Pure Manaʻo

1. Listen attentively for 10 minutes Presenters: welcome to your worst teaching nightmare. Teachers learn how to be antsy from their students. If you have a lot of middle school teachers, expect them to act like middle schoolers, ADHD disorders and all. You have 10 minutes to hook us and we want to get up, move and be active every half hour. 2. Talk to our neighbor while the presenter is still talking This practice is a natural way for teachers to use each other as a sounding board for the connections they are making to their own teaching (or they're just gossiping). If you can't tell the difference between productive noise and idle gossip, you need to go back to the classroom and practice. 3. Text and read posts When speakers talk about another author, or another concept, we get on our smart phones and look up the links so we can expand our knowledge immediately. (Or we're blogging or catching up on our email). Don't be offended. Only kick us out if we don't realiz...

Summer Olympics 08 is over and there's definitely a hole in our TV line up after 2 weeks of sleeping late and waking up early to watch the Olympics. I'm not really a sports junkie, but I do love the drama, the personal stories and the beauty of exertion, triumph and sorrow. Yes, I'm proud to be an American, but I'm more proud of being a Hawaiian (I mean in location, not in koko). It seems like Hawaii has its own sports factory. Perhaps it's our year-round sports-playing weather, but I think it's a tribute to these moms and dads who volunteer to coach in all-play programs like AYSO, little league, bobby sox, etc. For a small group of islands with limited access to outside competition, we do really well on all levels - from little league to the Olympics.      Maybe we won't do as well in the 2010 winter Olympics in Whistler, but let's support our athletes, buy the kalua pig tickets, watch the high school and pop warner games, so that when the 2012 Olympics...

Diva shoes Ken trying on my diva shoes surrounded by my other diva shoes. No fit! People around me this week have been having really bad days, bad seconds, bad hours, bad weeks, bad months, bad years. . .bad decades! So what if you have to work with morons, or some idiot keyed your car, or the neighbor's dog keeps pooping in your yard, or no one seems to know how to change the toilet paper roll except you. . .life's tough! After years of taping the Oprah show, subscribing to O Magazine, listening to the podcasts, I've learned a little bit about not getting your panties in a bunch over the stupid things that other people do. I realize, after thousands of dollars worth of biblio and tv therapy, that I already had the solution for all this strife. Everything I needed to know, I learned on the Olomana Girl's Home softball field. Lesson one, when you have pilikia, never take it personally. You are AWESOME and people are HATERS! Like crabs in a bucket, people will always try...

Michael Phelps , Beijing Summer Olympics '08 I am an Olympics freak. I love the Olympics, from badminton to basketball, synchronized platform diving to singles synchronized swimming. Yes, there is synchronized swimming singles. The Olympics captures all our athletic dreams. When I was in high school, I watched the '84 Olympics and decided that in order for me to be an Olympian, I would need to find a team handball club in Hawaii. I looked it up during my senior year and the national team practiced in Oregon. I never did get to Oregon, but when I watch the Olympics, I still think maybe I could have, if I would have. . . right. Now that I'm older, unless hanafuda were an Olympic sport, I don't think I could qualify for anything. How about full contact origami? I have anger issues, I could succeed in that. Actually, I've been more interested in watching the parents of the Olympians. I notice that when Michael Phelps wins (so far he has 11 gold medals), he looks for hi...

Ok, it's not a battle, but after being married for 20 years, I realize that there are some things that fall into the "mom's job" category, and there are some things that are strictly dad's domain. Mom's job is to find things. For 20 years I have lived in a male dominant household. The fact that the majority of the toilet seats in my house remain in the down position is a testament of the power of the one and only alpha female. However, what I can't do is teach my children (and my husband) how to do what I call "mom looking" versus "man looking." I don't need to explain this for the moms. They know exactly what I'm talking about. The guys are slower to catch on. I'll type s-l-o-w-l-y. Here's a typical "man looking" conversation: "mom! (or Cat!), where's the ______ (insert anything from socks to the car)?" "It's in the _________ (insert my instructions like refrigerator, garage, o...

I'd have to recheck with my mom, but I'm pretty sure I was a good kid, even as a teenager. I never got detention except a few times in the hs dorms as a freshman until I figured out the system. I never got suspended and I definitely never had the principal calling my parents from school. In fact, I think I was quite angelic as a teenager, and the pride of my parents' eyes. I played sports, drove responsibly, made curfew, had honor roll grades, and was basically a gift. I'm only saying this because I just got a call from the principal and my son, a junior now, already has detention for his hair color. It's not that he's never had detention for his hair. He's quite a regular at the cafeteria for his hair being too long (bangs over his eyebrows, or touching his collar, or covering his ears, or color, etc.) The difference is that this is the FIRST day of school. OK, so I knew when I got the message from the principal that it would probably be his hair. See, I wo...