During our holiday we took a boat trip around the harbour, with many jellyfish swimming around.
I can tell you, taking pictures was a “treat”. If they were close to us the boat would move fast and they’d be gone quickly, if the were further away the light broke too much on the surface for my angle.
Still, there were some nice ones.
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Apparently, thistles are delicious.
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©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
Admittedly, not the most exciting recipe, but it’s the time…
This year is the first one where we’re getting apples from our trees, or at least one tree. The whole thing looked quite ridiculously kitschy in summer, like my garden was trying to mock my disdain for people like Kincaid by throwing this at me.
Lovely, right? The pic doesn’t even get how violently bright everything was.
© Giliell
Now the apples are getting ripe and some are falling down, the ones not yet ripe enough to pass on to neighbours and family, so on Sunday I went to pic them up. I gave up when my basket was getting too heavy to lift and I wasn’t even halfway done. The next hour and half Mr and i spent together peeling and cutting apples and we reminded me of my grandparents, but in a good way. See, they were from a time where making your own preserves was a matter of survival, and even though those times were long gone during my childhood, they kept it up for as long as they could. And actually, the work was nice. It wasn’t very demanding physically or intellectually, but we were grounded to the kitchen table without any media and could just spend the time talking about this and that.
Applesauce:
Peel and cut apples
Microwave with some cane sugar
Add cinamon
Nomnomnom
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Optional: Have a very nice neighbour who makes you potato pancakes.
She’s 89 years old, by the way.
The neighbour, not the pancakes.
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More juvenile barn swallows from Nightjar
Feeeeeed meeeeeee
©Nightjar
©Nightjar
This little fellow at the Barcelona Zoo was obviously torn between wanting a swim and actually doing it.
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Open to see the photo story.
As you may know by now I have recently started a new job as a special ed teacher without having actually trained as a special ed teacher. This is pretty challenging on top of the job being challenging anyway, and I’m trying to desperately read up on the concepts and theories of the discipline. In doing so I stumbled across a word that is one of the nastier ones flung around in English: retarded.
And I discovered that it is a good word. Or at least used to be.
See, special ed went through it’s development just like regular teaching. Concepts and ideas about children, learning and teaching have changed, change which is often (though not always) reflected in our schools. In its earlier stages, special ed saw children who were slow to learn as “defective”. Children who could more or less keep up with the classwork were “normal” and the other ones were broken, damaged goods, lacking. You see where this is going.
Then came science and studied children and how they learn. They put many things educators had long known on a scientific basis and formulated scientific concepts. One of the still most influential people in this area is the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who described the processes through which we learn and also formulated stages through which we develop.
Yes, there’s an endless amount of books on and by Piaget
All legitimate criticism aside (it relates mostly to how far you can take his models and where are limits of their application), his models are still important. As teachers we want and we need to challenge our students to help them in that development, which isn’t an automatism. We need to construct our input at the right level. Primary school teachers will endlessly use concrete things and pictures to teach their students. They need to literally take away five marbles to find out what 12-5 is.
What especially Piaget’s students found out was that not all children develop at roughly the same pace. Some children are much slower than the average, they stay behind, they are “retarded”. The concept as such was revolutionary. The children were no longer seen as defective, just slower. They were not inferior to their peers but would reach the same levels of cognitive development as their peers, just later. This had, and has, great importance for teaching children with special needs, as it means that we need to give them different input, teach them using a much more hands on approach than with their peers and most importantly, get them to the same place, just a little more slowly.
It’s sad to see how ableist ideas turned such a revolutionary concept into a nasty slur. It also shows that you need to change society, not just words. The slur does not mean what the word means in a professional context. It still means “broken and defective”.
In early summer we shovelled about 1.200 kg of pebbles into the gap between the front yard and the house.
One of the secrets is to wash them and make them wet or you’ll suffocate, and also, wet pebbles are just too pretty. I proudly announce that I did not put any of them into my mouth.
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More below the fold
A young blackbird in my front yard, which completely didn’t care about me “intruding” in its territory.
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Today’s post is less a recipe than a post about cake making.
I love making cakes. I especially love making the “big cakes” where you can go wild. Chances are that if you invite me to an event above “kiddie birthday” and ask to bring a cake, I will use it as an excuse to turn approximately 100.000 calories into a cake.
The excuse for the following cake was my friend’s kids holy communion (the family’s catholicism has been puzzling to us for generations. Girl, I know what you did in your 20s and 30s).
The cake base was a red velvet cake with cherry filling, which I frosted with chocolate ganache. This was pretty not spectacular although already delicious. I went for two layers, though. If you do, use a cakeboard or a wrapped piece of cardboard supported by some sticks because otherwise the very heavy second layer will sink into the soft first layer.
It didn’t have to be very even because there’s a second frosting to come. I always wanted to do an Italian meringue buttercream, but I never tried because my old kitchen machine was designed by an engineer who put the motor below the bowl and the gears into the middle of the bowl. Don’t ask. Regular buttercream regularly ended in a disaster because everything just melted, so after a particularly annoying instance I decided to get a new one and Mr convinced me (I’m using that word in a very loose sense here) to get something decent and I went for a Kitchen Aid. I never looked back. The only problem was that I could have done with a second one to keep whipping the meringue while I was creaming the butter, but that was possible to do by hand. In the video, Yolanda just adds the butter, but I was following a different recipe.
Since communions are in spring I went with green, first a light one to cover the whole cake and then a darker one for the grass.
But that’s only about 80.000 calories, so the next step was to break out the fondant and go crazy. I love that silicone forms have become quite affordable. The trick is to dust them with starch, as well as the finger you use to push the sugar into the form.
I was quite pleased with the result.
Another one from Barcelona. Parakeets are neozoons in many parts of Europe, including the Mediterranean, though interestingly, their number their is relatively low (3000 in Spain, 800 in Portugal) when compared to colder countries like the UK (35.000) and Germany (10.000). The Barcelona population makes one wonder about the accuracy of that count.
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My oldest is a gifted artist and I want to share a picture she drew last week, because she’s just amazing.
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Teacher’s Corner will be an irregular feature containing my mumbling and ranting on issues of education and people.
The theme of today’s post is probably going to be a reoccurring one: Why are the USA determined to be so horrible? On Twitter somebody posted the following note which apparently was handed to their child:
Mrs. White’s 8th Grade Admin/Bathroom/Water/Nurse Pass
I will only have two passes for the ENTIRE month during Focus, BOTH Math Blocks, Community, Lunch, Restoration, etc.
I understand that once the number is circled, it indicates how many times I have went (sic) thus far for the entire month.
I understand that I need Mrs. White’s signature for EVERY TIME I leave to go to the Bathroom, Nurse, speak with Admin or to get water.
I understand that once I have used my 2 passes for the ENTIRE month, I will not be able to go to the restroom, get water, or go the nurse (sic).
I understand that only special accommodations will be made if my Doctor writes a note regarding a medical condition.
I understand that failure to comply with the Bathroom/Water/Nurse Pass will result in an Automatic Detention and a zero on whatever assignment I decide to walk out on.
I understand that Ms. White is petty and although we both have options, I can be denied going to the bathroom/water/nurse during the lesson.
I mean, WTF?
As a teacher, I know that “the potty goer” is a nuisance. It is disruptive in class when every other minute somebody asks to leave, leaves, comes back, etc. That’s why we encourage our kids to use the breaks, which are, btw. included in this bathroom pass. We have two big breaks of 20 minutes between 2nd and 3rd, and 4th and 5th lesson, and short five minutes breaks between the other lessons. And still we don’t deny our kids bathroom breaks. At the most, they get some extra work (I have a whole book of extra work that “fits the crime” where the kids have to reflect on their behaviour). Some classes have a system where you automatically move to “yellow” if you go during the lesson. In most cases we use common sense. The kid who asks to go five minutes after the end of their break needs to learn that yes, going to the bathroom is part of their “during the break” activities, same as eating*. The kid who asks to go after 30 minutes probably couldn’t have known during the last break.
*You wouldn’t believe the amount of kids who return to the lesson and then take out their breakfast. Many of them react angrily when you tell them to put it away and feel treated unfairly because they are hungry.
Although the school issued a retraction (see below), this isn’t the first time an American school is in the news for “strict”* bathroom policies.
On Twitter, while many people shared their stories about peeing/vomiting/etc. in class due to similar practises, many people replied that they didn’t see the problem and that it would teach kids discipline. It’s a dangerous gateway to the authoritarianism we currently see.
*strict as in dehumanising, cruel and completely fucked up.
Retraction letter from school
Today’s Monday Mercurial is a Carpenter Bee, who are rare and amazing creatures. This is the only thime I saw one and had a camera at hand. They are quite big, easily the size of my thumb and can give you quite a start when soaring past you when you don’t expect them.
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©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
©Giliell, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
