Tag Archives: God

TeacherDiaries: YOLO. You Only Latin Once. (The one where I leave my job)

Posted in children, Coaching, education, growing older., life, teaching, work by

one of my favorite memories

one of my favorite memories

I started my unexpected teaching career with nothing: I didn’t know Latin, I’d never taught, never even been in a private school, wasn’t affiliated with the church…In my interview, I literally told the principal “I don’t know why you’d hire me, but I love Jesus, kids, and languages, so I think this could all work out.”

And it did. I rebuilt the Latin and Spanish curriculums, created a drama program, got my credential, coached the volleyball team, and planted deep roots into the community at my school.

When I talked to my students about leaving, they asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know who would teach Spanish, Drama, coach volleyball. Who would throw pens at them. Who would demand they say “please?” at the end of every sentence. Who would teach them silly songs about frogs who love Jesus. Who would put together weird vocabulary slideshows. Who would youtube videos of puppies when we’d had a particularly rough day.

They said a lot of nice words…I got many hugs and nice cards that I will keep forever. Some even made me a video impersonating me! They demanded my boyfriend’s email address so they could write strongly worded letters. Some cried in my arms or made cookies.

<3

<3

It was overwhelming to feel so loved and to know I will be missed. Lots of times, as a teacher, I feel like I only heard concerns from parents, or heard students’ sighs about homework, or felt the time-suck of staff meetings, endless emails, correcting papers, cleaning, discipline, and all the mundane things no one tells you will really make up the bulk of your life.

Sometimes I just felt like a girl pretending to be an adult, trying to make kids care about a subject they just don’t care about. I know my students love me, but very few out of the 130 I teach actually love the Latin language. It was emotionally exhausting to drag the rest of them, kicking and screaming, through the worlds of vocabulary, declensions, verb tenses, and sentence drills.

And so I things like tell endless pirate jokes, or play pranks on them, or knock their pens off their desks, or steal their notebooks and write notes inside, or show youtubes of baby ducks. And so we made a fun, little family in my classroom-built-to-be-a-closet. And now I am struck by the idea that I have known these faces for three years, but perhaps will never see them ever again. (To be honest, with some students/parents, this is a rather comforting thought! :) ) But I will never know how they grow up, how they look without braces, if they will remember me, if they made good choices in high school. If they ever realized how special and beautiful and loved they were.

Spirit Week!

Spirit Week!

I have learned a lot these last four years. There are many things I wish I had done differently/would have known before I started, and many moments I wish I could do-over. But I don’t have a whole lot of regrets. Afterall, YOLO. (You Only Latin Once!)

What I do have are memories and tears. After I cleaned out my room, and handed in my keys, had my exit interview and got in the car, I just wept. I wept to think that someone else would be sitting in my desk come August, and teaching all the curriculum I worked so hard to develop. And I cried to think of all my kids and how I would miss them. I cried to think of leaving all my friends I have made…friends so close that I ran out of the building, afraid to say goodbye, because I knew it would hurt my heart.

But I think it is so hard because I have loved it. And that is a good, sweet thing. I question my decision to leave every hour or so, and the true test will come in August, when my co-workers head back and I…figure out what God has planned for me. No matter what, I will always be so grateful for the chance my school took on me, and for the many students who came into my classroom each year, changing my life forever.

Some Highlights of the Last Four Years!

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BookReview: A Year of Biblical Womanhood – an Unexpected LOL.

Posted in education, Jesus, life, love, writing by

biblical womanMy boyfriend went to Canada a few weeks ago, and told me over the phone he had bought me a present that he couldn’t wait to give to me upon his return. I have visions of cute little maple-leaf things, weird Canadian chips (I love international chips!), or some Mountie Christmas ornament. I am very easy to please when it comes to gifts.

But instead, he told me that he had knew I loved God, and blogs, and sarcasm, and so he had bought me a book that combined all three. And the author’s name was Rachel. Brilliant.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood.

This woman, Rachel Held Evans, who might just be my long-lost twin, embarks on a year-long journey that explores every single thing the Bible says about women. She is mostly doing this to procrastinate against the childbearing her well-intentioned Christian friends think it’s time she get down to business about. And because her mother thought it was a crazy idea. I resonate SO much with that! haha.

She compiles a list of all the sometimes lovely and sometimes strange commands the Bible has about women, divides them by theme and attempts a certain group of them each month. Things like:

  • calling her husband “master”
  • rising before dawn and working well into the night
  • investing in real estate
  • observing specific holidays
  • praise her husband at the city gate
  • care for widows and orphans
  • long periods of silence
  • considering herself “unclean” while menstruating…ie sleeping in a tent outside her home while on her period
  • spending time on the roof in reflection over sins she commits
  • not cutting her hair, as it is her jewel
  • covering her head during prayer
  • making all food from scratch
  • and much, much more.
A Quiverfull family

A Quiverfull family

She connects with randoms on her blog, rabbis, Benedictine monks, the Amish, Quiverfull families, sisterwives, etc., to learn more about how they feel they follow what’s outlined as “Biblical Womanhood.” She retells the stories of the women in the Bible, who are often nameless, who are often overlooked and forgotten in our whole church bible studies, relegated to “Women’s Retreat material,” and helps us to see how radical Jesus was, not just for including women in the religious dialogue for the first time, but for raising their status in a time and place and culture where they were separated at the temple, uneducated, property of men, nameless in most documents, and considered unreliable witnesses.

Did you know that the first person to whom Jesus reveals he is the Messiah is a woman? Remember how the first people to see him after he rose from the dead were women? How he allowed women to sit at his feet and learn from the ultimate rabbi, even when dinner was not yet prepared? How he healed so many women from diseases that had kept them from society and normal lives? How he called the Christians to care for the widows, who in many cases were cast in the streets, forced into prostitution to survive, left forgotten to die?

I have never heard a sermon about any of these things. All my sermons have been from men. It’s not their fault I’ve never heard it, but it is wild to me that as a 29 year old, educated, lifelong Christian, this was a complete revelation to me.

The way that Christianity changed the treatment of and attitude towards women beginning in the 1st century is staggering, but because we read the Bible through the lens of the 20th+ century, it sounds sexist and oppressive, and we don’t look at the verses within the historical context and cultural context in which they were written. We try to interpret the Word of God literally, black and white, legalizing the words that Paul was writing in a personal letter, and pick and choose which verses to make the law.

I love this guy.

I love this guy.

I laughed out loud more than I have at a book in a long time. I teared up. I learned. And I thought deeply about what it means to truly be a woman in the church we have today. I marveled at the women of the Bible in a completely new way.

I really resonated with what seemed to be her overall lesson in her experience – as Christians, we can’t get bogged down in these details of interpretations of things. We have to just run after Jesus. She admitted that she had looked down upon people who interpreted parts of the Bible in different ways than she did. As Christians, we often take this to a far, far extreme, and we alienate not only each other, but everyone on the outside looking in. We look like angry, hypocritical, unloving people no one is going to be interested in getting to know.

Anyway. Go read it. You can actually head to her blog, sign up for an email subscription, and receive a free electronic download of the first bit of the book. Love it or hate it, I guarantee you won’t be able to put it down.

http://rachelheldevans.com/biblical-womanhood

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Teacher Diaries: What a Husband Looks Like (according to junior highers)

Posted in boys, children, education, Jesus, life, love, teaching by

So I was trying a new vocabulary exercise today in my 8th grade Latin class. We rolled a die (actually it was a virtual die I pressed on my smartboard) and there was a different activity assigned for each number on the die, and we had to do it for whatever word a student chose. For example, we rolled a 1 and had to draw a picture, 2 wrote a sentence, 3 wrote a synonym, etc.

The word that came up was “maritus” which means “husband.” For this word, I told the students that they had to write three sentences about how they would either be a great husband, or what they wanted in their dream husband.

Here are the results from the girls on their future dream husbands:

  •  Godly, loving, handsome.
  • He can cook, he is loving and puts others before himself, he is successful.
  • He’s godly, tall, and hot.
  • English: Taylor Lautner at 2009 Comic-Con Inte...I want my husband to be hot, also very strong and buys me anything I want. Also a Christian.
  • My husband is sweet and loving. He gives me roses everyday and lets me buy what I want. Also he is Taylor Lautner.
  • Smart, Christian, trustworthy.
  • My husband will be a baseball player. He will laugh and smile a lot. He will love to make me smile.

The boys said:

  • I will work all day. Buy chocolates. Buy flowers.
  • Discount Flower Delivery Detroit 3 Dozen Red...I shall make her breakfast in bed. I shall love her. I shall protect her soul.
  • I will be kind and loving. I will assist her with chores. I will work hard to provide for the family.
  • I will give her flowers. I will cook for her. I will be nice.
  • I will give her access to the bank account. I will love her unconditionally. I will love God.
  • I will give her flowers and bribe her to make me a sandwich.
  • I wouldn’t kill her. I wouldn’t sell her. I would allow her to breathe.

Sometimes my students are so wise.

Sometimes.

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It’s a Saturday night (296)

Posted in children, family, growing older., life, love by

this morning I checked my stats, just chilling on my phone, checking me stats as I went pee (what kind of world do we live in where I take my cell phone to go pee? like i might get bored in 20 seconds?) and I had over 800 hits on my blog, at 8am on a Saturday morning, because of search engine hits for two Chinese characters, that I don’t know what they mean, that lead these 800 people to a blog I wrote in April of 2011 about going to science camp with my eighth graders.

so…what’s going on in china that they are interested in christian camps in santa cruz?? i do not know.

tonight my cousins and family are gathered once again in my aunt’s house in danville, going over details of my grandmother‘s funeral tomorrow. this has come to be a familiar scene this year. the wine pours, the tri-tip barbecues, we all pile on top of each other on the couch (those of us that aren’t dealing with grief in a different way) and crowd around a computer screen to watch funny youtube videos. (try “largest dead snake” and “girls summer 2011 fail compilation”)

it feels weird to be laughing when Grandma is dead. but as opposed to when my uncle died earlier this year, this feels less like a tragedy and more like relief. as i go through all the pictures of her, i realize that she hasn’t been “grandma,” in the way i will remember her, for a very long time.

standing there in the hospital room with her, holding her fingers, watching her nod and bite on her oxygen tubes…it was like i didn’t even know her. but i cried because i did know her, and hated watching her in pain, and i wanted it over. at least now it’s over. we knew she wasn’t going to get better, and she’d been declining for so long.

tomorrow at the funeral, we are doing some readings, sharing memories, and i’m singing a really funny song about baseball. i sang a song at my uncle’s funeral, and my dad asked me if i would sing at gma’s, but we realized that all she ever listened to was like npr and knbr. so i’m singing a song about baseball. here’s a clip.

tonight we hung out with some of gma’s cousins, and heard stories about her childhood we didn’t know. we looked at old black and white photos, and laughed about the little school reports she kept from each of us

“two shits of paper”

(something i wrote about an opera in third grade, and i spelled “obviously” correctly and used the word “whom” correctly. the teacher inside me swooned.)

its just weird. i think as we approach the holidays, it will get weirder. why do people die? why is there pain? why do we hurt? i know it brings us closer to God,  it makes us stronger, we value things more once we’ve lost someone. but all that sounds so cheesy and dumb when you’re actually in it.

it also makes me so scared, and paranoid. when i’m driving, i think about car accidents, or earthquakes, or crazy hurricane Sandy’s. i don’t want to live in fear. i just want to eat gma’s yummy potato casserole, drink wine, snuggle my boyfriend and cousins and sisters and cats and dogs on the couch and watch youtubes about manatees.

too much to ask?

When I Feel Sad, I Youtube Cat Videos. (291)

Posted in boys, family, growing older., life, love by

I wrote my grandma’s obituary tonight. Her death is getting more real, but still just a weird thing that happened. But it’s getting to the time when we talk about random memories of her. Like tonight, we were referencing Waterworld, and saying it was by Sizzler. And I suddenly remembered that Gma Susi loved Sizzler, and we used to go there on Sundays after church for lunch, and eat cheesy bread. And then we decided to look up Pinterest recipes on how to make cheesy bread.

There were some fitness Pinterests on my newsfeed, and that made me feel guilty. Buuuuuuut with another glass of wine, everything is just ironic.

School is going well. I am really excited to be done with my credential program, at least this portion, by December 7th. It’s going to be a freaking part-ay. Teaching is okay. Every year feels so different. Which is part of the charm. We’ve been in school for three weeks, and I’ve already had to put the fear of God into three boys in my classes. My morning clock is slowly adjusting…but there is really nothing natural in waking up at 630am, drinking a lot of coffee, and hanging out with pre-teens all day.

Boyfriends take up time. Or maybe I just didn’t realize how much time I had to myself, and now I want to spend it with someone else. You know what else boyfriends do? Make you chubby. Boys eat SO MUCH FOOD!! Of course, I speak as one who calls four chicken nuggets and a diet Coke a well-rounded dinner. But it’s going really well. I realize this is the first real, adult relationship with a guy who loves my three bigs: Jesus, Giants, Guitar. And being outdoors.

A Dental hygienist attends to a patient.

I went to the dentist, and I really like them. I mean, if they weren’t constantly putting shots into my mouth and drilling into my brain, I feel like we could be friends. They are so nice. My hygienist goes to my gym and is named Sophie, like my sister, and sometimes I want to go talk to her when I see her on the treadmill. I have apparently cracked open my tooth through grinding. So I have to go back. TWICE. Scawy.

I wonder what dentists are scared of?

Right now, my family is watching “Eating Giant Hippos,” but arguing towards watching “Women on Death Row.”

We’re a fun bunch.

Tonight we watched this cat video, and it led me to youtube the Pure Moods CD advertisement from when I was little. I was instantly transported into my childhood. Give a watch.