why I teach

Today was a day that for every class I 'taught' I demonstrated another reason that I may not want to consider teaching as a career - it was just an 'off' day. So when I came home and had these pictures taken yesterday during Sunday School in my email, the timing was perfect. This is DJ and me. Every day that he is in Sunday School he encourages me with his answers to questions to the class. He is insightful and honest as only kids can be. He was also, this Sunday, helpful in letting me know that if I saw a black patrol car on the way to church it was definitely a sheriff's car. His mom told me later that he plans on working for the city police as well as the county and he is a bit concerned about where he will park all the vehicles.This picture looks good, even if I'm not looking at all. The class went out to the playground and we acted out our story for the day. (For reasons that will be apparent, we read the story prior to coming outside to act it out.)
One night after Christ had risen from the dead, the disciples fished all night, but with no luck. Many of the disciples had been fisherman before Christ had called them, so they were very good at it. But all night (according to the pictures in our book) they had caught only weeds and a shoe, but no fish. In the morning they saw Jesus on the shore. He told them to lower their nets on the other side of the boat. They listened to him and brought in a net-breaking haul. They had breakfast with Jesus and then went hiking up a mountain. From there he left them to rise into the air and go to heaven.
So we climbed up in the jungle-gym, our boat. We threw a laundry basket with ropes attached overboard and hauled up our 'catch'. It took us several tries and repositioning to the top of the boat before we learned how to haul up the 'net' without flipping it over before it could be reached over the railing (or under the platform). Because my helper, Josh, often seems to think on the same wavelength (or even slightly before the same wavelength) as me we also hauled up a shoe. Then Josh, with his great multi-tasking abilities, acted the role of Christ and stood on the shoreline. He told us to the throw the basket (er - net) over the other side of the 'boat'. I led the grumbling and the catty remarks that we knew how to fish and that if we had not caught anything all night it was not going to change now. We threw the basket and Josh changed roles again to load it up with the construction paper fish that we had made for the exercise. It was a windy day and many of our fish blew out of the net and had to be chased down. Somewhere in there I attempted to remind them to listen to Jesus even when it might not seem to make sense. Immediately following our grand 'catch of the day' one of the parents came and took pictures on our 'boat'. It was fiercely bright out (perhaps that is why the fish were not where we could net them), but I like the pictures.

from behind the daffodils

Just looking at this picture makes me feel ticks crawling all over me.

have you hugged a roly-poly today?

Today I learned that it has been hypothesized that life began to leave the seas to escape an impressive, ever-increasingly-efficient predator - the shark. I now know why my sister is so completely terrified of sharks, it has to do with her ancestors' exodus to land.

And I learned that the first animals to make the journey to the land were not, as is often supposed, fish with lungs (like mud puppies) or amphibians, but pill bugs (or roly-poly-type critters). It would seem that we owe our existence as terrestrial beings to the roly-polies. This is also confirmed by the fact that Sheryl and I liked to play with them when we were little. I'm not sure that they enjoyed being played with, but we didn't ask. I am now certain that they deserve more respect than to be roly-polied and flicked about.

So I've also learned that sharks eat roly-polies - I had no idea. Pretty big day for me. Give me a few more thousand years and I'll get the entire evolutionary process figured out.

(Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 338)

bein' human not always a liability

The days at school that seem to go the best are those days when I am so ridiculously human that we can all only throw up our hands and laugh. My whole aura of 'teacher-who-has-everything-under-control' is usually lost the first day when I stutter through sentences and deliver lines inverted and inside-out. I have also proven that an effective way of distracting the students from the fact that I am trying to remember all their names as I pass out their papers is to walk into desks and chairs and, if possible, trip over things that may or may not be there. Today I was asked to cut up leftover doughnuts into pieces small enough to provide a snack for a class of 20 students. I managed the cutting part of the task successfully - carrying the box of doughnut pieces into the classroom was not so successful. Turns out that the 30 second rule applies to all forms of pastry. (The students were well aware of the fact that I had dropped the doughnuts - there was no uninformed exposure to the possible germs on the floor.)
But for all my slip-ups and ample opportunities to bring smiles to the faces of those who happened to hear what I couldn't quite say - I graded the design class's first quiz/test today, and they have learned something. I can know that they learned more from lecture than the fact that when I was 7 years old I dressed up as Princess Leah (for Halloween) and paraded through town with braided buns on my head. (The link to class was that all the walls painted in colors that advance would make the room seem smaller - like the trash compactor in Star Wars.)

yeti poops

It is a good idea to run trials of the recipes that the students will be making in foods class. Especially when I can't remember the last time that I beat egg whites - or if I have ever beaten egg whites. Tomorrow, to get practice for making angel food cakes from scratch, the class will be making meringue cookies. So this evening I got to make meringue cookies. I'm not sure what they are supposed to look like, but I have renamed them yeti poops. It would have to be a small yeti. But I think a small yeti is as likely as a large yeti.

wimps and machos

I am now two and a half weeks into my second student teaching position in Bloomer, Wisconsin. Bloomer is a larger town than Boyceville, the jump rope capital of the world, and home to Main Street Cafe which makes really good pie. The drive is longer and coming home into the warm sunshine can be quite a challenge. If it weren't for the cost of gas and the fact that I am currently not working I would completely enjoy the drive. So far my car seems to be making an effort to keep me awake. I've had oil lights flashing, the cruise control resuming at will (not my will), and strange rumblings and bumpings in the suspension. Although I have appreciated the jolts back to wakefulness, I hope that the car perseveres past 250,000.

I am listening (during this lovely commute) to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (I heard the first chapter in January) and am learning a lot of terribly useful information. I now know (but may not remember next week) that there are subatomic particles called wimps and machos - neither of which may actually exist. There is a large crater impact in Manson, IA. Australia is sinking. You should not run around Yellowstone Park in the dark without a flashlight. Mount St. Helen erupted from its side. The catastrophic destruction of the earth is 'overdue' on several fronts (or faults, supervolcanos, or meteors showers). In the twinkling of an eye a landslide carried away the tent of the parents of a family, leaving the children sleeping and unhurt. Every year 30 000 metric tons of space dust land on earth. Scientists are now more certain about the age of the earth (~4.5 billion years) than they are about what causes gravity. (although there is ample evidence of its existence). It seems reasonable to assume however that in 4.5 billion years from now - we won't be here.

The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe is some sense must have known we were coming. --Freeman Dyson