Compared to some of the teachers with whom I work I feel like a one trick pony. I know English Language Arts very well, but when it comes to teaching an elective, all the other things I can do - bake, ride a horse, worm a sheep - aren't very school worthy. Even after 6 years of French in high school and college, I can barely read it, and speak not at all - pidgin English is the closest I get to a foreign language. I am a peg which fits my hole in life very well - not sure I would be versatile enough to move to another place on the pegboard, to extend the metaphor.
I even spent some time thinking of 7 things I could say about myself that you couldn't read for yourself here on Hapless. But here we go:
1) I am not good with change - at first. I adjust when I need to, but my first reaction is panic.
2) When people are talking and talking, I tend to tune out, which can be highly embarrassing when someone asks you a question in a whole staff meeting.
3) Even though I have spent my professional life with teenagers, sometimes my own baffle me.
4) I suspect my kids are well aware of number two, and start talking and talking so I tune out and say, "Uh huh, sure" when they want to have me say, "Yes". It doesn't work, but it is pretty clever of them.
5) I am ridiculously tender-hearted and cry at stupid movies and even touching commercials - which cracks up both my kids and my students to no end.
7) I am ridiculously over-educated, but my lifelong dream was to get my PhD. At this point, the amount of comfortable work years and the cost of a PhD don't make sense, but it was still a dream of mine.
I know I need to pass on my Versatile Blogger award to another blogger, but that will have to wait until later - I think all the bloggers whom I read frequently deserve it - but I am extremely late for an appointment - arrgh, just noticed the time.
6 comments:
Congratulations! Very well deserved.
Seems to me that you already speak Hawaiian and English, being fluent in French would just be showing off.
I've discovered that my book knowledge is lacking around the farm, turns out I needed practical knowledge.
Thanks, Leigh!
Chai Chai, I don't speak Hawaiian. Pidgin is sort of a creole - mostly English words with a grammar structure that is more like the Hawaiian grammar, but these days it is more a dialect than a true creole. My kids have to take Hawaiian at the school they attend, but they laugh at my attempts. Hawaiian was very little known when I was growing up, and it has really grown in the last twenty years - they even have Hawaiian immersion schools now, and state testing in Hawaiian Language for some subjects, but I didn't have that at all.
I would never have known, you use Hawaiian words quite often and I just thought.....that is what I get for thinking. If find it fascinating that a Creole style Hawaiian/English dialect (Pidgin?) is being created and is in common use, sounds like a possible PhD project and follow on thesis for some enterprising teacher....hmmm.
I was just talking about it with my kids in the car. It was really a lot more like a different language when I was a kid - and each island had their own subtle version. Now, with all the media and cable tv, it is different. We spoke standard English with our kids, mostly, when they were little, so sometimes, they can't even understand some of the older people's pidgin. I find it kind of sad, a loss to our community - even if the English teacher in me could be happy, I guess. I moved to Hawaii in middle school, so I learned through exposure rather than actually growing up like that. My husband, who is part-Hawaiian, was raised in a mostly standard English speaking household, too - but I know my in-laws knew a lot more! Sometimes, Mom D will use words people aren't using much anymore - it is very interesting.
Congrats!! I agree with Leigh, very well deserved. I enjoy your blog :)
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