For dinner tonight, I had locally grown skinny asparagus that I bought
at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday.  I sauteed it in some olive
oil with lots of coarse kosher salt and LOTS of black pepper and it was
about the best thing you’ve ever tasted.  I have more in the
fridge and even though I’m full, I’m tempted to go cook more for
dessert!

Yesterday, I took my low beginners to the computer lab to type the
paragraphs that we had been working on for two days.  They each
wrote a “how to” paragraph that used the formula “My name is
____.  I like to _____ (play soccer, dance, cook, etc.).
Here is how you ________.”  Then they used sequence words like
“first, second, next, then” to give how-to instructions.  Their
paragraphs were maybe 7-10 sentences long but it took us the better
part of 40 minutes to get them typed.  With any extra time, they
had fun inserting pictures, changing the font, changing the color and
all the fun things that I had forbidden them to do until they finished
typing.

To hurry the process along, I went around and typed in a sentence here
or there for the slower kids, to make sure they would finish by the end
of the period.  One boy decided to do something entirely different
from what he’d written in class without asking me – not cool.  So
I told him that I would type the first half of his real paragraph to
get him caught up.  I proceeded to look at his paper (not my
fingers or the screen) and type as fast as I could to get it
done.  Now, I will admit that I am an extremely fast typer –
fairly impressive if I do say so myself.  The funny thing was that
out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel’s head come around, look at
my eyes, look at the screen, look back at me again, and then say,
“Woooooooooow!”  He was so shocked and impressed that I was able
to do what I was doing.  “Wow Ms. Judge!  How did you do
that?”

In my other period, another girl has laboriously typed her four
sentences and about 5 minutes before class ended managed to delete it
all.  So I just sat down and typed it out in about a minute for
her.  I looked up and she and another student were grinning with
this incredulous look on their faces – yet again, “Wow!  Ms. Judge
is FAST!”

It’s pretty fun to be AMAZING in the sight of some!