Guest Blog Post: Positive v. Negative

I was dismayed recently when I went to look back at some of my former students' blogs, and I discovered that they had all been deleted. Presumably, this was a result of the transition in student email domains from lovelandstudents to students.lovelandschools. Nevertheless, whatever the reason, I was bummed. I had some really good student blog examples there, and now they are gone. All of them.

I was visiting with Addie Sholar, one of my former students who had written a great blog entitled Inevitable Passion when she was a student in my class, and I shared with her my frustration with all of the great, lost blogs. So, what did she do? She wrote a blog post for me to share with my students. How cool is that? I am posting it here for my current and future students and anyone else who wants to read something interesting. Enjoy!


Positive v. Negative, by Addie Sholar:

Hello again fellow humans, nice to talk at you again.  I just thought I would drop in and throw out something that has been itching at my mind lately. Let me ask you a question. Have you even walked up to someone to say hello… There is an awkward pause, and then one of you starts to complain about the weather, work that has yet to be done, how hungry you are etc? (By the way, no one really cares if you’re hungry) I have walked into those situations many times, and it really got me thinking. Why the heck do we start complaining when we don’t know what to say? Is being negative really the only way we can fill the awkward silence? Please tell me you know what I am talking about? Don’t you think it is a little ridiculous? It is very interesting how our minds immediately gravitate towards the bad instead of the good.

I want to ask you another question. Do the conversations that start off negative usually last very long? Do they bring smiles to people’s faces, or joy to their lives? Nope. I can say for sure that they don’t. They just clear out space above your head for a dark little storm cloud to inhabit.

If you agree with what I am saying, why not try and change it?  How about the next time you go up to someone and talk to them you immediately try to bring joy to the conversation? Try to make them laugh, or talk about what the best part of you day has been. Little sprinkles of positivity can change ones feelings in a second. In this crazy, chaotic world wouldn’t it just be easier to forget the negative for a second when having quick conversations with friends or family? Think about this for a while and don’t be afraid to sink your feet into positivity, it might just turn your day around.

Starting Something New...

With the prompting and encouragement of a friend, I have recently begun 30 Days of Yoga. It is a totally FREE program by a yogi named Adriene. Her stuff can be found on YouTube and on her own site, Yoga with Adriene. (Pretty original, huh?)

Anyway, I have found that when I go to YouTube to begin the daily torture, the next video I want is not always cued up for me. You would think that I would see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. in order. But sometimes it is more like Day 7, Day 8, Day 10, Day 11, Day 6 and then I'm scrambling to find Day 9 (or whatever).

So, I decided to create my own webmix of my 30 Days of Yoga videos on Symbaloo so I could keep everything in order just the way I want it. I decided to share my webmix here. A couple of cool things about Symbaloo: I can use the visual icons to know exactly what I'm looking for, and I can embed videos right in my Symbaloo webmix (which I can then embed in other places, like my blog). It's a cool way to share information. And, as I update my webmix, I can update my embedded Symbaloo webmix with one click.

So, try 30 Days of Yoga and try Symbaloo. They are both awesome. But one hurts more than the other....

The Value of Diversity

As I read my students' blogs, I will occasionally come across some really good ones. (Unfortunately, uninteresting blogs are more common....) One of the consistently good blogs I read is written by Jordan. He wrote an interesting post about Atheism, which made me really question my own assumptions about people, along with a number of other thoughtful posts. If you have not read his writing, I would urge you to check it out (after you read this post, of course.)

Today, I want to talk about his post on Diversity. In that post, Jordan wrote, "I think diversity is absolutely necessary in one’s life, just to show them that they aren't the only person that looks like this or the only person to think like this. I will travel to see how other people live, think, act, speak, believe, and disbelieve."

I absolutely agree with Jordan's position on the value and importance of diversity. I have found that the more I am exposed to people who are different from me, the richer my life becomes. When I am only with people who think and act like me, my world is smaller and less complex. For example, when I was a child, the Sunday nearest to July 4th was an interesting day at church. Our services were filled with refrains of "God Bless America" and other patriotic American songs. I never questioned that practice. After all, I was an American and I was in church. Singing about God and America together made sense.

But then, my horizons were expanded when I met a man from Belgium who moved to the United States and attended church for the first time with his wife on July 4th in Texas, of all places. He told me later how uncomfortable they were in church that day and how he and his wife feared they had made a bad move. Throughout the service, God and America were intertwined to the point that he thought that Americans worshiped a God who only cared about the United States. He believed in a God who loved the world, not just one country. He feared there would be no place for him in that church. I was exposed to a person from a different culture with a different frame of reference, and I grew in my thinking because of that.

However, that doesn't mean that coming face to face with people whose cultures, values, religion, or experiences vary greatly from mine is easy. It is not; in fact, sometimes diversity can be really uncomfortable. It is a challenge for me to remember that there is more than ONE RIGHT WAY to do things. And, as much as I don't want to admit it, my way may not always be the best way. That doesn't mean that I fully accept all diversity. There are some areas in which I continue to struggle. But, as long as I am engaging in the struggle, there is the potential for continued growth and development.

Crispy M&Ms: A New Review

Okay, so in my last post I wrote about the return of Crispy M&Ms. I knew they were coming back in January, so I kept looking for them as I wandered store aisles. I finally found them in Walmart, and bought 10 of them since I knew my family would want to try them too.

I was so excited to try them that I tore into them as soon as I got back in the car. And I was only somewhat impressed. They were good, but they weren't great. They no longer held the place of highest honor in my Best Candy of All Time list. Had I never had them before, I would have been pleased with them. However, I loved them SO MUCH before they were discontinued that I think I expected too much of them.

Are they the exact same? I don't know. I think they are, but I couldn't swear to it.

Will I buy them again? Sure. I have already bought them a couple more times.

Will I continue to dream about them? Nope. That ship has sailed.

Now, I am putting my energies into the return of Reese's Peanut Butter Balls. No, they are not the same as Reese's Minis. They are much better. In fact, I may have to put them into a place of highest honor in my Best Candy of All Time list....

Photo credit: Calorie Count

Crispy M&M's Are Coming Back!!

Oooh, this is bad!

I just found out that Crispy M&M's, after years of being unavailable, are being brought back to my world. They should be available in January. As I said, this is bad.

I wish some of my previous students were around to read about this. During one class last year, we talked at length about the fate of the crispy, yummy, chocolaty treat, and there was some discussion about ordering it from an overseas market in order for my students to see what the fuss was all about. Ultimately, I didn't end up ordering them because 1) it was expensive, 2) I had read that overseas Crispy M&M's weren't as good as U.S.-bred Crispy M&M's, and 3) I didn't want to poison my students if they ended up being bootleg, black market, fake M&M's. So, instead, I sadly pondered the loss and assumed I would never again taste their crispy lusciousness.

Until today, when I read they were coming back.

In their previous life, Crispy M&M's were swathed in a blue wrapper, which has forever been ruined by its association with the utterly nasty Pretzel M&M's. I can't tell you how many times I excitedly approached the misleading blue wrapper only to find the word, "Pretzel" inscribed on it. Yuck!

Photo Credit: shamecon.wordpress.com 

The new iteration of Crispy M&M's will be draped in a stylish green wrapper. Never again will I look for a blue wrapper. Starting in January, it's the GREEN wrapper all the way.

Photo Credit: mms.com

Who knows. Maybe I won't like Crispy M&M's anymore. Maybe they will be less alluring now than they were a decade ago. However, I suspect they will be just as delectable, just as desirable, as they were when I was a Crispy M&M's stalker. 

This is for Cedric

Cedric is a lovely young man, but he is confused. And, quite frankly, his confusion exasperates me. Thus, I am creating a new, fakish post so that Cedric can see what happens to the URL of my blog when I create a new post.

So, Cedric, this post is for you.

By the way, don't break any more chairs.

Why Is It So Hard To Be Kind?

I teach high school students, so I see lots of emotions in the course of any given day.

• There is the relationship drama, often exacerbated by the presence of additional parties to the romance. For example, A and B are having trouble, so C swoops in to woo A. Meanwhile, D makes moves on B. When A and B see that D and C are making moves on their One True Love, they rush back into one another's arms, leaving C and D crushed and alone. That type of love quadrangle can mess up the best-laid instructional plans. After all, how can one worry about the trials of Odysseus when your New Crush or Long-time GF / BF are mooning over / glaring at you.
• Then there is the girl drama. This often occurs when two girls are pursuing the same guy. But, it can also occur over something totally random and seemingly unimportant (like when one girl reads the part of Juliet in class and the rest of the girls are mad that she was chosen to be Juliet and they weren't...).
• Then there is the boy drama. This sounds a lot like the fight scenes of beefy, monosyllabic actors ("You want to start something? You want a piece of me? I'll take you down!") Although initially intense, this type of drama goes away quickly, unlike girl drama which seems to last forever.

There are more types of drama, but you get the idea. I have worked with teens long enough to know that these are just symptoms of being a teenager. Most of my students will outgrow these behaviors as they mature.

There is one type of behavior, though, that I have not been able to accept or understand: being mean. I often hear students say awful things to one another. I get that people don't always like one another. I mean, I don't like everybody, so I understand that. But that doesn't mean you have to be mean to someone. (In fact, generally speaking, my preferred method of dealing with someone I don't care for is to ignore them. Maybe not the most mature way to do it, but I find it more appropriate than just being nasty to someone else.)

You may dislike someone because you think they are too whatever. Maybe they look or smell weird. Maybe they don't look like you or their beliefs are different from yours or they worship a "different" god. Maybe they aren't as smart or athletic or socially acceptable as you are. Who cares.

http://img.timeinc.net/time/2007/la_riots/king_rodney.jpg

Why must we continue being cruel to people who are different, In the now-famous words of Rodney King (click here if you don't know who he is), I wonder, Can we all get along? 

Imagine how amazing our world would be if we could manage that one "little" feat.