Reasons not to date me

• I have an unhealthy obsession with kitchen gadgetry.

• Even after seven solid attempts over the last six years, I have yet to finish Anna Karenina.

• I'm a married woman.

• I gave you no warning that I am retiring this blog.
  

The Intern and I have tied the knot! Hoorah!

~ g. mango is looking forward to gardening, lawn bowling, knitting and other relaxing activities enjoyed by retired people everywhere.

Me and Jesus

Much like Jesus, I have risen from the depths of hell. Unlike Jesus, it's just temporary, and starting Monday, I'll be joining in the chorus of gnashing teeth. And by that I mean, I'll be back at school all day, every day. And every night I will be buried under an almost unbearable amount of paper-writing, chapter-reading, and reflection-writing.

I know, it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it is true! I am taking the equivalent of 7 courses right now. In French, no less! Sometimes it feels like it's going to be the end of me. But by some miracle (or fit of denial), I think I have done enough work this week to actually afford myself at least a partial weekend. Hoorah!

I went to see The Very Best last night with friends as a reward for my diligence. And today I have no intention of getting dressed. The little pleasures in life seem so great when faced with gnashing of teeth.

Redefining Productivity

Oh, April, where have you gone?

We have one month of vacation in my teacher education program and it is April. I set off to do a whole host of things this month and so far am only about half-way through. Luckily, I am a tenacious kind of girl, so I don't see why I can't polish off the rest of the list in the next nine days.

Here is a short (read: long) photo re-cap of some of the things that April brought with her.

We went to Oregon.

I learned to play the ukulele. Sort of.

A chicken was roasted.

A small vat of ice cream was made and consumed.

Some poor animal was dried out and bottled.

Some apples were stripped of their dignity and viciously sliced into quarter-inch rounds.

The aforementioned apples met the same fate as the unfortunate animal.

And that's what the first two-thirds of my vacation yielded. More culinary and geographic adventures to come, I suspect. But one can never know.

~g.mango chooses vacation for her vocation!

March Break

Hello, Internets. I've missed you.

When last we spoke I was flustered and frustrated, and neck-deep in the crappy part of student-teaching. But almost immediately after I had to write things in boxes and promise to over-plan every minute of my work day, the most wonderful thing happened: the higher ups okayed my plans and then left me alone.

So I promptly forgot all about the lesson plans and unit plans. And I started teaching. Woo! Teaching is so much more fun than planning to teach. Watching kids build yurts with their bodies, or exploring topography by making a class map of India (again with their bodies) is so much more exciting and fulfilling than writing about why it might be exciting and educational.

So, yeah, I'm doing just fine. Kicking ass and taking names later.

It also doesn't hurt that I have an excellent mentor teacher who is very encouraging and freely shares ideas and resources.

Now I just have to finish the last two weeks of March and I am ready for the world! Sort of.

~g. mango is getting an A+ for affort

Flunking out of teacher's college

I don't think I am cut out to be an education student. There are times when I really do enjoy the act of teaching, learning, hunkering down with students, getting to know them, etc. But before I get to any of that good stuff there is the impossible task of planning units and lessons. Is there a real teacher out there somewhere who actually does this shit?

I'm all for having a plan. But, as you well know, I cannot be caged. And all of these god-forsaken unit and lesson plans have to be typed up, categorized, and fit into horrible little boxes on my computer screen. And as cliché as it sounds, I really do not think inside the box.

We have learned (in the very few classes that they give us at the university before they fling us into the unknown) that different students learn different ways and that, as teachers, we should not only respect but embrace the diversity of learning styles in our classroom. We learn to make room for the introspective types by letting them write a journal instead of an essay. We learn to make room for the musical types by letting them rap the passage of an apple through the digestive system instead of taking a test. We learn to let the dramatic types act out the archetypes of Jungian psychology instead of filling in a worksheet. We learn to stop privileging text exclusively and start embracing art, movement, music and nature.

And then they make us write. In little boxes. And put ourselves and our big ideas in little boxes.

But I, as you well know, cannot be caged.

~g. mango don't want no education