Some things never change

A blast from my 4-year old past:
"You were about as tall as my knee and you always had a big smile for everyone. I think you found life pretty delightful back then."

Conflict resolution

Overheard in a school office:
"Are you happy with this being a, 'Say you're sorry, end of story' kind of situation?"
"Yes, sir."

Shaken to the core

I'm not the best at dealing with my emotions. I'm not the best at explaining what's going on when I feel something. Like, seriously feel something.
While watching Waiting for Superman, I started crying. I was pretty confused about it because I don't think of myself as a crier. I thought through my emotions, and I think that I understand why I responded that way. Nonetheless, I was shocked how I reacted to my feelings.
It happened again. I just got an e-mail that shook me to my core. I love it, maybe more than your average person, when things connect. When you find out the world is small and you feel like there's too much of a coincidence of what's happens in life. So that part of the e-mail was great, but then I started reading into the subtext of the e-mail and again I was surprised at how strongly I was reacting. When things get really personal. When thing really hit at what you're passionate about. I guess that's when you react in surprising (or maybe extreme?) ways. At least, that's how it seems to be for me.
As I've said, there are some things that I need to pursue.

"School board considers paying needy students"

There's an article in the Toronto Star that talks about an idea that has the TDSB paying "needy" students for things including good grades, attendance at school, involvement in programs.
From skimming the comments on the webpage (I haven't looked at the Twitter page that they referred to), it seems as though people are bashing the idea. I, however, I can come up with both pros and cons to the proposal, but there's not enough information to really make an informed decision. I would like to learn more about it.
I also hope that in the future I will directly be involved with policy, institutional, systematic, or similar kinds of changes. That would be so exciting.

"Gifted"...in the Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail is doing a series about giftedness. Here are the articles thus far.
When I'm passionate about something, I find it hard to articulate my thoughts about it...which probably isn't good for my profession. Also, I need to pursue this area in more depth. I have to.

Definitely not the norm

I was sitting beside a Kindergarten student during afternoon snack-time. She turned to me and asked for my help. She couldn't open her bottle of San Pellegrino on her own.

Les ailes d'Hermes

This website by Hermes is quite cute. Some videos are better than others. I quite like the fingers skateboarding.

Freitag's new Hazzard

I'm liking the new Hazzard backpack by Freitag.

A disappointing workshop

This afternoon, I attended a workshop about networking. It was a complete disappointment. It's not necessarily that I had high expectations, but it's a topic that I think is very important and something that I want to learn more about, improve upon and think that it will be integral in my future.
It was such a horrible workshop. The presenter seemed too confident, too much of an entrepreneur, I was pretty disgusted. I don't feel as though I learned anything from the presentation other than confirming some of my feelings about networking being kind of sleazy. I know it's an important part of life, but I still like to think of it as something that can come from a genuine place. If you think that's naive, too bad. I truly believe that it can be done without that dark side coming out.
The presentation was horribly done. Instead of learning any valuable skills, I felt like a commodity, only there to trade information with others in the room. One could argue that our networking was valuable to our future, but it was ridiculously superficial.
It was a 2.5 hour workshop, and two hours were spent finding out about everyone's career interests one at a time. We learned about all of the wonderful contacts that our presenter could provide for us, and were constantly reminded of the value of LinkedIn (I'm not sure how I feel about this). After a 10 minute break, the final 20 minutes were spent going through a powerpoint presentation in which we learned of all the successes of our presenter and in the last four minutes (seriously) we finally learned some basic networking ideas. I had a conversation with the presenter during the break. She had asked me who she could introduce me to so that I could get closer to my goals, and I honestly couldn't think of anyone, nor was I sure that I wanted to be (at this point, I was already disillusioned by her 2 hour ramblings about who she knew and how she'd be able to introduce us to all of them). It was almost as if her actions backfired, and I didn't even want to be associated to her. As opposed to me wanting to get into her network so that there would be a reciprocal payoff, I wanted to stay as far away as possible.
It was like she thought the only reason I wanted to be there was to get introduced to some important person that may advance my career. Although I'm apparently a green link (sequential thinker, list maker, summarizer, quick witted, don't like wasting time, visual, know what I expect from things, make a beeline for my target - I guess I did learn something, however, it wasn't made clear what the point of this knowledge was...I mean, I already know what I am), I wanted to learn more about the process rather than get just a name out of the workshop. I told her this, and although she kept saying "what can I do to help you", I got no help other than being reminded of mundane etiquette that everyone in my world knows. I was told about all of the wonderful things that I do, which doesn't seem helpful, because I do them already, so why bother telling me about it. Whether they are conscious or unconscious things, I do them, so tell me about the things that I don't do. When asked what I wanted to learn about (this was done in another round-about way that talked about things that I already knew about), we both agreed that it wouldn't be helpful to learn about obvious basics (that she proceeded to outline and explain in great detail - this woman is so ridiculously ineffective!), so I proceeded to tell her that sometimes you don't know what you don't know so you can't articulate exactly what you want to learn. I think it's her responsibility as the 'expert' to be able to provide us with that next step and be able to tell us (from her prolific experience) what more we need to learn. Is this where I'm supposed to toot my own horn and admit that I'm lucky that I've had a variety of experiences and opportunities to learn and develop the skills that were being (but I really don't think were) presented in this workshop and since I already have the skills and knowledge about all this stuff, that's why I felt do annoyed by the sub-par performance?
Ugh. I was so annoyed. I wanted to get up and leave.
The write-up about the workshop was completely misleading. Instead of learning about networking, I wasted 2.5 hours of my life and felt sorry for all the rest of the people who were subject to the presenter's wrath. I have no doubt that she's successful, but she does it in a way that is completely different than I would ever do. I may never be a millionaire like she is, but I much more comfortable in the way that I view life and other people. Sometimes workshops are ridiculous. I wonder if I'm more judgmental of presenters because of the field that I'm in. And I feel like my rant isn't really explaining the situation. If only I was more eloquent. Maybe I should attend a workshop about that.

Schooled by a Kindergartener

I was reading a Scooby-Doo book to a wee Kindergarten student this morning and had some trouble. You see, it was a learn-to-read kind of book that had pictures in place of many words. I had to get my new friend to tell me who all the characters were. I hid my lack of Scooby-knowledge by encouraging her to help me read by saying all of the words that were pictures. Rather quickly she got tired of this and said, "Can you just read the book for me?" Yes darling...now that you've told me who Fred, Velma and whoever that other girl's name is, yes, I'll read the book for you. I had to get her to remind me about Fred and that other girl's name a couple more times. Obviously, the names didn't stick.
I, clearly, missed out on some classic TV as a child. And this child of the 21st century, knew more about the stars of my childhood than I did. How strange.
It was mighty fun being in an elementary school again. I listened to the barely audible morning announcements over the tinny PA system, sat in a chair so that my knees were almost hitting my chin, sat on the rug for storytime, squished 6 bodies onto a loveseat, got told that I was pretty, you know, all the good stuff.
Education is a wonderful thing.

Trivial dilemmas

May hair seemed to be a great length a month ago. Now, it's too long. The dilemma is that I decided awhile back that the next time I cut my hair, I want to cut off a significant amount. It's long enough to donate to an organization that can turn it into a wig for cancer patients, so that's the goal. I've already decided the style of cut that I'm going to get, but I don't really want to have that style until warmer weather rolls around. That's not for months. Also, I want to give my blunt bangs more exposure. This new 'do has gotten some interesting reactions. Anyway, I thought that I could last until the spring, but my hair is entering 'too long' zone. I don't want to wear my hair up for the next couple of months, so I'm getting antsy. I could just trim my hair, but I'm concerned that they'll chop it too short. Actually, I just don't know where to go for a decent trim. I visit hairdressers for cuts, not trims. Another annoyance is that static-y hair season is upon us. Woe is me.