Category Archives: Teaching

Vacation and the Rest of Summer

Posted on 1 July 2010 | 2 comments

I just learned that I start teaching at Burris on August 18th, which means I have approximately six and half weeks (not counting the week I will be gone to Nebraska and Minnesota) left to accomplish all of this:

  • finish painting the outside of the house (the floor will wait until next summer)
  • finish a chapter of my dissertation (or at least get a really good start on it)
  • work 20 hours each week in the IEI
  • start training for the marathon in November (once school starts add lifting weights and swimming)
  • go through all of the Write On! Featherweight stuff and get it together
  • plan for the entire school year next year (two seventh-grade, two eighth-grade, and one tenth-grade year curriculum plans)
  • play some disc golf, basketball, and possibly soccer (can someone teach me to play soccer?

Here is how I plan to accomplish all of it:

  • House painting—WEEKENDS
  • Dissertation—AFTERNOONS
  • IEI—MORNINGS
  • Running—EARLY MORNING before dog walking, must get up by 6
  • Write On! and Planning for School—EVENINGS
  • Disc Golf, etc.—IN BETWEENS

I am sure there is something I am forgetting. I am not sure I can accomplish all of this in 6 weeks. Say some prayers, breathe some for me.

*

My family (Dad, Mom, Adam, and I) just got back from vacation in Cincinnati. Cincannati is like dissecting owl pellets: you have to wait through the disgusting stuff to find the gems inside it. The majority of the city of Cincinnati, not the suburbs or the outskirts, looks like the worst neighborhood of most other big cities. We wanted to walk to Findlay Market, but the shuttle driver at our hotel said he’d better drive us because the neighborhood was so bad. I agree. Usually, I am unmoved by deteriorating neighborhoods. I am not afraid of loitering people, or run-down buildings, but this area of Cincy was more than just derelict. People had looks in their eyes that were so down-trodden, so forlorn, that I was afraid of them. They looked the way Cormac McCarthy describes people in The Road. That desperate. That carnal. While we were there, each morning the news reported several shootings within a couple of miles of the hotel. My dad couldn’t sleep because of all the sirens, and there were literally 50 or so homeless people sleeping on the grounds of the library across the street.

However, much like other big cities, if we stayed South of our hotel, toward the Great American Ball Park, there were no worries. In fact, there were multiple tourist attractions and affluent shopping malls, complete with Brazilian steakhouses and upscale clothing stores. I wish I could rest one day from thinking about culture. I wish the injustices and inequalities weren’t so blatant to me. Sometimes I just want to go back to not recognizing the painfully obvious way our society is stratified. I can’t though, so my heart hurts. I have a hard time having fun, but I have a hard time identifying how I can do anything to help a system so big and so broken. One of my constant prayers is for God to show me my role in helping to fix our very broken world.

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Also, I found this amazing graphic to help me plan meals while I am training.

The only hard part about this pyramid is drinking enough water. Our water tastes pretty gross, and even though I know algae isn’t bad for me, I still don’t want to drink water that tastes like organic matter. Ew.

*

Food: banana, juice, sweet potato waffles with strawberries, blueberries, and a touch of syrup, carrots, cherries, tortilla with faux peanut butter and strawberry jalapeno jelly, a few Thai chips, chocolate soy milk, salad, guacamole and salsa and chips, cauliflower, blackberries, peach, veggie burger with bread,

Exercise: walked the dogs,

2 Comments

Posted in Disc golf, Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, IEI, Running, School, Swimming, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Sweet Potato Waffles and Some Other Things

Posted on 27 June 2010 | 5 comments

This morning I made vegan sweet potato waffles from an excellent recipe I found here. The only things I changed were substituting apple sauce for the oil and upping the amount of clove and nutmeg, and the waffles turned out very well. Frequently, I change quite a bit from someone else’s recipe. This one really worked as it is, but I always under-cook the first waffle every time. I forget that I am supposed to wait for the little red light to go off before removing the waffle. Once I got the hang of the machinery, I made some very nice waffles, which paired nicely with my favorite Starbucks coffee, Africa Kitamu.

Thinking about coffee brings me to another point: I need to cut back on my extraneous spending again. I was at the point during last school year where I was going to Starbucks several times each week. I wouldn’t mind spending so much money if it was going to an independent coffee shop, but I don’t go them regularly. I should. I need to remember to focus on the mom-and-pop places instead of using big, national chains. I just think it’s good karma to support people who are trying to make a living in a honest, controlled way. I realize that most big companies started with this same ambition, but companies like SBUX have lost site of their original vision and don’t pay as much attention to the little guys as the smaller businesses. For example, my friend Kellie and I went to a local smoothie place and didn’t realize they only took cash, so the woman let us have our smoothies and pay her later. All of this after they were already closed; we didn’t see the sign on the door that said 4PM.

Right now, I am sitting here waiting to go over to the 505 for Izzy’s birthday party. She is 3-years old today, and it doesn’t really seem possible. How does time go so quickly? I always used to think people were crazy when they talked about their kids growing up so fast. Izzy’s not even my kid and I am amazed at quickly three years has gone by! Anyway, Becs and I got here these really cool little books about four famous artists, and we were going to get her some art supplies and stuff to go with them. However, my mom got her art supplies and things like that, so we are just going to put our gifts together, or at least they will seem like they go together. My brother’s gift is the best, though. He got her this fantastic lady bug laboratory that comes with lady bug larvae that she has to feed and watch grow. It is really a fantastic present. I hope she likes it.

I am hoping that once I get back form vacation, I can make some headway on this dissertation. I also need to make some headway on the house painting. I really want to get it finished this summer, but I also need to plan for next school year. Those are the big three things that have to get finished this summer, along with my work for the IEI and training for this marathon. I have to keep telling myself, “You can do it!”

*

Food: banana, sweet potato waffle with Earth balance and pure Maple syrup, juice, coffee, baby bagel with faux-peanut butter, ten baby carrots, grape Kool-Aid slush, whatever I eat at Izzy’s party

Exercise: walked the dogs, bike ride to the 505 and back

5 Comments

Posted in Coffee, Family, Food, Goals, IEI, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

Blah. And some more blah.

Posted on 17 June 2010 | 2 comments

I need to start writing here consistently, and I need to finish the two book reviews that I started when I was in Florida. I need to paint the house. I need to finish the floors. I need to plan for next years’ classes. I need to work on my dissertation and meet with Debbie tomorrow. I need to spend time running. I need to write my presentation for the PCA conference in October. I need to revise a couple of essays and send them out to try to get them published. I need to give time to my friends and family. It’s slightly overwhelming, and all of this in a summer that I thought might be relaxed. I need to not be so overwhelmed by all of my activities, commitments, and self-assigned bullshit.

But, first, I need to finish these end of course assessments for the IEI at Ball State, which is where I have a summer assistantship.I am having a hard time getting motivated because it’s a bit intimidating to make assessments for courses you’ve never taught and probably never will teach, though I’d love to teach in the IEI. I think it would be very satisfying. As for my summer work, it’s different. It’s challenging. It’s fulfilling.

It’s different because I have never considered how to teach a language in a very short amount of time to someone who doesn’t speak it, much less if that person is beginning college or graduate school, which I think are very different considerations. I am not sure that it is as important to teach a graduate student how to keep a daily planner as it is to teach the same skill to a 19-year-old college freshman. All college freshman should have to take a study skills class, regardless of their ability to speak English or not.

It’s challenging because I have some very definite ideas about what students should know when they enter an English 103 or 104 classroom, and my ideas don’t necessarily jive with what the IEI instructors can accomplish in their seven or eight courses, which I believe are taught in seven weeks each. I could be wrong. Anyway, the classes go from fundamental (or survival) through communicative to academic. My task for this week is to design reading assessments for each course to test the learning outcomes for each class. This task is challenging when I have only learning outcomes, and no real grasp on or feel for the students. I said today when I was talking to the director of the IEI that this is challenging for me because I view language acquisition to be a much more organic process than academia views it to be. Think about how you learned language. Did you ever take an end of course assessment? Probably not, but then again, you weren’t trying to acquire a language in a few short months; you had years to do it.

Finally, it’s fulfilling because the end result is that people are equipped with one more skill that will make their lives in the US a little easier. I can imagine nothing more intimidating than being in a new culture without having command of the language of that culture. I by no means believe that all Americans should be required to speak English; we are far too diverse of a culture to require that. I do, however, believe that going to school at an American institution requires that you be able to speak, read, listen to, and write the predominant language of that institution and to be able to do it well. Particularly, the humanities require this. I am still trying to decide if getting a science, math, or another non-language-intensive degree should require a command of English, since we are in the US (I suppose the predominant language at some American universities is Spanish, Portuguese, or French?). I am leaning toward no, but it’s up for debate. At any rate, this summer work is fulfilling, too, because it’s forcing me to have to reconsider all those things I think about language. And, I am learning new things every day. Very good.

*

I am at a point where I just want to lose weight, which makes me a very bad fat studies scholar. I love food too much. I love good healthy vegan cooking way too much. I could seriously eat all day long, but then I’d have to run all day long. And my foot’s been really funky, so I haven’t run at all, only walked. And not much.

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I want to write a list poem about freedom, or imprisonment as outlined in Sarah’s post. I just need time.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, IEI, Pedagogy, Reading, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing

Sunday, June 13

Posted on 8 June 2010 | 3 comments

Sunday, June 13 will mark one year of taking life seriously. It will be one year ago on Saturday, June 13 that I weighed myself when I got home from family vacation and decided it was time to do something about my lifestyle. I think the weight, a magical 256.4 pounds on my brother’s bathroom scale, was just the quantitative evidence of the feelings I had been having for quite some time. I have never been one to gauge my health or my happiness by a number on a scale, but I had been feeling particularly unhappy with myself for quite some time. This feeling of unrest had more to do with my inability to find clothes that fit, my disappointment with my level of physical fitness, and my general feeling of blah. I knew I needed to make some changes, so I said to myself that my changes were not going to be about losing weight, but about getting to a place in which I felt good both physically and emotionally. On Sunday June 14, 2009, I started running. Actually, what I started doing was walking. Slowly. I started by running 30 seconds to a minute and walking a minute in between each “run.” I built up to “running” 13.1 miles on May 8, 2010. I didn’t get the time I wanted, but I finished, and as a side perk my blood pressure is lower than normal, I’ve lost 40 pounds, and I feel a million times better.

I suppose since it’s been a year, it’s time to set some new goals. One goal I had already set for this year was to run a marathon the fall after my 36th birthday. I am maintaining it as a goal by signing up for one on November 6. Here is my list of goals for this year from June 13, 2010 to June 12, 2011 (they are in no particular order):

  1. Finish the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 6. Running, walking, or crawling.
  2. Shave my head on June 13 and on the 13th of every month all year long.
  3. Contemplate things outside of myself. Cultivate spiritual wholeness.
  4. Have 75% or more of my students grow one academic year’s worth of growth during the school year.
  5. Finish two chapters of my dissertation.
  6. Run 1000 miles (3 miles per day). Run and walk a combination of 3000 miles (10 miles per day).
  7. Go vegan. Stay at least lacto-vegetarian.
  8. Learn to say only what is necessary. Listen more than talk.
  9. Read one new book and one magazine from cover to cover each week. Follow the news, in print.
  10. Finish painting the outside of the house.

3 Comments

Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Food, Goals, Grace, New Year, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

This Is Why I Teach. Fat Marathon Runner.

Posted on 28 April 2010 | 1 comment

I had an excellent conversation—and it really was a conversation—with one of my high school students yesterday. He wanted to know about my use of Facebook and about my decision to temporarily deactivate my account. I am friends with him on Facebook and he has been involved in (or witness to) several heated arguments on my wall.

He wanted to know if that had anything to do with my decision to cancel Facebook. Yes. And I was spending way too much time on Facebook.

He wanted to know if I thought that it was someone’s right to write whatever they wanted on my wall. Yes, but I would enjoy it very much if everyone maintained an attitude of respect and would not call each other names.

He said he wondered if the fact that the wall is technically my property changed my opinion about that. Is it like defacing my property, he wondered, and would I ever delete something that someone put on my wall? No, I think of it as public space and people can say whatever they want if they say it respectfully. The only time I would delete it is if people were mean to each other, because I think mean people suck.

He then asked me if I thought Facebook should add more regulations to help monitor the things that people write on each other’s walls. Poor guy, he didn’t know he just unleashed a beast. Of course there shouldn’t be more regulations. There should never be more regulations; people simply need to learn how to monitor themselves and their behavior in all social situations. All Facebook has done is enable people to be cyberly passive-aggressive in a way that is more exaggerated than they can (or will) be face to face. For some reason, the anonymity of the screen allows us to treat people in ways that we would NEVER treat each other face to face. It’s kind of like warfare: if you don’t have to face the person you kill, the killing is easier, more remote, less personal. Do we still suffer from it? Yes. Do we recognize the suffering as readily? No, I don’t think so, because it is masked by the remote proximity of our interaction. I think the word anonymous may be too strong for what the cyber-relations provide us. Shielded. Blurred. Obfuscated. Those may be better descriptors for our online identities. At the very least, they don’t entirely match our fleshly personas. But I digress from the question. No, no more regulations. I am regulated to death in this earthly body. I don’t want my cyber body to be regulated, too.

He, of course, had a much more active part in this discourse than what I suggest here, because I said it was a conversation, not simply me pontificating. I don’t want to put words in his mouth.

*

On the running front, it is nine days until the half-marathon, and I think I am ready. I chose not to run today because I don’t want to re-injure my Achilles (heel) tendon, so I walked from my house to Starbucks where I am happily typing this entry while listening to the guy in the next chair noisily chomp, slosh his pastry and latte. I have seriously never heard someone smack lips, slide tongue like this wild maned, strangely-clad man. Uncombed, possibly for days, hair, maroon running pants, white t-shirt under inside-out grey sweatshirt, and brown leather dressy sandals. He waits tables at Johnny Carino’s. Or he did. I remember his face. Possibly in order to amplify the eating noises, he has his computer resting on the table between us and he is facing me, so that I can smell his cinnamony pastry as he chews. Apparently, we are close. And, apparently, he has never read Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” or he would know to “always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach.” Because you’re turning my stomach, Cuz.

Anyway, I walked some of the three miles barefoot and relished the coming summer. Even though there was frost on the grass, the pavement and sidewalks were warm from the sun. When my feet got tired of the grind of the asphalt, I begrudgingly put on my flip-flops and kept going. My legs and feet were glad for the walk, and I imagine that they look forward to a nice long, slow run tomorrow. I know I look forward to the eight miles on Saturday, hoping that my mental longing for peace and rhythmic breathing will result in the physical cooperation of my limbs and lungs. Ah. I rejoice in the clarity and the solitude of the run.

Yesterday, I contemplated making a special t-shirt to wear when I run the marathon in November. It will say, “I am morbidly obese and running a marathon.” I thought it might make a good point about BMI, and the way those numbers are used to keep people down. Fat people. Fat, running people like me. Although, wearing a shirt like that is a bit like tempting fate. What if I have a massive heart-attack around mile 20? What will people say? Did you see that fat chick drop over? No wonder she died. Why would a morbidly obese 36-year-old try to run a marathon? How could she have the nerve to wear a t-shirt that tempted fate? You see, these are the voices that already go through my head, so I contemplate the shirt. Ironically, it names my fears. Confronts them head on.

Cacomorphobia: the irrational fear of fat people.

Caligynephobia: the irrational fear of beautiful women.

Maybe my shirt should say, “Do you suffer from cacomorphobia and caligynephobia? Then you better watch out, ’cause Mama’s comin’!”

1 Comment

Posted in Coffee, Fat, Feminism, Relationships, Running, School, Teaching