Then iPod touches arrived in the classroom, I received a MacBook as part of my duties as a middle school teacher, struggled endlessly to make the transition to the world of Macs, and ultimately learned that I knew nothing.  It’s true.  In the Mac world, I knew nothing!  And considering I had worked on a Mac doing desktop publishing back in the mid-90s, I was absolutely certain I would jump right back into the game, no problems.  Right… Frustrated and overwhelmed, I decided the best way to make my way across this terrifying bridge between Windows and the weirdness that was Mac was to immerse myself in a huge end-of-the-year project.  And when I say huge, I mean I-must-be-insane, breakdown-inducing MONUMENTAL.

The last six weeks of school, my students and I struggled with (and were sometimes buried beneath) the challenge of transforming the writings and artwork they had produced over the past year, all of it detailing their lives and experiences both here and in their home countries, into a digital format. Today, I am the proud [neurotic] owner of a single DVD.  Upon that DVD lie 35 of the most incredible stories ever produced in any of my classrooms.  It is not that the writing of my former students was any less powerful or inspiring.  It is simply that the writing of my current students can now be heard first-hand, read in their own voices and accompanied by breathtaking images of my students, their families and their artwork.

It has been an incredible journey and in the process, I have learned 3 things:

1.  I am not as technologically savvy as I once thought.

2.  My students are even more amazing than I ever knew.  And I thought they were pretty darn amazing before we ever began this process.  In fact, they are truly brilliant.  It was pretty humbling to realize that 13-year olds who had never moved a mouse before arriving in this country five months to two years ago are more technologically savvy than me.  Wow.  Like I said. Amazing and brilliant.

3.  I am truly blessed.  I love teaching ESL and I love working at the middle school level.

I am so incredibly proud of my students in this moment.  Every time I watch their stories, I learn something new or notice something I missed.  Their stories truly bring tears to my eyes.  Sometimes because the stories themselves are just that moving.  And sometimes simply because I watch their stories and I remember where they were at the beginning of the year (or whenever they arrived in my classroom for the first time) and I am literally blown away at the growth that each and every single student has shown.  I suppose I have grown too (after all, I produced a movie with my students!), but at the end of the day, it’s never about me.  In the end, I simply benefit from the amazing presence of my students in my life.

Anyway, I entered a new classroom this year and found waiting for me, forty iPod Touches.  “iPods,” I thought.  “What on earth am I going to do with these?  How am I going to use music to teach my students English?  Well, actually, I do use music in the classroom to teach both English and skill concepts, but still.  Forty iPods???  How often does my district think that I use music??”

As it turns out, there are these nifty little things called apps that you can download to your iPod and those apps teach all kinds of amazing things!  WHO KNEW????  Well, like I said, apparently an awful lot of people, but not me!

In any case, I’ve been using the iPods for PWIMs.  That’s teacher-speak for Picture Word Inductive Model.  In other words, I upload photos of vocabulary we’re focused on in the classroom, children pull up the photo in Comic Touch and label the photos with target vocabulary words.  From there, we write paragraphs describing our work.  It’s really amazing, the work the kids have created.  I have some amazingly talented artists in my classroom as well.  In lieu of using the photos I provide, many students draw their own pictures in Doodle Buddy, then import those pictures into Comic Touch and label them.

Two other apps my students love are Stack the States and Stack the Countries.  I don’t know why, but as a country, we don’t seem to put much emphasis on geography anymore — how many people in this country really know where Djibouti or Myanmar can be found?  My students are no exception — they really struggle with geography.  Many of them don’t even understand that Kansas is a state and the United States is a country.  They have no idea where Mexico is in relation to Kansas or where in the world Australia can be found.  These two apps have

helped them to really develop their understanding of the world and our place within it.

In the end, I’m simply amazed.  iPods are so much more than just carriers of music.  They have become purveyors of knowledge and tools for teaching.  WHO KNEW??

Since discovering that I am now one of two hundred and fifty, I have been obsessively re-reading the manuscript, frantically checking createspace and amazon to see if any new reviews have been posted, and generally making myself insane.  Ultimately, while I am thrilled to have made it this far, I am terrified the next cut will leave me crying into my bowl of cheerios, woefully bereft of breakthrough worthiness.

Is it April 27th yet?

In any case, in our email debates, I have repeated several times that I was NOT notified of an interest rate change, to which she has consistently (and quite stubbornly) replied that her records indicate one was mailed.  WELL THEN.  I’m sorry, I must have accidentally shredded this very important piece of paper that told me you were going to more than DOUBLE my interest rates and that I had 30 days to protest said changes before they went into effect.  RIGHT.  (In case any credit card representatives from this unnamed company are reading… this was EXTREME sarcasm, not to be read as any form of agreement that said paper was EVER in my hands!)

Of course, as I was writing my latest argument with this woman, it occurred to me that really, I was engaging in a battle I could not possibly win because I was shouting in the wind at an entire system that was corrupt.  I found the woman’s arguments to be absurd.  When I stated that I never received the notice, she countered that it was mailed.  When I stated that the hike was unreasonable in any case, she said the company had the right to do anything they wanted, so long as they notified me in writing.  When I reiterated that I received nothing in writing, she again stated it was mailed, starting the ridiculous cycle all over again.  When I questioned the intelligence of anyone believing that I would be okay with a 7% interest hike, and brought into question the ethics of presuming my agreement based solely upon my LACK of a response, rather than, say, receiving a signed agreement from me, she claimed that her company’s “business practices are continuously reviewed to ensure we provide valued services and remain competitive in our business”.   Umm… anyone else notice a distinct lack of response to the question of their ethics?  Instead of insisting this company adheres to ethical business practices, she instead insists they are … competitive?  Oh, and that they provide valuable services?  You bet they do.  To those who are desperate, and to people like me, who are weak.

Am I the only one who is sick and tired of the business practices of corporate America?  I think in the end, I am mostly annoyed at myself, though.  After all, I hate credit card companies and everything they stand for, and yet… here I am, sitting on my new bedroom furniture bought with a Nebraska Furniture Mart credit card, typing on a laptop purchased with a Dell credit card, snug in my grumpy sweatshirt paid for by Chase VISA.

Yep.  There is absolutely no denying that I am most definitely part of the problem.