Squashed!

This was my supper tonight.



Can you tell I like squash?

Seriously, I LOVE squash. I can even remember when my love for each kind of squash started.



Ahh, spaghetti squash. My first squash. When I was in high school, Dad baked it and then served it with butter and parmesan cheese. Mmm...still eating it that same way.











The first time I remember eating zucchini was grilled on the barbeque. I think I was in high school for this one too. Now I usually just saute it in a little bit of olive oil with some salt. Dee-licious!


I had my first butternut squash this spring. I loved it immediately. I actually remember thinking, "How have I made it to 27 without having tried this?" So nutty and sweet, butternut squash is perfect just mashed up with some margarine.

Acorn squash: this one is easy to remember because I cooked my first acorn squash tonight. I was almost nervous to eat it because I didn't want to not like it. Well, it was delicious. Very similar to Butternut, but not as sweet.

I don't know if I've ever loved any food SO HEALTHY this much. Squash is high in beta-carotene, fibre, vitamin C, and all kinds of other good stuff. Oh, and 0 fat and low in calories! And so yummy!

Father and Daughter Part 2

Our story ran in the Star Phoenix and Leader Post today.

Here it is!

Good Teachers Part 2

Mr. Nethercut taught us Grade 10 Social Studies and Art. He certainly caught our attention. In a small town where new teachers are always a novelty, Mr. N was even more so. On the first day of grade 10, he walked into the room, slammed the door and proceeded to YELL at us "THIS COULD BE THE WORST YEAR OF YOUR LIFE." We were listening. He continued, "Or we could have a great year. The choice is up to you." He handed out blank pieces of paper and had us write down one word: RESPECT. He told us it was his one rule and that if we showed him respect, he would show us respect.

Background info: we were a very difficult class. Substitute teachers didn't want to sub in our classroom. The driver's ed. instructor threatened to walk out on us and fail the whole class. Teachers had meetings about us when we were in grade 8. So ya, no teachers had ever talked about respecting US before.

Mr. Nethercut had no problem controlling us. He didn't need to. We respected him because he respected us. He had high expectations of us and we actually wanted to live up to them.

Father and Daughter

Dad and I are both teaching Grade 1 Math this year, in different schools of course. I was telling my principal and he suggested emailing the Bulletin (The STF monthly publication). A couple of weeks ago, one of the writers visited my classroom on a day that Dad and I had set up our classes on Skype to chat and ask each other some math questions.

Here's the article! Page 7.

Also: Pig in boots

Just because these photos are so, darn, crazy cute.

World Teacher Day

Yesterday was World Teacher Day and we didn't even realize it! Oops.

I've known that I wanted to be a teacher since I was in Kindergarten. Now I am a teacher and sometimes I can't even believe it. My days are crazy and my life is full of meetings and prep work; my head is always full of things I need to get done, needs of students, and thoughts about how things are going. But then my day starts and I have a bunch of small people around me, needing and talking and laughing and learning, and all that other stuff gets put on hold. In grade 1, my students' victories are small and gradual: remembering a letter sound that they couldn't remember yesterday, remembering to get out their books without being reminded, learning routines & procedures, and making better decisions than they made yesterday. Their little light bulbs flicker all day long as they learn and remember new things and all of a sudden something big happens--like they recognize a word or the concept of "adding on" becomes natural to them.

It's pretty exciting.

So I'm going to pay tribute to some of the teachers that had an impact on my life.

Mrs. Gropp-Kindergarten

Mrs. Gropp had contagious enthusiasm. She was always wide-eyed and smiling. I was already a reader when I went to kindergarten (much to the surprise of my parents) and yet I was never bored with learning the alphabet. We sang songs and read exciting stories; we played in the sandbox and dressed in high fashion from the dress-up centre. One of my clearest memories from Kindergarten is of Mrs. Gropp standing at the front of the room, leading us in our exercises. It was the 80's, so she often wore a bright coloured, one-piece pantsuit and had big, heavy beads that she would throw over her shoulder so they didn't hit her in the face as she jumped up and down.

Another clear memory from that year was one day that Mrs. Gropp asked me to come out in the hallway. She told me that I was a great kid and very special. Then she gave me a big, scratch-&-sniff sticker of a banana that said, "I think you're Top Banana!" I remember feeling so special and singled out. She probably did the same thing with every student, but I of course felt like I was the only one.

Kindergarten was the first time I remember wanting to be a teacher. I remember watching Mrs. Gropp, thinking how much fun her job must be. It's definitely harder than I thought it would be at the time, but it's just as much fun. Thanks, Mrs. Gropp!