We tucked our four return tickets into our bags, and left the booth with considerably more money left over than I had thought we would. This was a great relief because things have been a might tight around here with the falling blue rate. Good news, kids: Fresh fruit, helados, weekly street tortillas and mate are back on the menu!!!
Finally, some good news, followed by yet another unpleasant surprise ending... read on, dear reader, to discover why there are no photos with this blog post!!! (Ugh!)
After haggling an arbolito on Florida street up to 10.3 (it helped that we had nearly $2000 USD to exchange), the boys and I headed down to Retiro to buy our bus tickets to Salta, the destination they had chosen for their birthday adventure... And -- YIPPEE -- we found a bus line that sells both first class (i.e. fully reclining seats; very important for a 20-hour bus ride) tickets and allegedly offers free wifi enroute (granted, the lady mimed to me that the Internet was only semi-reliable, depending on where along the route the bus was....) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's return to Florida street.... The blue rate has been unbelievably shitty lately (I yearn for the days of 12.2, back in early February...) But we needed to exchange $ to buy those bus tickets, and according to my sources, the rate was "up" to 10.2 today. So off we went, hundred dollar bills safely tucked away in various bags and inner pockets. I decided to try a street crier today, since our usual guy is honest, but does not always give the best rate. The first guy we stopped told me 10:1. I raised my eyebrows at him, and he then told me 10.2. I suggested 10.3, and he said no way. I started to walk away, and he quickly saw the error of his ways and suggested 10.28. I told him how much money we had on us to exchange, and he agreed that 10.3 sounded fair. We followed our new friend into some side street office, where we began pulling out our money. The guy behind the counter started counting out stacks of 100 peso bills which he slid under the glass to me, and which I, in turn, slid across the counter for the boys to first count and then check for fakes. (175 bills to individually check in total. No small feat for two 10-year-olds!!!) After counting the first pile of ten 100-peso bills, Simon whispered to me, "Mommy, this one has 11". I had him count it again, and then I counted it. Yep, 11. STOP AND THINK: What would YOU do? (C'mon... be honest!!) I took the bill and slid it back under the glass. The guy behind the counter assumed I wanted to exchange it for another, and wordlessly did so. I shoved the new bill back at him, and explained to him in my broken Spanish that it was too much, he had given me too many bills in this stack. You should have seen the look on his face, and on the face of the street crier (the latter was still hanging around, hoping for a tip)!!! :D "You are very honest!" he exclaimed, "Thank you!" I made sure they knew we were Canadian. Then we got back to counting and checking. All good, with the possible exception of a bill in one of the middle piles. I elected to give that one to our arbolito as a tip, since, after all, he had waited around patiently while we checked every single bill, and truth be told, he had probably not made much from that exchange, since I had driven him to a rate higher than most (he'd had words with the guy behind the counter when we had first come in, and had to argue with him about the rate he'd promised us). Besides, I figured, if it was a fake, then he'd lose at his own game. We stuffed our 17 thousand pesos and change into various pockets and bags, making sure to lock all zippers and strap the bags on tight. Then we headed back out into the busy street, Mommy holding boys' hands. (It's a lot of money to walk around town with, hehe, and we're starting to look familiar to people.) Alex noted, "Mommy, when I was young, I never knew stuff like this existed"! After a quick stop for frozen yogourt and money recounting and organizing in the lockable family washroom at Galleria Pacifico (we took a photo, but...), it was on to Terminal Omnibus Retiro, to see if there was any other bus company than the horribly named Flechabus that might possibly offer "Cama Suite" to Salta. (Sorry, we just could not bring ourselves to ride on something with "flesh" in its name!! And also, the reviews online were crap.) After passing a company called "Dumb Ass Cat" (I kid you not, I have a photo to prove it, but can't post it on the blog -- more on that later... keep reading, kids), we finally found the recently-rumoured, wifi-offering Balut bus company. Small booth. Micro-company. Good. VERY GOOD: Discount when paying "effectivo" (cash), and yes, (sketchy) wifi, and yes, vegetarian meals, and yes, fully reclining seats, and yes, availability of front row (window) seats there and back! SOLD! We tucked our four return tickets into our bags, and left the booth with considerably more money left over than I had thought we would. This was a great relief because things have been a might tight around here with the falling blue rate. Good news, kids: Fresh fruit, helados, weekly street tortillas and mate are back on the menu!!! We had to hustle to get home in time to Skype with Daddy, so we decided to take the more direct Mitre train (2 stops), rather than press onto the overcrowded subway where we'd have to switch trains (approx 11 stops). Things had been going surprisingly well, so something had to give. And here's where our great day starts to go down the toilet, quite literally... At the train station, we made a bathroom stop, and as I was leaning over to flush the toilet, my keys and PHONE FELL INTO THE URINE-FILLED TOILET!!!! ARRRGHHHHH!!! SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE?! I fished it out of the bowl, quick as I could, and gave it a rinse off at the sink -- no soap in most public washrooms, and risk of getting things wetter, but sorry, I'm not going home with a PEE PHONE!!! And of course no paper towel either, so I rubbed the water-rinsed pee phone and keys "dry" on my jacket and we got on the train. Stupidly (I read later you're not supposed to do this!) I turned the phone on to see if it was working. Not so well: Flickering, some parts of screen would not work to touch, calendar shut down... ugh! I pried open the Otterbox case, and sure enough, more water (pee?! Ugh!) needed to be wiped off the phone. So I wiped it all down and put it in the rice whence it will have to stay until at least Friday night, I am told (I think I have a job interview at 9 a.m. that day... can't check my calendar now!!!) Then I thoroughly washed and disinfected the Otterbox components, which I am cautiously optimistic will soon house my gloriously working iPhone once more. (I cannot believe I turned it on. And that I didn't remove the case before we got home. Stupid me. Anyway. That's why there are no photos with this post. They are in the rice, along with the phone!) So those of you following along, please send prayers and/or positive vibes our way, that the rice does its magic and dries out/revives the phone. Otherwise, we are camera-less, map-less, music-less, helpless gringos lost in BsAs. I've already suffered enough with the theft of the laptop and iPad this month, must I lose my only lifeline left???!!! :( Oh well, at least we got 10.3 and cheap bus tix! Now that's okay! :)
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Another great OTF Connects online workshop tonight -- a little over my head, some of it, and I am so wiped out from today's adventures, which I will blog about shortly, that instead of recounting the session tonight, I will share some videos and links and let interested teachers and others explore for themselves...
In terms of inquiry... how do we move our students beyond simply regurgitating information? Peter wrote a blog post about using journals to prompt student thinking. Some interesting resources to get students thinking are linked below, but first, a question: Is graffiti always "bad"? This Grade 11 student didn't think so, and wrote a rap to communicate his thoughts about it. (The guy should come to BsAs -- the "art" here is super "public"!! Hehe.) Visible Thinking and Natural Curiosity seem to be two sites worth checking out. When students are engaged in inquiry, neat things can happen. Here's a "product" an elementary student came up with as part of an inquiry project he was involved in... We've been taking music lessons with Gabriel for two weeks now (about 5 sessions), and I had an opportunity to film the boys playing with their teacher at the most recent lesson. It took about two hours to load a 37-second video, so let's hope it works, hehe... First is Alex playing 3 parts of a 4-part piece (I wasn't quick enough with the camera-phone to catch the first part), then Simon plays a little jazzy bit with his right hand while Gabriel plays the bass line.
Gabriel is challenging me to think in new ways about how music is taught and learned; he's studied a wide array of methods of teaching music to children, and is developing his own approach, based on the philosophy that music should be fun (if it's not, the kids won't practise anyway!), and that parents should play an integral role in the learning.
Where correct finger technique and reading music from the staff were things pounded into me within my own first three lessons as a child (and constantly revisited by my RCM teacher for years thereafter), my children are learning to listen, respond and create music, often with their pointer fingers only. What's more, they're being encouraged to record their work on paper or iPad in a way that makes sense to them. We've not drawn a single staff since starting, and when I questioned Gabriel, he said he probably wouldn't do so before we leave in May. With the boys having so much fun and sounding great so quickly, I must say, it's a lot easier to keep an open mind about these blasphemous music teaching methods. :)
The book also offers a great launching point for critically examining media use of the environment as a selling feature: When I used this book with my grade 3 students last year, we examined the Coca Cola polar bear and also the Nissan commercials, and how they used various persuasive elements to make the viewer feel good about their products.
In addition to discussing and reading the Easter story together in the Scriptures this past week, the boys and I tried our best to emulate our other Canadian seasonal traditions this holiday weekend... A big, family/friends picnic and chocolate hunt have always been a key part of the Easter tradition in our family, reaching back to the days when Jeanette and my mother and Omi would pack a picnic lunch and hide chocolate out in the country at some park outside of the GTA for me and Rebecca and Stephanie and whoever else we managed to schlepp along. With Easter moving, sometimes the picnic falls on a birthday (last year was mine, in the past it's been the boys'), and there's cake to be had. This year, there were no conflicting birthdays. There were also no friends as one of our friends is currently in the US, and the other two make a living working at the market on Sundays and holidays. To make matters worse, Tats is away in Florida until May 1. So, we were all alone. :( Happily, the Easter Bunny as well organized. In addition to budgeting over the past several weeks for a few local treats, she had also arranged with a Canadian friend to bring some "real" Easter chocolate and jellybeans when he came from PEI last month. And miraculously, there were some familiar blue and pink easter egg papers with blank boxes in which to write something! Thus, the night before Easter, I wrote clues and hid (and also sampled some) treats. Clue writing for each boy is an idea I picked up from the family I used to babysit for when I was in high school. And later, once I became a teacher, and then when I had kids of my own, I realised what an excellent way this was to build literacy skills in toddlers and young children... I remember how excited Alex and Simon were, and how motivated to read, when they were little and found the (then very simplistic) printed clues the Easter Bunny had left them... heck, they're still excited! Needless to say, the clues have become a tradition, and last June, when I was sorting boxes and packing suitcases for our year in Argentina, I made sure to pack our clue templates in the "spring" box. The boys were not disappointed, and eagerly went hunting around the apartment and onto the balcony. (Unfortunately, they elected to do this naked, so photos here are limited, sorry, folks!) Once they had found the first stash and gorged themselves on as much chocolate as they could cram in, I went back to bed for an hour, following which we had a little REAL breakfast, and then headed off to San Isidro. But not before making a stop at the local verduleria to play Easter Bunny to Mia, the little girl whose parents run the fruit and veggie stand we frequent. (We also dropped off some chocolate with the family who has recently moved in on a mattress under our subway bridge. Judging by the state of their dental health, chocolate and jellybeans were perhaps not the most thoughtful gift we could have brought them, but their toddler, in any case, was delighted with the festive treasures!) And then it was on to San Isidro... We had heard there was a train that runs along the coast, and which connects directly from "our" train (the Mitre), so we decided to check that out. The passage between the two train lines was itself worth the journey: the walls and ceiling above the escalators had been creatively plastered with sheet music and old LPs, and there was a plethora of antique shops lining the passage from the Mitre to the "Tren de la Costa". The latter, as we had suspected, was a "tourist" train. That means that there were instructions and descriptions in English as well as Spanish, and the price -- instead of the $2.20 pesos round trip the regular (Mitre) train costs us -- was a whopping $40 pesos per person!!! Since there were few other options at this point, we quickly elected to cheap out on lunch, and I dug into my pants pocket and forked over the money. We were soon on our way. The outrageously overpriced train was at least as run-down as the regular BsAs trains, and had orders of magnitudes more graffiti sprayed on the sides. But it did indeed run along the Rio, which we caught glimpses of on the way to Barrancas station, where we disembarked, and walked through yet another antique market enroute to what we hoped would be the "beach". As a summer Islander, my schema of "beach" is so very specific, and I keep forgetting that when Portenos refer to "beach" in the greater BsAs area, what they usually mean is "small patch of publicly-accessible grass from which one can see the murky waters of the delta". Indeed, there were a few of these patches; some folks were fishing there; we had lunch (one order of chicken and pasta with salad -- all shared -- and fresh squeezed orange juice) near one of them, and could see the San Isidro Cathedral in the distance. After lunch, we walked to the San Isidro train station, which in itself is quite a pretty place. Here we elected to hold our second Easter Egg hunt. (The boys -- although happy to get more chocolate -- noted that it just wasn't the same without the thrill of the chase. With no other contenders, they had no one to fight for the loot! I offered to fight them for it, hehe!) Next, we wandered through the feria (I bought some pecans -- hard to find in the city!!), and stopped to watch a performer swallow fire and juggle a floating glass ball before heading up to check out the Cathedral up close. Having devoured all our chocolate, and being pretty much broke, we decided to head home and eat dinner at the apartment. We were soon back on the overpriced "de la costa" train from which we connected to the Mitre back to our little corner of Palermo Hollywood.
Back at home, we dug into our "Kartoffelpuffer" and apple sauce, and all agreed it had been a reasonably nice family outing for our first Easter away from home and family. Hey, Vinx! This blog post's for you: We spent the day in San Isidro, a suburb of BsAs, and there were tonnes of flea and antique markets (with super-cheap prices), so much so that even the boys said, "Hey, Mom, Uncle Vinx would LOVE this stuff!"
So, here you go (click to enlarge)... I'll be honest, I don't have a kid with ASD. But I do have a co-parent with whom my children share residency! And as I was thinking ahead about our return to Canada and the "regular" shared parenting schedule, I knew the best place to search for child-friendly calendar apps would be in the Autism section. Choice and transition planning, so necessary for students with ASD, can benefit many other learners as well. Bee Visual has developed two apps that are helpful for keeping children organized and on track: Choice Works and Choice Works Calendar. As a parent who likes to foster a sense of routine and security in her children's lives, I appreciated the fun and fairly easy-to-use interface that Choice Works offers. In particular, I liked the fact that their calendar app and menu items can be customized, either by labeling an already-existing stock image, or by choosing a photo from the photo library on one's device, or even by taking a photo on the spot. I quickly used this app to build monthly schedules for May - September, which I then shared with Alex and Simon's dad as a .jpg file via email, and with the boys themselves, since both their devices have the same app (so files created on one device can be shared with and opened by others who have the same app, directly in Choice Works Calendar, on their own device). Although the app offers this easy-to-use sharing feature, I have to say I found the files rather large and slow to share. (But that might have just been my slow, crappy internet connection!) Another thing I appreciate about this app is that one can create a monthly calendar, but then view "week at a glance", as in the first image below. This is helpful for chunking information for kids who need smaller bits rather than the big picture (you can even view one day at a time, useful when you have more than two items per day, which can be a bit overwhelming in the monthly view -- in our case, I kept the calendar mainly to who was sleeping where and when, just an overview). I like the fact that you can customize images, but I do wish the visual library were a bit bigger, and included things like "Skype" or "singing", rather than the more generic "computer" or "music". I'd also like to see people of different colours (everyone's pretty "white" in the generic images) and different family groupings, like two moms or two dads, and kids with just one parent, to show special time with one parent alone.
Overall, I think Choice Works Calendar is a useful app for parents and teachers working with students who have ASD, as well as for anyone who wants to support their child in getting organized. It's a great visual organizational tool with lots of potential. As well as the usual assessment/DI/comprehensive literacy/parent communication/engaging all learners/3-part lesson plan material, I am trying to absorb all the new stuff that's sprouted in public education the past few years since I a) did my pilot training b) completed a TLLP and c) spent a year in Argentina! (All three of these experiences have of course made me a better teacher on many levels, but I still need to be able to spout the current "lingo" in a job interview...) Here's what I'm researching... but first, the latest and greatest app the boys and I have been using (inspired by a cross between something a colleague sent me, and a critical thinking lesson I found online), here is my classroom a-la-SKITCH: Technology One thing I have definitely developed this year is a greater comfort with technology as a teaching and learning tool. I've taken online classes and had Skype interviews and meetings, I've explored apps and virtual worlds with the kids both in class and in our personal lives, I've circumvented less than ideal tech situations due to theft... it was not one of my primary goals to become more proficient with technology, but it happened, and I'm glad. I think my future students will benefit from the less Ludditic Ms. Teschow! As I've learned from both the PD sessions I've attended this year as well as the blogs and articles I've read, technology is the new vehicle for learning. And my own children have demonstrated the power of technology this year as they've immersed themselves in it, using technology for both learning and entertainment. What I'm most excited about is my ability to see the transition from "augmentation" to "modification" in my own teaching, and I am looking forward to continuing this journey when I return to a classroom next year. The 6 Cs 21-century learning is about more than technology. Smart Boards, apps and online courses are tools to enable the following facets of a solid education, not replace them: character, citizenship, communication, critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration and teamwork, and creativity and imagination. Sometimes these are called the 6Cs, their importance in the teaching repertoire is outlined by Michael Fullan in "From Good to Great: Launching the Next Stage of Ontario's Education Agenda". Reading through Fullan's report as well as some Board documents and resources from the Thinking Consortium, I realised that I am largely "doing" the 6 Cs in my classroom, and have been for some time. My challenge in classroom job interviews will be to articulate how I incorporate them into the fabric of my program, which I am not yet used to describing using the 6C language. Revised Social Studies Curriculum Last year, the revised Social Studies curriculum was released, and with it, a renewed focus on a number of Ministry initiatives and policies: * mental health and wellness * differentiation * environmental education * equity and inclusive education * financial literacy * literacy and mathematical literacy * critical thinking/literacy * 21st century learning * career/life planning Although I have used some of the themes in the revised curriculum in my home schooling this year, this is an area I definitely need to be come more familiar with. In particular, I want to think more about how the front matter has evolved, and how the 6 Cs (from the previous section I wrote about) are embedded in the expectations of the new curriculum document. The revised curriculum document is -- like its peers in Math, Science, Language and the Arts -- a robust compendium for teachers, to be consulted as a whole. No longer does one simply flip to the grade level expectations for the grade(s) one is teaching (not that we should have been doing that in the first place, but let's be honest, a lot of us did!), but rather one consults the entire document for ideas on how to set up a rich program that engages all learners and prepares them to be healthy, engaged citizens in the 21st Century! The Whole Child Speaking of healthy, engaged citizens, we teachers can be program geniuses, but at the end of the day, we are teaching children, not curriculum. That means that while thinking about how to set up an effective literacy program, we also need to be thinking about how we can contribute to the greater fabric of the school, such that school is a place where students and their families feel comfortable. Awareness of mental health issues, socio-economic factors, and other "extra-curricular" challenges (and their impact in the classroom) is increasing. Our classrooms need to be places where students can explore who they are as learners and who they are becoming as people. Lunch time clubs and after school activities contribute to our understanding of the "whole child" and help us to support students across subjects and grade levels, even if they are not in our class. I've always been a firm believer that an understanding of the whole child leads great teachers to assess and instruct in ways that meet learning needs of a variety of students, which in turn meets those learners' other needs as well. Indeed, one of the foundational components of Karen Hume's model of differentiation speaks to this idea. (Click to enlarge the image on the left, and consider the red oval near the bottom of the concept map.) So, getting to know students outside the classroom context can help us meet those students' learning needs more effectively, which helps us further get to know those students as "whole" people. Articulating this belief is a goal for me in future interviews. This past winter, I got to experience snow for the first time on PEI. And now, thanks to our new neighbours and their handy cameras, I get to experience spring on the island, too! Thanks, Katie, for sending these photos of our Harbour. What incredible landscapes and colours... |
About Vera...Canadian, vegetarian, PPL, certified teacher and mother of twins, home schooling for the year, in Argentina!
Visit me online at www.verateschow.ca Archives
May 2014
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