Tag Archives: challenges

Free University Courses

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….. just signed up for a 7 week course in art

Like I’m not busy enough as it is, I signed up for an intense course yesterday that involves reading, taking quizzes and painting. I’ve already done all the reading for last week and taken the quiz but I haven’t started the painting. It’s due tomorrow night. I still have to run a 5k tomorrow morning and I have to finish my report cards.

One of the problems is that the course started last week so I’m already a week behind. When I get this first painting assignment done I’ll be caught up. I’m actually very excited about doing this. The program is called Coursera and it offers hundreds of free courses that are taught by certified professors from dozens of universities, worldwide. Check out the courses here.

What did I learn this week? Well the program is designed for beginning artists so the basics taught this last week were a good refresher lesson for me. This week the focus is on Fantasy art and I learned a lot about Independent Fantasists, such as Rousseau and Chagall, Dadaism, Automatism and Abstract Expressionism. I was also introduced to some Fantasists that I was not familiar with, such as Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray.

Man Ray http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Man_Ray_1934.jpg

Marcel Duchamp http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Marcel_Duchamp_01.jpg/128px-Marcel_Duchamp_01.jpg

Giorgio de Chirico http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Giorgio_de_Chirico_%28portrait%29.jpg

My assignment this week is to come up with my own Fantasy painting using any medium and technique I’m comfortable with. I also have to create an artist statement. Wish me luck. Well I’d better get to those report cards. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.

Cheers!

We Lost in Overtime

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….heartbreaking

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I knew the minute I saw the other team that this was going to be a close competition.

A few days ago I told you about my trials and tribulations when I took my girls’ soccer team to the West Conference finals. The team easily won their first game and then we had to wait an hour between games before we could play our final game. Little did we know at the time that the other team wasn’t going to show up because they had gone to the wrong location.

After waiting in the hot sun for an hour and a half I had to make a decision. Do we win by default or do we allow the missing team to make up the game in the next two days at our school? After speaking with the team we reluctantly decided to play later in the week.

Finding a time that would work for both teams proved to be difficult. I had the upper hand and basically gave them a time that worked for us. I knew that they must have been under a lot of pressure from their community because the time I gave them originally didn’t work for them and when I told them that we had run out of options (which we had) they found a solution to arrive at that time.

All of this happened late Wednesday afternoon and I then had to run around the school to inform the girls that we were playing at 9:00 in the morning the next day. Unfortunately one of our players couldn’t make it because of an appointment that couldn’t be changed on such short notice.

On the day, we had to scramble to find pinnies that were all the same colour because the boys took the jerseys to play in their West Conference game. They won, by the way, and are moving on to the City Finals. To make a long story short, we started out by scoring the first 2 goals and then they tied it up. We then scored 2 more goals and in the last minute of the game the other team tied it up again.

We had to go into overtime, two 5 minute halves and the first team to score would win the game. It was stressful and in the second half the other team put the ball into our net.

When we congratulated the other team I quietly said to the coach from the opposing team that in the future she should be careful not to miss a game again because I’m not so sure that I or any other team would be so generous, again and agree to play at a later date. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that but she became quite indignant and said that if the tables had been turned she would have definitely ‘invited’ the team to her school so that the girls could play. This is all fine and well to say when you’ve just won your game but she didn’t have to wait for an hour and a half on a shadeless field with 16 girls and a dozen parents who had made the long trip to watch their girls play and then have to inform everyone that we weren’t playing because the coach of the other team hadn’t read her emails. We had been informed about the change in venue a week before the game and there were several emails in between that went out informing all of us about the times and field locations.

In the end I explained to her how the girls had helped me make the decision to host another game so that her players had an opportunity to play. I graciously offered to make the presentation of the banner to her team because the convenors for the tournament couldn’t come to the school on such short notice. In turn she praised my girls for a game well played and thanked them for making the decision to give her team another opportunity to play.

Should I have kept my mouth closed and not said anything to this coach? I’m afraid I’m very much like my father and sometimes blurt out things before thinking it through. The only difference is that I know how to take back or apologize for my words where my father rarely does because he believes that you should be allowed to say what you want and not worry how it affects someone else. As he gets older it seems to get worse, as if age is an excuse for insensitivity.

I would welcome your thoughts on this predicament. Have you ever been put on the spot where you had to make a decision that was literally a game changer? I only wish that there was something in the regulations that deals with situations like this. We have rules for everything else, maybe we need a rule for no shows.P1000958

Organizing Timetables for Next Year

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….it took six of us about five hours to pull it off

It’s been a tough day for me, emotionally. The press was very critical of teachers today. Apparently last Friday over 1600 teachers in the school board next door to the one I work for, called in sick and there weren’t enough supply teachers to cover all the absences. We knew that this might happen when the government took away sick days that teachers had saved over the years and cut back the total number of sick days a year that teachers could use. Any unused days can no longer be carried over to other years so as a result many teachers feel that they have to use them up or lose them.

The problem here is that your colleagues suffer when there aren’t enough supply teachers to cover your absence. Library classes get cancelled, MART teachers are pulled from their class and sometimes teachers lose their prep periods to cover these unsupervised classes. Listening to the radio this morning on the way to school and then again on the drive home left me feeling very depressed. Everyone who hates teachers seems to come out of the woodwork when stories like this are written. These haters paint all of us with the same brush. We were described as greedy, selfish, uncaring, liars and dishonest.

I also spent a great deal of time today dealing with the school that didn’t show up for our soccer game yesterday. The time I suggested yesterday didn’t suit them. At this point I really didn’t feel that I needed to make anymore concessions. They wanted me to play through my lunch hour and they even offered to pay for a supply teacher so that the schools could play in the afternoon. I’ve had to leave work for supply teachers in the past and it’s a great deal of work, especially for art. In the end I told them that there were no more options. They finally agreed to come at the time I had first posted.

After school today a group of us stayed behind at school to organize next year’s timetables. Our principal ordered in chicken and salad for dinner. Even though it took us 5 hours it seemed too easy this year. Either we’ve gotten really good at it or we’ve made a huge mistake that will be discovered in the next day or two. Even if it is correct I know that we won’t please everyone. Each teacher has been given the number of prep periods that they are entitled to but we know that some teachers won’t be happy with how they’ve been distributed. Some want them  all in the morning, or all in the afternoon or evenly distributed or only in periods 1 or 5 and some people may not like who is delivering their prep or which subjects are being covered. The funny part is that anyone who wants to participate in organizing the timetables is welcome to join us but it’s always the same people every year who do the work.

Everyone is a bit on edge these days. Report cards are due next week and people are struggling to finish teaching the curriculum or marking tests and projects. We’ve just finished the grade 3 EQAO province wide testing and we we’re still preparing for the spring concert.

The highlight of my day today was teaching puberty to the grade 5 students. I actually volunteered to do this because I love teaching this part of the health curriculum. My principal thinks I’m crazy. I also loved my art class where most of my students were completely engaged in creating their Picasso portraits. I can’t wait to share them with you next week.

Cheers!

We’re Half Way There

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….to winning the West Conference Finals

Today I took 16 girls from the soccer team to the Esther Shiner Stadium to play in the West Conference finals. Our first game was at noon and we arrived 40 minutes early so that we could warm up.

It was a beautiful day and the temperature was perfect for playing soccer, warm but not hot. The girls played extremely well and put in place all the skills that they’d been taught over the last 6 weeks. They won their first game easily, 6 – 0.

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We have new rules in soccer now that require teams to take a one hour break between games. After the first game we had to wait until 2:00 before we could play again. The winner of this second game would be crowned the West Conference champions.

An hour is a long time and even though the girls were suppose to rest they played on the field and even practised some more of their soccer moves. When 2:00 arrived the other team still hadn’t shown up. By 2:10 the convenor called the coach of the other team and we discovered that they had gone to the wrong soccer field. Now this field wasn’t down the block or a couple of streets over, it was on the other side of town. Before they could get to Esther Shiner we were looking at another 40 minute wait.

We contemplated waiting but then the organizers realized that all the fields were booked at 3:00 and we wouldn’t be able to play anyway. Now the decision was mine. The other team asked if we could play the game at our school later in the week and they would pay for the ref. I could have said no and but I kept thinking about the girls on the other team who didn’t get to play through no fault of their own.

When I got back to school I checked our schedule and discovered that the only time slot that would work for us is Thursday at 9:00. I wrote to the other team about the new day and time which is completely contingent on whether or not we can get a ref at such short notice.

So that is why we are only half way to being the West Conference champions. Unfortunately on the same day that we might play, the boys from our school are headed to Esther Shiner to play in the West Conference finals for boys and they will be wearing the Rosethorn jerseys. One of the parents is looking into getting enough pinnies, all in the same colour, for the girls to wear on Thursday.

I was hoping that would be one more thing that I could cross off my to do list but it wasn’t to be. Tomorrow I have to finalize what we’re going to do for our Forest of Reading Celebration. Today I got a lead on an author who is willing to come to Rosethorn to talk to the children. That would be a perfect way to end our special day.

Till tomorrow, cheers!

One Day Left in April

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…..and I’m still shy 2 new followers to reach my goal of 300

April has been an interesting month. I reached 10 000 views and in fact this month I set a record for the most views in one month since I started blogging one year ago. I also had my best day for views yesterday.

Recently I mentioned that I’ve met some wonderful people since I started blogging. We comment back and forth so often that I feel we’ve really made a connection. Thank you for all your kind words and your support.

This weekend I experienced a first for me. Someone I’ve never met before came across my blog while she was helping her daughter with a homework project. They were researching watercolour painters and they saw my post Painting at 91. The mom realized that she knew the family in the photo. In fact she’d been looking for my friend L for years. They met during high school when L was studying in France. They lost touch with each other about 18 years ago. Now they’re about to reconnect, despite living an ocean apart. Isn’t the internet wonderful?

Love hearing from you? What was the most interesting experience you’ve had since you first started blogging?

Cheers!

 

 

Is the Library Obsolete?

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…. well at least one parent thinks so

Tonight at the parent council meeting people were asking when the wall between the library and the computer lab was going to be removed so that the library could be enlarged. To my dismay one parent questioned the logic of enlarging a library when books were becoming obsolete. 

The new library would have tables where students could work and the portable computer lab with the laptops could be used along with resource books to do research. The desktop computers would be moved into classrooms. Some of the better ones would be left along one wall in the new library space. 

At the moment the library is so small that there is no room for furniture where students can sit and read. Presently they sit on the floor. Even the superintendent thinks that the library is incredibly small. My principal says it’s a closet. Well it’s not that small but it is tight and difficult to manoeuvre around the book carousels and cases. Teaching a class in this space has its challenges and forget doing writing assignments. 

These old computers would be removed and replaced with tables and laptops.

These old computers would be removed and replaced with tables and laptops.

 

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I hope the complaint from this one parent doesn’t go any further. No one else at the meeting supported her views but she didn’t seem convinced when we laid out the benefits of removing the wall. The space could also be used by other teachers to teach French and media classes and I could use it for my art classes as well. No more ‘art on a cart’ and there’s water in the space which I don’t have when I have to teach in the portables. 

I know that e-books are becoming more popular but I’m sure that books will have a place in our society and schools for numerous years to come. 

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Coming up on my One Year Anniversary

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…. I can’t believe that I’ve been blogging for a whole year

When I started on this new journey I didn’t know exactly where I was going with this blog. It’s taken me in many directions. It’s been a weight loss journey,

My official 'before' picture taken in March 2012 just before I started my weight loss journey.

My official ‘before’ picture taken in March 2012 just before I started my weight loss journey.

In February, 2013, 33 pounds lighter.

In February, 2013, 33 pounds lighter.

a site for reflecting on my past, an experiment with writing stories and prose, a place to share my new hobby of photography, a gallery for my art work and the work of my students, a cookbook of recipes and a journal to experience and share what makes me happy.

Blogging has kept me on track with my new fitness and eating journey. I’ve never felt better (not counting this cold I’m battling) and I think I look better. I’ve never been happier with myself than I am now. I feel that life has so much more to offer and for me to experience. I look forward to each new day and can’t wait to see where it takes me.

I’ve met the nicest people from all over the world. Thank you to all of you who have liked and commented on my posts. You have no idea how much joy I get from hearing from you. You lift me up when I’m not feeling well or when I’m down in the dumps and you honour me with your compliments and awards. I hope some day to be able to meet some of you when I start to travel more after I retire and I hope if you come to Toronto you’ll look me up and we can meet for coffee or share a meal.

Before the end of the month I hope to reach 10 000 views. The month has started off slowly but that is my own fault. I haven’t had much energy or interesting things to blog about because of my cold but starting today I’m going to try to publish every day. There are 23 days left so that means I need about 30 views a day to reach my goal. Last month I averaged 42 views a day so 30 I think is very doable.

I’m delighted with how many people are following me on mamacormier. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that so many people would want to read what I have to say. Just before the New Year I put out a plea to reach 200 followers and a few kind people made that dream come true. Since then I’ve been steadily getting new followers and am currently sitting at 281. Before the end of the month I’d love to reach 300. Any takers?

So where do I go from here? Well, I’m definitely going to continue with my weight loss and fitness journey. One thing that I’ve learned is that this journey is and will be a life long commitment. I want to live a long and healthy life. I don’t want to live my last 10 years as a statistic and be a burden on society. I have too much I want to do and accomplish in life.

I love the challenges that wordpress and other bloggers put out there so I know that I will continue to participate in some of them, especially the photography ones. I’ll also continue to share the art that my students create and hopefully I’ll find more time to create more of my own art. Who knows, maybe something new will cross my path and I’ll share that with you as well. I can’t seem to focus on any one thing so I tend to do it all. That’s just the way I am. I wouldn’t be happy any other way.

Cheers!

Snow, Slush, Rain and More Snow

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…..didn’t reach 20 cm of snow on Wednesday but made up for it today

With all the hype of more snow or lots of rain I had a feeling it might be the latter. Sure enough on Wednesday morning there was very little snow but it had been raining and sleeting all night long and the end result was slush. Yuck!!!

I was on yard duty Wednesday morning and the kids were jumping in the puddles and sliding through the slush. By the afternoon we had to keep them indoors because too many of them had wet feet and damp clothing. The parking lot at the end of the day filled with water in the low lying areas and some of the staff had to wade through calf deep water to get into their cars.

Last night it started to snow again and this morning we woke up to a winter wonderland. The snow was heavy and clung to tree branches and hydro lines. It was pretty and made for great packing snow. Today the kids had a great time building snow forts and getting very wet again. Our poor caretaker was mopping floors all day.IMGP0239IMGP0240 IMGP0241 IMGP0242 IMGP0243 IMGP0246 IMGP0249 IMGP0250The ground is so wet that the mud is starting to seep through the snow. The temperature, however, is suppose to go down overnight and all the puddles and slush will freeze over. It should be an interesting drive tomorrow morning but I fear that those of us who like to walk will face more challenges. Here’s hoping that my husband doesn’t fall again.

Cheers!

Enough Already!

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…. three falls on patches of ice in one week is too much

I know I wished for snow this winter but I’m ready for Spring. Really ready! IMGP0108The snow has been beautiful and when it’s fresh, deep and crisp and you don’t have to drive anywhere it is lovely to look at  and even fun to walk through.P1000017

The problem with the snow this year is the pattern of weather we’ve been experiencing. Shortly after the snow we’ve had warm weather and the snow all but completely melts away and then we get more snow. Not a bad scenario but after the last BIG storm not all the snow melted and we were left with slushy patches and puddles that froze a few days later.

P1000457This made walking very difficult for humans. Frances is small enough that she basically walks on the crust without breaking through and of course she wants to continue with her daily walks. She doesn’t realize how treacherous the walks have become.

I recently reported how my husband fell on one of his walks with the dog and hurt his back. It was just starting to feel better when he fell again….not once but twice on the same walk this morning.

On Groundhog Day, Wiarton Willie predicted that we would have an early Spring. Boy did he get it wrong! We definitely haven’t seen the end of Winter, in fact we’re suppose to get another snow storm on Tuesday. Wiarton Willie

Wish us luck. I guess I’ll be taking over the dog walking duty for awhile. I don’t mind but I like it better when both of us go out, especially when it gets dark. March 21st can’t come soon enough!

Cheers!