Here's something that I posted on my flickr page a few days ago.

I feel like I'm just posting pictures taken a long time ago, and I'm not actually doing the whole "photography" thing anymore.

Oh wait. Maybe I feel that way because I'm just posting old pictures and not taking any.

*sigh* I love teaching. Honestly, I do. But unless you've done it yourself, you have no idea.

Try this. Develop an engaging 45 minute lesson. Something that will teach the students something, meet state standards, build on what you've already taught and point towards what you will teach later. Now do 15 a week. Don't forget to include writing (in all forms), literature, public speaking, grammar, and visual literacy. Consider the two Spanish speaking students you have. Make modifications for IEP students.

You got that? Cool. All that great lesson planning you did just created 5 journal entries per student per week, plus one writing assignment per student per week. So come Friday you have 660 items to grade.

Start with the journals. It may seem like 550 things to get through and grade, but remember, each student left 5 bits of his/her life in there, and you need to treat it like it matters (because it does). So be sure to leave some sort of comment on each journal (550 comments). Now read their writing assignment. You have 40 descriptions of a dream vacation (7th grade), 30 descriptions of an event (9th grade) and about 40 pieces of essays (11th grade). Read the paragraphs from 7th and 9th grade and leave marks by mistakes that need to be corrected (we'll do that in class next Wednesday) and then read the 11th grade papers. Leave coments on each of these telling the students what they need to change, remove, add or modify in their paper. That will be their writing assignment for this coming week.

Now go take pictures for your 365.

(If you read this whole whine-fest, then you seriously need to get a life. Go take some pictures or something. I'll get over it.)

Sorry I've not updated in a while. School has been keeping me quite busy.

Dad left last Sunday. A group of bikers showed up and gave him a hero's send off. It was very special. I just found out on Friday that one of my student's dad is in the same location as mine...I'll have to let him know about that.

Saturday night my friend Jason and his family came over. Then a fellow just down the road got a flat, so we ended up spending about an hour and a half helping him out. The spare was chained and locked in place, so we had to get a bolt cutter to cut the chain. We called almost everyone we could think of, and finally Brother Tobbie from church offered us his. So we drove out and got that, then got the tire loose, then had to re-inflate it. But we had fun just hanging out doing it, so it was fun.

Classes are going well. We are reading the book "Killing Mr. Griffon" with the 9th grade classes and they seem to be enjoying it quite a bit. I've got one seventh grade class that is becoming quite a challenge...I'm hoping to get that under control soon. I'm cracking down pretty hard on them right now.

Stokton's birthday party out at Blue Hole was a blast, but I got a bad sun burn. Next time I'll remember to apply sunscreen!

I'm getting off now. I've got to get stuff ready for classes tomorrow.

With victories over the likes of Ken Shamrock, Jorge Rivera, Evan Tanner (twice!) and Wanderlei Silva, you would think you would be in a good position. Add to that some great knock-out highlight material, two succesful defenses of the UFC middle weight belt and a stellar record (25-4-1). Only three men have ever beaten him: current champ Anderson Silva, current light heavy weight champ Lyoto Machida and former Pride champ (in two divisions!) Dan Henderson. There is no shame in loosing to any of those guys. You would think this guy would be on top of the world.

But Rich Franklin is very, very far from the top of the world. He is, in fact, probably the most stuck person in all of MMA. Franklin really should fight at 185, but what's the point? Silva took his belt in brutal fashion. He didn't just beat him: it was a slaughter. Franklin won his next two fights and re-challenged for the title. Silva destroyed him again. There is no way he is ever getting a shot at Silva again, and if he knows what's best for him, he doesn't want one.

But he can't move up to LHW either. Once again, there's no point. He would be fighting men much bigger than him, and the eventual goal would be to fight Machida. But he's already fought Machida and lost. And the Machida of today is much improved over the Machida that beat him before. Once again, there's just not much point to letting them fight again.

And he can't make the cut to 170: he's just too big.

So what do you do if you're Rich Franklin? Hang around, take fights when you can, and lobby like mad for a 195 division. Maybe he'll get it.

You've got to feel sorry for the guy.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.

Grappling class on Thursday was intense. Very few people showed up, so those of us that were there (all three of us!) did a lot of rounds. My legs are so sore I can barely move. We also did 9 minutes of straight ab work...anything except fetal position is painful. Wow.

Silva knocks out Griffin in the first round. Poor fellow never had much of a chance. But who does against Silva? It will be interesting to see how Henderson tries to approach him the second time.

I just finished reading Killing Mr. Griffin. It's a fun book. I think we'll probably read that and do character analysis with it...internal conflict, external conflict, changes in character, that kind of thing. It should be fun. Next week sometime we are going to read the first chapter from All Creatures Great and Small and talk about the basic structure of a story plot. I love that story, so it should be fun.

Friday I had some good conversations with some of my fellow new hires. The new librarian seems like a really neat lady, and I've enjoyed listening to the new band director talk (since I could hardly get a word in edgewise anyway!) Seriously though, he seems like a cool guy and it will be neat to see what he does with band and choir. I also had a good conversation with one of the math teachers and the home ec. teacher. I'm getting more and more pumped about the school year.

Oh! I got my class list for four out of six of my classes...so far my largest is 20 students. I love it!

In other news, Chera's car died on her and we worried for bit what this would do to her moving down, but we've got things worked out now.

Dad spent way too long in the attic today in the 101 degree weather. When he came down and I saw how bad he looked it really scared me. I talked to him later and said basically, "Dude, your 55 years old! You can't pretend this heat isn't there! Don't be an idoit!"

I've been talking with our youth pastor at church about setting up a class to help kids transition from Children's Church to big church. The idea would be to meet during service every other Sunday and go over some church basics: why do we have church meetings? What is the worship for? What is our part in worship? What is our part in the message? How do you take notes during a message? What is the greatign time for? What do you do when spiritually attacked in church (I think this happens far more often than we want to admit)? What if I disagree with the message? Our children's pastor is gone on vacation, but when she get's back I'll talk to her too...hopefully we can start something in September.

Good night!

Interesting article on Kenny Florian's background. I don't see how he can win this fight. But I'm praying he does.

The good news is, if Penn wins this time, Sanchez will beat him early next year.

July Flickr Mosaic

July Flickr Mosaic
Originally uploaded by S Bavido

This is actually a blog, but should go with the picture. So just click on the picture.

Post UFC 100 thoughts (number 2)

Mark Coleman vs. Stephan Bonnar

Ok, I was entirely wrong. Coleman showed up in shape and demonstrated that he is still the same thing as when he won UFC 10: a huge, incredibly powerful man with world-class wrestling and very heavy hands. On top of that, he showed some improved bjj and control from the back. Bonnar's days in the UFC are numbered.

This may seem way to early to predict this, but if Coleman can keep this up for two more fights, I think he'll be given a title shot. Everybody said Rashad's only hope against Machida was his wrestling, but Rashad isn't really wrestling anymore. Coleman could be marketed as the guy who has what it takes to defeat Machida.

BTW, the next person to use the phrase "rubrix cube of pain" in regard to Machida deserves to die.

Jon Jones (wow!) vs. Jake O'Brien

O'Brien's boxing was much better than I expected. Jones (wow!) fought well, although not quite as good as against Bonnar. I'm not sure if I've ever seen somebody finish with that choke before. Quite impressive. I was also very impressed with the fake take down into spinning elbow. Sweet.

Dong Hyun Kim looked quite impressive. That dude is in great shape and his judo is certainly to be reckoned with. As much as wrestlers dominate in MMA, I wonder if more interest in MMA geared judo might not produce some incredible fighters over the next few years. Wrestlers take people down and end up in guard. Judo fighters take people down and land in half control, often with their weight on the other guy's chest.

We watched the new X-men movie yesterday night. It was a fun action flick. But it has got me thinking a bit about this idea that so many movies have that killing a horrible person makes you like them.

Example: Hero has a chance to kill main bad guy. Hero is the only person who can kill bad guy. Hero knows that bad guy is an avid serial killer, having made a habit of killing people for the heck of it for years. So hero looks at bad guy and says, "I'm not like you." and lets him go.

What? You've done something noble by allowing this guy go and kill again? This makes no sense at all.

I'm getting very excited about teaching this coming year. And incredibly nervous.