30.3.06

Overdue Update

I know, I owe you guys. I owe you about a million entries, but you’re going to get one, a long one. Unless of course, I mess something up so bad that I need to come back and add it.

WPA Conference

It was pretty awesome. I went to most of the Con Tinta events. I was actually at the one on Thursday night. The most exciting part of the night besides being greeted by Alicia Gaspar de Alba and chatting with Rolando Hinojosa was seeing Matthew McConaughey. He was eating dinner with some buddies on the patio. Fortunately, we ended up having dinner there and got a table in the patio adjacent to his. When he walked through the lobby (where were sitting) from the restroom to his table, we all just about fainted.

Anyway, this Con Tinta stuff is pretty cool. Rich was awesome for looking through the program and hooking us up with the Latino events so that we could go and support each other. It was cool to have to choose between a couple of events instead of having only one option. I would encourage any of you writers to attend. Just like the protests for immigration, we need the Latino voice to be heard in places like this. Anyway, I’m sure you all know how I feel about certain top selling authors.

Capturing Kid’s Hearts

I got sent to this training in Podunk, Texas. Okay, it was really Round Top, those of you who don’t know Texas, it’s just outside of Brenam, which is near College Station (home of Texas A&M), which is just outside of Austin. So really, it’s in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, we got to stay at this Christian Retreat. It was a huge chunk of land with about four farm houses. We got to stay in the biggest one. It was a really nice house. My room had a door to the balcony and bunk beds. The décor was country-style. They had a little pond with fish and the porch on the first floor had about a million rocking chairs.

The training was pretty good. When I got back on Friday, I had students running up to my room to see if I had turned into one of the “nice” teachers.

TAKS

I’ve been busy because I had that training and I’ve been lagging three days. TAKS is only a two short weeks away and yesterday we got the “talking to.” I seriously don’t get what these legislators are thinking. I mean, how can I increase the percentage of kids passing TAKS when I don’t have the same kids as I did last year, but I digress. If I’m absent, this is why.

Immigration Protests

So there have been protests going on. Our school is freaking out that our kids are going to protest. They keep talking about it and the kids are like, “What protests Ms.?”

It comes down to an issue of safety. I’m not against the protest, heck, had I known, I would have been there. But these kids, the ones I teach, they have no idea. If they protested, I’d be upset because they would make us look like dumbasses. Anyway, I’m doing a lesson on the whole issue. I’m getting the ones that want to, to write letters and sending them off. I think we might have a debate in class on this issue.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

you know i lost all my focus after i read about matthew mcconaughey. he's been my hero since he rescued all them little animals in new orleans. i would have been so star struck it might have annoyed him.

Georgina Baeza said...

It was a-maze-ing seeing him.