My best bud...

...turned SIX this week.  How, how, HOW is that possible?! 

 

 Love this kiddo with my whole heart, heart, heart
(and not just because he's SUPER smart, smart, smart!!)!!

(He's into rhymes these days.  :) )

 

Staff development day in the S building -- built in the 1860s for the teacher seminary.  The room is next door to S304 where I gave a lecture on the similarities and differences between
Critical Discourse Analysis and Nexus Analysis. And...both rooms are right above the room where I'll publicly defend my dissertation in 14 months.  :)

 



 

We played board games.  The purpose of playing them (aside from having lots of fun)?  To see what principles of teaching and learning we could pull out from them.  It was a really fun and engaging time -- and we actually talked a lot about teaching and learning (importance of clear directions/instructions; scaffolding the learning for a new comer to the group; peer collaboration;...)...

 

 

(just look at all the learning that was happening!!  :)  ) ...as we were learning how to play a game none of us had played before: 

 

 

"Pigs."  You rolled two plastic pigs and depending on how they landed, you score points.  Who won?  Oh, that's right.  The American!!  :)  I would have traded that win, though, for...

 

 ...Team USA beating Finland's hockey team.  But...  we won't talk about that.
(This is a picture of the Finland v. Russia game that we watched during the staff dev. day.)

 

 

 

 

Professor Coleman (now retired) and his wife Sirkka.  I met Prof. Coleman back in Oct. last year at the Invisible Multilingualism seminar we held.  He's originally from Ireland, but earned his PhD at Penn (in American history).  We met up for lunch (we'd been planning to do this for a while...and we finally coordinated schedules!) and what a wonderful visit we had (here in the main JYU library).  Sirkka is 100% Finn, Michael is 100% Irish, and I'm 1/4 Finn and 1/4 Irish.  I only wish my mom could have been there as she's 1/2 Finnish and 1/2 Irish.  Love it!! 

Dinner with the missionaries..

Lunch with Helena and Eeva...

and lunch with the Koivistos. 

LOVE THEM ALL!! 

Oh. my. goodness.

And just in case I need to allay possible concerns that it was no work and all play this week...



 

 

...Maiju (a colleague of mine) and I made small group assignments for the 33 confirmed participants at our upcoming reading group this week.  (And worked out the plan for how to connect them all -- as more than 1/2 of them are joining us virtually.)

I love this whiteboard.  But not as much as I love working with Maiju on this project!  :)

 

Our team also kicked off the Discourse Academic Writing Programme (with 11 participants spanning 10 time zones and more countries than I can remember at the moment..).  KUDDOS to the participant from the Monterrey Institute in California who had to be online at 4am his time (as it was 2pm here).  THAT is dedication.)

 

Happy birthday to my best bud in the whole wide world!!