What day is it? Huh?

It's amazing how quickly I let myself get into the flow of a summer schedule. I don't know what day of the week it is and I'm staying up later and later every night, reverting back to my night owl ways. I love staying up late. So does Mr. Awesome and so do some of my closest friends. This is dangerous for a reformed insomniac and really fun for a professional procrastinator. I am literally procrastinating bedtime.

Last night Mr. Awesome pondered what would happen if we stayed up 4 extra hours every day. In 6 days, would we get an extra day? Or would we have lost a day by sleeping through it at other times? Or would you be able to discipline yourself into keeping a 28 hour schedule and be able to quite literally add more hours to the day? I wanted to try the experiment right away but Mr. Awesome is smarter than me and he reminded me of things like other people in the world.

My bathroom is sparkling and smells of bleach, my kitchen is spotless and smells like lemon fresh cleaner, and every item of clothing I own is laundried and put away, excepting my current outfit. And now I'm blogging about topics interesting to about 3 people in the universe.

I must be procrastinating. Yikes. Don't tell my future boss about this habit I have. Remind me not to mention it when they ask about my "weaknesses" in an interview. I can imagine it now...

"Tell me, Mrs. Awesome, what would you say is your biggest weakness and how does it impact your work?"

"Well, there's the whole procrastination problem I have but don't worry, I always finish by the deadline and I usually get fun side projects done on the way too!"

Oh look, a bookshelf to reorganize! 

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...

Sunday Nights

I've been told normal people don't work on Sunday nights. Normal people make nice dinners, finish up weekend projects, maybe go out to a movie... but they don't work on projects while they're off the clock.

I'm not really normal and I don't have a normal job. Also I LOVE to procrastinate. In fact, I am pretty sure I created this little blog just so I can procrastinate better! Sure enough, I was almost being productive when I remembered I could be writing an awesome post instead.

Tonight I am working on finalizing the recorder performance piece for our spring sing. I've chosen "Louie Louie" because 1) it's a crowd pleaser and 2) it's easy and 3) it fits our theme of Rock N Roll.

Well it turns out that you can't just Google "recorder music for Louie Louie" and press print. I want the kids to perform to the original track and I also want them to have more than two repeating notes. Actually I really want two or even three part harmony with choreography and singing too mixed in with recorder playing. So now I'm making things a million times harder on myself than I need to by writing out the notes to it myself. I think I might have a problem.

Note to self: try to stop getting in over your head.

So while the rest of you normal people are doing nice, normal things... I'm frantically trying to get my spring performance in order.

Of course, I could have done this several weeks ago.

So normal people don't work on Sunday evenings. But procrastinators do!