Thirteen Main Dishes I Like
1 - Pizza
2 - Grilled steak
3 - Poppyseed Chicken
4 - Chicken and Dumplings
5 - Meatloaf
6 - Spaghetti
7 - Lasagna
8 - Chicken Stir Fry
9 - Creamed Chicken on Cornbread
10 - Grilled Chicken Salad
11 - Grilled Salmon
12 - Halibut Fish & Chips
13 - Hamburgers

That’s right. We should release Saddam and let him go back to Iraq AFTER we give him a sex-change operation. As a matter of fact, we could release ALL the Islamic terrorists we have in custody. We’ll be very gentle with them - no torture or discomfort. Just give them lots of painkillers, do the sex change operation - let them recuperate with the best nursing care, and then send them home. A few days as a Muslim woman should put out the fire of their Islamic fanaticism.

(I heard that on the radio the other day - but I don’t remember what show it was.)

Crossposted aat Jihadi du Jour.

RT has a flair for making me laugh with his comments. The other day we were watching TV and saw a news clip about ministers who preach the “God will make you rich gospel.” (Of course the people must send the ministers money before God can start the rich-making process). RT remarked, “There will always be a wealth of dumb ass gullible people.” Then he told me about someone he was interviewing who, with stunning ignorance, talked herself out of the job. He said that she displayed CDA, or classic dumb assedness.

I once worked with a teacher who complained about all the HMPs (high maintenance parents) that she had to deal with. Then there were the kids who were OTL. You can probably guess that one without my assistance.

Be sure to check out this week’s Carnival of Education over at The Education Wonks. As always, there’s great writing about and from the world of education.

I would venture to say that the one thing that most educators would agree on is that most professional development activities are a waste of time. Boring presenters, along with irrelevant materials and topics are common complaints. I understand that planning and providing quality professional development is not an easy task. It’s a task I don’t want, which is not good since that’s part of my job. Anytime you get a room full of teachers together, you have a wide range of needs and interests - even if they all teach the same grade level or the same subject. There are the veteran teachers who want to learn something new, and there are the beginning teachers who are struggling to survive. It is truly rare to attend a professional development meeting or activity that is both practical and beneficial. Yet each year school districts require a certain number of PD days for teachers. Most teachers are still refining the skill of determining - prior to attending - which offerings will be applicable and interesting and which won’t.

Last Friday I attended a day of professional development that met the 4-part criteria of being challenging, helpful, applicable and engaging. It was our monthly meeting of the district’s reading specialists. There are about twenty of us in the group. At last month’s meeting, we each wrote a question that we needed answered in order to do a better job as reading specialists. After we shared our questions with each other, we put the similar questions together and came up with a total of four questions which were then written on the board.

Then we wrote our names beside the one question that we were most interested in - thus forming our “action research teams.” On Friday we spent the afternoon with our teams researching our questions. Our goal is to have answers to our questions and the research to back up our answers by the end of the school year. We will then share the information with the other teams.

It sounds simple. Maybe that’s why it worked so well. It was one of the most productive meetings I’ve ever attended, and here’s why:

(1) The questions were generated by the people involved.
(2) The questions (goals) were important to the people involved.
(3) Committee time was spent researching answers to the questions. We didn’t spend our time talking about how to find answers. We spent our time finding answers.

I actually enjoyed the afternoon when we met with our action groups and researched our question. My group met in the curriculum director’s office. She was out for the day and meeting there was her idea. There we had access to her computer for internet research, along with a wealth of books and journals for other research.

At the end of the day, I felt we were well on our way to a solid answer - one that was concrete and would be helpful not only for our group but for the other reading specialists as well.

Would the same plan work with other groups? It depends on the groups’ needs. It’s a good idea, though. Just imagine! Professional development that is challenging, helpful, applicable and engaging! Wow!

Beth at Blue Star Chronicles wrote about her soldier son in this post.

I don’t know where my Soldier Son is. The last time I got a message from him he said his unit was pushing to another area. He was vague about where that would be, but I know it’s an area where there is a lot of fighting right now. . . .

It really hit me when I got his orders in the mail. He sent them to me for safe keeping and ‘just in case’. Just in case. That’s what really got me. The ‘just in case’. I tried to read the orders, but they looked like they had been xeroxed way too many times and were barely legible. The part I could read was his name, rank and the statement that he’s deployed in the Global War on Terror. That got me too. . . .

When I hear that the al-islamofascists have put out yet another tape of their disgusting medieval abuses and tortures of U.S. military Soldiers or civilians from anywhere I feel my anger towards them building. When I hear their fascist hate-filled rhetoric I just want to scream. . . .

When I hear the hate-filled ignorant rhetoric of our enemies within who just don’t GET IT, I want to scream even more. These are the worst. They are speaking against their own people, their own country. . . .

The main stream media is the worst. I listen to them put out propaganda AGAINST our own country and it is infuriating. It puts our troops in a much more dangerous position. Appeasement does nothing but prolong suffering and conflict. You can avoid conflict, but it only leads to unavoidable conflict. How they can do that and sleep at night is beyond my understanding.

All the “progressive” rhetoric against the war and against George Bush is killing our soldiers. It is empowering the enemy. Seeing the self-interest, stupidity and political posturing masquerading as patriotism and scholarly intellect turns my stomach.

It was reported recently that a study had been done that determined that the war in Iraq has made terrorism a bigger threat. If the idiot leftwingers could have been non-partisan and truly patriotic long enough to support our country through the hard times rather than turning tail and running when the going got tough, the war would be completely different.

Beth’s soldier son is my soldier nephew. I pray God will watch over each and every soldier and save them from our enemies from without and within.

I wrote before HERE and HERE about RT’s and my wedding on September 5th at McHugh Park outside of Anchorage, Alaska. We woke up that Tuesday morning and realized we had just a few hours before our flight home from Alaska. Our Plan A for our wedding hadn’t worked out, but we still had our Alaskan marriage license, and we didn’t want it to go to waste. We could have waited until we got home to get married, but we had planned on being married in Alaska, and we didn’t want to give up that idea. The resulting Plan B was much better than Plan A ever could have been.

RT got the Anchorage phone book and started making phone calls around 9:00 that morning. He found a minister who could do the ceremony that day, we made a mad dash to Wal-Mart and REI for clothes, and met the minister at 1:00, drove to the park, and the wedding occurred around 1:45. By 8:00 that evening, we were on the plane back to Nashville. It was a whirlwind, but it was truly perfect.

The minister who performed the ceremony was Dr. Michael Mitchell. I don’t recall everything that Michael said during the “sermon” part of the ceremony. However, one thing did stand out. He used 1 Corinthians 13 as the text, and as he quoted each characteristic of love, he gave examples.

When he came to the part, “Love does not take offense,” he said, “Resolve today not to let your mate offend you. Only you can control whether or not you feel offended.” Then he went on to say that whenever we start to feel offended or annoyed by our mates, we should immediately make ourselves think of the things we love about them.

I realize I’ve been married less than three weeks - so it’s still the honeymoon phase for me - even though RT and I were married for 28 years previously. However, that is good advice, and it’s the one thing from Michael’s sermon that has really stuck with me.

Do you remember recess? That carefree time of jumping rope, Red Rover, and simply playing? On rainy days we’d play jacks or checkers inside. I don’t remember a lot about the classes from my elementary school years. After all, it WAS a long time ago. However, I DO remember recess. It was a time to socialize, to play games and to exercise. Except I didn’t think about the fact that I was exercising. I was playing - chasing friends, being chased, swinging, sliding, playing tag. And we had a morning recess and an afternoon recess. The teachers would often sit in chairs underneath shade trees while the children played.

The Education Wonks writes about how recess is being shortened or sometimes even eliminated because of the drive to increase test scores.

According to the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, 100% of the nation’s children must pass standardized tests by 2014 or else.

School personnel alone are being held accountable for accomplishing that goal.

I believe that it’s highly likely that more schools will be curtailing recess in the years to come.

And that’s a real shame.

Jane at Cozy Reader reports on what the Atlanta City Schools now call “recess.”

According to this news report Osama Bin Laden is dead. If it’s true, it’s somewhat disappointing. Someone who was so evil and caused so much suffering to so many others should have had a much less kind death. But at least he wasn’t captured and given the opportunity to grandstand like Saddam has. As Bin Laden died and descended into eternity, imagine his surprise and shock when he saw - not the virgins he had imagined, but this:

ABC News has picked up the story, too. However, both sites got their report from Reuters - and we KNOW how reliable Reuters is - not.

h/t to Beth at Yeah Right, Whatever!

Others writing on Bin Laden’s reported death:
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Ace of Spades HQ
Gateway Pundit
Stop the ACLU
Dr. Sanity
All Things Beautiful
Panck’s Constant is sad about it.
Blue Star Chronicles provides a good round-up of OBL blogging.
Michelle Malkin

In perusing my site meter last night, I saw several hits from The LA Times. The LA Times? Why are people coming to my blog from there? So I clicked the link and found that the LA Times online had reprinted an entire post of mine - along with a typo (which I have since corrected on the post) - and with links to The Median Sib. It was on their schools/education page. For posterity, HERE’S the link to the article in The LA Times. It has only generated a couple dozen hits since yesterday. But still it’s nice to have a little publicity.