“When can we start listening to Christmas music?” a student asked. “After Thanksgiving and not a day before!” I barked. (Wow, don’t ask the teacher that question again.) No holiday jumping in this house, people. (Although my husband would like to point out that I will demand a trip to the forest for a Christmas…
One of my students couldn’t find something of his in the classroom a few days ago, and I have to confess that I told him flat out, “Guys can’t find things.” “Thanks a lot,” he said. His indignation was justified, since I had just thrown all men under the bus. But then I went to…
I won’t blame those freshmen guys for yawning all the way through my class. It was 2:00 in the afternoon, and they had started the day with a before-school basketball practice. It was a grueling first week in their new schedule, to say nothing of the fact that it was the end of the quarter…
Matt and I are very smart people. We make it our goal not to own anything too complicated or fancy, because with the ownership comes breakdowns and repair bills, which we cannot afford. For example, it’s good to know someone who owns an expensive boat and maybe sometime they’ll invite you to go to the…
I’ve been quiet on the blog here for a few weeks, because the Lord and I have been in conference behind closed doors. The question I brought to the table was about my success as a writer, and by that I mean how many. In the professional writing world, everything revolves around how many. Publishers…
We do a lot of coloring in my first-year Spanish class. It’s partly because markers make me happy and partly because my first-year students are learning basic vocabulary that lends itself to association with pictures. On Monday, I gave my students a primary color wheel, with a few empty circles down on the bottom where…
At the end of a long day, they gathered all of us kids around a huge fireplace at Quaker Ridge Camp in Colorado. It was the middle of summer, but this was a camp high in elevation that looked out over Pike’s Peak, so we came to the gathering place with our sweatshirts and wrapped…
I was having some ridiculously petty thoughts yesterday, and do you mind if I don’t tell you what they were? They swirled around disappointment and frustration, ending in a big pile of self-pity. (Just so you know, I’m 69 chapters into reading the Psalms and have noticed that David sings the same song over and…
There is a button on Facebook that says “Hide Post,” and I have been clicking it more often during the last few weeks. There are so many pictures of our two presidential candidates, and when I see their faces I feel emotionally assaulted by the anger and harshness in their expressions. My point is going…
You can name it two ways. Call it ditzy or call it creative. Call it a deficit or call it gifted. My son and I often laugh, because we both suffer from the same illness. We are on our way to do a task, but then our imaginations hijack us. For him it looks like…
Today is music Tuesday in my classroom. Can you hear my students cheering? Music Tuesday is enjoyable, because it means doing work that feels more like taking a break. In front of them, students have a page where they slowly, over several weeks, fill in the lyrics to a worship song. Every week I give…
I don’t know if I’ve ever clarified this before, but this blog is for those who often feel unsettled and a little desperate. You even-keeled folks are welcome to join us, of course, but you may not understand. That said, I shall now tell you how I arrived at my quiet time with the Lord yesterday…
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