Things they don't tell you #2...

2. Letting students sit around for the last 15 minutes of class results in chaos!

Yesterday I was rushing through my lesson, nervously looking at the clock thinking I only had 5 minutes to wrap up everything. Ironically, we were discussing the theme the "failure of reason."
I zoomed through the reading and last minute announcements, satisfied that I had once again crammed in as much info into one 50 minute period as possible.
Students were packing their belongings up and I told them just to chill out for the remaining 60 seconds until the bell rang.
But the bell didn't ring...
I glanced back at the clock and was horrified- I had accidentally read the time wrong earlier and we still had 15 more minutes left of class!
Chaos burst down the flood gates. I tried desperately to reign students back in; read quietly, look at your grades in the back...but there was no chance coaxing these 9th grade savages back into sitting in their desks and reading demurely.
I simply had to put out fires for the remainder of class time.
Students opened the windows and were yelling outside, girls were flirtatiously hugging and snuggling up against my gangsta boys, people were milling around, laughing and arguing. It sounds painfully typical for high schoolers, which it is, but monitoring these hormone-bursting teenagers is enough to make me feel schizophrenic.
Moral of the story- fill up your class time.

Things they don't tell you in Teacher Education courses...

1. students don't keep or look at the copies you make them (so don't waste paper on high schoolers!)
instead they use all your precious white paper to do the following:
a) make origami
b) write notes to friends
c) rip it up
d) step on it and leave it strewn about the classroom
e) fold up into odd shapes to stick in their back pocket or backpack
(Bare with me and try to imagine a gangsta wanna be high school boy with a week's worth of homework assignments folded up into quatrains and stuffed in his pants- nice organization; or the girl who has crumpled up all of her assignments and shoved them into her backpack so that it looks like she is carrying around a satchel of trash- awesome!)

I'm back...barely

Ok- I am back to blogging.
This will be my cartharsis for student teaching, which more or less has been shattering my sense of self-worth.
What fantastic fun.

But I am ready to stop beating myself up, receive some grace, gain some perspective, and humility. These are my strategies for climbing out of a student teaching sink hole:
1. exercise daily- or at least go outside each day.
2. plan a week in advance on Thursday nights.
3. seek out support from older and wiser people.
4. write down things that I do well.
5. ask for more student feedback.

and work on remembering:
1. the job of savior is already taken (and I suck at it anyway...)
2. i am not responsible for student performance; students are responsible for their own choices and learning.
3. i am not in control
4. i cannot prove my self-worth by what i do or do not do.
5. for every winter there is a spring

falling

Hope is almost beyond my grasp these days. The death of a beloved mentor has hit me unexpectedly hard. Grief seems to find me in every crack and crevice. Just today more news: my pastor's father died moments before she could make it to his bedside.

There are rivers of tears falling down on us all.

Yet, when I was reading the book of Common Prayer the other day, it said that the liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy.
This thought has kept me thinking all week. The liturgy for the dead is a celebration! How can we be expected to celebrate in moments of our deepest grief?

I am not sure how- but I believe that it everything to do with resurrection. The liturgy for the dead is characterized by joy in the certainty that because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.
New life comes from death-
always.

hope

Exodus 14:14

The Lord will fight for you while you keep still.

the glory of god

"the glory of god is man fully alive"
~St Irenaeus

thought for the day: what does it mean to be fully alive?