My First Yarn-Along! Or, A First Glimpse at Cherish's First Shirt

People who first meet me learn two things in (often) quick succession:

1. I obsessively read.
2. I obsessively knit and crochet.

As a result, it was only a matter of time until my blog drew in some of this side to me.  I learned to crochet when I was 17 (...which I just realized was NINE years ago...oy...), and I finally got the hang of knitting about two years ago.  Everywhere I go, I have a knitting or crocheting project on me, my Kindle fire, or a paperback.  I pull one of those out regardless of location, using them to calm my stressed out mind, to pass the time, or just for a change of pace.  I even combine these two loves of mine: I read while crocheting projects that I can do by feel, and I listen to audiobooks for all the others.



In an attempt to capture some of my personality--and to keep my easily distracted crafter-brain focused--I am joining up with Ginny's Yarn-Along!  Due to my inability to look away from my knitting, as well as my scatter-brained personality, you'll see me alternate between ebooks, audiobooks, and physical books, as well as between my projects.  I'm hoping this helps me focus on finishing projects, but we'll just have to wait and see!

(Forgive the terrible camera phone picture--it was the only option I had available today)

THE CRAFT: I am working on Elena Nodel's Playground Shirt for my oldest niece, AB.  I picked this pattern to stretch myself as a knitter.  I figured the challenge of shaping a simple child's garment combined with the ease and comfort of the good ol' stockinette stitch would keep me from growing too frustrated.  So far, it's going well.

My only complaint is that the pattern for the 5T-6T size was off by at least 18 stitches when it came time to transfer the armholes to scrap yarn.  A few glances at other knitters' finished projects and a frantic picture message to a knitter friend cured the problem, after some frightening tearing back.  (And to place over 200 stitches back on my needles and only dropped 6--I call that a success!)

Lessons learned? 1) ALWAYS question the patterns when you think it seems off, and 2) Never knit a row involving stitch transfers or pattern changes when you're exhausted.  I transferred those stitches at 3 am; if I had used my head and waited until the next day, I'd never have had to tear back in the first place. Ah well!  I'm a little bit wiser and more confident for it!

THE BOOK: I'm listening to I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass.  The story follows two sisters, Louisa and Clement, who are so different that (at least to me) they start to seem alike in their entertaining "fumbles" through adulthood and responsibility.  Louisa is an artist bound by her own judgement and strong sense (...most of the time...) of what is sensible.  Clem, on the other hand, is a wildlife enthusiast driven by passion but stuck in her own wildness.  Their adult stories unfold through each woman's stream of consciousness, forcing the story to focus on the the next time each saw their sister and alternating narrators with each part.

I'm finding this tale very engrossing.  Though I want to shake both of these women for doing things I would deem foolish, I love how Glass's characterization of each woman makes them deeply flawed but deeply real, driving you as a reader to continue learning about them so you can discover just what drives both of these women.  Though I would never label either woman as a role model, you can definitely emphasize with their struggles, both the ones forced upon them and the ones that their foolishness forces upon them.

In Which One Adult Educator Lesson Plans...slowly...

I've been desperately trying to write lesson plans for literally 3 weeks now.

...okay...more like 11 weeks... *hangs head in shame*

With my classes, I tend to write down brief plans a week before I do them in my planner.  They're usually something like "X class: pp ##-## (skill) Monday; pp ##-## Tuesday...", etc.  I'm to the point with my curriculum that I can look at the skill with the book and page number and know what we'll be doing that day and how to prepare for it.  My supervisor, in turn, knows that if he asks me what the plan is that week, I can rattle it off or show him.  The result, though, is that I rarely find a need for the detailed plans we like to keep on file here.

Now, in my first few sessions of classes, I needed that detailed plan like I need my planner or my Bible.  Those detailed plans helped me think more along the lines of what a learner needs than what a teacher thinks will work.  These days, however, I know my learners and what works, so I can go off of prior experiences moreso than the detailed, formal plans.  I still keep those detailed lesson plans, but I (somewhat ashamedly) write them at the end of a week more as reflection from those smaller ones written into my planner ahead of time.  This, for me, lets me chronicle what worked, what materials helped, which were a flop, etc.  In turn, those pieces of information are on hand for reflection when planning other lessons: I can look back when I have new students to see what worked or didn't in the past and, in turn, can then turn those around to try again or to rule out old methods.

The big problem this session has been keeping up with those lesson plans.  The problem, actually, was two-fold:

1. Time crunches: This past session, my co-teacher and I were covering jail classes until an incarceration teacher could be found.  Though I loved those classes, it sapped a LOT of time from my schedule that I was accustomed to having for planning.  I instead had to plan out lessons for a substitute to administer, plan jail classes, implement the jail classes, then catch up on what I missed.  Again, I loved those classes in a strange way, but I still missed my usual planning time.
2. Computer Issues: I have no idea why, but my work laptop picked the past 2 months to pitch an ever-lasting fit.  A fan died in the laptop (or at least has begun the process of dying; either way, the machine overheats if you look at it wrong), and a fan in my cooling pad also died without warning--on the same day that the other fan became very loud.  After weeks of my computer just randomly shutting itself off or running slower than the DOS machines of my childhood, I finally figured out the issue was overheating and purchased a new cooling pad.  The computer runs just fine now, but the constant shut downs and lags slowed me way down.

Now that I've resolved both, I'm finally cranking out plans.  Problem is that I also have to crank out some plans for the new session starting two weeks from today.  I think I've finally come up with a system that will compensate for all kinds of issues.  We'll just have to see what works.

Ah well: such is the name of the game in education!  Try, try, and try again, then reflect on it all and try some more!

(Anyone else find they lesson plan like this?  What works for you?)

Literacy Ain't Just for the Young!

When I tell people I teach reading to adults, I often get a lot of...interesting looks.  Some pity me, assuming I get the absolute "worst" of society: drug addicts, high school dropouts, felons, criminals, homeless people, jobless people, etc.  Others assume my students are only there as someone forced them there, demanded they stop being the drain on society they so obviously are.  Even a few assume I spend my days desperately trying to force adults to learn things they have NO interest in learning.  Heck, I've even had a few tell me I just repackage lessons and get my summers off...while I was packing up to go teach a class in July that I had spent an entire weekend designing.

...yeah...about that...

I don't get mad at these people.  (...well, okay, I got mad at the last one for being condescending, but that angers me in people who verbally attack people who aren't me.)  Instead, I just view them as someone who has no idea of what I do everyday, and that's okay.  I just see it as another opportunity to educate people.

It's not uncommon for people in adult education to joke that we're a forgotten field.  Much of the literacy funding that's available in the USA goes to children's literacy.  Honestly, that doesn't surprise me: it seems a huge chunk of the educational movements in our country are focused on "our future," with "the future" soundly considered to be those who are under 21 or, in many cases, 18 years of age.

But is that the right approach?

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a TEDx Talk about the growing need for adult literacy instruction in our nation and beyond.  The speaker (Daphne Greenburg) spoke about being an adult literacy tutor and the many people she encountered in her line of work.  Even as a professional in that field, it spoke to me.

Many of those students sit at the tables in my classroom.

You can ask an adult education professional (instructor, program director, tutor, etc) for what kind of people make up their classrooms, and I'd almost bet that most people would counter with "Just start naming the types of people you know.  We've got them all."  And they'd be right.

• I have high school graduates, and I have high school dropouts.
• I have college graduates, and I have college drop-outs.
• I have currently employed people and demoted workers, and I have jobless people seeking work in a rural, impoverished area.
• I have people holding down steady jobs--people who want to move on to new fields of work.
• I have people with steady jobs who got hurt on said job and now cannot perform their duties and are forced to make a career change.

In short, just like in any other population, you cannot make sweeping generalizations of adult learners.  That term alone can also refer to adults going back to college, and how often do we truly refer to those learners as lazy, inconsiderate, criminal drains upon society's lacking resources?  This is a vast injustice as these people, though not the "future," are a huge growing concern for our society.  They deserve as many educational opportunities as the young.

Who knows: how many of them, like Greenburg says, will be going home to some of the very same learners childhood literacy movements are trying to reach?  Does it not benefit children to surround them with adults who understand the value of education?

Hey, I Had a Blog!

Well, I went to read a blog today in Blogger and, low and behold, I apparently STILL have the blog I started as a scholarship entry for grad school back in, oh, 2010.

...It is 2014...for 24 whole days now!

Needless to say, today I deleted the one-and-only post as it was TERRIBLE.  It reeked of "college senior English major burned out on school, writing, scholarship entries, and life."  (It also reeked of "I THINK I want a Masters in Library Science but all the doors are closing and I have no idea which one will open so I will ramble here until you throw money at me KTHNXBAI.")  That's not what I want to be my blogging legacy (if such things even exist) in this world.  So, it's gone.

Instead of ending the blog, however, I decided to re-purpose it.  Rename it, redesign it, and play around to see if I really want to get into this whole "blogging" thing.  I have many blogs I read that I love, and they always inspire my creative side to write more, to get my voice out and share it with others.  It will take some time, though, to figure out what that is.

I'm up for the journey.

So, for starters, my name is Cherish: hence the "pun-y" title to this blog.  I'm a newlywed as of December 28, 2013; my husband is a PR guy for a local university.  In my free time, I knit, crochet, write, draw, and play clarinet when I can.  That free time is sorely limited, however: I'm also a 25-year-old teacher at a non-profit in Western New York.

What makes me unique as a teacher is that I'm what's called an "adult classroom instructor."  My non-profit in concerned with family literacy, and I work in their adult program.  My role in the non-profit is to teach adults to read as well as to sharpen their reading skills so they can better themselves (through HSEs [High School Equivalency diplomas, for all you non-New Yorkers], obtaining jobs, or improving their work outlook), their families (through the empowerment of knowing they can help their students learn as they can read better as well as through the economic boost of such knowledge), and the community.

Yes, you read that right: I teach adults to read.  And write, on occasion, but that mostly happens at the jail.

...oh, that too: I teach two mornings a week at our local jail until July.  Many teachers equate their classrooms to jails at times: my classroom really is one a few times a week.

Despite the challenges you can imagine crop up in my job, I love it.  I love the creativity it takes to create lessons that engage, encourage, and strengthen my students.  I love the environment of adult education and the HUGE changes I see happen with my students.  I adore knowing that I work with students many, many other people, educational systems, and communities have written off as "lost causes" and "worthless drains on society."  I never see them that way: I see the potential that lies there, even when they fail to see it themselves.  And I adore knowing that my attempts to teach them often go beyond the classroom, helping them better others.

So, welcome to this teacher's personal blog.  Let's see where it goes.