1. Debbie had mentioned to me that Diane had made pasta sauce, had some left over, and was going to share it with us. Even knowing this, I got all motivated (restless) to use up leftover stuffing from the stuffed peppers I made a while back for family dinner. I wanted to use it to stuff baked acorn squash.
So, I went ahead and thawed out and warmed up the stuffing and halved two acorn squashes, drizzled each half with olive oil, and baked them. After a half an hour, I removed them, stuffed them, and put them back in the oven for about 15-20 minutes.
My thinking was that if we wanted to have pasta tonight, the squash would be good tomorrow and Debbie's lunch would be ready.
Diane brought the pasta sauce and some linguine to cook, and some Parmesan/Romano cheese!
Debbie, Diane, and I had great conversation and we couldn't thank Diane enough.
What generosity that Diane wanted to share this food with us!
We were about to cook the linguine when, on the spur of the moment, we decided to eat the squash I'd just prepared -- Oh! My! That pepper stuffing worked superbly with the acorn squash -- and we'll enjoy the meal Diane brought us on Thursday evening.
2. Jeff and I are going to Portland from Eugene on Nov. 2 for a benefit concert featuring jam bands from the WOW Hall days back in the 1990s. Today, I decided to book a tiny house in southeast Eugene for five nights, starting November 1. My next step is to contact friends in Eugene and see if and when we can get together. It will be about five jam-packed days and evenings and I'm stoked.
3. When Debbie arrives home after her school day ends, she's tired. I always assume she's not much in the mood to talk, but wants to sit, enjoy a glass of wine or a cocktail, have some time with Gibbs, and relax. I'll ask her kind of a general question, just to check it, like, "Things go okay today?" and, so far, every day her answer has been "yes".
Later on, we'll talk some more. Debbie learns more about her students every day. In teaching, the way I see it, what we learn from day to day that really matters about our students is not so much their levels of knowledge and skill development, but what's going on with them in their day to day lives. This was crucial for me to learn when I taught at LCC and it's equally, if not more, important for Debbie as she gets acquainted with her third graders.
Then, this challenge presents itself: agencies overseeing public education issue standards for what students should be learning at whatever grade they are in. It's the standardizing aspect of public (or, I should say, classroom) education. There are any number of reasons why federal entities, state entities, and local school districts establish these standards.
At the same time, though, children (or, in my case, community college students) are not standardized.
The challenge is how to simultaneously help students as individuals while meeting established grade level objectives or standards, often while using standardized (or canned) programs in reading or math that the school or the district has purchased or subscribed to.
Debbie never gives up on facing this basic challenge. She wants to help her students meet the standardized objectives and she wants to work with each student as an individual (a challenge itself since she's working with about twenty-five of them).
So we talk about these challenges, keeping our discussions as constructive as possible, and we did some of that talking tonight.
Even though I have over thirty years of teaching experience, I don't have a lot to offer to these conversations. The demands elementary school teachers face are of a nature and of a difficulty that I never faced working with college students.
Debbie has a lot to say and she knows what she's doing. I also think, already, in her new teaching job, that what she does as a teacher is working.
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