use?

Last Day of Big Journey

We’re a little closer than expected to Fairbanks and arrived by mid-afternoon. Here are some of the pictures I took between Tok, Alaska and Fairbanks.
More RV's.....they are everywhere....I'm pretty sure I know why.....there's really hardly any place to stay in Canada....if you are traveling on the Alaskan highway, if you want to be sure you have a place to stay, you need to bring your bed with you.....seems like many people have learned that lesson....RV's are very, very abundant!

More evidence...

Majestic.

Highlight of Day Five

The highlight of the day was going through customs and entering Alaska. For a few minutes I was worried that trouble was around the corner when we approached customs. My husband was trying to be sure we were in the appropriate lane…he swung wide towards the truck lane, and quickly, a customs agent came out of the building, pointed his finger at us, and motioned for us to move into the other lane. We quickly got in the right lane.

There were several cars in front of us, so we cut off the truck and waited our turn. As co-pilot I kept up with all of our paper work: the gas receipts, hotel receipts, food receipts, passports, the U-Haul rental paper work, the military papers authorizing the transporting of the items in the U-Haul, and our driver’s licenses. We were ready. When there was one car ahead of us, my husband eased up. I mentioned there was a stop sign, but the customs agent, leaned out the window, pointed his finger at us and yelled, “Back Up!” In my mind I was thinking....Woah!!….these people don’t play! I said, “By the time we get to the window there’s no telling what they will do to us. We’ve already been reprimanded two times!” Of course, my husband just laughed and made light of the instances. When it was finally our turn, we eased up to the window and my husband put the truck in park. The agent said, “Sir, please turn off your vehicle.” I was thinking…this is bad….when we entered Canada, they didn’t ask us to do this. Needless, to say, we had all of our paper work in order and he let us pass through with only answering the usual questions about transporting weapons (we had none) and declaring food purchased in Canada etc. He was very polite and sent us on our way with hearty, “Welcome, to Alaska!”
My favorite photo stop thus far was at the Alaska sign. When my husband traveled to Alaska earlier in the year, he had is picture made at this sign. I wanted my picture made there too and had been wondering about the whereabouts of the sign. While we were snapping pictures, a young family approached us—a husband, wife, and three young children. They asked us questions about where we were traveling from and where we were headed. Interestingly, they were from Fairbanks. They were both teachers. They were headed to Idaho to visit the husband’s family. His father had been a school superintendent and was retiring after 42 years of service. We’ve met quite a few very nice people. It was very interesting to me that sometimes we kept seeing the same people over and over.

Day Five--Larger than Life

Day Five—We noticed only one field of wild horses today and one moose and a baby in a field far back from the road. The roads up until today had been pretty good. There had only been one spot of road construction with graveled roads. But today was a different story.

Miles and miles of roads marked uneven roads. This was a new sign for me. Have you ever ridden the small roller coaster at Six Flags, the gold mine one, that’s bumpy and jerky, going up and down and around? This is about what it felt like ….the roads were so bumpy it was unbelievable and it really slowed us down.

The scenery was breathtaking....

Just a few of the newer places looked like the above picture....made out of logs with tin roofs.

Snow capped mountains...

More bumpy roads

Lots of rocks on the sides of the roads.....whenever you see rocks, you see numbers and words....sometimes names are spelled out too....

From rocky to sandy.....at times it looked like large sand dunes lining the road.The YUKON---Larger than life....

The following pictures captured someone training sled dogs....

Bright orange flags indicate there is a major problem with the road....drivers beware!

Day 4 Continued....

Here are some pictures we took along the way....beautiful aqua blue lakes.....honestly, even pictures do not do these views justice....
Folded mountains....

The Folded Mountains....so interesting....

More evidence for my research study....RV's on the road....

U-Hauls.....

We saw two fields of wild horses....this was just awesome!

Buffalo....

Lots...and lots of black bears....

More buffalo...
Lakes, Lakes, and Lakes

This is a typical gas station...

We had planned to stop in Watson Lake. Upon arrival, we noticed the motels were very old and looked run down. (My husband noticed boarded up windows in one.) We mustered up enough courage to see if there was a vacancy. We waited in a line with about 5 other families. There were 2 rooms left—one with a kitchenette and one regular room. The man in front of me came back, returned the key, and said (in broken English) “no want room”. The lady at the counter had been getting towels out of cabinet for another customer. My husband looked at me and said, “Let’s go.” We got in the car and he said, “If the room wasn’t good enough for that man, I don’t want us to stay there either. Did you see those towels she was handing out? They looked like the kind of towels I use to wash my car. There was no way I’d stay in that motel. I’d drive all night long before I’d stay there.”

I thought, oh boy, here we go, another day of even more driving. Luckily my husband had picked up a small brochure of the area and as we drove away, I flipped through the pages and noticed an advertisement for small cabins for rent. Within just a few miles, we saw them and pulled in.

There was a store/restaurant and a gift shop. We entered the store/restaurant. There were two guests eating dinner. The cook had just prepared it for them and he was waiting with his smiling face behind the counter. Since it was about 9:00PM and we hadn’t eaten dinner, my first question was, “Are you still serving dinner?” He responded, “Certainly, here’s a menu, have a seat and I’ll fix anything that you want.” My next question was “Do you have any rooms available?” He responded, “yes” and called someone to meet me next door in the gift shop.

Divide and conquer is usually our motto. I volunteered to take care of the room if my husband would order our dinner. The truth is, I wanted to make sure we had a place to stay. My husband had been driving lots of hours and I knew we needed to rest. The room was considered a 4-star room—the only one in the Yukon. Price didn’t really matter to me; although I was able to talk them down a little…she deducted about $50 when I told her my husband really wouldn’t want me to pay so much for the room. Within seconds of my paying for the room, my husband appeared. He said, “Did you take the room? How much was it?” The lady at the desk quickly responded that it was his wife’s treat. I quickly added that he didn’t need to worry about it. Of course I told him the price-- it was just a little over $200. He shook his head (no-no-no). I explained it was late, the next town was a long way, and the rooms there may look just like the last place. He quickly changed his mind and said “OK. It’s certainly better than the last place. They wanted $150 for that place and another man wouldn’t even stay in it.”

Un-official Research Study

As we continued our journey, I started thinking about the exact same U-Haul pulling up behind us when we stopped to take pictures of the waterfall.....and it prompted me to conduct an unofficial research study. The numbers of U-Hauls on this road were just unbelievable! Here are the results of the study. There are 3 main types of vehicles on the Alaskan highway:
1. Semi Trucks
2. Recreational Vehicles---campers of all sizes and makes. There are very few places to stay. If you want to travel here, you need to bring your bed with you.
3. U-Haul trucks and cars pulling U-Haul trailers. Since U-Haul is the only moving company that allows moves into Canada and Alaska, they are a much needed commodity. Yea for U-Haul!

Day 4

Day 4---We slowed down and stopped along the way to see the sights. We pushed hard for three days so that we could enjoy this part of the journey. Our first stop was just a few miles out of town, the Kiskatinaw River Bridge. One can see the elevation by looking at this picture although the mountains don't look that big. Before the day is over, we will see really big mountains! We began a fast decline, dropping over 1,000 feet within just a less than a kilometer then crossed another bridge. The transition was beautiful, but I couldn’t catch a picture of it. We quickly climbed back to 2137 feet (GPS tracks this for us).

We began seeing more signs warning us to slow down because of different animals...and we captured a few....

Here come the mountains....

As soon as we began traveling the Alaskan highway, the farm lands and oil wells ended. Vast prairie lands (as one British Columbian native described it) surrounded the road. The adventure came in looking for the wild animals.

On this photo stop to catch the waterfalls, once again I was amazed. A couple pulled in right behind us. They were driving the exact same U-Haul as us. They were retiring to Alaska and had been unable to move all of their furniture at one time. Their journey wasn’t quite 4,000, but almost—they were logging over 3,500. See what I mean about how there is someone out there who’s life parallel’s yours?

During this photo shoot, we talked with another group of people too. They actually ran up to us when we got out of the truck and started telling us about their near fatal experience with a rock slide. We were not sure of their ethnicity. Although they spoke English, they were very difficult to understand. They explained they were taking photos of the waterfall. One person in their group had climbed up a little on the mountain, trying to get her picture taken near the waterfall, when rocks started falling all around her. She ran as fast as she could across the road to safety. They apparently were very shaken by this experience and ran up to everyone who stopped and shared this story. They also told us they had seen White Mountain goats with horns climbing on the mountains. We looked for them, but never saw them.