Today I met with the assistant principal to discuss my second Formal Observation, which was on Tuesday afternoon. In general, things were the same as on my last observation, except that he knocked points off in the "teaching critical thinking" and "applying Maine Learning Results" sections, and suggested that I give more handouts to the students so they wouldn't have to ask me so many questions.

The Maine Learning Results are a bunch of criteria such as "Collaborative and Quality Worker", and one of the graduation requirements is that students be familiar with the Maine Learning Results. According to my observer, I'm suppoed to be making sure the kids know which learning results they're developing during their assignments.

My first thought about this was, "this is bogus; I'm (a) already too busy making up 4 different curricula on the fly, and (b) if I say to the kids, 'this assignment will make you a Clear and Effective Communicator' they'll look at me as if I have 2 heads". Howevah, in the mind of the assistant principal, this is just to cover my ass if the State of Maine does a review of my program and asks to see how it relates to the Maine Learning Results. OK.

The second area was "critical thinking". It must be difficult to walk into a computer class as a non-computer person and understand anything that's going on, much less figure out whether or not I'm teaching critical thinking. My best guess is that he equated "students have to ask a lot of questions" with "they can't think for themselves" since when I asked him about it, all he could tell me was that he didn't see evidence of it.

I encourage students to ask lots of questions, which I usually "answer" with other questions. Some of them are now at the point where they can do some debugging. I do think they're improving at thinking critically. With some students, though, it's like pulling teeth. Follow these easy steps to take a walk in my shoes:

1. make a very detailed assignment handout, listing what the program should do, what variables and functions you'll need.
2. give out handouts.
3. go to answer a question and realize that the student has not read the handout (and usually needs to be prompted multiple times to read the handout). "I don't like to read" is a common response here. "Too bad" is usually MY response.

I struggled with how much information to give on handouts earlier in the year, thinking that I didn't want to do too much spoon-feeding, but I realized that I do need to do a good amount of very directed programming assignments (with details down to the methods and variables) for a while until the students get used to what a well-structured program looks like. Only once they've got that down will they be able to start thinking about good design.

His final comment, "are there notebooks the students can refer to instead of asking you?" made me envision a beautiful world where I have a textbook and a curriculum. I mentioned to him in our meeting that in the Glorious Future the students will have better reference materials than just the Java Documentation (or the JavaScript or MySQL or ColdFusion or HTML or whatever), but until there's a book on Java programming written for students who read at the 6th-grade level, I will be responsible for creating those reference materials (and/or creating materials to get these kids' reading levels up to the point where they could understand a Java textbook). Until then, things will be rocky.

Thank god it's almost Christmas. I need a week of sleep.

... when your cat comes upstairs at night to sleep with you and gets under the covers.

This afternoon I read Who Moved My Cheese?. The assistant principal ordered one for every teacher in the building. It was a cute read.

I'm just about to leave for the library (one trip to the Reiche branch and then downtown to the Main branch), where I'll get:
- a CD of Vivaldi's Gloria
- Snow Crash
- Neuromancer

The Vivaldi is so I can memorize it before the 17th, when I have to play it in concert. I'm playing 2nd violin so the part isn't hard, but performing is so much more fun when I don't have to count measures rest and such.

I read Snow Crash in college and enjoyed it a lot. The other day it crossed my mind for some reason and I realized that I want to use it in class to get the kids interested in Java/HTML/Web programming languages. There are a bunch of games that emerged after Snow Crash was published, some of which are listed here. All of these games use their own scripting languages, but I want to use one of them as a teaching tool, so I'm hoping I can make Java and HTML API pieces that will fit in with one of them. If not, we'll have to go with a [mostly] text-based adventure game to start. My Christmas project.

I can't remember whether I've read Neuromancer or not, but I figured I'd immerse myself in the cyberspace-alternate-reality world for a little bit to get me in the mood for this.

Nutcracker is now over, (8 shows was enough!) and I'm happy to report the following:

- I can now play at night without taking a huge nap during the afternoon
- I have vibrato!
- I can [usually] trill
- My intonation is pretty good, and my shifting is getting better.
- In general, my technique is far better now than it ever was pre-MS.

Yay.

Inside, Bonita is under the covers. Outside, snow softens everything and makes me giggly and cheerful. M. and I went downtown today and did a little Christmas shopping (he actually accomplished some shopping, while I am still trying to figure out what to get Ryan and my parents). It was snowy and sunny, a gorgeous day in Portland.

After making a stop at the Sun Oriental Market to check out knives and foodstuffs, we went by Longfellow Square to say hi to Longfellow, decked out for the season in a scarf and holding presents. He was never decorated like this when I was a kid, but I love the silliness of it.

We spent a long time in Longfellow Books (not at Longfellow Square as I had assumed, but actually off Monument Square), browsed in a few stores in the Old Port, trekked down to Commercial Street and then up to Silly's for some long-overdue lunch. A lovely winter day. Next: skiing!

Last Wednesday I had to take a sick day just so I could sleep. After 2 weeks of Nutcracker on weekends, high school during the day and violin students in the evening, I was fried.

On Wednesday afternoon I finally used the bag of McIntoshes I'd bought at the Whole Grocer and cooked up a batch of sauce. Here's my current favorite method:

Pink Applesauce

Quarter and core a bag of organic apples (Cortlands are my favorites).
Throw into a pot and add a little water just so the ones on the bottom don't burn.
Cook until the skins separate from the fruit (this doesn't take long).
Fish out the skins with tongs and put in the blender.
Blend up the skins and the pulp clinging to them.
Return the skins to the pot and stir everything together.

This yields a batch of kind of chunky sauce with smooth peels. Yum!

N. told me not to bother with Neuromancer and he was totally right. 80 pages into it I decided I had given it a shot but it wasn't worth my time. Now rereading Snow Crash and loving it all over again. He makes a permaculture reference! Way cool.

Back in those blissful days when I actually had time to go grocery shopping, I remember practicing Defensive Cookery: the art of concocting an artful (and in most cases, edible) meal out of stuff that looks like it's on the verge of going bad. These days my fridge gets so empty (this morning it contained one eggplant) that I now find myself cooking in a different way: Emergency Food Prep.

Emergency Food Prep saved me from eating raw eggplant for breakfast this morning (I hope I would have just skipped breakfast instead of subjecting myself to that, though I usually don't get a chance to eat lunch until 3:00, so skipping breakfast is a really, really bad idea). In this case, the Prep was corn bread-- 4 jars of [gluten-free, dairy-free] corn bread mix I had put together earlier in the week "just in case". The idea is to make a bunch of something all at once so I don't have to try to make a meal when I have 15 minutes before school or 15 minutes before my violin students arrive or whatever. I always do this with salad and soup, and to a lesser extent with other things.

Corn Bread Rations
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons corn meal
1/4 cup brown rice flour
2 Tablespoons tapioca flour
2 Tablespoons potato starch flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of ground nutmeg

Put in a jar with a lid. When emergency hits, shake contents vigorously, pour into a mixing bowl, and add these ingredients that have been whisked together:

1 egg
2 Tablespoons oil
1 Tablespoon honey
1/3 cup water (use 1/2 cup if you're making pancakes)

Make pancakes in severe emergencies. If you have 20-25 minutes, pour some oil in an 8-inch cast iron pan, heat it up in the oven, and pour batter in. Bake at 350°F for 20-25 minutes.

Tonight I played the Vivaldi Gloria over at Breakwater School in a concert for the Church of Christ the Redeemer. String quartet plus oboe, trumpet and continuo, and a chorus of about 8 women. The performance went fine, but the other violinist and I agreed that the second movement, Et In Terra Pax, was the highlight for both of us. Something magical happened during that movement. I felt like we weren't even playing the music; it was just flowing through us. It's during those moments, when I'm helping to create a thing of beauty, that my ongoing struggles to improve as a violinist are all worth it.

E., Bonita's first mom, recently said about Bonita: "When she was a kitten, she would sit in the bathtub for long periods of time staring intently at the drain. i was pretty sure she had found an alternate universe there."

Bonita still does this. Immediately after I get out of the shower, she jumps in there and stares at the drain. I originally thought it was because she's mostly blind, but now I think it's because she's mostly weird. And likes water. When I brush my teeth she likes to be right under me in the sink (I try to spit around her). A few weeks ago I dropped a glob of toothpaste on her and had to wet her down pretty thoroughly to get it off (it kept lathering...heh). She just stared a lot. At her alternate universe, I guess.

This morning I awoke from a very strange (and highly moral, weirdly) dream to the Allegro from Handel's violin sonata in F. The performance was light and graceful, and it reminded me of what I was thinking about during the Vivaldi: now that I can feel my fingers, I need to take my playing to the next level. Time to start playing elegantly.

Playing elegantly takes energy, more energy than just playing in a totally relaxed way. It takes faster and more controlled fine motor movement. It takes more breath. It makes me tired. And boy, I'm already tired enough these days--I don't dare sit down on the couch until after my last violin lesson because whenever I do I end up falling asleep. 2 hours later I wake up with Bonita purring on top of me and groggily try to figure out what time it is. Yikes! So I haven't been improving my violin playing the way I'd like. I need to change that, because I've been feeling unsettled -- too much time at work and not enough violin. My artistic self hasn't been getting enough love lately.

To the set of genes and environmental and psychological ills that brought MS into my life: thank you so much. As I watch my violin students improve their posture, musicianship, intonation, tone, and manual dexterity, and see them develop into truly beautiful souls, I am reminded that none of this would have been possible without MS. I wouldn't wish it on anyone else, and occasionally I wallow, but mostly I'm grateful that MS is now a part of me.

I alphabetized my progress reports today and kept having problems with Js and Ls. Is it because I'm out of practice? Is it because my immune system is eating my brain again? Or can I chalk it up to a premature "senior moment"? I also choke on my words a lot these days. MS or something else? Hmmmm. I never know.

It's early yet, but I'm fairly sure M. is going to break my heart. It will have been so worth it, though.

A body in motion tends to stay in motion, but has an attraction to the couch that is inversely proportional to both the amount of sleep the body has had and the number of days left until Christmas vacation. A body at rest tends to stay at rest until it gives itself a stern talking-to and makes itself get off the damn couch and play the violin for 30 minutes (elegantly) and then go out to Tango practice. Ahem.

Today I sent e-mail to W. to thank her for buying Captivate for me with her employee discount. I sent the note to her old Macromedia account and got back a vacation response from her new Adobe e-mail address. Just seeing "___@adobe.com" in the return address field made me a little sad and nostalgic for good old MACR.

(Right now a certain group of people who were at Lori's house that year when we played Celebrity are probably all shrieking "Steve Gutenberg!", so here's another one for you: VISCOUS!)

This year my violin students and their parents have given me lovely cards, yummy treats that I am totally breaking my diet in order to eat, and some really cute gifts.

Here's a picture of the mushroom-shaped meringues by D. Totally cool. Vaguely disturbing to eat something that looks like that and have it taste of egg, sugar and chocolate.

C. came to her lesson on Tuesday with a plateful of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies. I ate 2 and then realized they were so dangerous that I needed to get them out of the house right away. I brought them to school yesterday morning and my AM class inhaled them. Whew! Disastah averted.

Mom's birthday was on Tuesday and we all went out to celebrate tonight. We ate at The Afghan in its new location on Forest Avenue, almost at Congress (where Gallery Music used to be). It's at 21 Forest Ave., right next to the Mad Apple Cafe.

We were the only people in there for most of the time. I'm not sure why, since the food was delicious. We all ended up getting something involving lamb, but there are vegetarian options. After chuckling at the menu on which most entrees are described as "delicately spiced", it was a delight to discover that the descriptions were 100% accurate. Very tasty. Entrees with meat are about $12. The bill for 4 of us (4 dinners, 3 appetizers and 4 desserts and tea) was $84.

If you do go, when you finish dinner and the server politely asks you if you'd care for a pudding, say yes. :-) They also have a lot of different kinds of baklava, but all of us went for the lighter dessert. Yum. This place is worth a visit, maybe before catching a show 2 doors down at the Portland Stage Company?

Last night I didn't finish my entree at the Afghan, so I asked our server (I think he is also the owner) if I could take it home. When he brought it back all wrapped up, I thought he said it would be good for lunch, "just add some rice". But when I opened the container at lunchtime (intending to eat it with a salad instead) I realized that what he had actually said was "I just added some rice". Some "delicately spiced" rice, at that. Wow! I had a very nice lunch and was so filled with good will that I decided to make [gluten free] Christmas cookies.

Small problem: the only cookie cutter I own is shaped like a bat. Howevah, I was not deterred and decided that bats are really "a lot like" angels. Some halos made from crystallized ginger, and voilà! Angels with a bat attitude. I thought the halo hanging from one ear gave my bat angels a rakish air. And what is that circle of ginger doing on the tummy, besides hiding the "super bat" logo? Well of course it's so everybody knows this bat-angel is single; it's a bat-chelor button. Ack! Someone stop me!

I have to admit that it was fun to say to my afternoon violin students, "would you care for a Christmas bat?" Heh. I think I'll have to make these every year.

Last weekend I rifled through my Leaning Tower of Music (to do: organize this over Christmas break) to find the violin part for "Meditation" by Massenet. In a rush to think of some easy listening for church I actually suggested to the pianist that we play this for communion. I draw the line at the Pachelbel Canon, though. I've only played 2 weddings for which I was not required to play the Canon--even E., who promised me that I wouldn't have to play it for her wedding in 1998 (?), was thwarted by her dad, who requested that it be played as the special music during the ceremony.

But I digress. As I was disassembling the Tower, I came across 2 score sheets from some competition or jury or something I had played...sometime in the past. Maybe in college? No names, no dates, no hint of what piece I played for these people.

Adjudicator #1 said:

Very good in general. Very well prepared and sensitive. What I think you can search for is more power in the sound and in the interpretation. I am not speaking of loudness. When the bow moves too fast it is hard to get a "paste" in the sound. Without that "paste" it is very difficult to create intensity and drama in the interpretation. Whether by this or other methods if you can intensify your performance it will become very impressive.

And #2 said:

Fine musical interpretation, strong & solid execution. Good finger technique, clean & fleet. Strong tone.

As I read these I had a flashback to me in my teens and twenties, or really to any time before age 26, when paralysis chilled me out pretty quickly. There's nothing like being disabled and diagnosed with an incurable disease to make you understand what you really need to worry about and what doesn't matter. Back then I needed to work on tone. And relaxation. Reading these comments now I can see that both people were talking about the same thing that I've been working on myself and improving in my violin students: a particular focused relaxation and ease with the instrument that lets the violin become a vehicle for self-expression.

The problem was, back then I was uptight and my playing was uptight and you can't just take an uptight person and say "now relax" and have it magically work. I needed to be told how to relax and no one could tell me how to do that. This is my problem with most violin teachers anyway--there are tons of teachers out there who are amazing musicians but who can't tell you how to do things because somehow they just were able to do them naturally. I want to be the teacher I never had, one who is able to tell my students exactly how to trick their bodies into attaining that beautifully balanced, calm state, where muscles do only as much work as they need to do and playing the violin feels comfortable.

I don't think I've gotten there quite yet as a teacher. But every time I see a little spark of "oh, wow" on a student's face after doing an exercise, I have hope.