Meeting My Hero, and Miscellanea

One of my personal heroes is Doug Lemov, founder of the Uncommon Schools charter network that I am so obsessed with (the one that made me cry when I visited it as a first year teacher). So I was beyond thrilled when I found out that he was coming to Philadelphia to lead our first year corps members in a session on classroom management yesterday. I didn't actually get to see the session because I had to be outside doing boring administrative stuff, but afterward I got to actually interact with him for a full thirty seconds! I told him about visiting his school and it transforming my beliefs about what was possible for my students, and he thanked me for sharing with him - he said it was the most rewarding part of his job! My friend took a picture with my cell phone, and it motivated me to figure out how to get pictures off that thing for the first time ever:

You can only see Doug Lemov's back, but you can totally tell how awesome he is.

Also, now that I know how to get pictures off my cell phone, here are some random interesting pictures from the past year:

This was in the bird room at the Camden Aquarium, where we went for our staff retreat.

Our old carpet floor with our new wood one, when it was still in boxes.

I saw these at a random gas station once, but was too weirded out to try them.

My sister gave us a chicken from the farm she worked at, and Ben was very proud of himself for roasting it.

When Ben and I first moved in together, I couldn't resist the temptation of putting on all of our class rings and giving myself Brass Rat Knuckles.