Don't believe everything you are told.

OMG all these people accepting one source of information about Shirley Sherrod. First the blogger Andrew Breitbart claimed to have only seen part of the video he posted on his blog. From that sound bite the USDA and the White House jumped to fire Ms. Sherrod. Now they all are claiming that it was all a mistake and are sorry for what happened. Okay Breitbart is a professional journalist and should be use to checking his sources. Then the USDA and the White House, do they believe what ever they read. Don't they have interns to check these kind of things out? 
Now I see why kids and adults are so easily sucked it to believing what they read on the internet.
AAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGG!!!!!!!
Now I don't know a lot about Shirley's and Andrews political beliefs I'm guessing that they are far apart. But the story she was telling of her life up to that point is very interesting. She came from a rural souther town at a time of segregation and lynching. The part of her story that has caused all the controversy is about 17 minuets into the talk.



She tells of having power over a white man. Because of this encounter she realized her own prejudice. 
Know the whole story and make your own decision.

''Blissful Thoughts'' - by: Phillip Cordero (Original Composition) on th...

Found this while googling myself, it could be the theme song for my blog.

My Summer Project

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Originally uploaded by blisschan

This is my summer project.
I use to ride in college and then I got married and had kids. So I became responsible. Now the kids are grown and out of the house so I decided it was time again for some irresponsibility. Okay not too much irresponsibility I do wear a helmet and other safety gear. I also took a 4 day motor cycle safety course before I started riding.
But it is fun and Jan says that it rattles the windows when I start it up in the carport.
I just got through yesterday putting a few additions on the bike, a windshield and sissy-bar with back rest for Jan when she rides with me. The next big step is that I'm riding the hog to our family reunion about 250 miles from here.

Okay I’m officially confused

In the Florida legislature we have had the very Republican Senator John Thrasher sponsored a bill that would effectively move the control of schools from the local level to Tallahassee. Today Governor Crist vetoed the bill and I’m sure he will be criticized by Republicans for this but it seems to me that Crist was holding to conservative thoughts by reducing the size of government and maintaining local control over the school districts.

Then tonight I was listening to the news and President Obama was announcing his plans for NASA. It sounded like he is proposing to reduce the size of NASA and encouraging private industry to take up the mantel of space exploration. Humm reduce government encourage private industry.

I can’t tell if they are following focus groups or their beliefs.  But I'm leaning toward politicians not having an idea what they are doing.

Writing about Art

Okay when I first decided to include a major writing component in my lesson plans for the first half of this year I thought "This should be fun!" like banging my head against a wall fun. But stubborn as I am I forged on with this idea.
First I had to plan on what the students would write about. I always do clay before Christmas break and knew that the kids would be very engaged with this medium. So that would be the subject.
One of the major pushes at our school and district wide is to improve writing scores and many of the teachers at my school have extensive training the techniques used to promote student writing. I decided to work with Donna Tippin a 4th grade teacher that specializes in teaching writing. She helped me design the lesson and created the handouts that I gave the students in class to help them write about their clay bowls.

As part of the design of the clay project I decided to have the students create "Story Bowls" This allowed me to teach both pinch pot and coil methods. I also had the students add a small figure to their bowl. I thought that the bowl and figure could be made by most students in one class. The figure also gave them something to create a story around in their writing.

So now I'm working on reading and grading all of these stories of clay. Each of these milk crates contains one classes writing, 18 to 22 students ceramic tales.

01-04-10

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Originally uploaded by blisschan

Today I finally finished organizing my students art writing portfolios. One box for each class. I have to keep the boxes on the hall because my classroom is so small but I'm lucky to have one because not all art teachers in our district have classrooms.

365 photos 2010

I'm going to try again to take 365 photos this year, one a day and post then to Flckr and blog about them here. The first two were taken while on a visit to Jacksonville for News Year.
Jan and I spent New Years Eve with my sister Palmer Ann and her new husband Joe. We had wine and played games. Lots of fun.
1-2-10 was at Tim and Cheryl's house with other family and friends. Here the girls are raiding the refrigerator.

On 1-3-10 I received a very early text from our friend Leslie. At about 2am this Leslie while partying in Vegas she wondered what Jan was doing. I sent her this image.

Being as how I'm trying to keep this blog PG I can't show what was happening in Vegas, that will stay there.