If you have not visited this website, you should really do so now. If you are a dog person, you will totally get it. If you are not a dog person, you will probably still get a lot of laughs anyways.
Here is a taste of what you are in for:
Since I have been stuck inside with a two month old refusing to nap for more than 15-20 minutes at a time, I needed to see this today. 🙂
Since I am a Texas school teacher–don’t judge me– I feel rather obligated to post this first article. I don’t really view my self as radically politically overly involved, but I am concerned when people talk positively about a certain Texan who would have himself be a U.S. President (the same man who is very responsible for hurting the education of thousands of Texas students for his own political gain).
Plus, this article is pretty funny. It starts with “If Rick Perry and George W. Bush had been born in the same family, W would have become known to friends as ‘the smart one.'”
To read “A Tale of Two Texans,” please click here.
On a MUCH more positive note, here is an article on why The Hunger Games is an awesome book for both boys and girls.
Still don’t believe me? Just ask my dad. The same guy who hasn’t read a book “for fun” in a really long time. While he and my mom visited in early August, I convinced him to try the book. Just read the first 70 pages, and if it wasn’t for him, he could put it down, and I wouldn’t pester him to read it ever again.
He didn’t even realize he had passed page 70 until I commented on it the next morning.
(The English teacher in me: 3 — Dad: 0. Why 3? Because in less than two weeks he had finished ALL THREE books in the series. So three points for me. Oh, yeah.)
So, to read up on why The Hunger Games will only be the next Twilight due to popularity, click here!
Who knows? With potential presidents like Perry out there, the dystopian world of The Hunger Games might be closer than we realize. Maybe these two articles were not wholly as unrelated as I originally thought…
And for heaven’s sake, if you haven’t already, go buy The Hunger Games and read it ASAP!
Anybody else notice these Target commercials?
2nd Grade Teacher Commericial
Music Teacher Target Commerical
Gym Teacher Target Commercial
Target: Do you have to make teachers seem so clueless and annoying? Your marketing is not working on me. If you didn’t have such good stuff, I would boycott you just because these commercials drive me NUTS!
Okay. Just had to get that out of my system. Am I just crazy, or are there any other pet peeve commercials out there for you all???
A great article from Los Angeles Times about the continuing challenges of teaching…
Exerpt:
I’m willing to work as hard as I can to be an excellent teacher, but as a country we have to admit that I’ll never be excellent if we continue to slash education budgets and cut teachers, which is what’s actually happening in California despite all our talk of excellence, particularly in schools that serve poor children. Until we stop that, we’ll never have equal education in this country.
To read the rest of this, click here!
I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
Wow.
You always hear people going on about a great book, and then the hype usually doesn’t live up to the expectations you formed. And plus, it wasn’t a fantasy/sci-fi novel that I tend to gravitate to; it’s more of a historical fiction.
It just got me thinking about all the lines, borders, fences, etc., we put up between ourselves and anybody else who might be considered “different”. In our daily chats at CTWP, this came up over and over again, in multiple settings and different issues. Race. Religion. Sexuality. Social status. Abuse.
We fear different. Different might even be better than what we do, and we can’t have that. It’s like the Demotivator: The tallest blade of grass is first to be cut by the lawnmower.
(Thanks, Despair.com)
We often like to pretend those lines aren’t there. It’s wrong or inappropriate to discuss them as a teacher in the classroom setting. Some things are acceptable now that weren’t when my parents were children. And even then, some people still have deep rooted prejudices towards the Civil Rights movements of the 60s. And students are amazed when they realize, in several parts of the world, the country, the state, some people still keep their lines drawn firmly between themselves and “The Others”.
So it’s always there, the current deep and powerful, lurking under the waters. That’s why I love novels, reading, writing, so much–because deep in every important story, the lines are discussed, crossed, eliminated, or held up. And your reaction to whatever it is, tells more about you than you even realize.
Stories like The Help tear at me. I wonder how many times I just accepted something that was told to me because it was “just how things are”? How many times I treated somebody based on a preconceived stereotype, not thinking about what I was really doing or saying? How naive and ignorant have I been?
In the end, I desperately wish that people could just truly care about each other the way they should, not withstanding these lines. What a place this world could be, I wonder, if everyone treated each other with a little more kindness and acceptance. If we all lived by The Golden Rule: treat everyone how you would want to be treated yourself.
Would we have those lines still?