After 10 days hosting W. and S. in Portland, I'm suddenly in San Francisco, spending one last week in the office wrapping things up before I leave for good. Or at least "for now"...MM has this way of sucking people back into it. :-) Off I go, out of the safety of corporate life and into the wilderness of high school teaching.

I don't want to leave this team of fun people! Ack! But I'm totally excited to develop a new curriculum and [I hope] really make a difference in the lives of kids in my own community. And be on East Coast time. And be out of my house and out of my computer chair. And be around other people all day and be able to walk to work and...OK, now I'm getting excited again. Onward!

I've tried making hake before, with edible results, but yesterday I came up with a dish that I would make for somebody else on purpose. The trick was finding some flavors that would go along with hake's strong flavor without overpowering it. Here's what I did:

Baked Hake
hake filet (mine was a little less than a pound)
olive oil
3 large roma tomatoes
1/2 tsp white peppercorns
1/4 tsp (or less) coarse sea salt
4 cloves garlic, peeled

Procedure:
Oil baking pan. Slice tomatoes about 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick (enough rounds so that you can support the hake on them). Arrange on pan in a hake-shaped group. (school?) Put hake on top.

Pound or grind pepper. Pound together salt, garlic, and pepper. Moisten with oil into a paste.

Rub the paste all over the hake.

Bake at 375 "until done" (about 15 minutes in my little convection toaster oven).

I had some basil that needed to be used (from the same friend who gave me the tomatoes), so I pounded up a little pesto to serve on the tomatoes. It was OK, but I just don't like sweet basil with hake very much. Maybe lemon basil would be better.

Yesterday I got on my bike at around 8 AM and rode downtown to the farmers' market in Deering Oaks Park. It was so nice; lots of great stuff. If I had been going home right away I would have bought corn. Instead I confined my purchases to 2 "junior" cucumbers and 3 of the glossiest eggplants I have ever seen. I could see them glowing from 10 feet away and had to have them!

I then proceeded to the Eastern Promenade to stretch out a bit and, I thought, to lounge around planning my new computer curriculum. Howevah, the Eastern Prom is pretty sunny in the morning (being in the east...) so I decided I'd ride over to Cape Elizabeth and come back later. Around 11:30 I arrived back at the Prom and sat down for some reading, but then discovered I was starving. So much for lounging! I went home, made lunch, and took a nap.

I thought, "huh, I biked 22 miles and feel pretty OK." But TODAY I'm really feeling it...

Now that I've upgraded my Mac, I can finally post photos of the great Blueberry Jam Experiment. Want to make authentic Wild Maine Blueberry Jam, instead of paying big bucks for it at L.L. Bean (or anywhere in Freeport, for that matter)? Here's how:

Wild Maine Blueberry Jam

11 cups crushed Maine blueberries (roughly; a little more than 4 quarts uncrushed)
2 cups water
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 teaspoons lemon zest
2 cups sugar
2 packets "no-sugar-necessary" pectin (for low-sugar canning; it says so on the package)

Procedure:

1. Go for a hike on your favorite blueberry mountain, remembering to bring ample small containers for storing berries and a large backpack.
2. At the usual place, look both ways for park rangers and then veer off the beaten track to the other side of the mountain.
3. Spend an hour or two enjoying the beautiful view, cool breeze, and companionship of your friends as you fill your containers with your bounty.
4. Return home and pick out stems, leaves, etc.
5. Wash berries.

6. Sterilize 12 8-oz.-size canning jars as directed on box.
7. Crush berries slightly and add water, lemon juice, and zest.
8. Cook, following directions in pectin box for boiling time, adding pectin, etc.
9. Pour into sterilized jars and top with lids and bands.
10. Process in boiling water bath as specified (10 minutes is fine).

This jam is great because it's not too sweet. Yum! Here are photos from the event:

Yesterday, after spending many hours dragging huge desks around, lifting computers and monitors and ancient equipment and sorting through software and office supplies, I was pooped. I went home and sat down to surf the Web on learning styles.

As it turns out, I am almost equally a visual, aural, and kinesthetic learner, with a slight emphasis on the visual. It occurred to me that I should probably give my students a learning style questionnaire on the first day(s) of school, since not only will I have to deal with kids who have behavior problems and/or ADD, but I'll also have kids who learn differently. Today at lunch I'll go over to the library and get out a book on learning styles to see if I can use some of it during the first days(s). I say "day(s)" because the participating high schools that send us students during the day don't start sending the students all on the same day (argh!) I am under orders from the assistant principal to "do something [in class] that isn't boring, but isn't that important either so you don't have to repeat it". Huh.

I'm told that the Computer Technology course is a dumping ground for kids with behavior problems, so I bet my first year will be rough. I also know (from my volunteer experience last year) that a lot of the kids in this class did nothing except surf the Web. So there will be some surprised students on the first day when I reveal the fact that there will be actual work involved...

I've been spending the last couple of weeks completely rearranging my classroom. A few people seemed surprised at this, but I think it's important to get the classroom set up to look (and feel) a certain way, so that when kids walk in on the first day of school it sets a certain impression.

It will be really important to get that first impression right, since (as I mentioned in my previous post) the kids who are signed up for this class think they're going to be surfing the Web, learning to touch-type, or making Excel spreadsheets for 2 hours a day and getting credit for it. No more! I was hired to completely redo the computer curriculum and "bring it into the 21st century". I've been stressing out about this a little, since I had vague ideas of what would be good to teach, but no concrete plans. And I need concrete plans to teach from, to let my students know what "the plan" is, to talk to administrators and high school teachers from the sending schools about our vision of computer technology here, etc.

It wasn't until yesterday afternoon when, nearly done with the classroom reconfiguration, I realized that my workout had had an additional benefit. No doubt because of the kinesthetic aspect of my learning style, organizing my classroom (actually 2 rooms) over the course of a week had made me think a lot about how I wanted the students to be using the room and, thus, what they would be using the room for. By yesterday evening I had a 2-year plan for my course. Yesssss!