pillowcase transformed

It's been raining for days, and I was starting to go stir crazy. So I dug through my sewing stash and got an idea. It started like this:

And ended up like this:

Yup, a pillowcase dress. I thought it would be pretty simple to do, but it turns out a pillowcase is pretty sack-like unless you add some curves. So I pinned and I sewed, pinned again and sewed again. It took four pins and sews to get it just right -- way longer than I thought. I searched the internets but only found tutorials for how to make pillowcase dresses for little girls, so it was trial and error all the way.

I could have been more ruthless in my pinning/sewing, but my only rule was it had to fit without a zipper (because I was sewing after midnight and there was no way I was running out for a zipper at that hour). It ended up looking pretty good. It's not the best dress in the world, but it fits and works quite nicely as a light summer shift:

I probably ought to go back and line it, but I'm 95% certain that will never happen. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the first dress I've ever sewn. It's still raining, so I may go back into the stash and try something else this afternoon.

how do your test scores grow?

Wow. The Sunday LA Times article on teacher effectiveness using a value-added analysis (consisting of LAUSD 3rd-5th grade teachers' math and language arts standardized test scores over the last seven years) has caused a gigantic ruckus among education policy folks. My ed policy twitter feed has been in flames over this since Sunday morning. Anything about teacher evaluation is guaranteed to provoke these reactions.

But the most interesting part of the article had nothing to do with test scores, it had to do with the reporters' following observations: Teachers who hold their students' attention and push their students to think critically claim higher results than those who don't.

According to the article, teacher Karen Caruso is loved by her principal, students, and parents. They consider her an outstanding teacher who goes above and beyond. However:

During recent classes observed by a reporter, Caruso set clear expectations for her students but seemed reluctant to challenge them. In reviewing new vocabulary, for instance, Caruso asked her third-graders to find the sentence where the word "route" appeared in a story.

"Copy it just like it's written," she instructed the class, most of whom started the year advanced for their grade.

"Some teachers have kids use new words in their own sentences," Caruso explained. "I think that's too difficult."

She dismissed the weekly vocabulary quizzes that other teachers give as "old school."

Of course everyone loved her: She's an easy teacher!! Not surprisingly, her value-added scores were quite low (she ranked in the bottom 10% in boosting student scores). I cannot imagine a more fruitless exercise than copying a sentence out of a text just because it includes a new vocabulary word. When teaching, I had only four hours of instruction time per day. Certainly not enough time to waste on copying. And of course third graders can use a new word in a sentence. If you really think it's too difficult, you follow the basic pattern of teaching: I do, we do, you do. Scaffolding really does work. As do bonus points on essays for using new vocabulary words when writing, team points for noticing said words in other texts and pointing them out to the teacher, or behavior tickets for getting caught using them in everyday conversation. None of those examples are "old school" methods, yet each one tests understanding without using a quiz.

So why don't we start the teacher evaluation conversation with two simple questions: Can you hold students' attention? Can you push them to think critically? As a classroom teacher, those are fair questions to ask. But I can tell you neither of them was on my yearly evaluation (however being on-time and working well with colleagues was!)

love, love, love

When I was working on my undergraduate degree oh so long ago (the mid-'90s seem like yesterday, don't they?), my parents encouraged me to travel for a semester. They were thinking overseas. But since I'd never really left my hometown (at that point I'd barely left the neighborhood -- my first apartment was in the Student Ghetto a mere four blocks from my parents' house), I really wanted to go to New York. They protested, but I insisted. So I applied and was accepted to NYU for the summer of 1997.

It was one of the best summers of my life. I lived in a dorm one block from Washington Square Park. Ate amazing meals. Saw phenomenal bands. Bought tons of records. Met interesting people. Most importantly, I walked almost everywhere I went.

I wanted to SEE the city, so I rarely used the subway if it was somewhere I was going for the first time. Copying most New Yorkers, I began to listen to my Walkman (tape version) everywhere I went. One day I got a package from tw with a mix tape inside titled "Pop Side of the Moon." Its cover was a black & white picture of Rockefeller Center (my obsession with the RC Christmas Tree was already in full bloom), and the bands included such indie greats as Small Factory ("So What About Love"), Incredible Force of Junior ("Blue Cheer"), Air Miami ("Airplane Rider"), and Low ("Over the Ocean"). I listened to it so much that the songs on this mix tape are still, to this day, some of my favorite songs.

However, there was one song that I absolutely hated. It was stupid, atonal, and the lyrics made no sense. But since this was a mix tape and not a mix CD, it was a pain in the ass to fast forward through without missing the song after it, which is one of my undeniably favorite songs of all time, Courtney Love's "Uncrushworthy" (Courtney Love being the early 90s band fronted by Lois Maffeo, not the obnoxious Hole singer). So I suffered through it time after time.

But the hated song would just not go away. Unconsciously, it started to grow on me. I began singing it in my head. It popped up in the shower or when I was trying to fall asleep. Then, I found myself fast forwarding to GET to this song. Finally, I began searching for other songs by this artist, amassing a small collection of dubbed tapes and 7 inches. New York City became the place where I began my love affair with what would become my favorite band of all time, the Mountain Goats.

The stupid, atonal song with the senseless lyrics? "The Monkey Song"

from armoire to office

As many of you know, I've condensed my personal space considerably in the past two months. Instead of a large craft/office space, I'm down to two pieces of furniture to fit everything! I inherited both sets of grandparents' bedroom furniture, and I'm using my paternal grandparents' set as a craft/office space due to its large size (my maternal grandparents' set is smaller and fussier, so I use it as my bedroom furniture).

The first piece I received from my paternal grandparents was a fabulous 40's armoire. I set out to use it for crafting immediately since it has deep, solid drawers. I stored boxes of supplies and other bulky items in the hanging side (the perfect hiding spot!) When I downsized, I decided to use the hanging space as my temporary office. But piling everything inside did not work! A change was in order. This is what I started out with:

I decided to add three simple shelves to hold all of my financial/important papers, as well as craft and work supplies. Eventually I'll stain and varnish the shelves, but I was desperate for some organized space quickly. Not only was it a simple and cheap solution (rails, boards, clips, and screws were around $20!), I actually have more space than I anticipated. Not bad for 2-hours' work!