Visiting BrookGreen Gardens

Today we visited BrookGreen Gardens which are south of Murrells Inlet which is south of Myrtle Beach. Our tickets are good for 7 days so we hope to return to see what we missed this afternoon. The gardens were full of flowers, fountains, and statues and really quite interesting. Some of the statues were very intricate, full of detail, and just downright impressive.

One of the statues was of Samson wrestling a lion. What I noticed were the rippled muscles and then the lions law on Samson's arm trying to stop him from breaking his neck.

I was most excited, and then disappointed, in the Poetry Garden, which held a few written plaques of Kipling's poetry, very few statues, and not much else.

I did find the first few lines of William Cullen Bryant's poem "Thanatopsis."

When I can figure our how to upload pictures on my iPad into the blog, I will share!

Looking forward to a return trip to visit the zoo and take a boat ride through the Low Country.

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

I know Longfellow belongs in ENGL 222, but walking along the ocean tonight reminded me of two of his poems, my favorites of his actually.

In  "The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls" the speaker laments the fact that his footprints in the sand disappear when the tide rolls in.   He takes it one step further and expresses his sadness that all that he has accomplished in his life may be wiped out and not remembered, just like the footprints are washed away by the rolling waves.

I was feeling a little blue myself as we walked this evening.  Memories came flooding back at me of times when we visited Jekyll Island in Georgia and Indian Shores in Tampa with our daughters and had such fun being tossed around by the waves. As I looked out over the Atlantic, I could hear their voices and see them running back and forth as the waves came crashing to shore.  I remember the sand sculptures they crafted and the drawings they made in the soft sand, all of which were erased by the tide the next day. I felt sad that our little "footprints" had been erased.

However, my husband reminded me that life goes on, that the girls are grown up, graduated from college, married, home owners, employed, and have families.  They live close enough for us to see frequently.  Now we will be able to watch Landon and the new little grandchild running around on the beach, chasing the waves, picking us seashells.  The footprints will endure in the form of our family and the memories we share and will continue to make.

The tide does rise, and the tide does fall, but my "Psalm of Life" continues to endure....through Megan and Hilary and Landon and Baby Scott.

Home of Carl Sandburg

As my husband and I were driving through North Carolina today, we spotted an exit for the Carl Sandburg home.  Hmm....one of our poets!

Normally I would have wanted Gary to switch lanes quickly and careen off the interstate to the exit and search for the house, but I decided not to force him to endure a tour of an author's home this early in the vacation!

Tonight as we are sitting in a hotel room in Columbia, SC, I decided to do a little searching and found some pictures on Google Images and also this blog that was an interesting read.

http://relaxedhikingnc.blogspot.com/2011/04/carl-sandburg-home-nhs-4232011.html

You might enjoy checking it out too.

Sandburg's poems are really some of the best for me. I particularly enjoy the "Chicago" --'city of the big shoulders.... '  I was very excited when we were watching an episode of  MASH years ago (some of you have no idea what the program even was, I know!) and Hawkeye ordered ribs and sauce from Adam's Rib in Chicago (through Radar or Klinger, I forget which one), and started to recite Sandburg's poem.  Maybe I really like that poem too because we live so close to Chicago, we have been there several times, and I just like the Windy City.

Another favorite of mine is "Fog."  Short. Simple. To the point.   

Anyway.....on this trip I know we will spend some time in Charleston. Gary really wants to see Fort Sumpter and some ships that are docked closeby. 

I think that my touring a fort and ships (even if I am a Navy vet daughter) would merit a stop at an author's home on the return trip. Don't you agree?  I will keep you posted.

Reader's Digest

Ever since I graduated from college many moons ago, my parents have given me a subscription to the Reader's Digest.  One year at Christmas somehow there was a double subscription so now the expiration date is Dec 2014.  Nearly two more years of the Digest!

Dad always loved reading the Digest, as did my grandfather.  They used to discuss various articles they had read.  Me?  I started by reading what I thought were the most interesting things:  Campus Comedy, Life in These United States, All in a Day's Work, Humor in Uniform.  Then I discovered the Word Power, and I always tried to get a top score as I tried to deciper the definitions of the words, using the roots and suffixes and prefixes. 

The articles never really seemed to interest me until well into my adult life, then I discovered various human interest stories that seemed to broaden my horizons in some way. Heroes in Real Life, stories about celebrities, just everyday people with everyday problems and solutions---all of those piqued my interest.

Recently I discovered that I could have my subscription to RD converted from the copy we received in the mail to a digital format which would pop in my Newstand on my iPad.  Wow.  Cool.  I went through the process to change my subscription, the little Reader's Digest cover appeared in my Newstand, and I was all set.  Yeah! 

Tonight when I came home from Logansport, what was on the dining room table with the mail but a copy of the Reader's Digest!  My husband said "You changed that to the digital version, didn't you?"  I did. We still have the paper copy.  Oh well...maybe it will appear on a table in the Student Commons.  Maybe I will take it along to a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning and forget to take  it with me when I leave.

I am sure someone else will get a little bit of enjoyment from reading Campus Comedy or All in a Day's Work or feel a little proud to score the big numbers on Word Power!

Reading the Newspaper

We missed church this morning (overslept, then graded the Pod), so after breakfast (my husband fixed blueberry muffins--he is such a sweet guy!), my husband went to town (Francesville) to pick up a newspaper, which we usually stop for after church.  Long sentence--whew! 

Now that the Pod is graded, the Midterm Blog scoresheets are ready and marked for the Blog Creation points, and I have checked Messages for the other four classes, I think I will take some time to read the newspaper.

Newspapers....

About 10 years ago I was invited to a Newspapers in Education seminar at the Lafayette Journal and Courier office.  It was a quick seminar--maybe 3 hours one summer morning.  At the end the leader asked us to complete a questionnaire, then add the number of copies of the paper we would like to receive for our students to use and how often we would like to receive them---free.  FREE?   Free.

The highest number of students I had in my classes during the year was 25, so I asked if I could order that number.  Yes. I asked if I could have papers delivered every day that we were in session. Yes. 

My heart started beating faster.  Twenty-five newspapers delivered to my door each day of the school year ---FREE!  Yes, FREE!

What a great opportunity for me and for my students!

I was so excited!!!!

Why the excitement?

During the seminar, the leader shared a story about a student who struggled to read.  He froze every time a teacher even mentioned a reading assignment because he couldn't process the words and larger paragraphs.  He had always seen one teacher reading a newspaper each morning.  He asked one day if he could look at it.  He found that he could read the newspaper much easier than he could read a textbook, so he asked the teacher to help him learn how to read better with the newspaper.  Finally he asked if he could take the newspaper with him.  You see, other students made fun of him because of his difficulty with reading. But when he was carrying the newspaper, whipping it out during study time or before classes began, they saw him differently. His self-esteem inproved. Plus he was learning many things by reading the paper.

I had so many students who would sit and NOT read the lit selections when I gave them time to do this.  Maybe if they became more comfortable reading the newspaper each day, they would get into the mode of reading the short stories too.  (It worked. They did.)

Next I saw many teaching opportunities.  With our 90 minute class periods, we were encouraged to include a variety of activities to keep the students focused and to fill the time period. Newspapers were a great way to start the class (while I was taking attendance or talking with students who had been absent about make up work), or a way to fill the time after a test quietly while others were finishing, or to fill the time when we finished a lesson early or returned after a convocation or pep session and there wasn't time to teach something new.

Also there were so many skills and techniques that I could share with my students using newspapers.  Read the article and summarize.  Read the article and express your opinion in your journal.  Look for a job or a new car or a house in the Classifieds. Log the information in your journal and analyze the type of information included.  Read an obituary, then write a similar one for a character in the short story we just read.  Learn how to read a weather map, a box score (that was a fun one!), the stock market charts.  Track the story line in a comic strip for 10 days (then we focused on the history of the comic, the creator and the illustrator in a research paper).   Have a scavenger hunt (that was fun!) to find certain bits of information in the paper (of course I had to create that in the morning before school started if I had some time in my room with no interruptions).  We looked at national news, state news, local news, sports, advice columns, classifieds, editorials and letters to the editor (we wrote a few of those also and sent them off and were even published).  It was a great opportunity for learning!  Plus the US History teacher said he noticed an upswing of participation in Current Events discussion because the students were reading the newspapers each day.

At the end of the day, the newspapers went on a chair in the hallway outside my door, free to anyone who wanted to pick up one.  They usually disappeared quickly.  One student always stopped by to take one home to share with his parents.  Another always asked me to save one for him since he was in a morning class and didn't want them all to disappear before he could return after school.  Nice to know that many students besides the ones in my classroom were benefitting from the free newspapers.

There were only two downfalls to this  wonderful opportunity.  One was a comment from a disgruntled student who really disliked English and me.  He wrote in his cover letter for his final portfolio that reading the newspapers and the activities that we did with them were only because I was lazy and didn't want to teach what I was supposed to be teaching.  Ok..those of you who know me and those who have had me as an instructor are probably laughing at that statement. As my daughters often say "Do you not know me?" Come on.

The other was with my replacement when I felt to take the position at Ivy Tech.  I had not planned to leave, so I had already ordered my set of newspaper for the coming year.  The new teacher saw no point to having all of those newspapers delivered each day.  Often she left them at the curb rather than having them picked up and delivered to her room.  If they did make it to her room, she often left them in the packages and threw them in the trash at the end of the day.  Since my son-in-law's brother was in her class, he gave me the low-down on the status of the newspapers.

I do know that reading the newspapers have had a continued effect on several of my students.  My son-in-law and daughter were both in my junior Lit classes when we were reading newspapers.  They both enjoy reading the newspaper each day.  Several of my former students who are now FB friends have mentioned that they have continued reading the newspaper, sometimes online, each day.

Newspaper withdrawal seemed to hit me at the end of the year for those four years I used newspapers in the classroom. Since we live in the Black Hole of Pulaski County where no daily newspapers are delivered, I really enjoyed the daily dose of news.  Now I look at the jconline version.  Just not the same as flipping through the pages, however. 

With that....I think I will close, fix a new cup of tea, and read the Sunday paper.

No Time to Read!

"Yes, Mrs. S.  We too have 'no time to read' and you are overloading us with reading assignments!"

I understand.  My whining of 'oh no...I have no time to read!' comes from the overload of grading I have been experiencing the last few weeks--plus other things.

It seems like every one of the five classes has had urgent demands lately.

Basketball season is FINALLY over, but with the sectional win came a Saturday spent in a gym watching the regional game.  Now that my husband is not at practice every day and running off to games several times a week, he is home waiting for me to arrive so we can go someplace or do something.  Not a bad thing, but not a good thing when I have other things, like grading, to do.

Family obligations interrupt my grading routine also.  Since our son-in-law had back surgery last week, we had Landon for a few days, then I fixed dinner for them one night, and we have stopped by (which means a 45 minute drive each way) to help out while he is recovering.  Our other daughter and son-in-law are expecting our second grandchild in August, so she has been very talkative about plans for the nursery (have to visit them to see the actual room--another 15 minutes beyond the other daughter's house). Then there are the in-laws, who called while we were in Pyrmont to tell us the cows were out so we had to drive nearly an hour to their house to discover the cows weren't really out; instead, we think my mother-in-law saw some deer wandering around in the yard in the dark.  Just things like that, which I know all of my students experience, but for some reason many students think their instructors don't experience these 'life events.'

Back to my 'topic of the day':  No Time to Read!

Reading for pleasure has been at the bottom of my to-do list.  Even my morning time for the Online Bible Study has been interrupted.  Many experts have urged us to set aside a time and never stray from it for morning devotions or just pleasure reading time. Good for the soul.  Good for the body (relaxation before sleep).  Just good.

But how to do that when so many other things are pulling at one's time?  No, the online Ad Analysis papers are not completely finished because I was reading a novel.  Doesn't work for me,  and it doesn't work for my students.

This morning I am checking off the list:

Pay bills.  Check!
Wrap baby shower gift.  Check!
Check messages for all five classes.  Check!
Update blog addresses.  Check!
Add blog post for today.  Check!

Yet to do:

Finish grading ENGL 112 online Ad Analysis papers
Grade ENGL 112 online Annotated Bibs
Grade RBofC Pod submissions
Go to baby shower
Meet one daughter, son-in-law, and grandson for fish fry in Francesville
Return home and finish whatever I didn't finish from the first three items on the list

To remember:  Spring Break is coming!  Time to read!

Wilma the Waitress and the Waffle House

One of my former high school students and a classmate of My Daughter the Librarian has written and published a children's book.  It hit the bookstores and Amazon last week.

Amber was interviewed by WLFI in Lafayette and the link below shows that interview.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AYoMzqQnng&list=UUyHX5j6cvdDlDFarayCObRA


I can't be more proud of her and her success.  She hopes to continue the saga of Wilma the Waitress and has ideas jotted down for more books in the series.

If you have small children, nieces or nephews, grandchildren, or friends with children, consider selecting this book as a gift for an Easter basket, a birthday, or just because.