Holy Matrimony

Lest you begin to think that my life is all work and no play, here's what we did a few weeks ago:

We got engaged!
Like our rings?



<--- This one's mine.



And this is Victoria's ->




We'll keep you posted on our wedding plans!



OK, well, that was lies. Here's what actually happened:

A few weeks ago I entered to win a variety of online contests on cities97.com- something I do every week because, well, why not? I saw that one of the contests to enter was for the Wedding Fair in the Minneapolis Convention Center. I thought to myself, 'oh, I know someone who is getting married! I bet Mitch would LOVE to go to this,' so I entered the contest. Low and behold, I won the tickets! And, of course, Mitch and his fiance had plans for the day so it was up to us to come up with a creative way of using the tickets.

Solution! We decided to fake our own engagements to two of our coworkers and go to the fair pretending to be planning our weddings.

Here are the lovely couples:

D.J. and Victoria

How they met: D.J. and Victoria ended up working at the same Caribou Coffee. Victoria didn't like him at first, but eventually he grew on her and they fell in love!

How he proposed: Unknown. But it might have involved pickles.

Wedding Plans: Jungle themed wedding at the Minnesota Zoo on July 28th 2012. Yes, this is a Thursday and it will be followed by a two-day reception. The bride and groom will wear loincloths and there will be plenty of lanterns around which remind D.J. of Thailand.


Me and David

How we met: Although we went to different schools in different states, one of David's best friends went to school with me and we met when he visited her one weekend. The rest is history.

How he proposed: It was the last night of Chanukah and as I went to light the first candle, there was the ring around the candle!

Wedding Plans: Late summer/early fall 2011, with either a red/orange/fall foliage or purple color scheme. We will be married near a lake where we will have our guests light floating lanterns over the water. The ceremony will be inspired by Jewish and Unitarian Universalist customs.


We like to think we were pretty believable. I even got complemented on my $15.00 TJMaxx ring. We got to taste some different types of food and cakes. We also watched a couture wedding dress fashion show and decided which ones we liked and didn't.

All in all, a really fun way to spend a sunday and some free tickets. Unfortunately, it appears that we have not won any of the honeymoons or dinner cruises we entered contests for, maybe next time.

I'll leave you with this image: Victoria and D.J. poking some mossy center pieces.

A Zen Buddhist Story

Today we had a full corps meeting, as we do every friday and during some work time a co-worker of mine, D.J. brought up a story that I thought would be fun to share with you.

D.J. first told this story at a professional development session that he attended at his school which was addressing the concept of tracking in schools. Many schools now will assign their students to various tracks: a college prep track made up of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes and a regular or non-college bound track with regular or even remedial classes. In the meeting, someone asked: "Does academic tracking perpetuate segregation in education?" D.J. replied that it does not have to, but only if both tracks have similar expectations and a set of future plans. The college track gives students a set of defined goals and ways to achieve them. The 'regular' track, however, does not provide it's students with any rigid expectations, or plans for the future. D.J. believes that the best solution would be one where expectations are appropriately high and understandably clear for all tracks.

To illustrate his point, D.J. told this story:

There was a monastery in the mountains of Thailand that was once considered an attractive order to be a part of. It contributed a lot to the well being and spirituality of the community around it. Recently, however it had become a dying order. Monks and Nuns were leaving in droves and the spiritual vitality of the community was dwindling.

The head Abbot of the monastery decided to visit a Rabbi of a successful and vibrant community to seek some guidance. The Abbot told the Rabbi that he was worried about the future of his monastery. The Rabbi replied: 'That's just terrible, and too bad because I heard from an Abbot nearby that a member of your monastery is about to become the next to be enlightened, so it would be a shame for it to die out." Surprised, the Abbot thanked the Rabbi for his time and headed back to his monastery.

When the Abbot returned to the monastery he shared the Rabbi's news with the community. Everyone was surprised to hear that the next to become enlightened was among them, but mostly returned to their normal lives.

As time went on, the members of the monastery started treating one another a little differently- thinking that maybe the other was supposed to be the next to become enlightened. And then they thought, wait, maybe it's me! So each individual started working harder on his/her spiritual development and soon the order was rebuilt and back to it's full vitality.

The moral of the story is that it does not matter whether or not someone in the order was about to become enlightened, the expectation that someone would was enough motivation to rebuild the order. When the members of the monastery could envision a future for themselves, they were successful.

According to D.J., if all students were able to aspire to a future they could envision, they would all be successful, regardless of what track they were assigned and whether or not they end up in college in the future.

The Case of the Terrifying Mother

Last week we had an interesting and terrifying visitor. She is the mother of a senior in our program and she came to our office to demand that her son, a junior, be admitted to our cohorts. First, she asked why no one had recruited him for the program, to which we replied that we advertised all around the school last spring and it was up to the students to take the initiative to apply. At this point she replied that she was taking the initiative on behalf of her son now- that he is a Native American with two siblings who went through the program and that he must be accepted right away.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't always handle conflict well- emotional break downs? suicide attempts? love issues? I'm all over those- but being yelled at... not my cup of tea. My "fight or flight" instinct kicked in and I went with the "flight," immediately referring her to my supervisor and sending him a panicking e-mail (sorry, Ben!). This seemed to sedate the mother enough to leave us alone, but not without taking my business card first- now I'm screening all of my calls.

Colin was able to catch up with the student in question and found out that he had no interest in applying or joining the program. We also looked up his grades and found out that his gpa is a 1.4, well below our requirements for applicants (2.0 or higher).

When the mother finally left the office, we were so shaken that we cowered under our desks in the fetal position. See Victoria below:


While this was a kind of hilarious office story that hopefully amused you, dear reader, it points to a bigger issue of a parent's dreams for her child and her child's goals for himself. It was heartbreaking to hear how desperately this mother wanted her son in our program, wanted him to graduate high school and attend a four year college just like his sisters only to find out that the son seems to want none of that for himself. The story became even more heartbreaking when we learned that the oldest son of the family had been killed serving in the US military in Iraq and knowing that many of the hopes and expectations of this family ride on this son's shoulders now.

So often in my studies of Education in college I thought and wrote about parent involvement being key to student success. I even wrote one paper about how parent involvement/motivation/presence is one of the key issues facing our educational system today. This encounter, however, proved my entire theory wrong. Here, the parents were incredibly invested in their children's education and success, despite their low income and minority status- but it was, most likely, the son's lack of motivation which will lead to his lack of educational attainment.

Wanna Know My New Boyfriend's Name? Kaplan!

With the new year has come a new focus to our curriculum: Kaplan ACT Preparation.

In the beginning of the week we handed out 3 prep books to each student and walked them through what were essentially wedding vows betrothing them to their prep books. The goal was to emphasize how important our students should be taking their books and this prep season in general and to make things a little fun because, let's face it, the next 3 months will not be all that fun.

Teaching the Kaplan curriculum is scary and frustrating. Scary because what and how we're teaching our students really matters now. Before, we were having conversations with them: what kind of school do you want to go to? what is the best way to save money? what should you include in your resume? Now, we are entrusted with helping our students improve their ACT scores and properly teaching them the techniques to do so.

Teaching Kaplan is also frustrating because it doesn't all relate to our students. Some examples:
- Kaplan does all of these cheesy things with the word "Kap" in it. For example "Kap Wrap" is the end of the section question that is supposed to make them think. "Thinking Kap" is the question at the beginning of each unit that is supposed to use the same methods that we will be teaching later in the section. I'm assuming this was amusing for the authors of the kaplan curriculum, but my students are not amused.

- Kaplan uses language that is too technical or confusing. Here's a perfect example in a section that I have to practice teach tomorrow:
In the English sections students read an excerpt and encounter various grammatical and structural errors which they are then prompted to correct.
" I rose slowly through the wooded sections, but upon reaching the flat, open areas, I rode MORE FASTLY. (this is not really in caps, it's actually underlined"
The first step of the method is to figure out what the problem is. In my mind I say: "oh, ok, the problem is that 'fastly' is NOT A WORD" but no.... according to the Kaplan book, the issue is that 'more is incorrect with slow'- what does that even mean?? If I told my students that, they would just look at me with death stares.

In a broader sense, my issue, perhaps not just with Kaplan but with the ACT in general, is that so many of the English questions are wrong or right because they "sound right." That's great for the majority of American high school students, but not for those who have learned English as a second (or third or fourth) language. To them, things don't just "sound right" in English- partially, I would argue, because English doesn't make all that much sense in the first place, but also because they don't naturally think in English. The second language that I'm closest to fluent in is Hebrew (and, mind you, there's no way I would survive a day in an Israeli high school where I was expected to speak Hebrew)- but there are very few occasions where I could read something in Hebrew and tell you that it "sounds wrong" or "sounds right"- it's Hebrew and if I'm reading it I'm going to assume it's grammatically correct- or at least it's more grammatically correct than I could ever write it. For my ELL students who struggle so hard to write correctly in English, how can I expect them to notice someone else's mistakes?