Spring

 e.e. cummings knows spring, by golly. and spring has certainly sprung here in Durham. here's another poem.  (it is best read when sitting in a field with the sun shining on your face):

now winging selves sing sweetly,while ghosts(there

and here)of snow cringe;dazed an earth shakes sleep

out of her brightening mind:now everywhere

space tastes of the amazement which is hope

gone are those hugest hours of dark and cold

when blood and flesh to inexistence bow

(all that was doubtful's certain,timid's bold;

old's youthful and reluctant's eager now)

anywhere upward somethings yearn and stir

piercing a tangled wrack of wishless known:

nothing is like this keen(who breathes us)air

immortal with the fragrance of begin

winter is over--now(for me and you,

darling!)life's star prances the blinding blue

-e.e. cummings

Board Tweets

 Twitter is sweeping the RHS nation. Well, let me re-phrase that. Twitter has already swept the RHS nation, but now it is seeping into the teacher world. I have had a regular twitter (@refvemma) for a while, but I decided that my teacher alter-ego needed one to keep up with the kiddies (@msrefvem). Really, it's for the kiddies to keep up with me. I can tweet interesting stuff from the web or reminders about homework or announcements about how many fish have died (i'm working on a post about the epic saga of animals that call room 222 home, stay tuned...).

All that to say, we tend to talk in twitter lingo sometimes in class. I had a kid answer a question on a test something to the effect of "We need to save biodiversity so that it can provide ecosystem services and the environment can last for future generations. #swag"... For those of you who are less up to twitter speed, that is a hash tag. And a student wrote a hash tag at the end of a test answer. I gave him some "lol points" for that one.

On Friday, we had some green pancakes and bacon in Ms. Hunter's AP Bio class, about which some tweet-ers in the class tried to start a trending topic: #apbiobaconswag. Much discussion of hataz (those who hate) also came up during breakfast.

Ms. Hunter (@mikajhunter) gettin her green pancake/sunglass/rollpiratesroll swag on


Since Ms. Hunter and I have so much fun talkin bout hataz, I googled "hater quotes." (side note: i HIGHLY recommend googling hater quotes. it will entertain you. clearly there are a lot of drama queens trying to fill up their facebook profile "about me" sections, and someone has found and filled in that internet niche). I came up with some great ones, enough to inspire my "quote of the day/week/whenever-i-feel-like-changing-the-quote." While writing it, I was encouraged by my 4th period to write it in ghetto twitter/txt lingo. Here is the result:

Some more "board tweets" for your enjoyment:

(this next one is not necessarily a tweet, but a reaction to Food, Inc. which we were watching in APES. Born out of a sad joke about making baby chicks straight into nuggets.)

It will be interesting to see how this whole twitter thing evolves... follow me if you dare! @msrefvem