Tuesday, December 24, 2024

2024 Card-vent Calendar: December 24

December 24, 2024:
2000 Upper Deck #FT11 Nomar Garciaparra Five-Tool Talents
This is kind of a weird card to end the calendar on.  There's nothing Christmassy about it.  It's just Nomar pointing at a pop-up.  Whenever Nomar is mentioned, I always think about this book.
This was a book from, what, TWO reading series ago?  For those of you not in the biz, this is called a leveled reader.  Back when we used this Houghton Mifflin series, each main story in the reading book would be paired with three different leveled readers.  These were stories that matched the main story thematically and incorporated the same vocabulary.  Each reader was written at a different difficulty level, either at grade level, below grade level for struggling readers, or above grade level for kids who needed something more challenging.
 
Our current reading series is a piece of shit.  We're using HMH Into Reading.  Same company, shittier product.  The basal reader is fairly decent, has interesting stories that the kids seem to enjoy.  But the leveled readers are garbage.  They're just random sets of books that have no relation to the main stories, either in theme or vocabulary.  They're kept in these blue burlap totes that are falling apart despite remaining untouched for most of the year.  I keep them on a shelf for display purposes in case a bigwig with a do-nothing job walks into my classroom carrying a clipboard.  (Guess what, motherfucker?  I carry a clipboard everywhere I go, too!  Your not-working-with-children, haven't-been-a-teacher-since-1999-looking-ass wants to take some notes, I'll take some notes, too.)  Every summer I pick them up and store them on a different shelf, and they leave behind these piles of blue powder that have been shed from the totes.  It's a bit alarming that they're decomposing as such.  I wonder how toxic that stuff is.  During the school year, the children like to put their candy wrappers in the totes as an alternative to throwing them away properly.  I like where their heads are at, putting garbage among other garbage, but I officially discourage this practice.

In any case, I just wish we could have books like Mia and Nomar back.  Not this Rigby Reader crap.
And tomorrow... a savior.

2 comments:

  1. It bugs me so much when they reverse the order of the people in the caption like that. Either put Nomar on the right or call it Nomar and Mia for f's sake.

    Anyway, Nomar was a good player. Decent pull.

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  2. Love the clipboard comment! Thanks for speaking truths... and cracking me up on Christmas Eve. And in case you don't write a post tomorrow... or in case I don't get around to reading it in time... Merry Christmas!

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