OP/Ed and the TRIB

To my public educators out there: I know what we teach in the classroom is much, much more important than just reading and writing and math. This article is for you, and me, and everyone who works hard to raise the next generation of Americans.

If you would like to read the article check out The Salt Lake Tribune, today's page A11, or www.sltrib.com, opinion section. P.S. Public education vs. private/charter schools is kind of a hot topic where I live - it's okay if you don't agree with anything I say. I was just really excited that the SL Trib picked up my article! You'll notice the article running right above mine is lifted from a New York Times writer, awesome. I'm close to something big. haha

There are a lot of comments on my article, some good some bad, but the beauty of writing is that it starts a dialogue. My favorite comment is from someone who says he was going to keep this perspective in mind as he goes to the cacususes. Yay for participating in the Democratic process.

1000 Photographs Later

This is what I wore today while being photographed by a BYU photographer.

The BYU Today magazine is publishing a short piece I wrote for their Spring 2012 edition. Part of what I wrote had to do with being a teacher, so they wanted to get a photograph of me in the classroom.

My students were really good about having a photographer lurking around the room. They even volunteered to run and get blow dryers so my hair would be flowing like in a hair commericial. I asked them to please act natural, and they were really suprisngly good. I guess we'll see next time how much they learned about writing research outlines while I was being photographed teaching them.

Two class periods and a 1000 pictures later, I hope at least one of the photos looks decent so I don't die of embarrassment when the magazine comes out. I guess I should be more worried about my writing than what I look like, but sometimes I make funny faces when I teach.

The UP Award

We don't pat ourselves on the back enough, and we can't wait for others to do so either, or we may be waiting a very long time. So, I'm just going to nominate and award myself the UP Award for having the remarkable, and it is, ability to keep my spirits up when life does its darndest to get me down. Yay me. Way to show life it can't get you. Way to set your sights always UP above the mess and seek for happy horizons on which to settle.

My Poor Future Children

Look what I found! How could I not buy it! It is a baby Shakespeare book of Romeo & Juliet that teaches numbers! My poor poor future children. If they don't end up with literary-inspired names, they will be learning how to count with Shakespearean tradgedy.

I kind of want to name future daughter Giulietta after Juliet, or Natalia after the protagonist in The Tiger's Wife, or Paloma after the girl in The Elegance of a Hedgehog. I have also always liked the name Guenevere after the King Aurthur stories, or Gwendolyn after Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

It's probably going to be a good idea that at some point in my life before I have a child there will be a man in my life who will have a say in the matter! In the meantime, I'm learning to count.

Two Photos

The Kolob Canyon Review, literary arts journal at Southern Utah University is going to publish two of my photographs! I'm so excited. They are publishing a photo I took in Morocco and one I took in a casino in Reno this summer. The photographs will appear in the Spring 2012 edition! Yay!

Own it Helena – You’re the New It Girl

Helena (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is one of my all-time favorite characters in Shakespeare; often over-looked, at least in her mind.

The not-quite-as-classically-attractive Helena is best friends with the All-American (in this case All-Grecian) beauty, Hermia. She has a paramour, Demetrius, who is interested in her beauty until he meets her best friend Hermia, and crushing, decides to transfer his affection to her. Problem: Hermia has her own true-love Lysander, who consequently, might be a better catch.

How does Helena respond? Whine, whine, whine.

Oh, Hermia! Why am I not as pretty as you? Why aren’t myne eyne as beautiful as thyne sphyrey eyne?

Oh, Demetrius! Pay attention to me! Treat me poorly while I chase you, just don’t leave me please! Treat me as you treat your dog, just treat me!

Hermia to Helena: PITY.

Demetrius to Helena: DISDAIN.

A couple of love-potions and fairy tricks later: Demetrius and Lysander are both in love with Helena --praising her beauty and virtues. And she is beautiful and virtuous; she just doesn’t recognize it comparing herself to Hermia.

How does Helena react to this new found love and attention from two “worthy” bachelors? She swears. “Oh Spite, Oh Hell!”

Helena is not used to the attention, she can’t handle the attention, she doesn’t want the attention; the lime-light isn’t comfortable resting on her or her on it.

My conclusion: Helena is so typically female. I can laugh with Helena, but I find I can’t chide her. What I really want to say to her is OWN IT. Own who you are. You tell us yourself in the play: “Throughout Athens I am thought as beautiful as she [Hermia],” but add the caveat: “but what of this if Demetrius thinks not so?” Don’t lose your confidence because one man doesn’t think you are as beautiful as you truly are.

My suspicion is if you had acted as confident as you have every right to be, and not whined in jealousy and begged attention from a man who may not deserve you anyway, you would happily be enjoying your best-friend-ship with Hermia, had Demetrius still tailing after you in amour, or better still, found a man much more worthy of you, by virtue of the fact he sees you for what you truly are: wonderful.

But this is a Shakespearean comedy, right? So you whine, complain, beg, become the “IT” woman you have always wanted to be, have no idea how to act when you receive the attention you have always wanted, and then end up marrying that man you think you want, (Demetrius) who only marries you because he still under the influence of the love potion.

Greatest good for greatest number, right? I disagree. While I love Shakespeare’s comedy, I would have re-written the ending; Helena, beautiful and confident, moving on past Demetrius, who would have been given the anti-love potion, so she could have been provided the opportunity to realize she deserved real love, ultimately from someone else.

Sounds like I want to turn this comedy into a feminist drama, right? Well, I’m looking out for Demetrius too. He shouldn’t love forever against his will with the love potion, he should get the opportunity to wake up too, and find a woman he truly loves, and for the right reasons as well, provided he can find them.

I. Got. These.

beautiful flowers from a boy on my birthday. Mmmmhmmm.

And That's What Comes From Men and Women Dancing

I'm not typically one to string a bunch of events together and call it cause-and-effect. And I always laugh hysterically when I think of one of my favorite scenes from Fiddler on the Roof where a whole slew of events go array simple "because" men and women were dancing together. But I do enjoy good turning of events.

I love going up to the Sundance Film Festival every year: stalking stars, seeing films, bundling up cute, and eating out. It's something to brighten up the often bleak January landscape. Every year we wait-list tickets or last-minute purchase tickets to hopefully-okay-movies. This year I did the early "locals-only" registration which would assign me a time slot to purchase as many tickets as I wanted, first.



When I received notification of my ticket-purchasing-time-slot I realized it was on Sunday. Drat. Of course. After talking to myself for a minute I realized I'd better not. We'd just chance it again this year and hope to get tickets to something interesting.

So...we got tickets to a good, clean film with less than usual trouble, we drove up there and instantly found a free parking spot one street over from Main Street, right next to the shuttle bus pickup stop, right across from the $20 a day parking. Then we actually saw a celebrity without even looking - three feet away on the bus: the very cute, Anthony Mackie from The Adjustment Bureau, among other films.


And that's what seems to come from not shopping for tickets on Sunday: easily getting last minute tickets without having to wait in line, finding a free parking spot where it would normally cost $20, seeing a good, clean film, and then inadvertently spotting a celebrity, without hours of hopefull stalking! haha

Correlation? Probably. But I was delighted.

I'll Never Never Never...

Wear colored tights like my quirky high school English teacher. Hmmmm....now I'm a high school English teacher wearing colored tights. Yikes! So - there are many, many things I said I would never do like be in a beauty pageant, listen to country music, kiss on a first date, wear skinny jeans, try online dating, become a teacher...Maybe I should say I will never get married, and I will in fact, get right on to doing just that.

The Life Unexpected: Lessons from My Grandmother

My grandmother recently died. The funeral was held on New Year's Eve. Next to my own mother, she was one of the most influential women in my life. This is the legacy she has left for me:

Love everyone. Everyone was her favorite. I always thought I was one of her favorite grandchildren, but I have no doubt every single one of us have felt the same way.

Always have something kind to say. Grandma could find something positive to say about everyone and every situation. Like my own mother, rarely did anything cross about anyone come out of her mouth.

Always look and act like a lady. Even at the age of 90+ grandma always did her hair and makeup, even if she wasn't leaving the house.

Always have a cookie or a bowl of ice-cream on hand. Everything feels like it will be okay after a spoonfull of sugar. And it will taste better if it comes out of a large, strawberry-shaped cookie jar.

Love the Lord and He will help you rise from the ashes. My grandmother isn't my real grandmother. My dad's mom died when my mother was pregnant with me, and my grandpa married my Grandma Charlene when I was a small child. She had a hard first marriage and hard life, but then she found my grandfather and together they loved her six children, his six children, and all of us grandchildren; went on four missions together, and never passed an opporutnity to share their testimonies.

FOR me, my grandmother was an example of faith - and much blessing after much tribulation. TO me, she was a powerful example of how to gracefully live the unexpected life.

11 of 2011: Good Life

It’s gonna be a good life, good life, good life, oh, it’s gonna be a good life, good life, good life: Oh, please tell me what is there to complain about. – One Republic

Looking back over a year of blessings.

1. I finished my master’s project; I will graduate in a year.

2. I mentored my first student teacher.

3. I received recognition for, and attended, a national journalism teaching conference in Reno, NV.

4. I climbed the Great Wall of China outside of Beijing.

5. My little sister went on a mission to Australia; I am so proud of her!

6. I was in four places at once: Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.

7. 10 years ago November I went through the Seattle, WA temple; what a blessing that has continually been in my life.

8. I floated the Great Salt Lake (it smells).

9. I travelled through the Baltic countries including Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Finland, Estonia, and Russia.

10. I was chosen to do district level training of the new 2010 Common Core State Standards.

11. The Lion’s Roar student newspaper, for the first time ever, is being printed with two pages of color!

As I look back over the year 2011 I realize it has in many ways been like many others, with ups and downs,tears and laughter, but when I look back on the year as a whole, I ask myself: what is there to complain about? I have good friends, a wonderful family, faith, a good job, and a belief in the goodness of others. I have challenges, but also opportunities. I have grown in faith, experience, and knowledge. It’s been a good year; it's been a good life. And I thank my Heavenly Father for that.

Cognitive Dissonance

I think the universe is trying to tell me something. While trying to work towards becoming this:

I did this to myself,
(see below) on accident:

I have been working on my future-wife skills, not that there is a future-husband yet, but if you build it, they will come, right?

I am cooking something new and exciting once a week, taking pre-natal vitamins, eyeing cute baking-ware in the grocery store; I even substituted in the nursery last week at church and didn't have a panic attack at the onslaught of germs. And I am going out regularly.

At the same time I am working towards nesting, I am also planning trips (in my mind) to Peru, Egypt, India, Spain, anywhere; imagining possibly earning my PhD in education from some university back East, and browsing the latest sweaters and skirts from Anthropologie and wanting to own half of them, the expensive half. I'm holding on dearly to the idea of the single life because that is all I've known.

I am experiencing cognitive dissonance: the flow of two incompatible ideas at once. I have a strange desire to start a nesting phase, and at the same time keep a healthy escape hatch. The result? Butternut Squash and thumb-sliced soup.

Ironically, I was texting a cute boy while chopping up the squash, and thus sliced my thumb.

Antelope Canyon, Page, AZ

Over the Thanksgiving holiday my mom and dad and I went to Antelope Canyon in Page, Arizona. They are slot canyons owned by the Navajo people. You would have no idea they are right underneath the ground, from the top you see only a barely perceptible fissure in the landscape. Anyway! They are beautiful.




As you can see I had quite a lot of fun with my camera - but how could I not? Apparently in the morning (when we were there) the colors are purplish-blue with the orange, but all day long the colors change as the sun hits the canyon walls at a slightly different angle. I wish I could have been there all day long to watch the array.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for my wonderful parents who understand my need for adventure!

A Trip to the Newsroom

Life has a strange way of turning around in circles.

I graduated from this journalism program several years ago, and last week I took my newspaper students to see the news studios and print offices at my alma mauter.

It was a strange moment of deja vu in reverse. I remember as a broadcast student at this university watching tours of high school students and Boy Scouts roaming the newsroom and each time wondering and even speculating that someday I too would be bringing in a group of kids to the newsroom.

Life has a strange way of turning around in circles.

Let's Not Talk About It

I am a proponent of talking about most things. I am a verbal, so talking-it-out, works-it-out in most cases. However, I wonder if that's not always the case. I wonder if sometimes, talking about it one more time doesn't help.

I just finished reading Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's account of the disasterous 1996 climb of Mt. Everest where 12 people died in one expedition. Afterwards when the few survivors made it down the mountain people were obsessed with finding out what went wrong and playing the blame-game. Interestingly a relative of one of the survivors, critical of Krakauer's narrative said:

No amount of your analyzing, criticizing, judging, or hypothesizing will bring the peace you are looking for. There are no answers. No one is at fault. No one is to blame. Everyone was doing their best at the given time under the given circumstances. No one intended harm for one another. No one wanted to die. (297-298)

Additionally, Krakauer said people wanted to "catalog the myriad blunders in order to 'learn from the mistakes.'" As if finding those errors would make them "too clever to repeat those same errors." (286)

It's human nature to want to catalog, analyze, and go over one more time because this is how we learn, but is it always necessary? Or are there some things we should just allow ourselves and others to have survived?

Blackmail Photos

I was told I was under no circumstances allowed to post these pictures on facebook...so I am putting them on my blog. Haha!


So, my teacher friends and I dressed up as teachers for Halloween! It was one of the funnest things I have ever done costume-wise! The reactions were classic. A few of the older teachers complimented us on how "cute" we looked - because they still have sweaters like this in their own closets! And not all of the students got it because they have seen sweaters like this on teachers (i.e. elementary teachers) their whole lives...but to people around my age it was halarious because we would never dress like this! :) Hopefully we didn't offend anyone because it was so great.




Admit it: This is what you pictured in your mind when me (an unlikely) grew up to be a school teacher.

Yosemite: What are men?

What are men to rocks and mountains? - Jane Austen

Bridalveil Falls

Vernal Falls

This past weekend was fall break and my friends and I went down to Yosemite National Park. My family visited the park several years ago in the summer and I fell in love! I had no idea, however, how gorgeous the park would be in the fall! The colors were amazing, and it only got down to about 40 degrees at night. We spent three days in the park and luckily, we were able to camp right in the park as well.
Cathederal lake

Mirror Lake
Our campsite!

Oktoberfest 2011

We went up to Oktoberfest Saturday up at Snowbird in SLC. It was really fun! We obviously didn't take part in the beer drinking, but had a good laugh or two over our water-jug drinking.

We did a little polka dancing and photo taking, and we ate snitchel and sauerkraut. All in all it was just great to be out with friends. AND the mountains were beautiful with the changing fall leaves + a little snow.

Save the world

Sometimes I feel like all they want me to do is save the world. You can do it they say, on very very little pay. Look how efficient we are with our tax dollars!

Most of the time I just pack up my positive attitude and carry on my way, and do the best the I can. Sometimes I have a day like today. A day where I say to myself, you know, I just might try. It's worth a try.

I have a student in my class that most would label as a typcial Latina high school student. She is very pretty and can work that angle. She skips her classes a lot and is failing half of them. I understand her teachers' frustration with her, how can you help a student who doesn't come to class? But I know the girl behind that mask.

She doesn't understand English half as well as people thinks she does. She masks her lack of language skills by not talking, it is easy for her to skip a class where she doesn't have any idea how to do the work. She has a fractured foot she is limping around on, because her dad doesn't have health insurance. She takes care of her three little brothers after school while her dad is at work. Her older sister, her best friend and role model, (who didn't graduate from high school) just ran off with her abusive boyfriend and baby to Mexico.

I care about this girl a lot. I've had her in class now for two years and I am going to do what I can to help her pass this term. I am going to talk to her teachers, help her with her homework, and be her friend. I am going to help her translate the entire Declaration of Independance into "modern English," and explain to her what lines like:

"...a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism..."

means. I am going to because I'm paid to, but more importantly because although I don't need to--and can't--save the world, I can care, and I do.

If we all looked past the exteriors of others and helped where and when we could, what a wonderful place the world could be.

Zippers Zippers ZIPPERS

Do you ever muse on strange things when you are stressed out? Do things suddenly become fascinating that you have never considered before?

My stress level is up to my eyebrows this week, and while sitting in a teacher-training conference at BYU—suddenly--the most fascinating thing on earth was the zipper on my hoodie!

Zippers, zippers, zippers ZIPPERS! Who invented them? Who came up with such an ingenious idea? Who thought of making little metal rivets to sew into clothing to keep it together?

What a fascinating sound zippers make as they go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, UP AND DOWN, UP AND DOWN.

How curious that you can bend a zipper back and forth and back and forth and it neither breaks nor comes undone!

Curriculum design, what? WHAT? Ooooppppsss.

Zippers: In 1851 Elias Howe (according to Wikipedia) invented the first zipper, but didn’t market it. He was too excited about the sewing machine. A million other things happened and then in the 1930s the B. F. Goodrich Company made zippers popular with their wonderful rubber boots. Who knew? Zippers as we know them in clothing didn’t become popular and normal until 1937 when the French (of course) thought they would be a wonderful addition to men’s trousers.

And there you have it!