Changes

The five people who so who actually follow this blog may have noticed that's it has been rather quiet lately. This is partly due to the fact that I've been incredibly busy, but mostly due to the fact that over the last 18 months or so, I've been contemplating some big changes.

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm currently working on a a PhD in English Studies with an emphasis in Children's and Adolescent literature. When I began contemplating this degree I was recently engaged. I didn't have a child. I lived in an apartment on the edge of a sinkhole (not joking). 4 years of PhD program later, I'm a very different person.

That doesn't mean I don't want a PhD, but it does means that my life is more complicated than it was when I first envisioned this process. So for the 2010-11 academic year, I have requested and have been granted a leave of absence.

This means that the university has granted me a year of no dissertation hours(although I plan on continuing) and they will hold my assistantship. The following year, I will then have the option to come back full time and continue my assistantship or to continue part time until I finish.

This is not a decision I made lightly. This is a conversation I have been having with my advisor and handful of people for the last 18 months. I have put off making this decision for a variety of reasons because I knew it carried major implications. I did not want to make this decision in the heat of the moment, or while I was pregnant, or while I was dealing with the sleep deprivation of a newborn, but ultimately over the last year and half I have returned to the same conclusion. I need to finish my PhD for me, but my goal is not to teach in a high pressure academic environment. This does not mean that I will not continue teaching, but it does mean that I will not sacrifice my family for a teaching job that does not allow me to achieve the balance I desire.

I plan to use this next year to figure out what is best not just for me, but also for my family. I would have loved to have talked to many of you about this decision, but due to a complex process and some administration changes, I was not able to discuss it until it was officially approved by the Graduate College. My apologies to those who are caught by surprise by this decision. Academia is a politically charged world and while I would have loved to have told you all this personally, I had to ultimately ensure that I did not burn any bridges.

Lessons from Our President

I originally published this here because it started out as a post about buying Al Capone new books. It got picked up in a trending topic on Twitter last night and I got a couple hundred hits in ten minutes, 3 pieces of hate mail (two were really nasty, but my favorite was "You call me ignorant for keeping my child home and you named your kid Al Capone."), lots of positive comments, and probably some really confused people who ended up on my other blog thinking it was about censorship, Obama, children's literature, etc and discovered that really it was an isolated post buried among 1 million reasons I think I have the cutest baby on the planet. So I'm reposting here as well...

Those who know me, know that I feel very strongly about discussions of appropriateness and children (and their books). I write about* children's books for a living. I can honestly say that I have one of the best jobs in the world, yet on days like today I get very frustrated.

This morning President Obama spoke to school children directly. Our local newspaper ran an article about the speech and posted the entire text of the speech online and still parents went ballistic. They called school board members, they kept kids out of school, they declared it propaganda, they demanded alternative assignments, they filled the newspaper comments section with hateful and racist comments. All of this name calling and hate speech because the President of the United States wants kids to stay in school, pay attention, live up to their potential, ask questions, watch less tv, work hard, and never give up. If this is brainwashing, I'm okay with these messages.

What I'm not okay with is parents who try to take over the schools because they don't like the President. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to skip school if you don't like the person who is talking. I'm not okay with teaching kids that you don't even have to listen if you don't agree with a person. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to make up your mind before you know the whole story. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to disrespect the President, their teachers, or other adults role models. I'm not okay with teaching kids that there is only one right way of thinking or one right answer to a problem. I start every semester by telling my students that I will never ask them to agree with everyone's point of view, but I will ask them to listen and treat each other with respect. It makes me sad when I see parents who use children as an excuse to perpetuate intolerance, disrespect, and hatred.

If Al Capone was old enough to understand and watch television, I would have hoped that he would have watched in school and we would have watched again as a family after school. Since he's not old enough and won't be any time soon, I went online and bought books that are often banned or challenged by people who feel that they have the obligation to protect children from the harmful ideas like diversity. Unfortunately, he won't be able to grow up and say that he remembers when he listened to President Obama at school, but maybe he will grow up being open minded enough that when classmates or their parents try and close down conversations with narrow minded, ignorant rhetoric, he will fight back. Hopefully he will never call our President by hateful slurs because he doesn't agree with his ideologies. Hopefully, he will never make fun of a classmate who's skin or family or religion or ability is different from his own.

We can't afford to buy Al Capone all of the books that I would like him to read, but today I added a few more to his library. Here's what I got him in honor of all of the ignorant parents who think it's okay to breed hatred and intolerance in children.

• The Family Book--because families come in all different shapes and sizes
• And Tango Makes Three--because some of those families have two mommies or two daddies
• The Lorax--because recycling is a good thing and we should take care of the environment
• In the Night Kitchen--because naked baby butts are not bad
• Halloween books--because Halloween is not the work of the devil

Obviously, this is a mishmash of books. Diversity and tolerance cannot be taught in a single book, but when children grow up with images of diversity, hopefully they do not turn into close minded adults.

*For those who don't know me well I do NOT write children's books, I write about them. I teach critical analysis of children's and adolescent literature to future teachers.

Identity, Holden Caulfield, and Flavor Flav

I think I might just create an Eng 101 assignment around this video.

No YouTube, I'm Screwed!

I think I might finally be outed as the teacher who does lesson plans on the way to class and puts everything off until the last minute. So far I've managed to fool people up until this point, but I think I may be in trouble this semester.

I just got an email that informed me that one of my students this fall is hard of hearing. It was a very nice email explaining that they are notifying me ahead of time because some of the modifications may impact my class planning.

Most of them I'm good with...

• wearing a voice amplification system
• not standing in front of the interpreter (if they send one)
• not giving oral exams (as long as she doesn't mind reading quizzes on post-its, I'm good)

Some I'm a little leery of...

• audio recording to be transcribed later for student. It's not that I don't want people to know what is said, but I'd rather not have a permanent record of the times I sound like a total idiot. On the upside, this should make writing the list of terms for the exam much easier.
• repeating/summarizing comments and questions by people not wearing the mic. I know I'm going to forget to do this.
  

And then I read this...

Closed-captioning is required for all videos, internet videos and self made videos when being shown in class.

Um, last time I checked YouTube isn't usually captioned. I can't teach without YouTube. I'm all about disability accommodations, but no YouTube, this is going to be a serious problem.

So I email the Disability Concerns person and explain my issue and include lots of really good reasons why I need YouTube to teach.* She agrees that it is a integral part of my curriculum and notes that occasionally professors include videos that aren't and that Disability Concerns will be happy to caption any YouTube video that is part of my curriculum.

Problem solved! Not so fast; there's a catch. I must submit all videos I want captioned at least ONE WEEK before I plan on showing them. One week; is that a joke?

So this week's task, scour the internet for any YouTube video I might show this semester and start submitting. I wonder if I can get the university to pay for my Netflix for the semester in order for me to have real clips with real captioning?

*None of which were "what am I supposed to do when I don't have lesson plans?"

Things I Can't Say

So in the interest of keeping the peace, I have to keep my mouth shut this weekend. I've realized this is slightly easier with a baby because I can hide in a back room while pretending to nurse, rock, or just "check on" said baby. Here are some of the things I've thought but couldn't say in the last 24 hours.

• Clearly being retired is so much more work than being a grad student with a baby. What was I thinking?
  
• Pee on her!
  
• Am I supposed to apologize for buying food in a grocery store?
• You're not supposed to do Tummy Time after a baby eats, but what the hell, it's not my carpet.
• I really have to go to the bathroom (while pretending to be nursing a baby in the back room)
• Why didn't I bring snacks and a drink in here? (while pretending to be putting a baby to sleep in the back room)
• Holy Shit! Did you just say "there's some really good wine out there?"
  
• I should have packed a bottle of wine.

So far, I think I've stayed out of trouble. And since the ancient CD player is broken, we have to play B's lullaby off of their laptop. Yay for internet access in the baby's room. Someone remind me to stash our laptop in B's room the next time we have visitors.

Twilight Irony

When I went to buy the second book in the Twilight series for my book group, this is what I found on the display. Leave it to a "lost" book to explain the meaning of vampire metaphors.

Patron Saint Cake

I may have to name all of my children after saints who also have their own brand of liquor. Al Capone* is being Christened this weekend and we are having a party. Every good party needs desert. Enter St. Brendan's Irish Creme Cake. We discussed using the bottle as a baloon weight, but decided that might be a little much.

Our first child will grow up with a Patron Saint Cake.

1 (18.255 ounce) box butter cake mix

1 (3.4 ounce) box instant vanilla pudding mix.

4 eggs

½ c. vegetable oil

¾ c. Saint Brendan's® Irish Cream Liqueur

1 (18.255 ounce) box chocolate cake mix

1 (3.4 ounce) box instant chocolate pudding mix.

4 eggs

½ c. vegetable oil

¾ c. Saint Brendan's® Irish Cream Liqueur

Frosting:

2 cans cream cheese frosting.

4 Tbs. St. Brendan's Irish Cream

Combine with electric mixer

Preheat oven to 350˚.

NOTE: Prepare each cake mix recipe sepatately

In a large bowl, combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs and oil. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add Saint Brendan’s®. Spoon into 9 inch round cake pans. Bake 25-30 minutes or until top is golden and sides pull away. Cool on wire rack.

Alternate layers of chocolate and butter cake mixes and frost with cream cheese frosting.

*To learn more about Al Capone click here. I promise I didn't really name my child Al Capone.

Confessions

I never realized how anti-censorship I was until I realized how much age (in)appropriate material we give our own child. Here's this week's list:

• I read Harry Potter 1 and 4 aloud to him last week.
• Last Friday, we had a prolonged discussion (okay more of a lecture) about road trip metaphors.
  
• Rakicy read Once a Runner to him. New words include: bastard, shit, etc.
  
• I told Rakicy to turn on the television as background noise. An hour later I realized that the background noise was Sahara.
• Rakicy turns on the radio or plays music on the computer when Boutros if fussy. Yesterday, I discovered them listening to Lil' Wayne's Lollipop.

Clearly, all of this exposure has had no lasting effect.*

*I say this had more to do with being a First Friday baby then being exposed to older reading material.

Paradox

I'm toying with the idea of taking my blogs down for a while. Theoretically, I could just not publish anything, but I'm actually thinking that I might just move them all to password protection and not give anyone the password.

I started blogging with the idea that among other things it would also give me a place to express my feelings. This was more true with the baby blog than this blog, but over the last several months, I've felt less and less free to honestly express my feelings and more and more like I'm carefully constructing posts with the feelings/reactions/judgements of a handful of readers in mind.

Part of me realizes that my impulse here is entirely emotional. I've been in non-progressive labor since Wednesday and possibly may stay in non-progressive labor for another 10 days (long story). Part of me really wants to write about these experiences, but the realistic part of me knows that I really can't handle even the slightest judgemental or gossipy reaction to those posts.

I'm not sure what to do about that. I could move the blog to private and only allow a handful of people. If I go this route, I run the risk of seriously offending some family members, not to mention that I would have to hide the posts once I opened the blog back up after the baby was born. I could just not blog and write elsewhere. Although one of the things I like about blogging is having a supportive audience. Journals don't come with supportive audiences.

The best solution (for me) might actually be to write a blog post about what I really need at this point. For example, I don't need you to call me early in the morning to see if I'm in labor. I don't need to you tell me that my doctor just wants to make money. I don't need you to tell me when it would it would fit best with your schedule for me to have the baby. I don't need you to tell me what you think of my choices to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, get an epidural, etc. I don't need you to compare the exhaustion of me having contractions for the last 3 days to you not getting a status update for several hours. I don't need you to tell me that your really quick labor/painless/easy labor was because you prayed. All of things, however, are directed at a handful of people who will either get really upset by a post like that or will assume that I'm talking about everyone but them.

So, in the meantime, I draft a post for that blog that I likely won't ever post and I vent on this blog because I feel slightly more free to say what I want.

Not my Hero...

Last night was our last childbirth class, and the last hour was supposed to be devoted to teaching relaxation techniques. I'm actually a fan of relaxation, but last night wasn't exactly what I would call relaxing. Here's why...

Having very pregnant women lay on a concrete floor (okay, I realize this can't exactly be helped) is never really the pinnacle of relaxation. To make it a little more awkward, the substance abuse meeting across the hall decided that watching childbirth class through the door was more entertaining than anything else they could do on their break. I'll admit that by this point I was seriously questioning my ability to pretend that I was completely relaxed and lying on a beach somewhere.

The true deal breaker, however, was not the floor or the rehab audience, but when the instructor talked about music and then turned on Mariah Carey's Hero, I was done. It didn't help that we'd just finished a cheesy 80s Lamaze video that featured the dad changing into a muscle shirt for the delivery, but I'm pretty sure if their had been a exam, Greg and I would have failed. Here's to hoping that Michael J. Fox (circa 1980s with lots of hair gel and a muscle shirt), Mariah Carey, and local substance abuse support groups stay far far away from my hospital room.

FAQ

Q: Do I need a works cited for my (insert assignment here)?
A: Yes, if you are asking this question, then the answer is probably yes. Clearly you have some item that you think might go on such a document, so you should probably have a works cited page. If you don't know what you would put on the works cited page, then you probably wouldn't be asking this question. I promise you that you will not get in trouble if you create an works cited page that your instructor doesn't want, but if you repeatedly ask this question for every assignment, you're grade might actually start to suffer.

Boots

Another reason it shouldn't snow in April...I'm stuck wearing my snow boots. It was icy this morning and it seemed like a really good idea to just wear my snow boots for extra traction. Um, I can't get my snow boots off now. So I sit on the couch grading watching tv and wearing my red snow boots. I forgot that I had be able to pull my boots off at the end of the day and that that would require being able to reach the bottom of my feet. I'm glad it didn't snow on Friday when Rakicy was out of town or I might of had to sleep in my snow boots.

Child Actors: Terrorized or Talented

The Today Show did a story this morning about a recent controversy over a NYC public service announcement about smoking. The controversy, according to the article, isn't about the message of the psa as much as it is about whether or not the boy in the ad is really acting or whether producers actually made him cry. Here's the full psa.



I really wish this had happened back at the beginning of the semester when we were discussing Shirley Temple and child actors, but I still find the arguments really interesting. Personally, the ad is very had to watch, but then again a lot of the stop smoking psa are hard to watch. According to the story, viewers were flooding DHS with calls about the appropriateness of the ad. Most of these complaints claimed that the ad was more too emotional, both in the sense that it "manipulated viewer's emotions" and the sense that the boy's emotions were too powerful to be acting.

This begs the question how old does someone have to be in order to act and/or manipulate their own emotions. I've babysat for plenty of toddlers who are quite capable of turning tears on and off. If we are going to make the argument that this child is too young to act in this way, then theoretically, he would be too young to be acting in another (happier) situation as well.

I find it interesting that while crying or upset children appear in movies and on television shows, the real objection here seems to be to the use of the child body to manipulate adult behavior. No one seems to be concerned about the welfare of the child actor when the child cries over the death of a pet in a movie. So why is this child actor so much more traumatized?* The comments about the story reveal that maybe this isn't really a case of a traumatized child or the impossibility of child actors.

The newsvine comments on this story quickly shifted away from outrage about the kid crying and toward outrage about the ideological content of the psa. One person noted:

So, if I don't have kids, I don't have to stop? Thanks!

And several other objected the idea of the psa in general:

What the hell is the government (any level of government) doing wasting our tax dollars to advertise! Friedman can kiss my a**! I dont need a nanny from the government taking care of me based on his vision of what is best!

I'll spare you the couple of other thousand comments about whether or not smoking (first-hand or second-hand) really causes cancer, what the government should or should not spend money on, and what products should or should not be taxed. There were even some comments that made a case for legalizing marijuana.

While I'm not sure that I can quite defend Donny Deutch's claim on the Today Show that

“Kids are very good actors. Maybe sometimes they make a kid cry, but if it saves 20,000 lives for five seconds of crying, I’ll take it.”

The outrage, at least from the internet comments, seems to actually have little to do about the actual child. The outrage instead seems about using the child in an ideological way.** Nearly all of the adults who have commented on the psa talk about the manipulation of the adult audience through the image of the crying child. While I will admit that the narrator does address the ad at parents, a think are far more interesting discussion would be about the manipulation of child audiences through images (however constructed) of children, but that will have to be a blog post for another day.

*The comments that objected to the child being made to cry, claimed that this would traumatize the child actor. I don't think I buy this extreme either, as by that theory any child who was ever told no or had something taken away would be forever traumatized. A television producer (stranger) who takes away a toy to get the child to cry might actually be less traumatizing than an older sibling who takes away a toy.
**Clearly the people who raised such objections have never taken my children's literature class or they would have realized that the child is always used ideologically.

Banned for Doping

According to Google, I am currently ineligible to participate in the Olympics (or any other professional sport) because of doping.

I'd admittedly really bad at "staying off my feet" and since I don't watch soap operas, I tend to only manage to follow these instructions if I can surf the internet.* Yesterday, I got put on Terbutaline to stop my contractions and when I was googling this drug, I was amused that articles about the this substance being banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency** routinely include the factoid that it is used to stop labor as well.

Given that Terbutaline isn't even usually prescribed until the third trimester of pregnancy, I'm wondering if this is a case of Wikipedia providing a little too many random bits of information for newspaper reporters or if there is a large number of women who are 7 and 8 months pregnant and also competing in professional supports. Clearly this news means that my plans of becoming an Olympic gymnast must be put on hold until I receive my Theraputic Use Exception.


*In December I had to stay on my left side for about a week which was extremely inconvenient for web surfing even on a laptop.
**It's primarily an asthma drug that increases your lung capacity by relaxing the smooth muscles in the lungs.

Superheros

I'm a little disturbed that this guy just happened to have a Spiderman costume on hand, but this is a very cool story.

Earth Hour Paradox

We try to be ecologically conscious, so while I applaud the idea of Earth Hour, I'm also a little frustrated by the whole "turn off the lights for an hour and save the world" message. Really I'd rather people try something (for more than an hour) that they can incorporate into their everyday lives (recycling for example).

Anyway, all that said, we (unconsciously) participated in an Earth Hour paradox at our house. I totally forgot that Earth Hour was tonight. Most of our lights (out of habit) were turned off, but all evening I was doing laundry in hot water and drying it on high heat. Why might I be doing such an environmentally unfriendly activity you might ask, because I was prepping cloth diapers (unbleached cotton has to be stripped of its oils in 6 prewashes before it becomes absorbent). We aren't only using cloth diapers because of environmental reasons, but I do have to admit that when I realized that I'd spent all of Earth Hour running our washer and dryer at maximum carbon output, I felt a little guilty. Not guilty enough to abandon cloth diapers and throw a disposable diaper in a landfill for 500+ years, but still a little guilty. At least I was consuming large quantities of electricity during the ultimate off peak time.

Keys

I'm really glad that no one measures fitness to be a parent by the ability to keep track of one's car keys and/or not lock one's self out of the house/car/office/all of the above.*

This morning I lost my car keys, then found my car keys, then 15 minutes later walked out the back door and shut the door (which was locked) with my keys in their new "safe" spot. B was on her way to come get me, when I remembered that I had been messing with the egress window that morning and likely did not lock it back. So I broke in my house, got the keys, and hurried to school.

Both of my classes were working on activities today that didn't require me to provide any materials, so I decided to leave everything in my office while I taught 170. Um, my office door locks automatically. Repeat above situation, this time with college secretary.

Is it wrong that while I was walking through Meijer this afternoon, I saw one of those pacifier attachers and instantly thought that maybe next fall, I will leave my keys attached to the baby? I mean, theoretically, I shouldn't lose my keys and the baby.


*Actually, there is a really good reason this story is appearing on this blog and not elsewhere. :)

Baby Disrupts Student Learning

I get lots of weird student email that I find amusing, but I may have to print this one out for the baby book.

Dear Mrs. XXX,
I wanted to know if it would be okay if I switched seats in your Eng XXX class. I know it's really late in the semester and everyone sits in the same place every day, but I'm having trouble paying attention. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that your baby really moves around alot and sometimes it makes it hard for me to pay attention to the class. I hope this isn't a problem and I'm sorry I called your baby it I don't know what to call a baby when you don't know the gender.

Thanks,
XXXX

For the record, I don't have assigned seats in my classes. I probably wouldn't have even thought that much about it if she had switched seats. Clearly it's not texting during class that is disrupting student learning, it's kicking babies.

A Canned Response

I cannot help you determine if your article was peed reviewed, peet reviewed, or pier reviewed, but if you are trying to determine if your article was peer reviewed please see the assignment sheet.

Thanks!

Blog Help

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of the phantom "bubble" behind the "links to this post" in my post footer? I can't seem to find the problem in the code.