back to the writing board.....

     it's been a long time since i wrote on this blog. five years by the look of the last post. and life is very different. some things are better in ways one would never imagine. some things are harder than the five years ago me expected them to be.
     
     a new house. a new job. a new niece. and renewed and fresh relationships that have changed me personally. have made me look at life with new eyes. so i am back to writing. it is one of my great loves and i now i have new things to say.

holding my breath

i love "the office". i am addicted to dwight schrute's love of beets and black bears ("bears, beets, battlestar galactica"). i can't get enough of kelly's annoying chatter ("fashion show, fashion show, fashion show at lunch") and kevin's hysterical laugh ("i don't have a lot of art in my house"). michael's stupidity is at times annoying, but mostly chuckle worthy (a.k.a the bird funeral in the parking lot). but mostly, well, really, totally, i tune in every thursday because i think jim halpert and pam beasley are adorable. i have been crossing my fingers this whole season that SOMETHING would happen in the finale. i was holding my breath- knowing that a lot can happen in 28 seconds (please refer to the last show of season two). so last night i waited and watched. i laughed and rolled my eyes. i gasped and pounded a pillow and wailed in the phone to my sister. and just when i thought all was lost... there he was asking about dinner plans. i don't know what so intrigues me about this show about nothing. but whatever the draw, i can rest easy today and the rest of summer. karen's gone, roy's gone. pam and jim are back. :)

pleased as punch

no alternate. no nationals. no honorable-mention. but i am pleased beyond words with the way the girls performed, answered questions, responded to stress and disappointment.God blessed them with the best job they had done since the beginning, and after severe script changes and intense research, they really did the best they could. judges sheets will arrive later this week. but they are winners in my book. i didn't have strings i could pull ( as some stories were floating around the competition). i don't know someone who knows someone ( as many of them do). i don't wave at the president of the organization from the balcony ( as some did waiting for the awards to begin). we know nobody important, we just worked hard in our own standing. it may not get you to national history day, but it doesn't matter. they are winners to those who matter! congrats to the titanic twins !! :)

Drum Roll, Please...

well, the weekend has arrived. this evening around 9:00 p.m., jeremy, andrea, annee and i will leave for columbus, for on the morrow, the girls will perform "The Titanic: The Triumph of Enduring Legacy, the Tragedy of a World's Dream" state competition-
9:40 a.m.- room 407B- Columbus University. pray that all goes well. pray that their anotated bibliography is correct. pray that i don't freak out unnecessarily ( not that i have ever been prone to such immature behavior :) :O) i will now go spray adhesive a list of passengers onto science project boards and then buy some black folders to hold the all important process papers. keep that drum roll going...i will soon return with news :)

Stuck In Some Blasted Tape

who's bright idea was it to charter this bitty, struggling, everyone already overworked school? i am thankful for our government. i am thankful for our president. i am thankful for our country... i am not thankful (though i know in my deepest heart that i should be) for the miles upon miles of sticky, red tape that these agencies make us crawl through. no wonder it's red- that's all the blood that has been shed throughout the years trying to understand legal jargon that means nothing in the end. and who would have thought that anyone would have time to read through our tiny-towned Christian school's daily log sheets anyway? i mean who knows how many exact minutes we spend on "student and other stakeholder focus" each day? and why isn't teaching considered a student focus? and why is there a 30 page "pamphlet" to explain how i need to explain how i work each day? i have a sneaky suspicion that after the 5 hours it is going to take me to fill out these logs sheets, they will find their final resting place in a folder labeled "some school, somewhere" under a two foot stack of papers on some bureaucrat's desk, where he will decidedly ignore the stack of stuff wherein lies our years inventory of teaching and decide he would rather have a coffee instead. he'll shuffle around a few more piles, our critically important log sheets will be covered by more expendable folders and documents, he will leave feeling satisfied that he has done his work for the day and no one will ever know how many moments i used on this day, may 2, to "use data to improve performance results", "plan strategically and improve continuously", or " evaluate and intervene". no one will ever know, except my students; and they don't want a log sheet.

six princesses, persuasion, and a rousing game of moods

sometimes it is nice when someone says "you have been working very hard- how about a play date?" that was the invitation i offered to my speech class today. after a week of incesent note taking, writing and identifying propositions, working on deduction, recognizing propoganda, handing in rough outlines, taking two quizzes and being assigned in-class work, i could tell they needed a break.

so since it was richelle's birthday, we had a party day complete with disney princess napkins, plates and blowers ( it was the theme she wanted ). then we played moods and laughed about saying "To be or not to be" in an embarrased way or "Girls dig me" in a girlish way.i'm sure it helped them with characterization and portraying proper emotion, but we didn't talk about how it was educating them, we just had fun.

so for a moment, we got to play.... now i will prepare to teach a 10th grade girl how to speak with an irish accent, make copies of health test chapter 10, grab a piccalo and flute to show in music class, and try to get some worksheets graded. funny, though, i feel quite refreshed. no wonder children like recess ! :)

a titanic undertaking

i have the capabilities of becoming intense. i will admit it. there are times when it is helpful and times when it definately has cost me something. three months ago when our history teacher asked me to help a duo of sophomore girls with a dramatic presentation to enter at history day, i was a little underwhelmed. it was a history day project- a little research, a little writing, a litte memorizing. but as the days progressed, i became wrapped up in the story of the these two girls who were on the titanic. i wrote a script. i stayed after school for hours working on timing and emotion and blocking and then we went to local competition. any speech person will understand my jerk reaction was to grab the judges comment sheet before reading anything else and hide myself in a corner, frantically reading what they liked, what they didn't. superior rating. going to state. BIG problems with the script and paper. so i sat down with the girls. said that it was their choice- go to state with the requirement that we rework everything they had already done, go to state keeping everything just as it was knowing we wouldn't be competitive, or just not go at all.

they chose option number one.

so i came back to school the next monday and researched and re-wrote the script and gave them copies. i said " we have five weeks till state- there is a lot to do but it is managable" so one week went by, then two, then three.

now we are at week four.

i have two sophomore girls with a brand new script that haven't even begun fixing their process paper or their bibliography. these girls have fair animals to keep, two sports practices, jobs after school, youth group responsibilites, oh, and school work to do. so i sit them down and say , " you have to do this right or we're not doing it. this new script requires a lot more from you than the first one."
and then i look at their faces and realize what i must look like to them. an woman obsessed with a project that i am only supposed to coaching- not dictating. i take a breath, say a prayer and apologize for raining my intensity on their heads instead of encouragement.

so today we begin to memorize, block, practice our new titanic script to present at state next saturday morning. it is a titanic undertaking.