easy livin'

not much to report...i've been sick all weekend. chest cold. pretty typical.

its as if when fall arrives, i get sick...to remind me...hey, a new season is coming. you are going to be nostalgic, reflective, and melancholic. i love fall. its inspiring me to work on writing again...which hopefully is a positive.

here is an example of how beach living can go too far. this morning as i was driving to school, an older woman was starting to walk across the street. i thought she saw me coming down the road, but just to be cautious, i stopped anyways. Good Thing! She kept on walking...and this is the thing, i realized she didn't see me as she continued to cross at a leisurely pace. then after she crossed, i drove past her and she still didn't even notice that she almost got hit by a car. now, that would have been a bad start to a monday morning.

teaching this week has been going well. high school was particularly fun today. i think things are starting to smooth out and calm down with them. we did an exercise with children's books where we look at male and female characters and then note whether they are in active or passive roles. loads of fun. apparently sometimes gender is so ingrained in our minds that people assume it is natural.

so it always seems to be something with my high school students...today, instead of questions about whether conor wears boxers or briefs...they got on the myspace line of questioning. "Miss Katherine, are you on myspace??" I tried to explain to them that it would be unprofessional of me to be on myspace. Someone was telling me recently how some school systems prohibit their instructors from having myspace accounts....because it could create false boundaries between the teacher and the student. i concur. or a false sense of consciousness.

on a happier note, in my class today, upon asking if anyone would identify as a feminist....the number went up...out of a class of 17, 4 folks raised their hands, including one guy.