Sunday Randomness

• Via Femiknit Mafia, a very smart and funny op-ed piece from today's Boston Globe about the gay agenda. Read it on her post and be prepared to laugh outloud while you discover just how it is that me and my people are taking over the country.
• I love language and language development. Curious Girl has started using duper as an intensifier because I sometimes use the phrase super duper. Today she told me that swimming was "very duper fun" and in the midst of that long crying jag she was wailing about her "duper favorite blankie" (which has since been found by Politica. Phew.) I think her language development is duper cool.
• Ianqui's relief about having somewhere to go for Thanksgiving makes me wonder what, besides turkey, people are planning to make for Thanksgiving. Our evolving tradition is to make mushroom-tofu stuffed phyllo triangles, a recipe I'm happy to share. Anyone up for a non-traditional holiday recipe swap? I started menu planning this weekend and am in search of a few side dishes. And sure, I could look in more cookbooks, but what I really love about recipes are the stories that go with them.
  
• Laura's post today on the centrality of teachers modeling learning got me browsing over at Alex Reid's blog, and I quite liked his post about lecturing, which reminded me a bit of the comments at Deb's recent post about audiocommenting. I have a lot of posts brewing about teaching, writing, and department chairing, so I'll push myself a bit in that direction with this little bullet point on the importance of considering what do students do when they are learning? It's easy to think about the content to be covered in any given course, but it's probably more important to think about what will students be doing in class. Practially, materially. So it's not enough to say "we'll be thinking critically about X." What are the activities, the steps, the moments of engagement that will produce, say, critical thinking, or flexibility, or whatever the more general goal is?
• The number of labels I just attached to this post seems ridiculously large. Oh well.