Well, the waterfall in La Fortuna kind of deserves its own post. While there wasn't any brilliant story to accompany the trip (except maybe the torrential downpour that showed up just as we got there, left while we swam, and returned just as we were leaving), there was a beautiful waterfall that I took a zillion pictures of.
Oh yeah, I went to Costa Rica for two weeks in July.
Honestly, I don't have time to recount the entire trip, so you can check out the pictures yourself. You probably aren't going to check out all 500+ anyway, so now you can scroll through at your leisure. The captions explain some stuff.
As was mentioned in one of the comments on a previous post, I seem to have left cookies out of my list of things I've cooked this summer. It's not so much that I am any good at baking cookies, but more that it's a specialty of the house where I've been living. Bill, who is generously letting Mark and me house-sit, is a often known as "The Cookie Guy"--and with good reason. We learned very early on in our supervisory group that he will never go anywhere without little ziploc baggies of freshly baked cookies. They are the most delicious and memorable calling card ever. He brought them for everyone in our supervisory not just at weekly meetings, but whenever he would come out to Mission to observe, and pretty much whenever he would stop by Stanford (it was not unusual to find a bag in my mailbox). Other recipients include the guy who runs classes at the Mac store, the mail carrier, and a waitress at one of their favorite restaurants.
It should be noted that these aren't just something off the back of some Tollhouse chocolate chips (not that those aren't delicious). No, this recipe took six years to prefect and makes about 90 cookies per batch. Of course the specifics are too special to post here, but let's just say that the base calls for semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate, and toffee chips. Additional ingredient combinations are numerous and continue to be experimented with. 
So when I got the keys to the house, I also got a copy of the recipe and the metaphoric keys to the KitchenAid mixer and the "cookie cabinet," an entire section of the kitchen literally overflowing with every kind of cookie filling your mind can fathom. The recipe wasn't so much permission to bake these cookies, but a mandate to keep the kitchen smelling delicious all summer.
I've even taken to carrying around cookies with me when go to friends' houses or other places. One of my favorite memories from this summer was when I got home from Costa Rica, and Mark asked me--on the car ride from the airport--"Will you bake cookies when we get home? I haven't had any in two weeks because you've been gone..." I might be turning into Bill. But there could be worse things. 
For the 4th of July, Sarah and I went over to the San Jose America festival and caught the fireworks in the park near the Steingruebl pad. Most importantly, I got to try out the fireworks setting on my camera: 
Don't you love that we celebrate our independence by mimicking the explosions of war? 
So you would think that with absolutely nothing to do, I would have taken the time to update this blog with all the things that happened in that last ridiculous quarter at Stanford--our trip to Angel Island, my students letters to math, the final days of teaching, reflections on my students, Oprah's graduation speech, my teaching plans for next year, etc. etc. But why would I do that when I can do all the things summer is meant for?
In the past two weeks, I've been taking advantage of living in suburbia (my extremely generous supervisor is letting me and an another STEPpie house-sit). So I've taken some bike rides, visited the library, read on a lounge chair in the sun, gone swimming, and just sat out on the deck watching the hummingbirds.
And then there's the cooking. I kind of feel like I'm playing housewife because my roommate works everyday, and I've been doing a lot of cooking for us. We have a fabulous kitchen, plus a garden with fresh herbs, rhubarb, squash, tomatoes, and beans.
Rhubarb muffins: 
Baking powder biscuits:
Mushroom asparagus tart:
Asparagus chive quiche:
And proof that I really have too much time on my hands, homemade hamburger buns:
Don't worry, my roommate has fallen into his traditional gender role and does the grilling: 
I could get used to this teacher summer thing.
If nothing else, this past year has been one of reflection. Reflection on what I did five minutes ago, five days ago, five months ago, and 25 years ago--and of course how that all influences the way I teach. In yet another bout of reflection, I decided to take a look back at the ways I have developed as a teacher (and a student) over 12 months in STEP. With the help of Wordle, my current favourite website, here is a pictorial representation of my past year, based on important documents I wrote. (click for larger versions)
First, the resume and personal statement that got me into STEP in the first place:
Summer began with writing my "math autobiography". You can see what was--and was not--important to me.
In our "Centralities of Literacies" everything finally clicked when I re-framed math as a means of reading and writing the world. Here, my final reflective journal from the three week class. 
In Equity & Democracy, I didn't write anything too earth-shattering, but Ray McDermott's three levels of cultural analysis rocked my world. 
Fall brought the five million page case study on one of my students (with the pseudonym Malik):
And my favorite assignment of the year, a deep dive into what it means to assess for conceptual understanding in a math class: 
Finally, in Classroom Management I made a first attempt at verbally articulating my teaching philosophies. Worst assignment ever. At least up to this point.
By winter I designed an entire unit plan (guess what it was about?)
And I wrote a grading policy that I could use in the ideal world
Spring brought PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers), which topped the classroom management plan as the worst assignment ever. It was long and painful, but it got me my teaching credential. 
Finally, I summarized all my reflections over the year in--what else?--a summary reflection. Actually, it does a pretty good job reflecting what I think my year was about. 
Obviously, these are all papers and writings on different topics, so it's hard to compare across them. However, I still like the trends I see. In particular, my favorite is the growth of the word "students" throughout the year. I like what this meta-analysis says about the kind of teacher I'm becoming.
I guess I'm not quite "well done"--I still have to teach until Thursday, but on Monday I did some printing and CD burning and I was done with all my Stanford coursework. Right now it just feels weird not having anything to do. I'm not sure what to do with myself when there's nothing I should be reading, writing, planning, revising. I guess this is why they invented sleeping, something I feel like I haven't done since last June.
