October 16, 2012

October 15, 2012

  • I have pink-tipped hair.

    Blue Collar Prompt:

    Create a "You know you're a ___ when ____" List.
    You know you're an English teacher when...
    1. You log into Facebook & pray people got "smart." But, NO ONE spells correctly. Or uses freaking apostrophes correctly, either. Or ellipses... yeah.
    2. You silently correct people's grammar. All the time. Everywhere. And then claim, aloud, that you don't.
    3. You consider going to a conference (where there will be other English teachers) a vacation.
    4. You dream of really cool assignments. And conference proposals.
    5. You love creating new words. And then thinking up their non-dictionaried definitions. 
    6. You love the smell of old books.
    7. You love finding free or cheap books, even if you'll never use them.
    8. You thinking publishing would be a FUN idea.
    9. You have a massive Amazon.com Wish List. That you will probably never get to.
    10. You enjoy finding prompts like this one and filling them out with your students.

October 12, 2012

  • TYCA Keynote!

    #tycamw
    #tyca
    The lunch keynote was A-mazing. I paid attention the whole time, for once. (I sometimes accidentally get my students' ADD at these things; we didn't pass notes, either). Then, she said so many cool statements & had such great stories that I want the transcript. Like now.
    Nice job, Dr. Mary Pipher! Thank you for coming to talk to us!

  • TYCA!

    TYCA-Midwest is underway!

    9am, Carrie/Connie/Nancy:
    ---Three (3) brainstorms are free on Bubbl.us (Cool for Eng120 to show how to come up with paper topics).
    ---Prezi: Citing Your Sources in MLA = "steal." (Placed it on Delicious.)

October 11, 2012

  • No worries. I'm here with a bunch of English geeks. It's fun.

October 10, 2012

  • Blow Your Budget.

    Today's Prompt: You come into 10 million dollars (let's say that's after taxes); how do you spent it & be specific.

    The "old way" I used to look at this was = to have a party first and then figure out what (and how much) to ship off to certain charities.
    But after chatting with my significant other, I think I would hide out first. Because people will come out of the woodwork to get some (while kissing my butt?).While laying low, I think I would divide up the money as best I could between family and friends and myself and charities. I think half would stick with me and my significant other. Half of the half, then, would go into savings. That's 2.5 million. The other 2.5 million would go into a separate account and we'd live off that (as well as build a cabin with it) for as long as possible. As for the other 5 million, I'd give half of that (2.5 again) to charity. Probably to ASAH (AfricanSoulAmericanHeart.org) and a few others (abuse centers and children's cancer centers, like Roger Maris, etc.). 
    The other 2.5 million would go to family and friends. I may use 1 million of it to get a building named after me on campus; that'd be pretty rad. Maybe another 1 million would be specifically given to family* and very close friends. That last 500,000 would be used as a "giveaway" to those I don't know who need a car or something. It would be like charity, but very randomized and to specific people.
    *To get away from any bias, I would just divide it as equally as possible and put that money into IRA Roths (as gifts - tax deduction?) & the people connected to those accounts can do whatever they want with it. Yeah...

October 9, 2012