At home for the holidays. I am feeling blessed to have friends to play music with and that the sun is shining and I am not just socked in with grey clouds.

I have some homework (reading and highlighting, no long essays) as our district is looking at renovating the ESL materials. In this era of Common Core Standards I find that my job is changing. Not that it hasn't changed every year since I started, but now I feel I find myself trying to navigate how the English Language is used effectively in the regular ed classroom and how to support language learners and their teachers.

The classes that Stanford offers through the MOOC (massive open online course) that focus on English Language Learners are time consuming and full of ideas and high expectations. I am mulling over the idea of taking the next one that is six months long instead of three. I was team lead on one last spring and it was a great experience. I joined one this fall that had no team lead ( It hought it did, but no one communcated ) and it was not a great experience. It was a lot of work to do the team lead, but I feel it was worth it.

I'm a Blogger-not

I really thought that I would get better at narrating some of the more interesting things that I do, but I have not taken the time to do it. When I am online I tend to check email and trash most of it, check Facebook and reply to any posts that I like. I have been a member of Twitter a long time, but never really tweet anymore. I joined Instagram a couple of days ago to make posting pictures easy.

Last summer I got to play with some mummers and puppeteers called Risk of Change for the Oregon Country Fair. My friend Jenni invited me and we ended up making a twins costume so that we could be the Silver Lining Sisters. We had clear glass orbs (otherwise known as marbles) and we would hand one to a fair-goer and tell them something like "This is an orb of perception that will help you look into yourself to find the silver lining in all your life's challenges." We also dressed up as gnomes, trolls, curly-stripey clowns, carnaval clowns, flamingo-rinas and some color themed costumes. This year uncle Sam thwarted my ability to go play by demanding more than a thousand dollars on April 15th, so I taught summer school again. I am hoping to return next summer.

I am going to clean out my car so that I can drive it south for 12 hours or so and camp in the redwoods near the Russian River and play music from Brazil at California Brazil Camp. I have been going for 7 or 8 years and learning songs and a third language and culture. It looks like I might be trecking alone, so I am preparing myself for that possibility. Snacks, music and a good night's sleep and I'll be ready.