Sunday Mornings

I love this little space of time after I wake up and before church starts. It's usually two hours of getting breakfast, getting ready, reading, and listening to Fernando Ortega. Sometimes I write. This time is uninhibited by the matters of my upcoming week. As a teacher, not planning/grading on Sundays is very tough, but I save that stress for later in the day. Right now I just want to smile, drink tea, reflect on the Lord's goodness and be content. 

Teacher Gushing 2

Dear student, 

Who told you to become a reader last summer? When did you finally obliterate the barricade between you and literature? How did you figure out that reading excerpts from a standardized computer test wasn't real reading? Didn't involve self-discovery, didn't have an authentic purpose, was supposedly the "best" of what's out there spanning a century but didn't speak to you? How did you come upon the first lines of a novel and let it entangle your mind into its world? 

In any case, I stand at the floodgates of this world to welcome you, as I was once welcomed, too, by Ramona Quimby, Amber Brown, Kit Kitredge, Hemingway, Stephen King, Elna Baker, Barrie's Peter Pan, Twain, Austen and so, so many more. 

I am proud of you.

Teacher Gushing

Here's something. I often have these really great moments teaching, but the day moves too quickly to relate them to another staff member or even my friends or family, and in turn I just forget about them. I've thought about doing this before, writing about them, but I have reservations. I intend for no student to be singled out or embarrassed by what I write. And I know...not all my thoughts need to be handed out to the public, but some moments can't go unnoticed. So against my better judgment, I'm going to write about them because what is life if you can't gush about what you love?

 1) I'm teaching a poetry unit, which I've loved teaching every year. I write with them, and they get excited about it, though they mostly won't confess it. One assignment is to take a well known poem and read it with dramatic pauses, voice, and emphasis. She read "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath. It was read so well, Plath herself may as well have been standing behind my podium bleeding her heart out to us. Her tone was somber, bitter, angered, and spent. Bravo, student. Just outstanding. 

2) Also to do with poetry. Two guys teamed up. One wrote the optimist's perspective, and one wrote the pessimist's perspective. The latter took all the gravest thoughts of depression and condensed them into this poem. Though it was intentionally written to depress the crowds, it was still heartfelt. I don't have it in print, but he wrote something about engraving a painting of scars on a body canvass, though he put it much, much better. I love that he wrote to a self-imposed standard.

3) During a study hall I discovered a student and I have many similar tastes. A connoisseur on all items YouTube, fanfiction, 80s and 90s alternative music, he aptly fits my weird standards for conversation and helped add to a list of best worst songs of all time, which I'd already begun with a couple other students two years ago. 

          A. "Take Me on"

          B. "He Needs Me"

          C. "Pop Goes My Heart"

          D. "Tablecloth"

          E. "Burning Down the House"

          F. Uncle Jesse's "Forever"

          G. Kip's Marriage Song "Technology"

          H. "I am a Vampire"

Etc.