Becoming Coco

  A nd What it Taught me About Teaching and Learning Second Languages   Playing Fruit Ninja in China I am jealous of people who grew up bi-culturally or learned different languages at a young age. I secretly want to be them because in comparison my background is boring and as an adult it is hard to learn a new language. I feel like I am starting late in the game. I grew up in a typical “English” only American home. My parents are the typical mixture of various Anglo cultures and the most interesting thing I can scrounge up about my family’s background is that my grandmother on my father’s side was half Irish. Unfortunately she had schizophrenia and was never a part of my life, so other than the knowledge that I am a quarter Irish, I have no interesting heritage to speak of. In Elementary school I hated those assignments that said to talk about your family’s heritage because no one in our family can give me any specific answer. We are a little Norwegian, German, S...

I made it! I'm in Beijing airport at an Internet Cafe alone drinking Cappuccino and listening to C-POP. I think that officially makes me a World Traveler. I even took artsy pictures of my coffee with the background blurred to upgrade me to Eccentric World Traveler with a blog, because everyone knows once you start taking pictures of mundane objects in your travels you naturally start a blog about them. I could have an entire blog full of pictures of Failed English. I think I will include those here. On the plane I really wanted to photograph the in-flight television show "Spongebox Squarepants." Unfortunately you are not permitted to use your phone during the flight and a camera would just be rude to others around me. You will just have to imagine the fit of girlish giggles I had to repress at the sight of the intentional typo made by mis-translation. If you ask me the Chinese translation makes more sense, he is rather box-y. View from my window ...

Me singing for my students on a "fun" day of Business Ethics Is this really as Easy as this Looks? As I get closer and closer to completing my credential program and head into the world of teaching, I can't help but to feel a little scared. I am excited for the future and for finally being able to do the job which I am most passionate about, but the world of public school today, is a little intimidating. Sometimes school feels more like a war zone than the equalizing opportunity play field its supposed to be. Kids, teachers and schools are under the pressures of meeting high expectations in order to compete with the worlds statistics. Schools, districts and states are compared by percentages and data to show whether the U.S. lives up to the education standards of the rest of the world, when we don't new tests are created. New curriculum must be made to fit the new tests. Sometimes the curriculum expectations feel like they are set by warlords who imagine st...