Ladies First

So, here's the scoop on my conference:

PEAK stands for Performance Excellence for All Kids. Basically, it is a teaching philosophy based on sports practices with the main point being "Our Kids Are Worth Whatever It Takes."

The idea is that when you are preparing for a sport, you keep drilling the fundamentals at every practice and then maybe learn something new and then apply it to those fundamentals. For example, at some point in my baseball career, I learned how to catch and throw. Now, once I got good enough at these skills to be successful, I didn't immediately move on to hitting and never throw or catch again. Instead, we played catch each and every day, revisiting these skills over and over while adding new things, like catching fly balls, or learning to throw with a crow's hop.

Therefore, when kids succeed at new information/topics/skills, we shouldn't just forget about them when we teach, but revisit them constantly, making them more difficult and higher on the taxonomy of thinking. Things like that.

Basically, I came out of the conference with a new, more effective way to plan my lessons and some great ideas for how to set my room up next year. I'm actually pretty excited to get back to school...for now.

Spring Honorable Mentions were split into Men and Women categories. So, here's the ladies:

1. Rachel Goodrich - Morning Light
2. Rachel Platten - 1,000 Ships
3. You Say France And I Whistle - OMG
4. Young Galaxy - We Have Everything
5. The Naked And Famous - Young Blood
6. Alex Winston - Sister Wife (Star Slinger Remix)
7. The Kills - DNA
8. YACHT - Dystopia
9. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers
10. Cults - Abducted
11. Blithe Field - Peach, Plum, Pear (Joanna Newsom)
12. The Raveonettes - Forget That You're Young
13. Julia Stone - Catastrophe!
14. My Little Pony - Breakup With Myself
15. Danielle Ate The Sandwich - Two Bedroom Apartment
16. Cassis Orange - Kotzebue
17. Heart-Sick Groans - Man On The Rocks
18. The Submarines - Fire
19. Peter And Kerry - Clothes, Friends, Photos
20. Ham Sandwich - The Naturist
21. Paper Think Walls - NyQuil
22. Larkin Poe - Desert Dream

Zach's Notes
1. Just a catchy number
3. I love their playful banter
5. I can't get past the fuzz. I love it!
6. Ah, Mormons...
8. The only reason this didn't make it's month was because of it's explicit nature. I send out more generic months than Honorables, so it seemed like a safer choice.
9. So sexy.
14. Pretty sure the girl only sings sparingly here, but it seemed like a girlie topic.
16. A city in Western Alaska where my good pal Luke Williamson worked last year.
19. Another song that just seems to have a girlie topic rather than a female singer.

Men and links to come. Time to get out of Vail!

Fallin' Behind

My dear friends and associates, I am writing to you from the sunny slopes of Vail, Colorado as I have officially begun the second leg of my summer adventure.

Alaska proved to be awesome for the month I was there. I can't with friends down in McCarthy and Kennecott. I met a whole bunch of amazing, new people at a ridiculous Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Fairbanks. I took my friend Desiree to Homer and Valdez, including playing on 3 different glaciers and a trip to Seldovia. It was superb.

I will try to have pictures posted pretty soon (on here and the fb, I suppose) and I hope most of the rest of my summer will be extremely picture-worthy.

Tomorrow, I begin a weeklong educator's conference called PEAK (not sure what it stands for yet). It was highly touted by many of my close colleagues from Glennallen, so I signed up. I'm looking forward to learning how to be a better teacher, but I have some reservations. Alot of these conferences tend to be geared toward the general classroom teacher and I have FAR from a general classroom. I'm hoping to improve my grasp of elementary curriculum and to work on using my room for good, instead of evil.

I'm going to post the tracklists one CD at a time. That will make me post a bit and then follow it up with some tracks.

It's going to be interesting producing the June and July playlists on the road, but knowing that this month caps my second year of discs has rejuvenated my spirit.

I hope you find at least one song per CD that you truly love. Here's April!

1. tUnE-yArDs - My Country
2. Rubik - Laws of Gravity
3. The View - Sunday
4. You Say France And I Whistle - Animal
5. Zoey Van Goey - You Told The Drunks I Knew Karate
6. The Eclectic Moniker - 2 Officers
7. Elbow - With Love
8. Florence And The Machine - Swimming
9. Of Montreal - L'age D'or
10. Star Slinger - How Will I Copulate? (Moranis Mashup feat. Whitney Houston)
11. Death Cab for Cutie - You Are A Tourist
12. Sloan - Unkind
13. We All Have Hooks For Hands - Amy's Room
14. The Joy Formidable - Austere
15. In These Woods - Always
16. Whale Tooth - 6 Billion
17. TV On The Radio - Caffeinated Consciousness
18. Fleet Foxes - Battery Kinzie
19. Seryn - We Will All Be Changed
20. The Morning Benders - Little Riot
21. Andrew Bird - The Twistable, Turnable Man Returns
22. Yellow Ostrich - WHALE
23. Lykke Li - Sadness Is A Blessing

Zach's Notes:
1. A modern patriot, I suppose
4. Crude, but catchy
5. One of the best starting lines of any song.
8. Who can't get enough Florence these days?
10. If you don't like this song, listen to it 4 times. According to Mark, you'll like it by then.
11. On the radio, this is their first single from their new album
12. This band is the Pearl Jam of Canada, celebrating their 20th year together with a new album. This is the first I've heard of them, but I love this song.
13. Great/Awful band name
14. I love the fuzzy, dark 90s sound
18. And the clean, folk Americana sound
19. This song snuck up on me and is incredible
22. This song was a hit at our Frisbee Tournament since our mascot was a giant, inflatable Shamu.
23. Second month in a row to end with a sultry Lykke Li number.

Catch Up

Oh, you poor, neglected blog. I'm surprised you're still here like an old, loyal dog and haven't trashed the place in my absence.

Anyway, school is out, summer is here, and I have absolutely zero intentions of slowing down. I've already been rafting, fishing, camping, hiking, grilling, driving, running, swimming, and climbing. This weekend I am going to run up to Fairbanks for my first Ultimate Frisbee Hat Tournament.

However, the music has still been pretty active. April has been done and ready to go for a while and May is being worked on currently. Plus, it's the season of Honorable Mentions for those who have been especially active in my life recently. I'm hoping to have them all mailed out by Friday or early next week.

The lovely Jackie Bordak has graciously reminded me that I have yet to post the March 2011 tracklist. So, here goes!

1. PS I Love You featuring Diamond Rings - Leftovers
2. Foo Fighters - Rope
3. Elbow - Neat Little Rows
4. Young Buffalo - Only We Can Keep You From Harm
5. TV On The Radio - Will Do
6. The Asteroids Galaxy Tour - The Golden Age
7. Say Hi - Take Ya' Dancin'
8. The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness
9. Architecture in Helsinki - Contact High
10. Cake - Long Time
11. Bright Eyes - Shell Game
12. Oregon Bike Trails - High School Lover
13. Middle Brother - Middle Brother
14. Fishboy - Aaron The Afterthought Astronaut
15. Those Dancing Days - I'll Be Yours
16. The Dodos - Black Night
17. The Decemberists - Don't Carry It All
18. Fire is Motion - Smile, It Makes This Easier
19. My Little Pony - A Miracle
20. Jessica Lea Mayfield - Blue Skies Again
21. Lykke Li - Love Out Of Lust

Zach's Notes
2. New album, same sound. If I could hang out with one living person for the day it would be Dave Grohl.
3. I'm pretty sure Nick Smith tried to get me to listen to these guys years ago and I didn't like it or didn't want to and now I love 'em. Go figure.
4. I love the build-up and how one little word changes the emotions of the song
5. A great effing song!
6. As seen on a Heineken commercial I believe
8. New album just dropped and this is the title track. It's been 5 years and this single makes it seem like the wait may have been worth it.
10. Great song by a Great band
11. Yeah, yeah...I give up. I like his new album.
16. Crank this one up. So good!
17. This is my current choice for my personal SONG OF 2011.
19. A cute and well-written love song.