Meagan

Lots of people in my program get me thinking for various reasons, but Meagan is an especially interesting case. Meagan wears some sort of hearing device, and she's reliant on that and on her lip reading skills to hear what goes on around her. The hearing device is about the size of half a deck of cards, and she wears it above her left ear, with some sort of attachment that goes up under her hair. I'm not sure how it works. I'm also not sure how well it works. Standing behind her, I've said her name and had to touch her shoulder to get her to turn around because my voice doesn't get her attention. If you heard her speak, you'd know immediately that she has hearing difficulty; she's not difficult to understand in the least, but the tone of her voice is slightly off and she doesn't hit consonants as hard as a hearing person would. She seems reliant on the feeling of her voice, rather than the sound, to control her speaking volume. (If you can't get a sense of what I mean by this, imagine the way you'd gauge the volume of your own voice if you were speaking to someone standing nearby and were listening to very loud music through headphones.) I overheard her telling a classmate that while she knows some sign language, her parents encouraged her to learn to read lips and take advantage of the hearing she had so that she'd be better able to fit in to the hearing world.

Two transcribers follow Meagan to all of her classes. She keeps a small laptop in front of her, and they type everything that the professor and students say and it appears in front of her on the screen only a few seconds behind. I've seen her refer to it once or twice, but for the most part her eyes are glued to the person who is speaking. I think it's mostly useful for when she looks down to write notes. I can listen and write at the same time, but if she's looking at her paper and not at the face of the speaker, she can't follow what's being said and so has to look back at the screen to catch up. The first time I really noticed this, I tried the same thing myself, just staring at moving lips to try to tell what was being said. I suppose through some combination of the sound she's able to get through her hearing aide and the motion of the person's lips, she pieces it together. However she does it, I'm impressed. I think it would be extremely difficult.

She and I were talking today about a speaker she wanted to go see. She had to email the office that manages services for students with disabilities several days in advance to arrange for a transcriber to be present. A few times this year, I've wanted to go see a speaker and at the last minute had something come up or decided I was too tired or not interested and just not showed up. Meagan doesn't have that luxury; a transcriber will be waiting for her if she arranges for one, and she's got to stick to her plans. She can't dash into class 30 seconds before it starts because she needs a seat close to the front so that she can see the professor's face clearly, and she has to get her laptop set up and connected to the transcribers' machines.

Meagan has chosen a difficult field for someone with hearing difficulty. If a young child reads "cot" instead of "cat," a person with full hearing would know that they were having difficulty with short vowels. This sort of error - if it happens frequently and if the child doesn't respond to intervention - can be indicative of a very big problem for a developing reader. I wonder how she picks up those errors. For one thing, the motions made by the lips while pronouncing the two words aren't all that different, and I'm not sure how well she can hear the difference. For another, a child who is reading looks down at the page, so it has to be difficult for her to read their lips. From what I understand, she's doing really well in all of her courses and in her practicum, so she must have it figured out. Still, it's admirable to me that someone with an obstacle can excel at the same things able bodied people struggle with.

Alphabet City and The Sunburned Ca-ohw

(Note: This trip occurred a few weeks ago, as you'll be able to tell from the snowy pictures.)

(Note II: For those of you who don't speak Australian, "ca-ohw" is how you say "cow" down undah.)

One of Dave's friends, and by extension my friends, is a sweet girl named Jeana who worked with him for about a year at Calico Jack's as a waitress. She was having trouble scraping by on her salary, trying to pay for living expenses and save for school in the big bad city, however, so when her dad offered to let her move in with him in Virginia and pay part of her tuition, she decided she'd better go for it. Several of the Calico Jack's staff and I headed out to Alphabet City for brunch to see her off.

Some phenomenally brilliant person decided that New York should be built on a grid - no sarcasm: after I make my first million I will pay to erect a lifesized statue of that person in Central Park. While a few of the streets have names (Madison, Broadway, Park, etc.) most are numbered. Avenues run north to south and streets run east to west. For this reason, a newbie like me can navigate Manhattan masterfully, and even if I've never been there, I can hear "42nd and 3rd" and know exactly where it is. Alphabet City is the part of the city where Manhattan juts out, and in lieu of using negative numbers, someone opted to use letters instead.

Having never been to Alphabet City, I left quite early so I wouldn't show up late. (Little did I suspect that meeting a group of bartenders and cocktail waitresses on Sunday at the conclusion of a busy weekend implies that everyone will be at least half an hour late, and that's totally acceptable.) The route involved going not only downtown but crosstown, and crosstown transportation in New York leaves everything to be desired. I ended up getting there with about half an hour to spare, leaving me time to walk around the area. It was a quiet Sunday morning. The buildings were shorter and looked older than they do on the upper West Side, and there the whole place felt more residential than commercial. Near the restaurant, I stumbled upon this community garden, festooned with recycled decorations:

I first saw community gardens in Tokyo. While there are not as many of them in New York as there were in Japan, I've still run across a handful. I look forward to checking them out as spring and summer progress.

Still a bit early, I found myself in front of the legendary Sunburned Cow and decided to go in to people-watch and wait for the rest of our party. It's a great place, it turns out, to people-watch. Brunches at the Sunburned Cow go well into the afternoon, and include very reasonably-priced all-you-can-drink deals. It's a very popular place for college kids, and it was absolutely packed when I arrived. No one had thought to make a reservation, so I elbowed my way towards the hostess and gave her our name. Good thing, too; I saved the group about half an hour of waiting. By the time everyone finally trickled in (the guest of honor being about 40 minutes late) we had worked our way to the top of the list. I've been on rush hour trains that were roomier than this place was. The hostess ducked and weaved her way through the crush, bellowing my name above the racket (her throat must be on fire at the end of her Sunday shifts) and we followed her at last to our table.

Our waitress was an Aussie - most of the staff are - and she was quick to bring us menus and Bloody Marys. Aside from normal brunch fare, one could order a "Burger and the Lot," which comes with a fried egg and a slice of beet on it (this is as normal in Oz as getting a slice of cheese and a tomato on a burger) and "chips" (fries). Dave happily selected that. I ended up with eggs benedict with crab cakes in place of ham. It was delicious, and I got my own pile of chips on the side as well.

To me, brunch has always had an air of sophistication to it. The Sunburned Ca-ohw relieved me of that misconception. About halfway through our meal, a college-aged kid from another table came staggering into view and issued a challenge to the room at large to a chugging contest. I'm honestly not sure who won (don't remember, as the outcome was not nearly so important to me as the decimation of my pile of chips), but it was certainly an entertaining 30 seconds or so.

It was a memorable morning/afternoon for me. Not so for the chuggers, who are unlikely to remember much.

13.1

(Pictures coming soon!)

I was thrilled to have Courtney and her boyfriend, Aaron (who just got a residency in Boston at Brigham - his first choice!) in town for the weekend. The three of us spent Saturday walking around the city enjoying the gorgeous weather, and they indulged me by consenting to eat high-carb foods along with me. I drank a giant bottle of Gatorade and lots of water, ate a bagel and a pile of noodles, and by 11:30 was in bed with my race stuff laid out for the next morning. I fell asleep quickly, but woke up at 2:00 A.M. after two back-to-back nightmares that I had missed the start of the race. Yikes.

When I woke up again, it was to my alarm clock playing Queen's "We are the Champions." 5:40 A.M. I drank some more Gatorade (I really hate Gatorade), ate a rice cake with peanut butter and honey, and headed out the door with a tank top and shorts under my warm-up pants and throw-away, $5 fleece. It was still dark.

At the Subway station, I saw several people carrying clear plastic bags to check at the starting line. I asked one middle-aged guy whether he planned to take the crosstown bus or walk across the park – I was a little worried about getting there on time – and we ended up chatting up until we got to the starting area and parted ways. I told him I hoped to make the cut-off time, which I thought was 1:40, so that I wouldn’t have to enter the lottery for the next half-marathon and he looked skeptical and told me that was pretty fast.

He and I ended up taking the bus across Central Park towards the starting line on the east side of it. The bus was full of other runners. One guy about my age told us that 16,000 people were registered to run that day. (!) We arrived at the starting area at 7:05, where I checked my bag, and waited in a very long line to use one of at least 40 portable bathrooms before the race began at 7:30.

In the starting corral, surrounded by goosebumpy arms and trembling knees on all sides (I was glad for my throw-away fleece) I began to get an idea for just how enormous this race was. We were grouped in sections, 1,000 runners in each area, and the line of people stretched farther than I could see both in front of and behind me; my bib number was 8358, putting me right about in the middle of the pack. After a few announcements over a speaker, during which people around me chattered softly, the national anthem played and then I heard "On your marks." I didn't hear anything else, which was ok because it took a few minutes for us to even start walking towards the starting line. After a bit, there was enough room to jog, and by the time I crossed the starting line, 8 minutes and 20 seconds on the official clock had already passed.

There were already a few spectators along the sides, clapping, cheering, and clanging cowbells. The runners were bunched together and running much more slowly than I felt I could be going, but I had trouble weaving in and out of them without crashing into anyone for the first few miles. The sun continued to rise, as did my body temperature. It was 53 degrees. I ditched my fleece somewhere after Mile 2. There were clocks at almost all of the mile markers, which helped me determine whether or not I was meeting my target pace of 9 minutes per mile. Although it seemed that I was going a bit faster than I'd anticipated, I felt good so I didn't slow down, and I couldn't really be sure anyway because I'd lose track of the numbers sometimes between miles. Next time, I will definitely wear a digital watch that can record splits.

I kept myself entertained by people-watching. Fans along the sidelines waved signs, from the generic (Run, Dave, Run! We love you, Mel! Go Daddy! Run Mom! Rock on, Team in Training!) to the humorous (Go Phil! Beer @ finish! Some girls chase boys. Lisa runs past them). One guy had a big sign with a hand painted on it advertising "free high fives." I took one. One middle aged man leapt from the sidelines to run a few steps beside a girl who looked like she might be his daughter. He kissed her on the cheek, said something encouraging, then turned back to the margins. It was fun to watch both fans and runners as they recognized each other. The runners themselves provided lots of diversion as well. One guy had written "Michael's first ½ marathon" on his jersey. I read "Israel," in Hebrew, on the back of another jersey. Lots of people who were running for charity had memorial messages written on their shirts: "In loving memory of Ellen, Dan, and Sarah, my sweet Patrick, my mom."

I continued to feel that I was going faster than I'd planned, and passed people consistently. Although I worried that I wouldn't have enough steam to finish at this pace, but I felt pretty good and my split times, assuming I was calculating them correctly, seemed consistent. My form felt like it was good enough (we'll see about that when I get a look at some pictures later), and nothing was hurting too much, thank goodness. I decided to pause for water once we were out of Central Park.

Coming out of the park was a pretty spectacular thing. Right after Mile 8, the spectators started to yell encouragingly that we were nearly out of the park, and then as I left the last trees behind me and crossed into the street, suddenly there was a huge crowd instead of small straggling groups and the noise level rose to four or five times what it had been. We ran along 7^th Avenue. As we crossed 54^th Street, we went over a rise and I could see down the gentle slope for maybe a half a mile in front of me. The sheer number of people bouncing along in front of me was staggering. I flipped around and ran a few steps backwards to check out the pack in back of me and decided that I'd better not fall.

I took my first Gatorade break after about 8.5 miles, slowing next to one of the hydration stations for about 15 seconds, just enough time to get in three swallows, before tossing the cup to join the other crushed cups that blanketed the ground and heading off again.

We ran through Times Square. There were bands set up every mile or so. Spectators lined the streets, some waving signs, some standing in front of hotels looking mildly surprised to see all of this going on so early in the morning. Traffic going along one side of 42^nd Street, partitioned off with metal fencing, was at a standstill, and many drivers were holding phones out of windows to take pictures.

As we rounded the bend to go along the last stretch parallel to the Hudson, the band set up there announced that they were going to play a song they'd "never played and may never play again" and launched into "Eye of the Tiger." We were approaching Mile 10, and weary runners around me broke into ragged cheers and threw fists into the air. I needed that boost, because the 9^th mile was probably the toughest one. As I was leaving another hydration station a little further on, I came up behind my "friend" from the Subway/bus trip. He saw me as I approached. "Hey! Great job!" he said, looking surprised as I blew past him. I felt vindicated.

A terrible thought occurred to me as we ran past the 11-mile marker. "Hey," I gasped to a guy next to me, "does that mean we've done 11, or that we're starting the 11^th mile?" "Done eleven," he wheezed back. "Oh thank god," I replied, and a few runners around us laughed. Knowing that there were only two more to go was great, but I was exhausted. At least, I thought, I won't be kicking myself after the race, thinking that I could have given it more. I don't think I could have pushed any harder from the second I crossed the starting line.

I sped up steadily, passed Mile 12, and then after another few minutes of trying to ignore my aching shoulders and burning lungs (I don’t even want to talk about my legs), I saw the 13 mile-marker and then the finish line beyond it. Suppressing the urge to vomit (Mr. Garcia, my beloved high school track coach, always said that if you didn't feel like you were going to throw up, you weren't pushing hard enough), I picked up the pace even more, and the last tenth of a mile was a blur. I sprinted across the finish line and then jerked to a walk. I couldn't believe I was done. The clock above the finish line had said 1:56. I was pretty sure I'd crossed the starting line at 8:20, but I was a bit dizzy and wondered if I could have really finished that fast. I figured that between fatigue and subpar math skills, I must be doing the subtraction wrong; there was no way I'd finished in 1:44.

I was handed a medal and a reflective blanket and ushered toward a table covered with cups. I drank Gatorade and water was stumbling along towards the bag claim with the crowd of sweaty runners when I heard my name. Courtney and Aaron were peering over wall that divided the runners from the spectators, waving ecstatically and beaming. Courtney told me that they'd seen me cross the finish line and we made plans to meet in a few minutes. I collected my checked bag, stretched, put on warmer layers over my shorts and tank top (already I was starting to cool off when I'd been stifling just a few minutes before) then met Courtney and Aaron for a bagel, water, and most importantly, a stool. Sitting down was blissful.

I took the train home, arrived at 11:00, fell asleep, and finally worked up the energy for a shower around 2:00.

My goal

Total time: Somewhere between 1:57 and 1:58

Minutes per mile: 9

My results

Final time: 1:44:24

Minutes per mile: 7:58

Overall place: 2,416^th (that means I beat 13, 584 people!)

Place by gender: 582^nd

Place by age: 186^th

I enjoyed today more than anything I've done in a while. There's another half in Brooklyn in May, and you'd better believe I'm signing up.

Gearing Up for the Gun

Today I went on my last run before the half-marathon on Sunday – just a short one as I'm officially tapering and therefore have an excuse to be lazy. I bought a new pair of shorts, and I went out at 7:30 wearing the shorts and tank top I'll wear in the race to assess whether my planned clothes were appropriate for the temperature and whether the shorts were comfortable – chafing for 13 miles is not my idea of a good time. A bit chilly, but otherwise, all systems are go.

I had to go downtown to pick up my race stuff; they wanted to check photo I.D. and so couldn't just put things in the mail. Below is all of the free* stuff I got at the expo:

Contents of checkable bag:

Newman's Own microwave popcorn

Sample of men's shower gel

Sample of skin lotion

Insulated lunch bag w/ NYRR logo on it

Guide to downtown NYC

Order form for completion plaque ($89 to $160)

Number bib (my number is lucky 8358) w/ shoe tag, detachable tickets for free t-shirt and for raffle entry, sticker for my checked bag, four safety pins

Other free* stuff:

T-shirt

Muscle Milk (samples – I sweet-talked the guy at the booth and he let me have three bottles instead of just one)

Wearable waterproof container for documents, ID, etc. w/ UV-detecting beads

The checkable bag is a clear plastic drawstring bag. I'll throw a dry t-shirt, a hoodie, some pants, and my keys in it, check it before 7:00 A.M. (the race begins at 7:30), and pick it up near the finish line after the race is over. I'm not sure about the shoe tag. It's supposed to go around my shoelaces, and often they have microchips in them so that people can track their friends'/families' progress online. I'm not sure if this one works that way; I didn't get any information about it although it does appear to have a chip on the back.

The t-shirt isn't just a standard cotton one; it's made of light, breathable mesh and has a pretty cool design on it. It's a great souvenir.

An email from the New York Road Runners has this to say about race coverage: "Beginning at 7:30 a.m. EDT, your friends and family can watch live race coverage on Universal Sports TV or stream the race on UniversalSports.com. You can set your DVR to watch it later, catch the archived on demand footage at UniversalSports.com, or check our website for familiar faces on Flotrack's feeds from the course." I do not expect anyone I know to look for me onscreen. The race is early, there will be a lot of people on the course, and I'm not even sure what Universal Sports TV is. But it's kind of cool anyway.

This website has information about TV coverage, the course, and ways to follow runners you know. I haven't looked into any of it yet, but I plan to today.

I can hardly wait for Sunday morning!

*I say "free," but what I should really say is "prepaid," since I wouldn't have gotten any of this stuff without paying the rather hefty registration fee for the race. Nonetheless, I choose to be an optimist and pretend that I got a bunch of freebies.

The Wearing o' the Public Drunkenness

I agreed to work the coat check at Calico Jack's on St. Patrick's Day this year. Usually I go in at 5:15, but the manager wanted me there at noon this time. I thought it was a little on the early side, but I set out at about 11:15 anyway, figuring he knew more than I did about how this whole thing usually goes down in the city. I rode the subway with people who had clearly been celebrating already. Everyone, it seemed, was wearing green, from people in overt, kelly green t-shirts with shamrocks on them to businessmen in sage-colored dress shirts under suits. People in the Columbia area weren't really out in full St. Paddy's Day force when I got on the train, but when I emerged from Grand Central Station I saw huge groups of people, mostly college-aged kids, wandering the streets wearing green Mardi Gras beads and talking and laughing a little too loudly.

The bar was crowded but not packed when I arrived, but within an hour it was pretty full. Dave told me that last year they did $27,000 in sales on St. Patrick's Day. I'm not sure how much they made this time, but I have to guess it wasn't too far from that number. The place got most crowded around 4:00 and stayed pretty packed until about 9:00, and then the crowd started to thin out. I guess when one starts drinking before noon, one doesn't stay out as late.

The bouncers at Calico Jack's are pretty good about getting rid of people who look like they're too drunk to be there, whether they're getting rowdy or just look like they might start throwing up any second. I saw some people who weren't doing so hot, but nothing terribly noteworthy. Employees who came in from the outside, however, said that it was chaos - people sleeping against planter boxes, throwing up in the gutters, etc. Yikes. I saw some questionable dancing from where I was sitting, and at one point a confused girl stood next to me for about five minutes, swaying now and then and looking blearily around until her friends swooped down on her - they thought she'd wandered off - but that was just about it. The general level of drunkenness was pretty remarkable, though. Dave, who has worked at this bar for over a year, said that he'd never seen so many people in such bad shape before, and despite the fraternity parties I sometimes attended at Vanderbilt, have to agree. It was certainly interesting to watch, however.

At about 10:00, a group from the NYC police department filed in wearing kilts, climbed onto the bar, and played bagpipes for about five minutes. I'm not sure what the connection to St. Patrick's Day was exactly, bagpipes being from, y'know, Scotland, but they put on a good show and the crowd seemed to be pretty into it.

I met several actual Irishmen as well. Several of them kept popping by the closet to say hello, although I got a bit tired of them after a while, despite their accents. I guess they had a better excuse to overindulge than anyone else there did, though.

Usually the bar closes at 4:00 A.M., but we shut down, to my profound relief, around 2:00. I didn't make much money - the weather was gorgeous and warm and not conducive to coat-wearing - and so one of the managers just let me keep everything in the cash box, which I was grateful for. At closing, I had three coats left in the closet, which is unusual. A girl came staggering in after we'd supposedly locked the doors and thrust her ticket at me to claim one of them. I recognized her as one of a trio who had checked coats, and I asked her where her two friends were. One of them had left a purse with her iPhone and other important-looking things (I didn't want to dig around too much; I just peeked inside.) She mumbled, "I d'no," and staggered back out again. Hmmm.

As I headed home, the streets and, later, the subway station were dotted with work crews cleaning up. I'm used to seeing a garbage truck here and there that early in the morning, but this time I saw huge trucks with high-powered hoses attached to water tanks and people equipped with brooms and mops. The sidewalks and platforms were being absolutely scoured. I can't imagine how things must have looked before the clean-up started, but this afternoon when I took the subway into midtown again, everything was clean. As clean as it ever gets in New York anyway.

It wasn't the most exciting night I've ever had, but I was glad to make some money and do some first class people-watching. I had fun hanging out with Dave and the other employees, most of whom I really like. And I got a great lesson in the fine art of self control.

Wet, witchy weekend in Boston

I went to Boston on Saturday to spend two nights with Anthony and Jane. I didn't arrive until around 8:30, and Anthony and Jane had dinner well underway by the time I walked through the door. It had been rainy and windy in New York and due to some complications with my bus ticket (which I won't go into here but am happy to describe at length if you care to call) I stood waiting in the rain on the sidewalk for far longer than I'd anticipated. I managed to dry off completely on the bus, but the few blocks I walked from the station the Anthony and Jane's apartment negated all of that. (Umbrellas work only when the water is coming from above, not from the sides.) Oh well, we had salmon and polenta and brussel sprouts, all washed down with wine, so I was content. After dinner, we braved the rain again to go to a movie theater on the other side of Boston Commons. We met some of Anthony and Jane's friends and watched "Shutter Island," which was disappointing at first but moderately intriguing by the end. Not sure that I'd recommend it. I certainly wouldn't if you're home alone on a dark and stormy night.

We went home and awoke to more rain the next day. After a delicious, late brunch at a nearby restaurant, we sipped coffee and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. We hated to sit around, but it was pretty awful out, so a museum seemed to be the thing to do. But Anthony and Jane had been to the Museum of Fine Arts recently, and we were all sort of at a loss until Jane suggested the Salem Witch Museum. Anthony and I were game, and I added that, to keep the theme going, we could rent "The Crucible" to watch after dinner. So we got directions, piled into Anthony's car, and drove half an hour to Salem.

Jane slept through the drive, and Anthony and I chatted. Visibility was awful, and the lane nearest the median had unexpected, deep puddles periodically which yanked the car to the left each time we hit one. The directions were tricky, and it was a relief to pull up to the somewhat creepy-looking church-like building in which the museum is housed.

This picture is from the Internet, not my camera. Our weather was not nearly so nice.

We paid $7 each and looked at a few placards in the lobby for a few minutes until a young, heavy-set blonde peered through dark swipes of eyeliner and announced that because there weren't many artifacts from this time period, the "museum" consisted of a presentation and then a guided tour. She cautioned us that the room we were about to enter would be dark and that there were steps, then led us down some steps into a dark room. On raised platforms around the perimeter were darkened dioramas. I could make out what looked like a courtroom on one side. The presentation began, and we endured 20 minutes of cheesy narration. Different dioramas lit up periodically to illustrate the story and occasionally townspeople's words would be delivered by the voices of decidedly talentless actors. In a corner, a large figure of the Devil lit up when he was mentioned (which was often), his eyes glowing red.

At the conclusion of the performance, we walked with the two other groups that had endured the presentation into an exhibit called Changing Perceptions, or something like that. It documented public opinion of witchcraft through the years, and there were yet more unconvincing, full-sized models of people who spoke when our guide pushed a button on the wall. She briefly waved her hand at display cases filled with placards, then ushered us past them so that we had virtually no time to read the information. Jane pointed out that it was the last tour of the day and that they were probably anxious to get us out.

We picked up frozen pizza dough and other supplies on the way home, rented the movie, and spent the evening eating mostly homemade pizza and watching "The Crucible," which I think is fantastic. Jane said that it all seemed so implausible that she would have disregarded the movie as being poorly done if she didn't know that it had all actually happened.

Monday morning, I left a few minutes after Anthony and Jane took off for work, maneuvered my way through another bus ticket fiasco, and got back to New York safe and sound. It's gray, but the rain has mostly stopped, and I've got a final 13-mile run scheduled for tomorrow. It'll be my last long one before Sunday's race. All in all, a good weekend, and now it's back to my masters project.

Masters project

Today I had the last class I'll have to sit through for ten glorious days. Spring break begins tomorrow, but I couldn't get my act together in time to figure out where to go, and as a result am staying in NYC (except for a two-night trip to Boston to visit AnthonyCourtneyJane). This is fine with me for several reasons. For one, aside from a bus ticket, my day-to-day expenses won't rise, which is a good thing; warm weather is great for a lot of reasons, but for career coat checkers it's decidedly inconvenient. Secondly, the half-marathon is the final Sunday of the break, meaning that if I'd gone anywhere, I'd have to have come back a few days early anyway to rest up. Also, being in New York with lots of unstructured time is hardly a hardship - I look forward to checking out heretofore unexplored museums/parts of town. (I plan to get my very own New York City public library card!!!) Finally, most practically (and least thrillingly), I've been putting off doing any serious work on my masters project.

To graduate from the reading specialist program, each one of us has to submit a masters project during the final spring of our coursework. Because I intend to finish in December of this year, my project is due this semester. In fact, it's due twelve days from now.

We were given a great deal of latitude as far as the specifics of our project. Everyone has to fill a certain number of pages (although a weary-looking Dr. Masullo told us she refused to read any more than 20) and cite a certain number of sources. Beyond that, we were given a list of suggestions and the instructions to clear any original ideas with Dr. Masullo before getting started. Projects are either accepted or not accepted - there are no grades given. This sounds scary, but we'll be given the opportunity to revise our projects if, heaven forbid, they're not up to snuff for graduation standards.

Dr. Masullo suggested early last semester, before we even really knew what she was talking about, that Jill and I collaborate on a masters project centered in some way around Heritage High School. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. Jill and I have both been dragging ourselves to Heritage twice a week, a bonding experience if there ever was one (although we usually don't go on the same days). We are required to submit some sort of report for the Zankel Fellowship near the end of the year, and while it doesn't need to anything formal, focusing our masters project on Heritage will preclude our having to do any additional work. I am almost always in favor of a course of action that involves this perk. In addition, if anyone pays attention to it our project could improve instruction at Heritage after we've submitted it to the principal. Even if no one at Heritage gives it a second glance, however, it's the sort of work that's going to look pretty good on a resume, and Dr. Masullo can hardly fail to mention such a practical, masterful application of our newly-acquired knowledge in any letters of recommendation she writes on our behalf. So all in all, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

The only problem with the proposal is that Courtney, my sidekick (if only in spirit sometimes when we're on different continents) and soulmate is the only person I've ever really worked well with. I can tolerate group work to an extent, but for major collaborative planning, it's Courtney or nothing. I like to do things my way. And Jill has proved to be...a challenge to work with. I came up with the idea for our project, reading comprehension, and then, after she failed to contribute any inspiration of her own, narrowed it down to the idea of focusing half the paper on comprehension in English/reading classrooms and half on comprehension across content areas like history and science. Later, I submitted our proposed outline to Dr. Masullo while Jill was in Boston with her boyfriend for the weekend. We split up the research end of it so that I was looking for English/reading articles and Jill took the content area portion, but after I'd found a promising stack of resourcnes, Jill said she was having trouble and so we switched and I took her section over and gave her what I'd found. At our last meeting, Jill (who is leaving for the Bahamas with her boyfriend tomorrow) threw up her hands and said that she had no idea what she was doing and that she would give me her written section and that I should transform it to my heart's content. Gracious.

Let me make it clear that I like Jill very much. She is not shirking her part of the paper or dropping the ball intentionally, she really just has no clue what she's doing. In many ways, I sort of feel sorry for her. I know it makes her feel guilty and uncomfortable that she's not pulling her weight. I also feel a little sorry for myself; this whole process would honestly be easier if I just did the whole thing, and I'm not really comfortable telling her what to do or criticizing her contributions. But it is what it is, and I'm going to just make the best of it and look forward to March 23rd, the day after we'll have submitted the damn thing.

As far as my end of it goes, I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I'm really enjoying the process. I'm taking a study break at the moment. It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm alone in a study lounge (who studies during the first night of spring break?) very literally surrounded by articles and pages and pages of notes. I'm not tired in the least and although I keep telling myself to head upstairs and watch the Netflix DVD that arrived today, I can't really bring myself to stop reading, highlighting, organizing, synthesizing... So while staying home and working on a research paper for spring break isn't necessarily my idea of a good time, I have to say I'm not at all disappointed about the way things have fallen into place.

Definition: tedium

When I was teaching at St. Paul's, I was required to submit a lesson plan for each of my classes at the beginning of the week. My plans would be posted online to guide students and parents through the days until Friday. Usually, each day would say something like "Read Chapter 18 - discuss," or "Begin Vocab. Unit #8; edit setting paragraph." Period, amen. I suspect that I would have had to go into much more detail about my plans had the effectiveness of my plans been in question. As things stood, the administration and parents trusted me enough that this skeletal outline was all the documentation required.

Behold how times change: Below, I've pasted in one of the LISPs (Literary Intervention Session Plan) that I have to write twice a week to guide my sessions with my six-year-old client. After implementing all of the things detailed in the LISP, I have to write an SAS (Session Assessment Summary), which contains information about the client's performance in each of the areas I targeted. A typical SAS is 1.5 to 2 times the length of a LISP. I'm not certain whether I'll have to go into this much detail in my professional life when I plan, should I decided to become a literacy coach, reading specialist, or go into private practice; if so, it's enough to make me lean towards housewifery.

Literacy Intervention Session Plan #7

Goals for the Semester and Objectives for Session:

1. To improve alphabetic knowledge

a. The client will say the alphabet in sequence. {1a}

b. The client will put lowercase letters in alphabetical order. {1b}

c. The client will write the lowercase letters in alphabetical order. {1c}

2. To improve sight word knowledge

a. The client will identify differences between that and this. {2a}

b. The client will recognize that and this with automaticity. {2b}

c. The client will spell that and this correctly. {2c}

3. To develop decoding skills

a. The client will blend different onsets with the rimes –et, -en, and -eg. {3a}

b. The client will identify words from the –at, -ot, and -it families. {3b}

4. To develop encoding skills

a. The client will separate the onset from words in the –et, -en, and -eg families. {4a}

b. The client will spell words from the –et, -en, and -eg families. {4b}

5. To improve reading comprehension

a. The client will identify a problem faced by characters in The Cat in the Hat. {5a}

6. To strengthen written expression

a. The client will answer a yes/no opinion question.{6a}

b. The client will list text-based reasons for his answer to an opinion question on a graphic organizer. {6b}

Materials:

Paper and pencil, chart with upper- and lowercase letters of alphabet written on it (practitioner created), cards with lowercase letters written on them from previous session, sight word ring, cards from the Words Their Way Word Study Notebook (–et, -en, and -eg families), Word Family log sheet (practitioner created), laptop with Internet access, story map graphic organizer from Scholastic.com, "The Ugly Duckling" (practitioner adapted), The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (with one photocopied page), colored pencils, opinion question graphic organizer (practitioner created)

Procedures:

I. Familiar Text Time

The client will either read or tell the practitioner about The Christmas Bear.

II. Skill and Strategy Instruction

A. Alphabetic Knowledge

1. The client will recite the alphabet, using his finger to follow the alphabet chart. {1a}

2. The client will put cards with lowercase letters on them in alphabetical order, making reference to the chart if necessary. {1b}

3. The client will recite the alphabet again, using his finger to follow the cards as he checks his work. {1a}

4. The client will write the uppercase letters of the alphabet in order. {1c}

B. Sight Word Knowledge

1. The practitioner will show the client that and this on cards. They will discuss the differences/similarities between the two words. {2a}

2. The client will practice reading the words several times. {2b}

3. The practitioner will write that on a piece of paper.

4. The client will look at that and read it out loud.

5. The client will trace the letters with his finger while saying the letters aloud.

6. The client will close his eyes and visualize the word, spelling it aloud.

7. The client will sky write the word, saying the letters aloud.

8. The client will write the word three times on paper.

9. The client will write the word from memory. {2c}

10. The client will repeat these steps with this. {2a}, {2b}, {2c}

11. The practitioner will give the following dictations, using words from his word ring and today's new words: Who wants this? Can I get help with that? {1a}

12. If the client spells the new words correctly, he will add them to his ring. Any words he misspells will be taken off the ring and added to a list for further practice.

C. Decoding and Encoding

1. The client will sort picture cards from the Words Their Way Word Study Notebook from the -et, -en, and -eg families. He will check his work by saying the names of the pictures in each column.

2. The client will match another set of word cards to each picture, labeling it. Then the client will read the word cards in each column. {3a}

3. The client will copy the words from one of the families into the first column of a Word Family log sheet.

4. The client will write the words again, separating the onsets from the rimes. {4a}

5. The client will move his finger from the Onset column to the Rime column as he blends the two into a word. {3b}

6. The client will play "Missing Letter" on the SpellingCity.com website, using the eleven words from the cards. {4b}

D. Reading Comprehension

Review: The client will state the title, author, characters, and setting of The Cat in the Hat.

1. The practitioner will explain the term "problem" as it relates to story grammar.

2. The practitioner will read "The Ugly Duckling." The client will help to fill in the parts of the story map he has learned in previous sessions. The practitioner will model the process of identifying the problem in the story.

E. Written Expression

1. The practitioner will model filling out a graphic organizer in preparation for writing a response to the following opinion question: Would you like to ride a fast roller coaster? The practitioner will elicit the client's help in writing one or two reasons why it would be a good or bad idea (or a combination of both) in two columns, one labeled with a smiling face and one with a frowning face.

2. The practitioner will allow the client to choose from the following prompts: Would you like it to be Christmas every day? Would you like to have a pet elephant? Would you be happy if school was cancelled forever? Would you like it to be summer all year? The client will answer the question and then use a graphic organizer to plan an answer to the question using reasons to justify his answer. {6a}, {6b}

III. Guided Reading

Review: The practitioner will ask the client to define "problem," and explain the problem in "The Ugly Duckling."

1. The practitioner will ask the client to think about The Cat in the Hat and name the main problem. {5a}

2. The client will continue to read The Cat in the Hat and will add the second main problem in the story. {5a}

IV. Written Expression

Review: The practitioner will remind the client of the graphic organizers used earlier in the lesson. 1. The practitioner will present the client with the question Would you like the Cat in the Hat to visit your house?

2. The client will answer the question, then use events from The Cat in the Hat to explain his answer. The practitioner will encourage the client to refer back to the book to remind him of the events as he identifies his reasons. {6a}, {6b}

V. Personalized Reading

The client will read through The Christmas Bear or the story he dictated during the last session, or, if he chooses, select a new book from the Home Book Depot.

Criteria for Evaluation:

1. The client will say the alphabet in sequence. {1a}

2. The client will put lowercase letters in alphabetical order. {1b}

3. The client will write the lowercase letters in alphabetical order. {1c}

4. The client will identify differences between that and this. {2a}

5. The client will recognize that and this with automaticity. {2b}

6. The client will spell that and this correctly. {2c}

7. The client will blend different onsets with the rimes –et, -en, and -eg. {3a}

8. The client will identify words from the –at, -ot, and -it families. {3b}

9. The client will separate the onset from words in the –et, -en, and -eg families. {4a}

10. The client will spell words from the –et, -en, and -eg families. {4b}

11. The client will identify a problem faced by characters in The Cat in the Hat. {5a}

12. The client will answer a yes/no opinion question. {6a}

13. The client will list text-based reasons for his answer to an opinion question. {6b}

Spring is springing up everywhere!

Spotted yesterday while running through Central Park (with no gloves, ear-warmer, jacket, or insulated tights): buds on several trees, shrinking snowdrifts, and these:

Not sure what they're called, but I was happy to see them, along with other greenery starting to peek through the chilly mud along the sides of the road. Honestly, winter in New York wasn't that bad, although I'm pleased that spring is on the way!

Ice-T in the morning is better than coffee

This morning, while walking to Heritage for another action-packed day, I noticed a crowd of people gathered around jumble of various indiscriminate objects on the sidewalk across the street from Central Park. At first, I thought it was some kind of rummage sale. As I got closer, I realized that a filming of the TV series "Law and Order: SVU" was being filmed! Below is an Internet photograph of two of the characters, Detective Tutuola (played by Ice-T, former gangsta rapper-turned TV cop, a natural progression) and Detective Munch (played by Richard Belzer).

Now, check out the picture I managed to snap from my BlackBerry. (You see why I included the close-up photo for reference? This shot was the best I could do.) The white-haired man directly left of the guy in the turquoise parka is Belzer, and the guy to his left is Ice-T. I heard Belzer say something about a revolving door - not sure if that was dialogue or just commentary on his part - but that was about all I could get over the street noise.

Would I have recognized these guys from across a street too early on an absurdly sunny morning? Heck no. But the folding chairs below clued me in. You can't tell in this photo, but they say "Law and Order" on the back of them.

Gotta love this city.