on fire

Sometimes that term is used in a positive way, like 'You're really on fire!' Meaning you're really doing great, or getting things done quickly.

But, right now, Northern California where I live is literally on fire. There are so many areas around me that are burning that the air is thick with smoke. You can taste it in the air in the morning and the sun is a bright red in the morning.

This blog is called North Hills Quilter because I started making quilts to give away to people who needed a hug. I live in the Northern part of California and there are beautiful hills next to my house. They change from green to a gorgeous golden yellow in the summer. But that golden yellow means they  would go up in flames in an instant with just a careless spark from a cigarette or firework.

The biggest fire here is the Carr fire. It is in Redding, which is a couple of hours away from us, but has burned over 100,000 acres and killed 6 people so far. More than 800 homes have burned and it's only 20% contained. Entire neighborhoods have been decimated.

It reminds me of the fire that swept through Santa Rosa last October. Our school closed down for two days, even though Santa Rosa is more than an hour away, because the smoke was so thick.

My charity group, Vacaville Binky Patrol is working on making quilts to take to those affected by the fire in Redding. The first batch is headed up there today with some friends from my old church. I saw a post on Facebook yesterday that a group was collecting bottled water to take up there and asked if they could take quilts. Luckily I had some quilts ready to go. I will be dropping off the first round of quilts this morning and of course we will continue to work on quilts for as long as needed. Last year we worked until the end of the year and I figure it will go about that long.

Once people leave the shelters it is hard to find them and get them quilts. We reach out through the local churches and get quilts to them, but many of the people affected often move out of the area once they have lost their homes. That's one reason Vacaville Binky Patrol works year round to make quilts and I always keep some on hand to be ready in case an emergency strikes.

If you would like to help, we have lots of fabric, batting and supplies, but you could send us finished quilts or quilt tops that we will finish and get into the hands of those affected by the fires in Northern California or the next emergency.

We are always working to comfort those in need of a handmade hug.
You can send to me
Marilyn Lewis
425 Kirby Ct
Vacaville, Ca
95687

The biggest illusion

I always joke that I got into teaching so I could have summers off. I think a lot of people think that teachers only work 9 months a year. It's probably one of the biggest myths in the teaching world.

I know that from the second I walk out of the classroom in June until the moment that tardy bell rings in August, my mind is running full speed with ways I can improve my craft. I am constantly looking for new lessons that will inspire the next generation of doctors and lawyers, bus drivers and stay at home moms.

As I sew and quilt, I'm thinking about what I could do to make each lesson run smoother or how I could have reached that child who just didn't seem to want to learn.

I go into my classroom at least twice a week over the summer under the guise of having to feed my fish (I have three fish tanks now) but always with the thought of wanting to do more, to be more, to achieve more.

I know there are teachers who are laughing and thinking that I'm crazy for doing all of this on my 'own time' but I find that I have many others who are just like me and who have the lifeblood teaching in our veins. We eat and breath and sleep teaching and can't wait for school to start again in the fall.

My friend and I spent a few hours again today working on getting our rooms ready. It's been a while since I spent time working on the walls. I was a first grade teacher long ago and used to spent countless hours putting up and taking down bulletin boards. Every month I would change them out depending on the theme we were studying. When I moved up to high school, I tried to keep up with changing the boards and between getting laughed at by the other teachers and trying to keep up with grading, I finally gave up on the decorating of the walls. I forgot how much fun it was decorating for back to school.

This year after spending a lot of time on Pinterest, I decided to attack the walls with a little color and some of my favorite sayings. I probably won't change them every month, but hopefully the words of encouragement will help the students and me have a welcoming place to come every day.

wildlife

One of the best things about where I live is the wildlife that is all around me. Yesterday morning I was woken up by the sound of my dogs barking. Something had been bothering them all night. I finally got up to see what they were upset by and went outside. I heard some yapping and howling and sure enough, there was a fox in the field next to us. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it. It was probably telling its friends that it had caught a rabbit or ground squirrel.

We have a family of ground squirrels that lives under our house. You can hear them under the downstairs shower. The dogs have a fit when I let them follow me into the bathroom and always want to check out the shower to see if they can get to the shower and try to get at the furry critters. You can hear them scuffling around under there. One day my husband will probably fall through into their burrow as he takes his morning shower. Won't that be a funny blog post!

Well, yesterday I went to make a cup of coffee in the afternoon. I've been having a migraine for about a week and sometimes the caffeine helps. Most of the time nothing helps. I like to mix cocoa in with the coffee.

I put the coffee pod in the Keurig and pushed the button. The coffee brewed and was finished. I opened the top, took out the pod and out crawled this little frog. It had been in the part where the hot water pours through and somehow didn't get cooked. You've probably heard the saying about putting a frog in cold water and slowly turning up the heat and then cooking the frog. Well, the water comes through that part really hot! Boiling hot and that little frog somehow made it through unscathed. It came out and looked at me like I was the crazy one.

After asking it what it was doing in my coffee maker, I took it outside. I sometimes get them crawling out of my sink in the morning, but this is a first for me!

I cleaned the coffee maker really well and made myself a new cup of coffee.

The coffee didn't help the migraine, but I did get a great story to tell. And, you can be sure I will check my coffee maker and any other coffee maker for hidden frogs in the future!

civic duty

I got this in the mail yesterday. Yes, it's a jury summons. Yes, I actually love doing Jury Duty. But, if you look at the date, you will see that it is August 21. That's the day before school starts for me. It's the second day of in-service. With my luck I would actually get called in and then picked for service and miss out on the first day and first week of school.

I am always surprised when teachers don't push off jury duty to one of our many vacation days. I'm trying to decide if I should try to call and get it moved to before we go back (which I don't know if they would move it to earlier than my scheduled date) or to either Thanksgiving or Christmas break. I just need to make a decision and do it.

I don't know why it is so difficult to make a decision, but not knowing the future is sometimes hard. My dad turns 87 in October and every day I get to talk to him on the phone is a gift. But I can't know what tomorrow will bring.

There was one time that I forgot I had jury duty and didn't call and didn't go in.  I remembered a couple of weeks later and totally freaked out. You know they put a warrant out for you if you don't show up and you are supposed to.

I asked the campus police officer if there was a warrant out for me and he checked and said I must have been released from my duty because nobody was looking for me. I was so relieved to find out that I wasn't going to get a fine or arrested and I've never failed to call in again!

Always learning

With the changes to the Next Generation Science Standards, I have to get a new credential.  If I had known that by writing the new curriculum I would be working myself out of a job, I might have thought twice about putting in all of the work.  Those of us 'veteran' teachers-older than about 40 years of age or so-have old credentials and those credentials don't match to what the new standards say we should know.  It's actually kind of funny that I've been teaching the information for 18 years and wrote the new information that everyone in the department is now going to be teaching, but I'm not qualified to teach it because the piece of paper given to me by the state of California is too old. 

I've been talking with the guy who understands way more than I do at the county office and he's been talking to the people at the state.  It seems that my district is one of the first in the state to come across these problems so things may work themselves out as more and more districts come on board the NGSS train and more and more teachers come face to face with the problem of their credential not meeting the requirements. In my department, there is one other teacher who is refusing to update her credential.  She is nearing the end of her career and just doesn't feel like it is worth her time and effort to study and pay for a test to get a few more years out of teaching a curriculum she doesn't like. I see her point. The tests aren't cheap and getting a new credential isn't cheap either, but if teachers aren't willing to show students we are willing or able to make changes and keep learning, what message are we sending them?

So, I'm working my way through this and many other books.  I took a college class on Physics this summer and I will pass that test.  I plan to spend many days in the AP Physics class this year working on the math portion.  If you don't use the math, it becomes a distant memory. I think my students will enjoy watching me struggle through and I know I will be proud when I've checked this difficult task off my to do list.

a new quilt

Yesterday I started working on the boxes of scraps I have been sorting.  I think I have about 30 of the file boxes full of scraps. I cut 3 1/2 inch squares using my Accuquilt Studio fabric cutter and will be sewing them together to make blocks. I have several quilts I'd like to get finished before school starts.

We go back on August 20 and the kids come back on the 22nd.  That's not a lot of time.  I always laugh when I think that I ONLY have 4 weeks of vacation left.  Most people would be so happy to get 4 weeks of vacation.  I guess I've just been so spoiled by having summers off.  I find ways to keep busy every day and do enjoy every minute of my time off.  I read and look for new ideas to teach in the fall and of course spend lots of time playing with fabric.

Time

I've been busy this summer with lesson planning and a little quilting.

 Last year was a bit on the crazy side with switching the curriculum for both subjects I teach.  Freshman year used to be earth science with teaching about water for a semester. We taught the properties of water and where water is found in California. It was a great unit and had a lot of fun, hands on labs to go with it. I had been doing that for 17 years.

 Then, along comes the Next Generation Science Standards and everything changed.  We've been working on the standards for about four years now. The goal is to make sure that by the time all students leave high school they have all of the science standards covered.

 It's not an easy task. Two years of science are required for graduation and three are required if they want to attend a four year college like a state or University level. I would say about 75% of our students take 3 years of science and about 40% take four years. That means only 40% of the students are getting physics, which is a pretty important concept for life.

 Kids are always complaining that they will never use the things they learn in school and since the other sciences build on physics concepts we decided to move physics to the freshman year.  I know! That meant I had to learn physics all over again. Crazy talk here people... I'm old. I can't learn new things. Well, actually I can and it was fun.

 We re-arranged all of the concepts we had been teaching from four years into three years and took the earth science from freshman year and incorporated them into the other subjects.  So now the kids get physics and earth science, biology and earth science and chemistry and earth science. There are more labs and hands on activities which is the best part of science.

 Here's the problem. I don't have a credential to teach physics! I actually worked myself out of a job. So, I've been working on getting my physics credential. I went back to college this summer and took a physics class and stretched my poor old brain.  But, I didn't die and learned a few things. I've bought almost every book there is on physics and have been reading like crazy and try to learn at least one new thing a day. Turns out when you use your brain, learning gets easier. Who knew?

 I'm excited to get back to school and work on some more exciting labs for the kids. I love teaching because every year is a fresh start. The kids don't remember what last year was like and there's always the excitement at the beginning of the year for teachers and students.

 I won the District and County teacher of the year and now am in the process of completing the State Teacher of the year application.  It is a lot of work, but I'm learning a lot about myself as a teacher. It is really making me think about why I do what I do and searching out new ways to achieve my goals. My daughter is helping me edit my words. She completed her novel and is waiting to hear back from her agent. She is getting ready for the next chapter of her life, moving from Miami to Cleveland to teach at an all girl's private school where she will teach AP English and coach tennis. I love seeing all of her hard work pay off.

Here's to finding the time to come back and share my life and quilts again.