I'm like your favourite roll of toilet paper...

... or your trusty dog.
Your favourite sweater?

That's me -- loyal. I'm the queen of loyalty.

How loyal am I? Well, once I had a hairdresser that mistakenly dyed my hair a plum colour (AWFUL!) but convinced me it looked good, and I went back to her. Again and again... until she moved. Then, I started going to another hairdresser and stayed with her until she moved -- something like 4 or 5 years -- and I hated my hair everytime I walked out of there.

That's a piddly example, though.

I'm loyal in so many ways it's sad sometimes.
To my hairstylist, aesthetician, brand of toilet paper, makeup (I'm very loyal to Shoppers Drug Mart!), wine, beer. Ugh.

But my true loyalties come to my friends.

I'm a fiercely loyal friend. If we've become friends, I'll always expect it to be that way. If we've drifted apart, I'll hold fast to the memories we carved. If you cross me, backstab me, I'll feel sorry for you and still hold on to the goodness of the past.

As I write this, though, I'm thinking that maybe it's not loyalty... maybe it's absurdness. Maybe I'm an old soul. What remains, however, is that I've had to do a lot of reflecting the past few months on friendship, loyalty, honesty, etc. and it still plagues my mind. Loyal or not.... I think I am.

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.


Ann Landers

What do YOU expect from your child's teacher?

For 24 hours a day, I'm a mom.
For about 12 hours a day, I'm a teacher.
Yes, e v e r y  d a y. Weekends. Evenings. Christmas Vacation. Summer Vacation (aka, right now). I'm constantly thinking of my job... well, it's not really that, it's another part of my daily life, another part of who I am. I eat, sleep, breathe, think about teaching or teaching related things at various points each and every day. (In fact, this week I'm participating in a Math Academy for sixth grade teachers, and the true geek in me is loving that I'm learning so much!)

Come September 1, I'll be starting a new teaching assignment. To some it would be considered an easier assignment than my previous Primary through Twelfth grade assortment. Others wonder why I'd want to "just be a classroom teacher". Me, well, I don't quite know what to think, other than I'm very excited to be a teacher of the grade 5/6 combined class in the school I've taught in for 10 years. It's exciting, exhilirating, and a tad bit scary! (lol)

I'm going from the "teacher of many courses/disciplines" to the "classroom teacher of your child".

My questions for you around what you, as parents, want to see from your children's teachers:

• What makes them good?
• What's the best way to communicate?
• What do you want communicated?
• What's your opinion on homework?
• What do you really want your children to learn?

Can you help me out? I want to have a multiple-parent-point-of-view to help frame my own mindset as the new school year approaches.

Thanks!

Daughter Dichotomy

Apparently I used to be shy and quiet; can't really see it, but that's what they tell me. I guess it was once I started dance lessons at age 8 that I became more outgoing (being thrown onstage in front of 100  people kind of does that to someone, I guess). Since then I've danced in front of thousands of people, provided professional development for hundreds of teachers, presented a research project to hundreds of people and spend my working days in front of people.
I'm far from shy now!

So, it's with this outgoing personality that I find it so hard to grasp my daughter's shyness. Man-oh-man. She won't talk, interact with, or otherwise engage with people she doesn't know extremely well.... see, for those of us she does know very well, she's all drama, attitude, bubblingness. A lot of times, she's over the top. This is the kind of girl I can relate to!

Thus, it kills me to have to speak for her with people trying to engage in conversation with her. It kills me to hear that she barely says a word for the 4 hours she's at day camp, yet when she gets in the truck I get a play-by-play of every detail, everything she learned. It pains me to see her clam up and cling to me like speaking will draw out her last breath.

Sometimes I speak for her. Sometimes I force her into speaking by saying that she'll have to learn to speak up for herself in school in September. Most times I wonder if this will be a passing phase once school does start in September. A lot of the time, I must look like a liar as people who read the blog I keep about her see the polar opposite of what we at home experience on a daily basis. She's incredible. She says things you'd never expect. She keeps us on our toes. She's Ramona Quimby from the movie Ramona & Beezus. But if she doesn't know you, you won't see this. That makes me sad.

She's my daughter dichotomy.