Today my legs felt like they'd gotten a workout yesterday, so I came home today and stood again. I got Tuesday - Friday's lessons written, all standing. Tomorrow, I won't be home until very late, but I'll try to stand as much as possible where I am. A funny side note was that I noticed today how much the kids want to sit. They don't mind standing to play at recess for the most part, but if I ask them to stand for any length of time (like for the pledge ;) ) they start tugging at their chairs like the period of time is endless.

I have been reading a lot lately about how much healthier it is to stand while you work. As a teacher, most of my day has been spent standing, but when I get home (especially due to grad school), I'm a slave to my computer and desk and consequently the desk chair. Working on projects, papers, research, etc. means way to much sitting and I've noticed pains in places that I don't normally get them - like my lower back and hips. So, I pretty much cleaned off my desk (left my netbook because it gets moved everywhere anyway) and moved my main laptop and the second screen to a higher surface. The workspace is much smaller which will also take some getting used to, but this doesn't have to be a permanent fix - just long enough to see what I think about it. A couple of the articles I read said that the first week was the hardest.That does seem reasonable. Articles are easy enough to find, but here is a NY Times piece that is a nice summary.

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OK, one of my professional goals this year has been to add authentic (and objective appropriate) international math connections to my lessons. So here are some of my attempts: Buying fractional parts of villas and jets. World oil reserves - places and oil types. Polygons in geography. We are specifically focusing on other continents. Comparison of square mileage of USA states to European countries. Water conservation efforts world wide and why they are important. Comparison of gas prices gallons here to liter in Canada. Conversion of real-time temperatures in Australia (I know a guy there) to F. Conversion of mountain heights from Km to Mi. This is just a few of the things I've broached with the kids. It's late and I just can't come up with an exhaustive list right now. It's been thought provoking experience for them and has stretched me. So why do we need to have these conversations? When asked how a villa or jet could have fractional pieces. Every class decided it was

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Ron and I go to most of the men's basketball games and have for mmmmm about the last 15 or 16 years. There wasn't a real student section when Dave Odom was there, but Skip Prosser changed that and added the "sixth man,"  WFU students behind the band. Tie-Die nation! woo hoo. I hate the shirts but they do stand out. They also stand out in their absence. Last night was the most pitiful attendance in the student section I remember seeing when school was in session. Please tell me what was going on that kept the student section vacated except for the band and a couple of handfuls of students?  It's not a stellar year for WFU men's basketball, but there have been others that were pretty bad and still the student section was full.

This looks interesting. If I wasn't so busy I'm cross-eyed half the time, I'd look into it. Actually, I won't always be so busy, so maybe next year. Edudemic » How To Become A Certified Virtual Classroom Teacher .

while I'm taking 2 classes during a school semester. I need a little break between assignments. My original goal was to commit one weekend to one assignment with scattered working conditions during the week - depending on the fullness of the week. Well, a couple of Saturday's ago, we had a workshop at school and then a WFU game. I got some reading done that day, but real, concrete work did not happen. I worked Sunday but had to complete the project the next Saturday. So in my little brain, I thought I'd just start the next one on Sunday. I piddled at it, but I just found it hard to switch gears like that. Maybe if I'd already started it, I could pick it up. But it was hard to find focus. So here I am finishing it up today. I did get more real work done during the week. I also tend to under-estimate the time a project will take. I'll get that done by Wednesday or by noon. Wednesday turns into Saturday and noon turns into midnight. I'm always finding something tha

OR we'll close your account next week. Got in the mail a letter from Bank of America asking for a substitute w-9 to be filled out immediately or my account would be closed. Funny thing was, there was no reference to the specific account OR a phone number to call if I had a question. So I pull out my card and call Bank of America. After about 30 minutes of dealing with a very nice gal who also put me in touch with fraud, the information and copies of the documents are now in their hands. *whew* BUT wondering how many people fill these things out and send them in - especially with that line about your account being closed.

And it went very well actually. Google Forms. Some of the kids had a hard time with the submit button. They didn't intuitively know to click it when they were done. I'll admit that seems a bit odd to me, but . . . Some things I learned along the way: I had to add a place for the students to put their name in at the top. I should have had a first name and a last name box for sorting on the spreadsheet. I should have also had a box for them to indicate their class. Easily fixable on the spreadsheet, but I could have taken care of it up front. I had 10 multiple choice question with the last one being a free response. s The google spreadsheet is a little awkward to deal with, but it easily downloads to excel which is easier. My questions were all on the top row. Some were pretty complex, so they took up a lot of room. I cut those and put them on the second page of the spreadsheet. I made the key on the first row of the spreadsheet. This helped with grading. I added a