That's a good question.

Remember the Giving Tree? Have you ever asked your students if it was fair to take so much from the tree?

Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg from Mount Holyoke College has a whole philosophy outreach program. He asks young readers tough questions like "is it fair" and "what do you think?" And he actually disagrees with Piaget. GASP!! Piaget and Vygotsky aren't gods and you can fund research that disagrees with one or both of them? After you get up from falling off your chair, you can read the NYT article here.

All through my student teaching my supervisor pushed us to ask the kids analytical questions. He made us think of the questions we were going to ask the kids, write them into our lesson plans, and he made sure to comment on the kinds of questions he observed us asking. Once he even had me write down my questions on an index card so I had them in my pocket while I was teaching, just to be sure I would ask good questions. If there's one thing I learned how to do last year, it was ask my students really good questions.

If only I had known then that "is it fair" and "what do you think" would have landed me an article in the NYT!! Because some of my questions were awesome. Once I asked a kid "How do you know? Prove it!" and that was on a video tape of myself that I had to send to the state in order to pass a test to get my credential. It must have been a good question because they gave me a credential.

Wait have you read that article yet? I understand if reading the education section of the NYT isn't your idea of a relaxing evening. Sometimes it really ticks me off too. Sometimes I would rather grade papers. But I don't have papers. I just have a spring sing I'm procrastinating work on.

So it's true, a habit I have is reading about the goings on in education. I read about politics and merit pay and test scores and how McGraw Hill is bathing in money when we're laying off teachers and making kids go without colorful construction paper. I read about school violence and gangs and school lunches and obesity. I read about charter schools and national standards and vouchers and unions.

But a lot of the times I read articles like this. Articles about some study some professor is doing in some school. And I imagine if it were me. Only instead of imagining myself in the role of the teacher who opens her room to a local professor to be part of a study, I see myself as THE professor.

I think it might just be because I am realizing that my contract position is up in two weeks, and then job hunting season will be officially open. Ack. Ack like Cathy eats chocolate Ack.

Of course, if I can't find a job, there's always the option the option of more grad school...

How I learned to eat tomatoes

I had the privilege of spending this past weekend with a lot of family. My nephew, who is in sixth grade and gives all other sixth graders a bad name because he is way more awesome and better than any other sixth grader out there, is a very picky eater. So is my first grade niece (she's also more awesome than your first grade kids, sorry, they just can't compare with her, so don't try). As far as my baby niece goes, the 1 year old, well she'll eat anything but she's so stinking cute I almost put her in my purse to take home with me. She is forgiven for not being a picky eater. She still has time to learn from her wise cousins.

I told my nephew that being a picky eater is actually a life skill. Knowing how to eat food you really don't care for is something that will come in handy some day. He clearly thought I was being sarcastic. When I told my niece the same thing, she said "stop teasing!" Well, I probably shouldn't have tried to give out life advice after telling her the brain sucker on her head was starving.

Last academic year, 2008-2009, I was in grad school, earning my elementary school teaching credential and my master's in education. I chose one of those 5 quarter, one academic year programs because I was crazy and I wanted name recognition to go with my degree.  Also because I'm cheap and I didn't want to pay more tuition than I had to. The year ended up being dubbed "Hell Year". You know how football players do a week of training and they call it hell week? Well teachers who go through intense programs like I did get to call it Hell Year. Then for most of us our reward is a lot of debt and no real job.

We have got to find a way to get smarter people to go into teaching. Clearly this system is not producing the brightest of us all, eh?

But I digress. My point is that before Hell Year, I was a very picky eater. It's in our genes. I didn't like tomatoes or mushrooms or this color of sauce or this kind of meat or anything that touched the wrong thing or anything cooked not the way I cook it. I would not eat green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam-I-Am!

But when you've done 8 hours of student teaching, 4 hours of class, and 2-3 hours of homework/lesson planning almost daily for 7 months and someone hands you a sandwich that has... gunk... on it... you say "sure" and eat it.

And then when you've been doing nothing but being observed and told you're doing everything wrong and someone hands you a cookie that has.... weird walnuts...on it.... you say "sure" through your tears and you eat it. And because it also has chocolate in it you like it.

And then when someone hands you pizza with EVERYTHING on it when you haven't eaten in 12 hours because you're trying to turn in your thesis, you eat it.

Then about a month after you graduate, you realize that you've been eating tomatoes all year.

And the scary thing?

You like them.