Monterey day 3

Well, this morning started out very nicely, and we had bagels, and then I went to my conference.

The first speaker, Richard Ramsey, looked like Barry White and had a rhetorical style that is familiar to anyone who has attended Baptist services at a predominately African-American church. It was entertaining, although the guy used a TON of familiar cliches, apocryphal stories, and e-mails I've been forwarded recently. Like, the one about the voice mail for the psychiatric hotline (seen it? You know, "Obsessive-compulsives, please press 1 repeatedly" etc.) and the one about the teacher whose 5th grade student brought her a half-empty bottle of cheap perfume, but it had been his dead mom's and now he's going to Harvard. If you'd like, you can read it here at Snopes. It's, uh, fiction. But very touching, y'know?



Then I went to my first session, which was with a soft-spoken man who didn't seem to know 100% why he was there. About halfway through, several members of the audience started asking him questions about the structure of his school and the resources like computers (which was NOT the topic of the workshop) and he answered them all very pleasantly, as though we'd gone ahead and switched to a Q and A session. Then I had a break, and I met Sweetie for lunch and Petra's, which was Middle-Eastern-esque. I had dolmas, hummus, falafel, and tabouli. It wasn't the world's best, but it was perfectly decent and I left full and happy. I walked Sweet stuff back to the hotel, then turned around and walked back, stopping in a cute clothing store and Cafe Noir, where I had a delightful latte! Really yummy.

Then came the afternoon sessions. I had had difficulty deciding which to attend. One was a little over two hours long and sounded most interesting, but it was clearly intended for administrators and counselors. Then there were some that sounded okay, and were only an hour each. I chose those, just so we'd be able to take different perspectives back to school (I knew one of the other teachers was going to the long one). Anyway, the first one was from the Ford Fund, and it was trying to convince us to use their curriculum which, though it looked kind of interesting, seemed to be an elective that wouldn't meet college requirements. And you know, therefore TOTALLY USELESS.

The final session was actually really interesting. I took copious notes and stayed after to talk to the presenters. They were the principals of two small high schools that both occupied space on the same campus. It was a large comprehensive high school that "broke up" into six small schools. They shared some resources like the library, and they kept the athletic department together, but each school had a distinct administration, its own web site, its own programs and focus... They had to divide the books in the bookroom and the copiers and everything. It sounds difficult, but possibly really worthwhile. WHat was even better was that the female presenter was the principal of the "International Studies" school, which had an IB program, so her school was very similar to my small learning community. I got a lot of good information.

I walked back to the hotel, but only had about 4 minutes to get to a meeting that had been arranged -- I thought it was just for our school (and that therefore it would be short and I could sneak out to dinner), but there were three schools there, and the third was considering going to SLCs, so they wanted to know what the process was like and what the pros and cons were. So it ended up being a little over an hour. Oh well.

Then we went to my birthday dinner. Boompah had recommended Montrio, and we walked there, but we hadn't thought to make reservations, and the next available one was two hours away! We walked instead to Stokes Adobe, where we've eaten before (also on Boompah's recommendation), and had a great dinner! We had a caramelized onion and olive focaccia, then sweetie had a rare steak and I had a pesto and feta and tomato pizza. For dessert, we had a Scharffen Berger dark chocolate torte and I had a glass of port while Sweetie had Bonny Doon Framboise. Everything was great. The torte had strawberry coulis that was super-yummy. I was trying to figure out what was in it, but it tasted EXACTLY like strawberry Merlinos. (I realize that doesn't mean much to you, but Merlino's Freeze is a local treat, and it's a fruit freeze that's delicious and inimitable.)

Now we're back at the hotel. It's really cold, but with the Comfort Zone heater, we're comfortable. And now I'm 31 and it doesn't feel different, but I'm happy. I'm happy a lot.