Books

Let me once enter a bookstore and I am lost for hours... So is a substantial portion of my wallet. 

Henry Ward Beecher once said, "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" 

This is when I'm so thankful for used bookstores! They are the absolute best thing ever!!! I feel like a kid in a candy shop, to use a sorely overused idiom.  

Anyhow, I came back from town this afternoon with a stack of goodies to read! We'll see how long I can make them last... 

Inspiration

Last night I had a streak of culinary inspiration when I found this recipe for a vegan pumpkin cheesecake on Post Punk Kitchen.  I kinda fudged with the recipe though, seeing how much I LOVE a tradition pie crust. I know that's not what you'd normally put a cheesecake in, but it ended up tasting more pumpkiny anyhow. Oh was it ever so yummy! Couldn't wait to let it cool for three hours in the fridge, so we dug in after about 20 minutes. lol The rest we left in the fridge to cool overnight. I'll see which way I like it better. ;)

Baking always takes soooo long...

So does cooling...

Eating, on the other hand, is far too short!

And a picture of our second snow this winter! It's mostly melted now.

It's HERE!!!

It snuck in softly last night while we were all tucked snugly in our warm beds... It cloaked everything with its gentle, white beauty and then departed.

I awoke this morning to a peaceful anticipation... Something was different... something had changed during the night. There was a white glow sifting through my window blinds as the morning sun began to reveal the surprise...

The first winter's SNOW!!! 

Student?... Teacher?...

Today in the valley I went searching for two of my students who had gone to use the bathroom and not returned after more than a sufficient amount of time had past.

I walked by some park employees who had been working outside the visitor center all morning, and who my students and I had passed by a couple times already. I found my two students chatting in the bathroom, asked them to return sometime in the near near future, and headed back to the rest of my group.

As I passed the park employees yet another time, one of them called out to me, "Hey, you lose your class?" I chuckled and said, "Well, sort of. I found them chatting in the bathroom though."

It wasn't till a few hours after the incident that the thought dawned on me, "Wait, did he think I was a student??? My students are a group of 8th graders... some of them taller than me... and we did have the class teacher and a parent along... He really wanted to know if I'd lost my class!"

Oh the joys of teaching... I love it! And that's a good questions for today... Did I lose my class? No! I was able to keep their attention nearly the entire day! Yes, today held much more success than yesterday. All in all I'd say we walked about the same distance as we did yesterday (5-6 miles?), but the kids really didn't have a clue. With the multiple, unnamed destinations the kids really couldn't be distracted by what was happening next or where we were headed... because I never told them! lol

The day was packed with one exciting revelation after the next. Little did they know all the things we would do, the places we would visit, and the miles we would walk... Inspiration Point, Bridal Veil Falls, Lower Yosemite Falls, "The Spirit of Yosemite" movie, the Yosemite Visitor Center, the Ahwahneechee village, the Yosemite Museum, the Yosemite Cemetery, the Village Store, the meadows, and finally supper at the Swinging Bridge.

 It also helped that I remembered to assign my three personal assistants - the Toast Master (this student reminds us all to drink water throughout the day), the Time Keeper (this student is responsible for answering the ever present question, "What time is it?") , and the Questions and Complaints Department (this student fields all questions and complaints, unless the question regards the topic of study... then I'll answer those). This setup is really quite effective in diffusing most trivial questions and complaints... and keeping us hydrated. ;)

So I'd say today was a great success. Besides, how can you go wrong with a day in the Valley?! This is Yosemite after all...

A thing or two

This week's Outdoor school group is mostly inner-city kids. I had my first clue as to how the week would progress when on day one a guy balked at kneeling in the gravel for fear of dirtying his jeans. Uh... outdoor school... outdoor school... in my mind this conjures certain images of feet wading through streams, knees down on the ground, hands sifting through dirt, and yes, jeans potentially getting dirty. But this concept was somewhat foreign to our lively bunch of twelve 8th graders... Yes, this week was going to be fun.

Today our topic of study was trees. We drove to Mariposa Grove for some awesome tree encounters, (mainly Giant Sequoias). Our trail of choice was a loop somewhere between 5 and 6 miles... give or take a few. I decided to use the same approach with this group that I had used with the previous weeks group - one continuous hike to Wawona Point and back with short informational/educational stops along the way and lunch at the point.   

I now know that the continuous hike plan is not the most effective for this type of group. Sweat pours, feet ach, blisters form, shoulders stoop, moral drops, and before you know it your whole crew is ready to mutiny! Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but the Point was definitely too far away to have as the only "real" destination for this bunch. Yes, there were "sub-stops" along the way, but they weren't permanent enough destinations. I could tell the general mindset was, "Get to the Point, eat lunch, get back to the vans." The destination had become a distraction rather than the motivation I had hoped it would be.

Tomorrow we'll be taking the "multiple destination" educational approach. We will have no final destination to act as a distraction all day long. Instead, we'll have a variety of destinations that go unnamed until arrived at. I'm anticipating that this will dispel most complaints and keep attention focused on the experience at hand. We'll see how it goes.       
 
This whole education thing is definitely a learning experience... hopefully the kids are taking away a thing or two as well. ;)