Saturday Date Night

Happy Saturday!
Tonight, Daniel and I finally made use of his Valentine's Day gift to me.  He got me the gift of a Sur La Table cooking class for two, and we decided to use it to take a class on Asian dumplings.  As you know if you read my blog, I cook and bake quite a bit, so I love to learn new techniques and recipes.

When we got to the store for our class, we realized that we were the only ones signed up.  It was awesome to have Chef Tom (who was a load of fun by the way) and the kitchen all to ourselves for the two hour class.  Some of the things Chef Tom went over were things I already knew how to do (basic knife skills, making a yeast dough for the steamed bun dumplings) but were things Dan were not as comfortable with.  It gave him a chance to practice chopping, mincing, and kneading while I stepped to the side to watch.

The best part of the class (besides tasting the dumplings of course!) was talking as we cooked.  It was a low-key class that we truly enjoyed, and I learned that the two types of dumplings we made were actually really easy; things I could easily do on my own in my own kitchen.

Here's what we cooked:

Vietnamese Mushroom and Chestnut Buns
These were my favorite of the three dishes.  I really liked the texture of the steamed dough and the flavor of the filling.

Korean Pork and Cabbage Butter Dumplings
These were good, but we forgot to season the filling before we filled the dumplings.  We should have added a bit of salt.  Also, there was WAY too much butter in the recipe.

Chinese Long Beans with Chile and Garlic
The supplier for my local Sur La Table couldn't get the long beans, so we used regular green beans.  Honestly, I would probably only get regular green beans at my local grocery anyway, so I was fine with that.  This was a really tasty dish.









So will I make these recipes again?  I'm pretty sure I will.  I will probably look for a different filling for steamed buns, since my kids aren't into mushrooms.  But now that I know the technique, I can really do anything.

Next I'd like to learn to make macaron!

Working Smarter... And Harder

Here I am... my fifth go at the Slice of Life Story Challenge.  Every year I look forward to the arrival of the SOLSC, because it means warmer weather and spring are just around the corner.  Every year I think maybe THIS will be the year the writing habit will stick.  So far, no dice.

Earlier this week, I was looking through my Twitter feed (no surprise there), and quoted a tweet that struck me.  It led to this exchange:

When I read Dana's response, my first thought was "That would be a great Slice of Life entry!"  So here goes... how my school life is different as a third grade teacher than it was as a literacy coach or even as a 7th grade teacher.

I look at this work load as two separate entities:  things I do at school and the work I bring home.

In some respects, the work I bring home is not that much more than what I brought home as a coach.  In my life before literacy coaching, I was a seventh grade language arts teacher.  My home workload for those 18 years was CRAZY!  It was not uncommon for me to spend a good 6 hours on Sunday afternoons/evenings grading and planning.  As a coach, my homework was mostly reading professional books and journals, doing data analysis after our fall and spring benchmarking, and planning for PD workshops and book studies.  Most of my other planning I could do during the school day when I wasn't in classrooms or meeting with teachers.  As a third grade teacher, I spend about 45 minutes or less in the evening looking over student work from the day, and on Sundays I spend an hour or two planning and getting ready for the week ahead.  I don't mind doing this work at home, because by the end of the school day, I am beat.  I need some decompression time!

It's during the school day that I notice a HUGE change in the work load.  It's true that I see far fewer students (18 versus the 60 or so I saw daily at the junior high) and I have a paraprofessional with me daily for my literacy and math blocks.  However, I am with kids more total minutes each day now as a third grade teacher than I used to be as a JH teacher and definitely as a coach.  Teaching elementary school is a full-contact job!  My specials periods are 30 minutes each, so after walking the kids to PE or art and then going to pick them up and walk them back after, I lose about 10 minutes.  That gives me 20 minutes to make calls, grade, answer emails, check my mailbox, and do all the other things that teachers do during their planning periods.  There are days when I think back on my daily 40 to 80 minutes of plan time with great longing.  I won't lie.

The mental work of teaching elementary school is also more exhausting.  As a middle school teacher, I taught the same lesson multiple times.  I could make adjustments to make a lesson go better, but I wasn't teaching something new each period.  Now, I teach all subjects, so I NEVER repeat a lesson.  Add that to the fact that I am teaching math and science for the first time EVER, and you can see why my brain is exhausted at the end of the day.

That being said, I LOVE my new gig.  I find learning the new curriculum and working with my grade level team to be invigorating.  Third graders are sponges that soak up everything.  They are excited about learning.  They laugh when I'm goofy - and I can BE goofy with them in ways I never could be with older kids.  I have learned this year that I NEED to be in the company of children daily.  I might get tired, but it's the good kind of tired.

So there you go, Dana.  My long answer to your short question!

Now.. who has a question for me to answer tomorrow?

Learning Curve

Yesterday afternoon my highly coveted smart phone arrived at my house via UPS.  Of course, I was at school, and then I had to drive down to the Loop for a meeting.  By the time I got home last night it was 9, and I just couldn't wait to activate it and start playing.

By the time I got off the phone with the customer care person, it was almost 1l.  I quickly discovered that although I'm pretty tech savvy, there were just things I couldn't figure out (like um... how to make a call?). 

I know that as I have time to sit and play with my phone and poke around, I'll get the hang of how the phone works, but until then, I guess I'll let my 6 year old have a crack at it.  I'm sure she'll figure it out in five minutes.