BIG NEWS!!!!

No joke, it's for real the most exciting news you'll read if you've been following this blog for the past two years.  April 18, 2016, Hopkinton to Boston, and I am IN.  YES, you read that right people, I am FINALLY in the Boston Marathon!!!!  If you aren't aware, I've been trying to get in this for the past two years, but my marathon pace isn't qualifying time and the charities are always full.  But this year I found out that the respite center that Morty used to go to has a charity team.  Of course I immediately sent them my information because if ever there was a charity I wanted to run for, it would be this one. Lucky for me, they read my story, we discussed Morty, and everyone agreed it would be a great fit.  I'm so excited to be running for Morty and the Respite Center.  You know how some charities are huge and take donations but then spend most of the money on advertising?  Definitely not the case with the Respite center.  This is just a local home that provides families the opportunity for some much needed rest and a day off. Most of their programs are free of charge to the families who need them, so all the donations that come in go directly to supplies and services at the center.  Just keep that in mind if you decide to donate.  Your money is going directly to those who need it, not some giant CFO somewhere.
If you are interested in Morty and the Respite Center, you can follow this link and check out my page.  
Morty's Story

I mean, really, look at that face!

Piggybacking on this post now, I am still running Newport this weekend. I couldn't really get myself amped for this marathon, not the way I was for Louisiana, so I decided to give myself a reason to run.  Since this is number four, I'm dedicating this one to all the people who helped me out with training.  Really number four has nothing to do with it. But number one, MCM, was to do something new.  Philly was because we were still riding the runner's high and wanted to be maniacs.  Louisiana was for fun and to do one on my own.  So Boston is for Morty, of course.  So, Newport is for everyone else.  The people, if you will.  Everyone who ran with me, talked to me, listened to me whine about how much I didn't want to do it. The list, while seemingly endless, actually isn't that long.  But instead of writing a dedication list here, I'm doing it the creative way.  On the bottom of my shoes.  Yup.  One name for every mile.  Of course Ryan leads the list, because he's my number one fan, even when he's not.  But the other 25 miles are for everyone else.  And just to have a little fun, I switched up my shirt again.  Newport, I am ready for you!

Ok, you can't read that,here's the list:

Right Shoe: Ryan, Cynthia, Murdock, Madilyn, Holly, Tracy, Jenna, Danielle, Nala, Stella, Kenny, Mom, Gibbs Family

Left shoe: Title Boxing (the club, the members, and the trainers!), Kerri, Dana, Erin, Matt D (for offering his treadmill after the kids went to sleep), the Revolutionary War Soldiers (for getting me through a training run on the Battle Road Trail one day), the Mystics from the relay team, Lynn Woods Running, Lynn Classical Girls Spring Track Team, Donna, Cortney, Brian, and finally, Alex F.

The reason we need Common Core Math as told by someone who lives it

As an elementary math teacher, I have finally hit my limit of Facebook posts against Common Core Math.  I just can't read one more complaint and let it slide. Look, in a way, I understand the frustration level some parents face with this seemingly new math system.  But there is so much more to the Common Core that most of these people are overlooking.  It just seems to be that Common Core math has become a scapegoat.  In fact, I have yet to see one complaint about Common Core ELA, Science, or History.  Did you even realize those existed? See, here's the thing about Common Core.  At it's core (yea, I did), all it is, is a way for every student in the United States to learn the same basic concepts at the same general time.  That means if you up and move from Oklahoma to New York, your student can easily transition into the new classroom without you, the parent, worrying that s/he never covered certain topics or covered those topics in an earlier grade.  Wouldn't you rather have your student be able to understand the curriculum no matter where you move, than to have to play catch up or slow down student learning? If you don't, by all means, continue waging your war against Common Core math.  And ELA, Science, and History too.  But, in the off chance that you're still interested, hear me out on my old friend CC math.
The way I see it, there are two problems here. One, is that the parents don't understand exactly what's happening in their student's math homework, so they fall into defensive mode.  No one wants to look like they know less than their child.  Two, the many varying ways that students are able to learn math now don't make sense to the parent, and so it can't possibly make sense to the student. I can't tell you how many parents I have seen putting their personal bias about math onto the student.  As a teacher, that drives me crazy. If something doesn't make sense to you, fine, but there's no reason you should be putting that on your student.  You're turning them against something that could possibly make sense in their head, and now they are afraid to admit, because you've spent the past few weeks talking about how it couldn't possibly be right, or make sense.
Alright, I know this isn't the most eloquently flowing piece, but I'm a little fired up, so I apologize if it seems a bit disjointed.  For now though, follow me back to my days in elementary school.  I was a student of the 90s.  I started Kindergarten in 1989, so I mean that in the fullest extent, I was a student of the 90s. And do you know what I could tell you about math in elementary school?  Absolutely nothing.  I couldn't tell you what a place value block was, let alone what place value was or meant.  I had no idea why I was borrowing numbers in subtraction, just that I had to do it.  Fractions made no sense to me, decimals weren't even on my radar, and anything that involved shapes was an art project or nothing at all.  In fact, I dare any one of you to be able to say definitively that yes, you not only knew how to do math in elementary school, but you knew WHY the rules of math were the way they were.  Sure, some of you were probably fantastic at math, you could solve a problem in seconds flat, and you were probably top of the class.  In fact, I distinctly remember a boy in my third grade class who was a math whiz.  He was always the first one done with his timed tests and was always ready to do the problems on the board while I was still working on the first step.  That didn't change either.  In fifth grade, I spent most of my mornings writing all the problems I got wrong on my homework, three times each, on the blackboard. And do you know what I learned from that?  Nothing.  Not one thing.  I still had no idea why my math was wrong, and I still couldn't fix it when the same problem came up again.  So it went up through high school, and even college.  Do you know what changed my life?  The ever so hated Common Core Math.
You see, before Common Core was being taught in the classrooms, I didn't know there were other ways to do math.  I didn't realize that math had a reason.  Because I, like many of you, was taught that math is what it is, and there's no reason to question that.  You learn your facts, you do your math, and you move on.  But no one ever told me why.  No one told me that place value had a meaning, or that you could use visual models to understand problems.  I had no idea it was easier to subtract nines if I knew how to subtract 10s.  Or that fractions could go on forever between numbers.  Or that multiplying multi-digit numbers is a lot easier if you can break your numbers into expanded form and multiply by place values.  But now? Now I do know.  I know that there are many different ways to solve problems.  I know that if you understand WHY you're doing something, it makes more sense when you're trying to do it.  I know why you need to regroup a set of tens when you're adding or subtracting. I know how to use base-10 blocks to solve all types of problems.  I can break down numbers into sets that make 10 and then add on, or subtract from, if necessary.  But above all that, I know why your students NEED common core math.
They NEED to know that there is more than one way to solve a problem.  They NEED to know that just because one method doesn't make sense, it doesn't mean that s/he is stupid and will never be good at math.  They NEED to know that asking why helps you to understand how.  They NEED to know that, just because it doesn't make sense to an adult, doesn't mean that it's wrong.
Go ahead. Argue with me, tell me I'm wrong, tell me I don't understand, say maybe if I was that bad at math, I should never have become a math teacher.  I've heard it all. But before you do, think about your student.  For once, instead of projecting your bias onto him/her, ask about his/her thoughts on the method being used to solve the problem.  Ask your student to help you.  Be brave enough to ask the teacher to explain the concept being taught before telling your student it doesn't make sense.  Look up a video that explains how to use the break apart method or the area model for multiplication.  Make an effort to learn the way your student is learning. Because in the end, it's not the Common Core math that's making the work hard for the student, it's the negative way that the student constantly hears it being talked about.  Relearning something is hard, and maybe Common Core will never make sense to you, but I promise that constantly shutting it down as a viable option for problem solving is only going to hurt your child in the long run, especially if the concept does make sense to him/her.

October

Well, in case you were wondering, I've made it through my marathon training again.  Except this time around I split up my 20 miler so that I joined up with friends for 12 in the middle.  It worked out well because it didn't seem like it was 20 miles.  Anyways, I'm ready for Newport next weekend.  I don't remember if I even mentioned that I deferred Chicago due to not wanting to pay for plane tickets to Chicago and to Louisiana in the same month.  And baby Beau's christening took precedence over marathon running, so Newport, here I come.  My only real goal during this marathon is to get over the finish line in under 4 hours.  3:59 is fine with me.  So I guess that means no selfie mile markers this time around, and I'll probably have to really think hard about bathroom breaks and walk-through water stops.  You know what though, I think I can do it.  And if not, I'll try again in my next marathon.  But I think I can do it.  As long as it's not raining, or overly hot, or overly cold.  Ideal conditions only.  It will be nice to run through Newport though.  I hear the scenery is lovely.  I'll try to get some pictures, and apparently the race photos are free too, so I'll have those to share.  Anyways, I swear I'll have a lot more going on here real soon, it won't be months between updates anymore.  For real!

Teach them well and let them lead the way

In a huge jump, I wanted to take a minute to write down something I've been thinking about for a few months now.  Generally I like to keep all my good ideas to myself, but every now and again I throw one out there for the rest of the world to contemplate.  This has absolutely nothing to do with running or working out, and everything to do with the children/young adults that I work with during the school year.  As you may already be aware, there is no summer school in the city this year, due to funding issues.  Unfortunately, many of the students in my school could have used the extra help, even if it was a just for 3 - 5 weeks over the summer.  But on top of that, many of these students could have used the food that comes along with the program and had a safe place to go for a few hours a week.
After looking through the programs that I've heard about in various PD courses, I found that Lynn is seriously lacking in the community youth area.  Sure, they have the Community health program, the library, and Centerboard, as well as places like the Y, the Boys and Girls Club, and Head start.  But, what the city doesn't have, is a community youth center.  Here's my proposition, should I ever get the chance to make this a reality.  What I want, in short, is a safe, clean space, where the youth of Lynn can go and spend a few hours a day. In short, a Community Youth Center.  Bear with me here, because what I'm thinking of is very specific.  If I had the means, I would have a space available that was partitioned into 3 basic areas.  1) A quiet library/study/homework room. 2) A place to hang out with friends, talk, or play board/card games (not video games, not iPads, not cell phones, straight up board games).  3) An indoor sports area, for lack of a better term, basically a gym.  In addition, an outdoor area would be nice for Fall, Spring, and Summer, to garden, hang out, and play outdoor sports.  But, the outdoor space I'd be willing to pass on if needed.
Now, you may be thinking that the Y and Boys and Girls club already exist for this, so what's the point.  Here's where it varies.  As far as I know, all those businesses require some form of payment, whether it be money or a voucher.  Not to mention, transportation is often required after school. This community youth center would be free.  Yes, free.  Student's could come after school for a few hours, maybe get a snack, do some homework, hang out, and then head home. All the person would have to do to enter would be to fill out an entry form once, with important information (name, address, phone, emergency contact, etc) and then sign in/out every time s/he came after that first visit. It would be open on the weekends and during vacations so that everyone had a place to go.
You see, I noticed a trend last year in what my students did after school.  Get out of school, go home to a house with an older sibling or cousin, hang out until a parent got home, maybe do homework, watch tv, eat dinner, go to bed.  A lot of my students had no real place to read a book, do their homework, play basketball, practice baseball, etc.  Many of their parents weren't home until 5 p.m. or later, or didn't drive, or couldn't afford a house big enough for a child to have a space to do homework.
How could it possibly be free though? A space like that costs money, snacks cost money, basic operations cost money.  I am well aware of that, and therein lies the problem.  If I was Bill Gates rich, I'd just straight up open the place, run it for free for the city, and pay a highly qualified staff to keep it running.  But I'm not Bill Gates rich.  I'm not even regular person rich.  All I have is an idea.  So far, my way around paying staff would be to recruit the high school students that would be coming anyways, to become tutors/mentors to the elementary and middle school children.  Along with that, I would recruit college students from the many schools in the area, and offer them a college credit internship for spending X amount of hours working.  Ideally, college students who are studying to become teachers, counselors, or social workers, would come and volunteer their time in exchange for college credit.  There could even be classes offered for those interested, basic basketball skills, crafting, drawing, whatever the attendees have an interest in really.  As for snacks, I think I'd have to take the hit and shop Costco or look for companies to donate food in exchange for advertisement in the local newspapers.  I don't even know if that's something they would do, but it's the best idea I've got.  Other than that, all I can think of is to offer cooking classes and use the finished products as snacks! I suppose if we had an outdoor area, we could greenhouse it and grow our own fruit/veggies, and maybe that would work?
I don't know, it seems like such a good idea in my head, and even written down, it doesn't seem like it's unreachable.  The problem is, for me to do it alone, it is.  I couldn't even afford to rent a space for a week, let alone keep it open for a trial year. What I really need, for the first time in my life, is a business person to take this on and actually find an investor.  But how do you convince someone to invest in a program that offers no ROI?  At least, not in the monetary sense.  Could I just hope that someone is feeling philanthropic and wants to give back to the city? Sure, I could, but I still don't know anyone from Lynn that's willing to jump on board.
At the end of the day, all I really want is for the youth of the city to have a safe place to go in order to stay off the streets.

Feelin hot, hot hot

It was secretly hot today, which never works out for running.  At first, when I went outside, I thought, hmm, this isn't too bad, doesn't seem too humid.  Turns out I was SUPER wrong.  I don't know why I always end up running during prime heat times, but I do.  Yea, I've read all the tips that say you should run either early morning or after the sun goes down, but me, I like to run at, say, 11:00 a.m.  Which is super fun.  I think my favorite part is when you can feel the heat reflecting off the pavement and back onto you.  Oh, and if you forget the sunscreen...well, there's nothing better, let me tell you.  Sure, it cuts my  pace down to a 9/9:30 minute mile, but you know, it's all worth it right?  I say all of this, and yet I still won't change it, so I have no one to blame but myself in the end.  I just find it easier to run in the middle of the day, even if it is 1000 degrees with 2000% humidity.  Pretty sure those are accurate temperatures too.
Anyways, I got 7 done today, which is all that matters in the end, even if it did take me 1:03 to do the whole thing.  My first two or three miles were in the 8s, but it was seriously too hot to handle out there, so I guess I'm happy with my overall time and the fact that I ran the entire 7.  I do think that my tan lines are, at this point, irreversible, which is really unrelated, but something that I felt I had to point out.  At this point, the only way to even out would be to cover up everything that's normally uncovered during a run, and sit in the sun with only my back and stomach exposed.  Which is not happening, so instead I'm going to live the rest of my summer life with a racer-back/shorts permanent tan. Don't worry, I usually do use sunscreen too, it just so happens that today I forgot to put it on.
Tomorrow night, being Wednesday and all, is another Lynn Woods run.  Last week was the easy 4 miler for the long run, so this week it will probably be the dam run, which is 6 miles of misery.  But, I like the hill training, so hopefully I can make it there.  And hey, at least those runs start at 6:30, which is sort of close to the time when the sun might be starting to go down a little bit. Although I also saw that it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so that might actually help. Nothing like a good rainstorm to cool down during a run.  Certainly could have used one today anyways.
Well, this has been fun, and now, some pictures.

Here's Nala not being scared of fireworks.....(yea, right)

Sox on the 4th, where they actually won, shocking.

And the groundhog that lives under our shed.  I've since mowed the lawn to deter him from eating the clover.  If it's not there, you can't eat it, right?

Summer time

School is out and it's officially summer vacation.  It's been a day and I've already caught up on every show I missed in the past few months.  So, you know, definitely not going to be a long two months or anything.  I'm sure I can find other stuff to do.  Paint the house, learn a new language, literally anything that gets me moving before I die of boredom.  We'll see what happens I guess.
The end of the school year was quick and a little depressing actually.  This was the longest year ever, but I really didn't want the 5th grade class to graduate.  It was such a great group of kids and I really don't anticipate any other class living up to that for a while.  Now, of course, as a teacher, you're not supposed to have favorites, but of course, we all do.  This group just happen to have pretty much all of my favorites in it.  And yes, my overall favorite in the whole school was in this class too, so that's probably a part of it.  Sure, Ryan thinks I'm way crazy for having a favorite and missing him that much, but it's just something you can't understand if you're not a teacher I guess.   Particularly this student.  He came to us at the beginning of last year with a report so bad you would have thought that he was swinging from the lights and dancing on the desks at his old school.  Hey, maybe he was, I don't know, I wasn't there.  So, from the beginning I was asked to keep an eye on him, you know, make sure he wasn't going to run away or cause problems in the classroom.  He's had a real tough life for a kid, and I wasn't really sure what to expect out of him.  Two years later and I can proudly say that he was nothing like the report we got.  He is a kind-hearted, funny, (sometimes fidgety), friendly young man. I like to think I had a part in that, but who really knows.  I do know that after all he's gone through, to have those qualities makes him very special and I truly hope he doesn't change when he gets to middle school.
Anyways, you spend a lot of one on one time with certain people and they tend to grow on you.  Throughout the school year you connect with the students, learn about their lives, interests, likes and dislikes, and eventually grow to love them each as your own.  Some more than others, sure, but it's hard to let them go when you know you're not going to see them anymore.  After all, they're going to middle school now.  It's a whole new world over there, and a lot of growing up takes place, so really, this is the last time you really see them as children and not young adults.  It's kind of sad.  Once again, this is really something that you can't explain to non-teachers, you just have to experience it to know what I'm trying to explain.
Well, that's basically it.  Nothing new happening in running, so that's the end of that.  Here's a bunch of pictures from the end of the year, so enjoy those.

This is a homework assignment from my little buddy.  I particularly liked his 3rd sentence, as I have the same condition. The 4th sentence made me sad because, spoiler, his mom didn't come to graduation.  Like I said, he's had a rough life.

We made this on the side of the school to cover up some inappropriate graffiti before we held our flag day celebration.

First in Math trophy.  The school was in 1st place for almost the entire year.

Months worth of awards for being in 1st

A reading bulletin board. We had a contest to see who made the best one.  Can you believe I didn't win!?

Running selfies, I ran Horn Pond Mountain to check out the view.

I know the view doesn't look that good in the picture, but it was much prettier in person.

Beefsteak festival.  It was awesome.

Table long flip cup contest

Bread stacking contest, we won.

Beefsteak Betty!

Got my sweatshirt for coaching this year.  It's pretty awesome.

This is the card my buddy gave me.  I know it's only one sentence, but it means the world to me.  That picture is supposed to be me, from the back, as a superhero. Seriously. How could I not love this child?

Oh look, the end of May

I've been  little busy, so I let this fall to the wayside.  Nothing too much more exciting has happened since we bought the house anyways.  Track is over, which really helps with the whole being busy aspect.  It was fun, but I'm glad to have some time to do other stuff. Running has been going well, I signed up for the Chicago marathon, so I'll be working on that now.  I'm going to try and get my time down to BQ standards, but we'll see how that actually ends up going.  Right now it seems like a long and crazy road.  However, I did do the Run to Remember half marathon on Sunday and finished in 1:49.  That's a new PR and it gives me a little bit of hope that I can actually make it to the BQ time eventually. Even if I did almost puke at the end of the race.  What counts is that I didn't though, so boom.  School is still going strong too, just under a month left until summer vacation.  But, I don't have a summer job, or any form of income for the next two months, so I'm not overly pumped about that.  Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of vacation, but I hate not getting paid.  So that's it in a neat little package.  Now, enjoy these billion pictures from the past month.

The Blue Angels were doing some sort of photo shoot over Boston Harbor today, and we happened to be at the Children's Museum on a field trip as it happened.

Cod-zilla boat ride

Run to Remember post race photo with some police.

BOOM. Suns out, guns out.

1:49. Two thumbs up.

New shoes for a new race

That's me

Our back walkway

Photo wall

10 Mile Tuesday

Wild Rover Series 2015 medals

Backyard

Backyard

Anniversary

Kitchen

Bedroom