Skinning Movable Type

Posted on by Dana
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I am trying to get brave enough to skin this site. It looks like it would be a lot of work, and I’m not sure I’m up for it. But the skinned sites I’ve run across are so cute! For example:

  • Big Pink Cookie’s pink is so cute, and I love the Paris theme.
  • Acting-Natural.com allows you to pick a skin the first time you visit. Lots of choices!
  • chastitycatt has pretty kitties on most of her “themes,” but I think I like the default best — it’s understated and pretty.
  • lily of the valley has monkeys! You can change skins by clicking the link above her search box.
  • Magical Musing has some pretty skins.
  • scriptygoddess not only has four background and link color options to choose from, but also lets you input your own hex code and colorize as you please!

First of all, I’d have to come up with the different layouts, and I’m well aware how long it takes to come up with one. There is a reason my blog has been the same for the entire time I’ve had it on this site. In the four years I’ve been journaling online, I can remember having a grand total of six layouts. Six. Some people change them for each season. I’m like Cranky Dragon — I don’t want to break anything. It took me forever to relent and redo my individual archive template so I would have the TypeKey login link.

If you are a bit braver than I am, and you want to try to skin your blog, you might try the following sources:

  • Skinning a Website from domesticat.net has a tutorial appropriate for any website.
  • This Chick has a simpler method that works well for MT blogs (thanks Arvind for the tip).
  • Skinning MT at Movalog allows you to skin your user interface if you have MT (thanks for the clarification Arvind).
  • BlogSkins has lots of designs. Quality is mixed, but you can’t beat free.

Of course, anyone who wants to donate their talents to beautifying Much Madness is Divinest Sense is most welcome. Yeah, that’s likely to happen. I’ll just hold my breath.

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Connected

Posted on by Dana
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Yesterday, I went to the grocery store. There are three Kroger stores within about three miles from my home, but like most people, I tend to go to the same one all the time. This Kroger has those U-Scan lanes so customers can scan and bag their own groceries if they want. If I can, I always use the U-Scan lanes. I think as long as you don’t get behind someone who doesn’t know how to scan, then it’s quicker. Also, I don’t really like to interact with the checkers. I guess that makes me rude, but frankly, it bugs me sometimes when they insist on being chatty. Actually, I believe it to be related to OCD. One of my “issues” is talking to people I don’t know — especially over the phone. Sometimes, it’s simply that I find the chit-chat annoying; a checker at that same Kroger asked me if I had gone to church that day (it was Sunday). That bothered me on so many levels, I didn’t know where to start, but I forced a smile and said “no.” U-Scan lanes mean I’m in, out, and back home without having to interact with anyone if I don’t want to.

At this Kroger, the same man is always “manning” the U-Scan lanes. If you don’t know what this means, basically it means he stands there in case customers have problems with checking out. I go to the grocery store at least every other day, and he is always there.

Yesterday, as I checked out my groceries, lost in my own world, I didn’t notice the flurry activity around the U-Scan Man until I had bagged my groceries and was headed out the door. He was sitting on a bench, surrounded by EMT’s and had oxygen tubing in his nose. There were two ambulances parked outside.

I kept walking, because I didn’t want to stare or make him feel weird. I come in so often, he must recognize me in much the same way as I recognize him. I kept walking, and I almost called Steve. Nah, I told myself, you can tell Steve when you get home. I thought of U-Scan Man several times. Just a little while ago, I thought about him again: please God, I hope he’s OK.

It’s odd, isn’t it? I use the U-Scan lane so I don’t have to interact with anyone, and I wind up being attached to the consistent presence of the U-Scan Man enough to pray for his health. I guess I was interacting a little more than I thought.

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Guys Read

Posted on by Dana
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Jon Scieszka, author of perennial favorites The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, has something to say about the way boys are encouraged to read. From a recent interview with Bookslut (one of my favorite blogs; you must become a regular reader!):

There was a USA Today article [May 3, 2005] about bringing comic books into the classroom, and Santa Monica High School teacher Carol Jago said, “Our job as teachers is to help students read hard texts. When a student tells you the work is hard, you should say, ‘Good; now I know it’s the right book for you.'”Do you agree with that?

Wow, I think that’s wrong on just so many levels, it’s not funny. That’s just painfully wrong, I think. In fact, that’s what gotten us where we are today, where we just keep telling kids, like, you know, “Take your medicine. Reading tastes bad, but it’ll make you a better person, so suck it up.” But it’s not happening! Boys are just leaving reading in droves. And that’s not right.

Part of the Guys Read program is where I go around and talk to teachers and librarians about [doing] exactly the opposite. Don’t try to beat kids into reading. I think what we have to do is to motivate them to want to learn how to read. That’s a difficult thing, so I think the best way to do it is to give them things they like to read. And what we haven’t done with boys is we haven’t really given them a broad range of reading. In schools, what’s seen as reading is so narrow: it’s literary, realistic fiction. It’s feelings and problems, stuff that a lot of boys just aren’t drawn to. So we’re setting boys up for failure, because we have a literacy model that’s just easier for girls.

I have recently become familiar with Carol Jago through the normal education channels — seeing her books advertised, following links, etc. The book which really caught my attention was With Rigor for All: Teaching the Classics to Contemporary Students. It sounded like backlash against movements in education to introduce contemporary fiction. I haven’t read the book, so I cannot really be sure, but a reviewer who has commented (on Amazon) said:

Carol sees the teaching of the classics as a model for the way we teach thinking. She feels that kids learn content from the classics, yes, but they learn far more. Kids learn how to think about the great ideas that come from great books. She says the way we do this is by making the classics relative. The great themes of love, war, inhumanity, humanity are still the themes we all know and relate to. By making the classics relative to our kids, we examine again the questions and problems we all have been wrestling with. Carol suggests that the way to teach the classics is not in isolation. Carol believes that classics must be taught by using all sorts of other “texts”. A text to Carol may be the L.A. Times if it helps her make a point. It’s teachers, ultimately, who make the difference.

It makes me think the USA Today quote was somewhat taken out of context. It doesn’t seem that Carol Jago is saying that we need to feed children books they don’t like because they’re good for them; rather, she argues they could be taught differently so students will like them. I couldn’t agree more, as an English teacher who teaches a lot of classics. I need to get her book.

I also think Scieszka is right. We need to do something to make boys want to read — boys need to see it as a “cool” thing to do from a young age. So many of the parents of my students must have been doing something right, because most of my male students love to read. However, I’ve been teaching long enough to know that the problem Scieszka describes is very real, and we need to do something about it.

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Tots Online

Posted on by Dana
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The AP reports:

Before they can even read, almost one in four children in nursery school is learning a skill that even some adults have yet to master: using the Internet. Some 23 percent of children in nursery school — kids age 3, 4 or 5 — have gone online, according to the Education Department. By kindergarten, 32 percent have used the Internet, typically under adult supervision.

Can you believe that? What are kids that age looking at on the Internet? I have taken Maggie to look at things on Nick Jr., but I didn’t really think there was much out there for the under-5 set. Maybe I’ve been shortsighted, though. I don’t see why I couldn’t let Maggie dictate e-mails to relatives. They’d love it, and I’ll bet she’d like the replies.

I didn’t go online until my twenties, because there basically wasn’t any “online” to go to until then, but my own children won’t remember life without the Internet. In some ways, I find, as a teacher, that students don’t really know how to use print sources and become quickly frustrated if they don’t find what they’re looking for. In some cases, it doesn’t occur to them to consult a book! I worry that this trend could continue. The more dependent we seem to become on technology, the more enslaved we become to it. Think about this: your ancestors 150 years ago got by just fine without electricity and running water. I think this kind of technological progress is interesting, and I think it is good, but I hope it doesn’t prevent students from being able to use books.

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The Birth of Venus

Posted on by Dana
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The Birth of VenusI’ve just finished Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus. Renaissance Italy is such fascinating subject matter that I wonder I’ve not read much about it before. I absolutely devour any history programs about the Medici and the Borgias. One of my colleagues teaches a class entitled “Dante and the Medieval World.” Yes, in a high school — isn’t that cool? Anyway, I thought of her often as I read, because Dante is frequently alluded to in this novel.

The novel begins in 1490s Florence, just as Lorenzo de’ Medici dies and the city comes under the control of Savonarola. To Alessandra Cecchi, the main character, it is a frightening time, as the rebirth and flowering of the Renaissance seems perilously close to being snuffed out forever. Alessandra is strong-willed. She has a fine mind and the latent talent of an artist, but she is often discouraged in using both. Alas, she is a free-spirited woman in a harshly patriarchal society.

Alessandra is married off to politically astute and sensitive Cristoforo. The marriage allows Alessandra to have certain freedoms that she craves, but it also stifles her — Cristoforo is homosexual, and he cannot feel passion for Alessandra. Instead, Alessandra is captivated by the young painter employed to create frescoes for her family’s chapel.

The book was well-written, and I definitely felt as if characters were rendered honestly, with special attention given to the times in which they lived. Amazon recommended this book to me because I bought books by Tracy Chevalier and Susan Vreeland, whom they considered similar. If you reduce Dunant’s book to simply being a novel about art, then yes, they are similar. However, while Vreeland and Chevalier write about well-known artists and/or works of art and their backstories, Dunant has created a fictional art world. None of her characters are famous, and we cannot be sure that anything they created is today the admired creation of an unknown artist, but they do live in fascinating times, and I was easily swept into their story.

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Male Teachers

Posted on by Dana
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The Boston Globe reports that only 20% of teachers in public schools are male; in elementary schools, the number is a mere 9%. Think fast — did you have any male teachers in your elementary school? We had one. Mr. Veach. My sister was in his class in 5th grade. The numbers seemed to gradually increase until college, when the teachers were predominantly male.

Some people believe that teaching is “woman’s work.” It’s too nurturing, too maternal. However, men who teach young children have another issue with which to contend: accusations of child molestation.

According to Bryan Nelson, founder of the Minneapolis-based MenTeach:

[S]ome men who might want to teach fear false molestation accusations, and … society looks at men with suspicion. That view of men has been worsened, he said, by recent attention to priest abuse scandals and even the trial faced by Michael Jackson.

“Society has a narrow view of men,” Nelson said. “We think men are dangerous.”

One might argue that lately, it seems like female middle school teachers are looking kind of dangerous in that regard. My daughter had a male kindergarten teacher for a couple of months. He had an accident and was unable to continue teaching that year, but I will admit I thought it was kind of odd — I asked myself why a man would want to teach kindergarten. I have to come clean with gender biases of my own. I don’t think men are any better or worse than women at teaching. But I will admit that I did scratch my head over a man teaching kindergarten. And why should that be? Sarah has had male music and P.E. teachers since then, but not a full-time classroom instructor; however, I can say unequivocally that her male music teacher is one of the best teachers of elementary school children I’ve come across. In addition, he is also very caring with Sarah, and I can tell he has made a significant impression upon her.

One of the most caring teachers I ever had was Mr. Velando, my homeroom, math and reading teacher in 6th grade. He bought me an autograph book when I placed first on our team/second in 6th grade/4th in the school in the spelling bee. He, along with Mrs. Van, my Language Arts and Social Studies teacher, took me to my favorite restaurant, Crystal’s Pizza (sadly defunct) with another student to celebrate our awards as Students of the Month (I was, I think, January, and the other student was December). He was a truly great teacher.

I found this story interesting, too, because I will be the only female teacher in the English Department next year; however, the Science Department will be totally female. I don’t think I’ve ever been in the position of being the only female in my department. I’m not worried about it, but I am wondering how it will be different.

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New Tunes… Again

Posted on by Dana
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After another couple of months passed, I finally got around to updating my radio blog (get your own). This selection group should be titled, “What the Hell?” Instead it’s just stuff I like, and it’s a testament to my, shall we say “eclectic” tastes.

Playlist:

  1. The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”
  2. REM, “So. Central Rain”
  3. Motley Crue, “Home Sweet Home”
  4. Maroon 5, “Sunday Morning”
  5. k.d. lang, “Trail of Broken Hearts”
  6. Crowded House, “Weather With You”
  7. The Cranberries, “When You’re Gone”
  8. Blondie, “The Tide is High”
  9. Alison Krauss, “Down in the River to Pray”
  10. ABBA, “Dancing Queen”

Bonus points to anyone who can connect “The Tide is High” to “Dancing Queen.”

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Summer Reading

Posted on by Dana
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I recently discussed required reading in schools. You may recall my school has required summer reading in addition to reading done through the year. My daughter, who will start middle school in August, has a suggested summer reading list.

What about you? Do you read more during the summer? Do you set yourself a reading list?

I will admit that I don’t usually think about it that much. I just read. However, I decided to plan a little bit more this summer. This summer will include at least the following books for me:

Currently reading:

Reading list:

And no, I cannot imagine that I will finish them all. If you are interested, you can always keep track of my reading on my bookshelf.

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Imagine

Posted on by Dana
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It has been a while since I fully explored my school’s website; therefore, I didn’t realize my esteemed colleague, Barbara Rosenblit, had her speech in response to her presentation of the prestigious Covenant Award in November 2004 posted.

She’s a remarkable woman and a master teacher. In the short time I’ve worked with her, I have already learned a great deal. The best thing about Barbara is that she sees herself as inexpert — constantly learning. She once told me she likes to be, in her words, “the dumbest person” in the room, because she feels that is when she learns the most. In truth, she is the kind of person who learns from everyone, and she does not place her learning above that of others. She candidly told me, for example, that she took an idea from a new teacher and totally altered the way she teaches double-period classes. Many teachers in her position might take the stance that there is nothing they can learn from new teachers.

If you are an educator and like to “imagine” how great our educational system could be if people like Barbara were in charge of making policy, you can read her speech.

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