Let's get this party started!

A few of the students are blazing ahead and getting many things done, but some are still thinking that they have a million years to get their work finished. I find it interesting that they will lead with the same addictive thinking that got them here in the first place. Humans are so predictable! That's why I'm here.

I asked them to tell me what they thought good students, successful students, do to succeed, and they knew full-well what those little suckers do! "Study, pay attention, strive to understand, work with the materials, do the homework, and use your common sense and almost everything will turn out okay" is the basic sense of it all if you want to get along in school. You can't sit on the sidelines; you have to really get your feet wet and your back has to push into it.

I asked them what it takes to fail. They had no mercy whatsoever! "Sit on your backside, talk to your friends, stop paying attention, fool around, don't do the homework, and text message during assignments and lectures and you are bound to fail!" They knew every trick in the book, and so when I asked them this, they just about fell out. "If we know what to do, why don't we do it?" Teachers have to repeat everything eleventy-7 times, play games, light their hair on fire, use tricks, make posters, do a stand up comedy routine, and keep up with the entire technological culture just to have a clue as to what might work if they want to get a chance at helping these kids. What are kids supposed to do and what are their responsibilities? They knew exactly!

What are parents supposed to do to help the situation? Plenty! First off, go get your kid's iPod! Put on the headphones, turn down the volume, turn on the machine, and prepare to get blown away! Secondly, get that kid to eat dinner with you. Talk to your kids like they are not stupid. Don't think their problems don't count because they have a way of making them count. Rehab is 20 G's a week! Jail is a bout $4,000 to start with. They can wreck a business or bust up a family. They can even smash a classroom, if you don't show them that they are the end all and be all of all things important. If this was not your thought when you created the little buggers, then you are in for a rude awakening.

In my class, the kids are the reason I am here. They get whatever they really need, but I pay almost no attention to what the want. I'm a tough-love rough-neck. The most trouble I have is convincing them that there is not an endless supply of paper in the printer, and once I train them to refill the paper tray, the trouble is over. Once that first roll of twenty copies of some paper comes out of the printer and I find out who wasted my supplies, the heat is on and the understanding is now beginning. I'm on a budget, my time is valuable, and the ink is in short supply. I can talk non-stop for hours at a time, and this is not a skill I waste on the initiated since they know better already.

As one kid put it so well years ago, "Man, I tried all that and none of it works, so you might as well go ahead and do it because he's going to wear you down anyway." When it comes to anyone trying to convince me of anything, I'm thick as a brick and twice as tasty. Once my mind is made up, I am totally unbending. These kids are going to learn how to communicate who they are, and that is all there is to it. My love for them is not predicated on their agreeing with me, but if they want a moment's peace while they are within a hundred yards of me, they will make every effort to learn how to communicate their needs and how to meet the needs of others. Any questions?

runningturtle87

Today we will be discussing memorization, and here is something I got from Rich Allen over at Greenlight education.net.

1. sun
2. eyes
3. triangle
4. stove
5. fingers
6. sticks
7. up
8. octopus
9. line
10. hen
11. fence
12. egg
13. black cat
14. heart
15. fame
16. driving
17. magazine
18. vote
19. remote
20. vision

1. sun……………..the sun is round
2. eyes…………….I have two eyes
3. triangle…………a triangle has three sides
4. stove……………there are four burners on a stove top
5. fingers………….I have five fingers
6. sticks……………pick up sticks
7. up……………….the drink is 7UP.
8. octopus………….an octopus has 8 tentacles
9. line……………...nine rhymes with line
10. hen……………...ten rhymes with hen
11. fence…………….11 looks like a picket fence
12. egg………………eggs come in a box of a dozen
13. black cat………….13 is unlucky like a black cat
14. heart………………February 14th is Valentines Day, and I give my heart
15. fame………………everyone has 15 minutes of fame
16. driving……………At 16 you get your driving license
17. magazine………….A popular magazine is 17 Magazine
18. vote……………….when you turn 18 you can vote
19. remote…………….a 19 inch TV has a remote
20. vision……………..I have 20-20 vision

The trick is to use the expressions with the motions to have both kinesthetic and auditory learning happening; this puts the words deeper into your memory. If you just say the word without any way for your mind to hook onto it, it will just fade into unimportance.

Let’s take a second group of words and add them on top of the first group.
1. noun
2. pronoun
3. adjective
4. verb
5. adverb
6. interjection
7. conjunction
8. preposition
9. essay
10. subject
11. direct object
12. indirect object
13. object of a preposition
14. predicate noun
15. appositive
16.predicate adjective
17. participle
18. gerund
19. infinitive
20. grammar
We look at a stack of heavy words like this and we think of it as overwhelming, but they are only words. No big deal! Right?

1. noun……………Nouns NAME things and our star is the sun.
2. pronoun…………I can see with my eyes that pro-nouns take the place of nouns
3. adjective………..a triangle has three sides as described by AN adjective
4. verb……………..a stove can burn you and verbs show action
5. adverb……………my VERY fast fingers add to the verb
6. interjection……….I picked up a stick and stubbed my toe, OUCH! Interjection!
7. conjunction……….Drinking 7UP with a bottle AND my lips, conjunction
8. preposition………..An octopus had a preposition (IN each) (OF his tentacles.)
9. essay………………Essays cross the line by having an OPINION
10. subject……………Ten loud HENS were the subject (of the sentence) she wrote
11. direct object………I directly painted my FENCE, Direct object! DO!
12. indirect object…….The chicken gave ME an egg, indirect object. IO!
13. object of a preposition…..I hear the meow (of a big black CAT,) OP!
14. predicate noun…………She is MY GIRL, and I heart her. Predicate noun; PN.
15. appositive…………...My best friend, TIGER, is famous…I’m a’positive of that!
16.predicate adjective…..My driving is CRAZY, so my driving is what? PA
17. participle……………PRINTED magazines are part hype with a sip of truth
18. gerund………………Voting are der Germans und der breaking down zer vall.
19. infinitive……In the remote future I want TO HAVE an infinitive amount of money
20. grammar……I have a vision of grammar as a pile of DO-DO.

This is a great way to memorize anything in the world.
runningturtle87

School is starting today, and I have a plan for the year.

School is starting today, and I have a plan for the year.
I usually write my journals at various locations, but this year I plan to use this site to write out my year's supply of journals. I will provide a list of topics and then write on those, and then publish the entire manuscript at the end of the year. The point is that one day does not make a year, but collectively, all of the things we do make up our lives. One of the secrets to my having so much accomplished is that I constantly work on something, and I work of several projects at one time. When I see a project nearing completion, I tend to start looking around for what I will work on next. I know that my life has a finite number of days and instead of being concerned about that, I tend to think of it as a tool for motivation. Several well-known authors used their own illnesses as a tether to keep them grounded in order to make sure that they delivered under the time constraint of having a terminal disease. I don't know when I will die, but I will some day die, and that means that if I am going to get it done, it has to happen while I am still living.I am looking at the problem of my not being able to copy and paste the journal into my documents file.Okay, well now I have discovered that I can copy and paste from my computer to the board on the blog, but i can't take things back out again, and that could be a problem. Don't mind me while I set up an alternative way of documenting the number of words I write, okay?

Okay, then! I can take the original and turn it into a draft, and this can be brought out into Word, and that can be archived and edited. This will be tricky. I will need to do this on a daily basis, and that takes concentration. Let me see if I can pull it back up from the Blog board and copy and paste it from there in order to document the file. The whole point is to be able to write the book on line and then pull it off the web for publication. If I can't do that, it will be more difficult to pull off the assignment of writing a book on-line. Just one second and I'll check this out.

Well, that was tricky! I had to re-post it when i went back, so the problem is that it may disappear if I don't control the flow! Day one is now officially over!
runningturtle87

Many times I find that people will only speak of their deepest selves when they are in crisis. I ask then why we should wait until the last minute to get real with ourselves and others. What do we do about the rage, the regret, and the unintegrated parts of our psyche? What do we do with the lost and stolen moments that have now become loneliness and isolation? We laugh publicly and we cry privately. Why spend another moment being other than who we are when we can take steps to become our most true selves?
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Facing our own fears and intolerances is a martial art. Painting on a blank canvas takes the courage of a lion. Stepping out of the skin we have known takes bravery and sublime humility. If we are to awaken from the nightmare that is our own lack of standing for inner peace, then we must go to war against our own ignorance and learn to become tolerant of the intolerant selves that we are. To judge others is to condemn ourselves; to co-dependently allow others to enslave our minds to their untried ideas is slavery. To step beyond ourselves, we must do battle with our own reactiveness and learn to respond to the world as it is.
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Warriors pick their own fields when they can, but accept that the terms of battle can only be accepted when one faces himself. The opponent is always the self, and the other guy is merely the delivery system by which we have chosen to engage our own egos.
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runningturtle87