-
Special Education Today provides quick access to content from many different sources, permitting you to scan the headlines and locate stories that you want to read in detail. when you click on the headline for a story, you are taken to the original source where you can read it in its entirety.
Category Archives: Personal
merry christmas
I hope you’re all spending a wonderful day with family — I know I am!I wanted to share my favorite Christmas picture with you, back from 2008. We were trying to get a nice shot with me, my brother, and my sister. Right on “three”, my brother reached a… Continue reading
where in the world is sarah?
I haven’t been around the blogosphere all that much, but I did want to pop in and say that we’re enjoying ourselves with my parents here in France.Instead of picturing me in the classroom, you can picture me here:Local village in Alsace, France Th… Continue reading
i’ll be home for christmas
Tonight, our flight leaves for France, where I’ll get to see my parents for the first time in 2010.When I was little, I would always annoy my parents with “Are we there yet?” when we were on long car trips. Since I couldn’t conceptualize time well, my … Continue reading
Counting down
As a teacher, I feel like I’m always counting down to something. Thanksgiving weekend. Christmas break. Spring break. The last day of school. The next potty break.I think this is partly why I love advent calendars so much… not only for the chocolate,… Continue reading
the ghost of halloween past
I’m not gonna lie to you. Halloween, to me, has always been about the candy. Forget the costumes, the spooky decor, the staying up late, and the scary movies. Just GIVE ME THE CANDY!When my family moved to France when I was seven years old, it was al… Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Comments Off
eating in class
I was in seventh grade. I was sitting in Science class, and it was quite early in the morning. It was still dark out, so it must have been sometime in the winter.
I forget what the teacher’s point was…. all I remember is that she had a 2-Liter bottle of Sprite sitting unopened on her desk.
She picked it up and held it in front of us. “Who can tell me some of the properties of Sprite?” she asked.
No one answered.
“Come on, now. What does it taste like?”
I raised my hand: “I think it would be easier to answer this question if we all had a taste of the Sprite.”
To my utter surprise, she reluctantly agreed (it may have been all of the excited cheering coming from the rest of the students). And we all had a cup of pop that morning.
I honestly couldn’t tell you anything else about seventh grade science. I don’t even remember that teacher’s name! But I do remember the day we talked about the properties of Sprite.
Taste is a powerful thing, and I hope to incorporate more of it into my lessons! Maybe not quite to this extent (I don’t have the leeway to veer too far from our basal reader series), but maybe in smaller doses….
The teacher who had my kids last year read this book to them:
Then she did a whole week’s unit on pumpkin stuff and at the end they had a pumpkin tasting: pumpkin soup, pumpkin donuts, pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin bread!
If you ask my kids today what they remember about Kindergarten, they will all start yelling about pumpkin food! I’m thinking of creating a literature unit on the sequel to that book, and incorporating a “tasting” as well!
Do you like to incorporate taste into your lessons? How do you do it?
Posted in Classroom Life, Personal, Reflections, teaching
Comments Off
living my very own chick flick
When I was younger, I didn’t dream of my wedding, I dreamed of The Man. What would his name be? Had I already met him? Would he be good looking? (As it turns out: Max, No, and Most Definitely).
We’ve been married for eight years now….. and it all started with a nerdy first impression, a cake fight, and the World War 1 Trenches in France. You can read all about it here and find out why both of our fathers were 12 inches away when we had our very first kiss!!
Thanks to Gwen in Love for featuring our love story!
Posted in Personal
Comments Off
at least I didn’t get a spanking this time
One of my mom’s favorite stories about me from when I was little was the time that I was “back-talking” in the car. She was so upset, she pulled over to give me a swat. When she finished, she asked me: “Do you know why you got a spanking?” “Yes,” I said tearfully, “because I was talking backwards!”
It’s one thing to talk back to your mother, but it’s another thing to talk back to a security officer.
Like yesterday. I had to go downtown for a training. Unfortunately, each of our district’s various buildings are all in really bad parts of town. You know, the part of town where it’s not unusual to see shady looking characters drinking out of a paper bag, or the occasional drug deal go down.
Also? Parking is tricky…. especially when you have two GIANT crates of very heavy confidential folders you’ve been asked by your supervisor to drop by. So I decided to park in the closest lot, the one that I think is reserved for all the supervisors. I laboriously lugged up one crate of folders.
As I was carrying the second load, OBVIOUSLY struggling with each step and with each door, the security officer in the building stops me.
“Where did you park?” she demands. “Because if you parked in that lot over there, you’re not supposed to.”
And… I kinda snapped at her.
“LOOK! The only reason I parked over there was because I had to lug two huge crates up to the fifth floor. I’ll move my car when I’m good and ready!”
In my defense, though, I was in the middle of trying to juggle fifty pounds of paper, navigate around the crazies outside, and open the door without using my hands. I was a little too busy to be polite, uniform or not.
taking a bow
There’s nothing like a pat on the back once in a while! The fabulous Renee from Closed on Sunday has given me an award! And I didn’t have to bribe her or anything!
So I think this means that I’m a versatile blogger, which is just a really nice way of saying that I can’t stay focused on just one topic. Yay for variety!
Okay. Like any good blog award, there are strings attached. I must…
A. Thank the person who gave me the award
Thanks, Renee! If you haven’t checked out Closed on Sunday yet, you totally should. She’ll regale you with tales of cupcakes gone wrong!
B. Share seven things about myself
1. I have three cats. If I lived alone and didn’t have my husband to keep me in check, I’d have about three dozen cats. I guess this means I’m that crazy cat lady on the inside.
2. I drink black tea every morning. I used to drink coffee, but I was making it so strong that it was starting to give me headaches. And what’s the point of drinking coffee if it doesn’t look like mud?
3. I think regret is the worst feeling in the world, because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make it better.
4. I’ve thrown a tantrum or two in my classroom (once the kids were gone and the door was shut).
5. I’ve always wanted to host a murder mystery dinner party. I’ve been to a couple, and they were so fun!
6. My second grade teacher slapped me in the face once because I corrected my work in pencil instead of black pen (this was in France, though, so perfectly legal). It was our first year in France, and I still remember my dad chewing out my teacher in his broken French. I think the worst insult he came up with was: “YOU MEAN LITTLE OLD LADY!”
7. When I was in high school, I refused to stay home from school when I felt sick. Unless I was throwing up, I’d go. My parents would urge me to stay in bed, but I wouldn’t. I was too afraid on missing out on something very cool or important!
C. Pass the award onto 15 other bloggers
FIFTEEN?? Really?! This teacher is too busy for fifteen. Let’s just bend the rules a little…. Since I did seven things about me, I’ll pass this award on to seven other bloggers. And if you’d like to grab this award for yourself, too, I won’t stop you!
So here they are:
I’d love to read your “seven things about me”! If you have such a post, please link up in the comments 
even writing this makes me want to throw up
I had no idea what to blog about today until I saw my most recent comment from Unicycle Rose. She wondered about the M&M story I referred to in passing in my previous post. So, go away Inspiration, I just got a writing prompt!
I was five years old and living in California. I don’t remember where we were going or why I was given M&Ms, but somehow I ended up sitting in the back of our station wagon. The back, as in behind the seats… in the storage space. With no seat belts. Because I guess in 1987 everyone wasn’t all hung up about children’s safety.
So there I was, peering out of the back windshield, eating my plain M&Ms and watching the traffic behind us. It was dark and I entertained myself by figuring out which side of the highway was going faster: the cars with the red lights stopped on the opposite side, or the cars with the white lights on our side.
I still hadn’t figured out who was winning when I suddenly got very carsick. And I was feeling quite uncomfortable with my belly full of plain M&Ms. I threw up before I could stop myself.
I don’t remember what happened next but I’m guessing that we had to pull over and mom probably got the fun job of cleaning me up.
And since that day, the very thought of plain M&Ms makes me want to vomit. Peanut ones? I love! Plain ones? Bleeecchhh.
Years later, my psychologist husband assures me that I’m not crazy (at least not in that sense!)… that I have developed what’s called: “learned taste aversion”.
So what foods make you want to barf?
