Mmmmm...Pancakes!

Honestly I don't know what my food kick is lately.  I guess because during the summer I have a chance to think about what I cook more, and then I can actually cook more.

Summer mornings are my favorite.  I use the term "morning" loosely, because sometimes I wake up late.  But what I like about summer mornings is that there's not a deadline for leaving the house.  I can take my own time and go through my routine without worrying that I'm running late.

So often I make a fairly complicated breakfast.  On a normal school day, I will have cereal, oatmeal, a bagel, or a microwaveable breakfast sandwich.  Something that doesn't take a lot of time or thought.  However, I loooove pancakes.  Freshly made ones.  Frozen pancakes and waffles are OK, but they just aren't the same as those you make fresh.

So.  I was trolling through Pinterest and I found this recipe for fried apple pancake rings.  Now, I'm not one for complicated usually, so I read the recipe and decided to do it my own way.  I do that a lot.

The recipe calls for using regular pancake mix as the batter.  No biggie.  Whenever I make pancakes, I actually substitute some of the pancake mix with oatmeal.  The brand I use calls for 2 cups of the pancake mix, so I use 1 1/2 cups of the mix and 1/2 cup of oatmeal.  Oatmeal makes things healthier, right?  Oh, and the recipe calls for something like 1 tablespoon of white sugar, and I use brown sugar instead.

Since I just cook for myself, I used one apple for the batch I made today.  I decided just to make pancakes rather than the rings, so I simply sliced the apple.  Then I tossed it with a little cinnamon sugar and microwaved it for about 1 minute to get the cooking started.  Then, I made the pancakes: poured the batter in the pan, added some of the apple slices, and then cooked the cakes through, flipping when bubbles appear.   (I should also point out that I usually cook up about half the pancake mix one morning and then save the rest to cook on another day.  I'll add a small splash of milk to the leftover batter to loosen it up).   I get the "vanilla spice" or "cinnamon spice" pancake syrup variety from my local grocery store's brand.

Definitely a successful breakfast!  Frequently I will do a pancake breakfast on a Saturday morning and try to make leftover pancakes so I can eat them for breakfast later in the week.  I will certainly do the apple pancake recipe again!

Food Musings

When you're a frazzled teacher, sometimes the last thing you want to do after coming home from school is cook.  But eating at restaurants, fast food or otherwise is not only expensive but not that great for your diet.  I am trying my best to develop healthy eating habits and save money.  I also really like to cook, so it's also a nice stress reliever for me to cook.

I've found that I like to have a couple of "go-to" dishes to fix.  These are dishes that are not only tasty to me but also simple to make.  I try to keep the ingredients for these dishes on hand (I stock up when the grocery stores do their 10 for $10 sales) so that I don't have to stop by the store on the way home.

Here are the ingredients I always try to keep...

• Frozen vegetables, corn, green beans, broccoli, carrots, chopped onions.  You can add these to almost anything to not only up the nutrition but also it just adds more substance to the meal.  My local grocery stores generally do theirs on a 10 for $10 special at least once a month.
• Salsa.  You can add it to anything to add a serving of veggies.
• Chicken broth or bouillon cubes.  I prefer the broth but if I run out I use a bouillon cube.  Adds flavor to pasta if you cook the pasta with it.
• Flour tortillas 
• Tortilla chips
• Prepackaged pasta-and-sauce or rice-and-sauce.  You can add chicken and vegetables to them and have a fairly healthy meal.
• Frozen chicken breast tenderloins
• Canned chicken

So here are 2 of my favorite go-to dishes.  I'm not giving any measurements or amounts, just a general idea for cooking.

The first is a pasta dish.  I cook whatever pasta I have on hand with chicken broth.  I personally like the tri-colored rotini.  While the pasta is cooking, I sauté some mushrooms in olive oil or butter, cook up some frozen broccoli, and maybe some other vegetables.  Sometimes I will grill a couple of chicken tenderloins on my George Foreman grill.  Drain the pasta, add the vegetables and chicken.  Add parmesan cheese to taste and enjoy.

The second is an "all-purpose" nacho/taco/burrito/whatever filling.  I got the idea from this from a cooking show...the celebrity cook was making baked taquitos.  First, sauté some onions in oil with chili powder.  Add frozen corn after the onions start to get soft.  Then, add precooked chicken.  I have used leftover rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, canned chicken, and even pre-grilled some chicken tenderloins.  I honestly like using the canned chicken because it shreds up better, but you want to make sure you drain off the liquid if you use canned.  You want the chicken to have a shredded consistency.  Add salsa and cook until the liquid reduces.  I have also added rice to this.  Usually I either top it with shredded cheese and eat with tortilla chips or fill tortillas with it and cheese.  Add any other garnishes you like, sour cream, guacamole, fresh vegetables, etc.

I have become addicted to Pinterest and have seen a lot of great cooking ideas on there.  My "Foodliness" board is right here.

Summer, summer, summertime!

One thing is certain, I think I was meant to be a teacher.  Ever since I had any concept of "what I wanted to be when I grew up" I wanted to be a teacher.   I would go with my mom willingly during the summer when she would work at school.  The main purpose was so I could write on the chalkboard.  I'd get upset if there wasn't any chalk available!  (The irony is that now, as a teacher, I HATE using the chalkboard..I'd love to have a dry erase board in my room rather than a chalkboard.)

As I was thinking about my summer break, I realized that teaching is truly an ideal profession in many ways.  It's not without its frustrations and irritations, but it really is ideal.

The main reason, for me, is that I can't think of any other profession in which you can start completely over every year.  In the upcoming school year, I will be teaching courses I have taught before.  But the thing is, not only do I get an entirely new crop of students to work with, I also can revamp and redo what didn't work the last time I taught the course.  I have wracked my brain and I can't think of another profession that allows that "redo" option every single year.  I can go back to the unit plans I made for novels, plays, and writing projects and enhance them, basically getting a "second chance" on them.  I can even trash the entire plan and start from scratch!

This year I gave myself this opportunity without even knowing it.  I taught 4 sections of freshmen and sophomores in English.  I had a total of 112 students in these four sections.  English classes mean writing projects.  The major project of second semester was their biographical research paper.  The thought of grading 112 research papers was daunting to say the least.  It also would have been a nearly endless process.   I'll go out on a limb and do some math here.  A "good" paper (one with few errors) may take around 5 minutes to evaluate.  On average, I'd say it takes around 8 minutes to evaluate a research paper effectively.  So...8 minutes per paper multiplied by 112: 896 minutes.  That's 14.9 hours of grading...IF each paper ONLY takes 8 minutes.  Considering that I have to teach from 8-3:15 5 days a week, plan my lessons, do personal errands and tasks, and find personal time AND sleep, I probably would get through those papers in 4 weeks, if I'm super efficient and don't do anything else.

Have I mentioned that I hate grading papers and I procrastinate grading?  The reality is that I'd take longer than 4 weeks with 112 research papers, not because of how long it takes to grade, but because I would procrastinate.

Well, I decided that I would split those 4 sections and do the research paper with 2 of them and a literature unit with the other 2.  50-ish papers is a lot easier to get through, the pile is a lot less daunting, and I like the planning aspect of teaching better than the grading.  Then, the classes who did the research paper would do the lit unit, and the other would do the research paper.

Little did I know that not only would this be good on the grading end, but also on the planning end.  As I was teaching the research unit to the 2 classes, and then when I started grading their papers, I noticed things that I could have done better...and I had the chance to fix that RIGHT AWAY!   The papers I got from the second group of students were noticeably better than the first set.   (Likewise I was able to make similar changes to the literature unit..I noticed things that the students didn't understand as well and I was able to explain elements differently.)

I decided after this that the remaining writing units I would split in that way.  Not only did it decrease the paper load, but it also enabled me to immediately improve on what I had just taught.

Are there other professions that offer this kind of opportunity?  To start (from scratch if needed) over on a regular basis?

Beginning of Summer Craftiness

Since my blog is called "Reflections of a Frazzled Teacher", it makes sense that I haven't posted something in a long while.  School this year was overwhelming.  I had a lot more students, was dealing with some new technology initiatives, and in general I was working a lot harder than I had in a long while.  This spring, I was in charge of our Academic Super Bowl Team (competition in April), and as Junior class adviser I had prom to organize (also in April).  AND to top it off I agreed to be one of the grandparents in our school's production of Willy Wonka (show was the first weekend in May).  Needless to say my April was very, very busy.  However, all of the extras I was involved with were well worth it, and more.

All that leads up to the picture I'm posting.  I'm not ordinarily a crafty person.  I enjoy scrapbooking, I know how to sew, and I have done a lot of other kinds of crafts.  

This year, for teacher appreciation week, the parent group gave us a lot of gifts.  Among these gifts were some of those reusable insulated tumblers.  One of them (not pictured) was from a company, with a company logo on it.  The other was a colored (mine was orange) tumbler.  I also had purchased, from Goodwill, a similar tumbler that I later noticed was cracked.  I bought this tumbler sometime in January or February.

Well, the Goodwill tumbler was perfectly usable, but unattractive because it was cracked.  I presume that's the reason it was donated to Goodwill.

So I decided to go to the craft store (or maybe it was the scrapbooking section at Walmart) and buy some stickers to cover up the crafts and perk up the clear tumbler.   Since all of the teachers at my school received tumblers, I decided to perk those up too.  A little nail polish remover took care of the corporate logo, although it roughed up the shiny plastic slightly.

Anyway, pictured here are the results of my endeavors.  If you try this yourself, make sure that you get stickers that are NOT paper-based.  You'll want plastic ones for it to be successful.

Oh, if I could be more organized!

Today at school we had PSAT for just the sophomores and the juniors.  I had a small group of sophomores to guide through the five different tests of the PSAT.  This morning was also a typical Wednesday professional development day.  We start an hour later on Wednesdays for faculty meeting and professional development.

Monday was a full day of professional development too.  We got together into small groups and went to the website 21 Things for the 21st Century Educator.  This is a great web site for teachers...it's basically a professional development tool for teachers.  It's out of the state of Michigan and aligned to the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers.  You can look at various lessons about different kinds of technology tools that can engage you and your students into 21st century learning.

Anyway, my colleagues and I were put into groups to explore some of the lessons and then present what we had found to the rest of the teachers.  So our task for this morning's PD time was to create a lesson plan OR modify a current lesson plan incorporating the tools presented on Monday.   I had already been looking into wikis as a collaborative learning project for my classes.   So my colleague and I were working on our project this morning...but not much progress.

Certainly I meant to work on it more during testing.  But I realized I had some grading to get taken care of and updating to my online gradebook.  THEN I noticed some kids needed to have progress reports sent home...so I did that.  THEN I remembered that I have Spell Bowl practice again on Thursday.  It's the final practice before the competition on October 17, and I had to get the powerpoint ready for practice (it's still not ready).  So all that spare time I thought I had that I was going to use to catch up on the serious grading...the essay questions for the test to grade and some AP work didn't get taken care of today, like I planned to do.

Here's the thing.  The fresh/soph class is watching The Odyssey.  So that's 4 periods of movie time.  I am going to have to force myself to grade, grade, grade tomorrow!  I WILL get it done!

When you need...

I was tooling around other blogs (The Writer Today) this early morning, and I discovered this lovely post:

EMERGENCY NUMBERS


1. When In Sorrow.....Call John 14

2. When You Have Sinned.....Call Psalm 51

3. When You Worry.....Call Matthew 6:19-34

4. When You Are In Danger.....Call Psalm 91

5. When Your Faith Needs Stirring.....Call Hebrews 11

6. When You Feel Down & Out.....Call Romans 8:31

7. When You Want Peace & Rest.....Call Matthew 11:25-30

8. When The World Seems Bigger Then God.....Call Psalm 90

9. If Your Pocketbook Is Empty.....Call Psalm 37

10. When You Are Lonely & Fearful....Call Psalm 23

11. When You Grow Bitter & Critical.....Call 1Corinthians 13

12. For How To Get Along With Fellow Man.....Call Romans 12

13. If You Are Depressed.....Call Psalm 27

14. If People Seem Unkind.....Call John 15

Let the school year begin...

I don't know about you, but January is never the beginning of the year for me.  It's always been in August, because that's when a new school year starts.  When you're a student, you begin a new grade and you get a chance to start over again, with new goals and possibilities.  This is especially when you move from one school to another.  Freshmen in high school have a chance to redefine the identity they created for themselves as middle schoolers, just as college freshmen can do the same.  For them, moving out of their childhood home makes this transition even more dramatic.

As a teacher, I always start my new year with goals.  One of them is ALWAYS the same:  I WILL be more organized!  I plan, I clean out my classroom in the summer, reorganize my storage areas, discard things I haven't used, and begin the year with a fresh outlook.  I create and practice new ways of keeping organized.  By October or November I discover which of these new methods work and which don't.  By about March, I'm lucky to see out from underneath all the piles on my desk, and my cabinets have become a dumping ground for what I need to get off of my desk NOW.  When May comes, I look at my cabinets and start it all over again.

Generally I also have goals related to new responsibilities and procedures at my school.  This year we are pushing a huge technology initiative which not only involves new computers for teachers but also new requirements as to using technology.  It is a bit overwhelming for all of us in my building, even those of us who are comfortable experimenting with and using technology in the classroom.  We have an entirely new gradebook and attendance system that we need to learn about and use.  Parental communication has also become part of our new gradebook and attendance system, specifically that we are to have a daily online log of our classroom lesson plans and homework.  Parents have the ability not only to access their child's grades but they also can look for homework and lessons.  For me it is not the planning that is "new", but getting used to using the new system.   My goal for this is to be as efficient as possible with the new system, to be patient with myself and my colleagues about it, and to try and be an encouragement and resource to everyone who is feeling overwhelmed.

There are other "resolutions" I develop for each new school year.  Most of them are related to the failures or successes I had the previous year.  All of them are usually quite personal, and relate to how I interacted with  my students and their families.  Some of them have to do with my relationships with my colleagues.

So there, January...August is the real "new year".  It just doesn't start with a party and a countdown.  Just a classroom and school full of new faces.