Paper Chandelier

Last weekend I found myself in the Neiman Marcus at the Mall at Millenia. This venture into the foreign world of the modern shopping mall lead me to one of the most brilliant things I've seen in quite a while; an idea which I intend to plagiarize in my classroom. It was a chandelier of sorts, although that might stretch the definition thereof, consisting of sheets of paper, wire and binder clips. Visitors from all over the world had written messages in their native tongues, drawn a flag, created a picture from words, whatever came over them at the time. I love this idea. I love how individual it is, and how it is in essence a cloud of thought which is ever changing. I think I will attempt to make something similar for my classroom at school and give the students the opportunity to share their art work or thoughts in a relatively anonymous way. There is, however, the danger of getting a lot of profanity and vulgarity if placed in a high school classroom. I think I'll try it anyway, and trust that they can be mature about it. Yeah, right.

Reader challenge: My own note is up there, see if you can guess which one it is! (No fair if I already showed you...) Post your guesses in the comments.

In Search of Inspiration

I find that in the slow summer months (may they last forever) that I have little about which to write. It's not that I don't want to, but a play by play commentary describing my afternoons sitting around playing Nintendo and carrying on long and intense conversations with my cat isn't particularly interesting.

Then came my trip to Border's this weekend. As Curt and I searched for the hard cover Strunk & White's, I happened upon an intriguingly small cube-shaped book. The Writer's Block emblazoned on it's binding caught my eye, and I soon found myself flipping through its worn three inch pages. This is a book that has seen some hands. Stopping on random pages, I began to see why. Page after page of prompts. Things to write about; fiction, autobiography, a story heard long ago, all of them there on a 3 x 3 page waiting for me. So I bought it (and got a discount because it was a little beat up), and I'm going to use it. Maybe I'll share some of it here. Maybe.

Hi, I'm Laura, and I'm a Pack Rat

One look at my bedroom would tell you that I'm a pack rat. I don't throw things away if they have an iota of sentimental value. So, my room looks like an 8th grade art class or a very large refrigerator door. Pictures from trips, high school memorabilia, and bits and pieces of things from college clutter my bookshelf, floor, desk and walls. There is just too much stuff. It's no wonder that I have been dragging my feet in beginning the daunting task of cleaning and redesigning my room. I don't even know what color to paint it. Some things need to go, I'm sure of that; but I don't want to take the walk down memory lane only to find out how much I've forgotten.

It will eventually have to happen, because I'm going a little bit stir-crazy with all of the clutter.

On Exams

I've finally kicked my butt into gear and looked into the registration process for the Florida General Knowledge Exam which I must complete before the beginning of October if I want to keep my job. The act of looking it up and filling out the registration forms online brings back memories of high school and registration for the SATs, IB and AP exams. There is this distinct feeling I get when I think about exams. I dread them in general, but at the same time look at it with a fairly large ego. I've never done horrible on a general knowledge test. The FCAT was remarkably easy in my memory, and the SATs, while a good deal harder than the FCAT, presented only things I had seen and studied before.

In fact, I don't think I've ever had a horrible experience in an exam. There was the ACT, which I took on the morning after our second performance of "Les Miserables" for which I was only half awake. But even then, my score was better than average; I didn't get the score I wanted, but it was still better than many. Incidentally, I took that exam at the school where I now teach. I recall the first day of IB Chemistry being difficult, but I attribute that to the unfortunate schedule which placed it after IB History, thus my brain was already fried. In hindsight, spending the lunch break at the bowling alley thinking of anything but chemistry was perhaps not the best choice. The AP Calculus AB exam was absolutely atrocious. Since our main focus was the IB Calculus exam, we hadn't really prepared for the AP. Also, I had missed a few important days because of Drama (go figure) and could not for the life of me find the volume of a shape rotated around the x-axis (or the y-axis for that matter). I spent most of that exam doodling and drawing fish in a cylinder.

Yes, my senior year of high school was full of exams, some fairly easy, other decidedly not. My main memory is going in with confidence. Never nervous, always a little unsure, but confident. Hopefully this time around it will be the same.