I saw this somewhere and the student and teacher in me appreciated it even if I don’t follow the advice to proofread enough.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Author Unknown
Filed under: Community, Cool Finds, Discipleship, Friends, FUN!, pop culture, role models, school days, Student Comments, Teaching, These are a few of my favorite things..., tmc, work
- Friday afternoon: lunch with friends who greatly impacted my life and had definite roles and investments in God leading me to be an RD
- Late Friday afternoon: coffee with a friend who has my old job
- Friday evening chat with one of my old roommies. I never see them any more :(.
- Saturday morning coffee with my dear friend , Jen Holmes.
- Saturday late afternoon headed down to Disney Day with Summer for the best Disney trip ever! I only rode one ride, but it was sooooo good to hang with Sum and to see so many other friends who were there for Disney Day.
- Saturday evening: briefly saw Laura and Adam for a minute. Thanks for the Torani syrup and the avocados :).
- Sunday afternoon: Porto’s Cuban Bakery after church with all of my old roommates. Guess I can’t say I never see them anymore.
- Sunday late afternoon: Talked with my dear former student, Anuja. So encouraging to hear her plans, dreams, and desires for college next year and for beyond college.
- Sunday evening: Time with my ARAs. I love them :).
Does it come as a surprise to anyone right now that I despirately need to do homework?
Filed under: Christian Living, Friends, FUN!, Lessons Learned, My life, Quirky, Teaching, These are a few of my favorite things..., tmc, work
Hello Friends,
If I’ve been absent, that is because the office is busy and I am about to transition from one job/lifestyle/ministry/residence to another. I’ve also been busy seeing and spending time with friends.
Here’s what I did this weekend:
- Saturday: Ate with/Prepped for a Catering Event/ Hung with the Fam of one of my best friends from high school, Laura
- Saturday Evening/ Sunday Morning: Went to visit my dear friends Rick and Esther (aka RED) who just broke my heart and moved over an hour away. Their home is going to be my new get-away. Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone who would want to track me down. I also got to see their new church which was especially fun since many of my former IBEX peeps are on staff there or go there.
- Sunday Afternoon: Shwarma and TV with my brother Jeremy
Still to come:
- Wednesday: Casual Hangout/Cooking with my intern
- Thursday: Taking Dinner to the Jones Family who I have been blessed to know over the last two years and who recently have blessed me by reminding me that God has not given me more than I can handle. I was stressing about my move and the job and all that needed to be done before the transition and then I remembered them. He just finished seminar, she a woman’s certificate program, had their third baby under the age of 3 last Friday, and are moving across country within a month to a new job, church, and life away from family to serve God in the inner city. I think I will be okay :).
- Friday: Celebrating a friend’s birthday with my dear peeps from work. Sushi? Yes, please!
- Saturday: Celebrating my wonderful housemate’s birthday. I love celebrating her birthday because A.) I’m glad she was born B.) That means she is older than me for a little over a month, making me the baby of the house, and you know how we youngest children like to play the baby card C.) I get to hang out, do fun things, and eat good food with people I like D.) All of the above.
Also very random – Over the year’s I’ve had two gray/white hairs appear each time I taught Jr. High. My first year teaching, I named one Archie and one Michael. My second year teaching, I named one Timothy and one Shane. To protect the innocent and the guilty, I have not included last names. Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed these students, but they are still to blame for my premature aging. If I always had gray hairs with 13-16 students, I wonder how many I will have when I am responsible for 80-100 students.
Anyway, For the first time, I have a white hair when not teaching. Here are the proper names I am contemplating naming it:
Jam-Packed Student Housing
Boss’s Dissertation Woes
Wading Through Applicants
Boss’s Quadrupled Responsibilities
What do you vote I name it?
On a more serious note, the speaker at TMC’s commencement this year was excellent. Here is something from his sermon that I’ve been contemplating. We will all die, but will our life and our death be to God’s glory? Could it be said of us as it was of David, “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay;” (Acts 13:36)? I can’t imagine a better Eulogy.
Happy Tuesday to you!
Filed under: Christian Living, Community, Friends, FUN!, geography / travel, My life, school days, Teaching, These are a few of my favorite things..., tmc
I’ve recently been reminiscing about my trip to Peru the summer I graduated from college, and I thought I would share a few pics here.
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- Hellooooo, Lima!
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- Me with our sweet team leader Kristi.
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- It was very clear that God had prepared us beforehand for the work he had called us to. Kristi who had done competative jumproping, put her skills to use.
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- Recess with the kindergarteners.
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- We loved every minuted of playtime on the playground.
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- Christa – such a sweetheart.
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- During snack time at their desks in the first-grade classroom, our job was to help the kids practice English. No Spanish was allowed at the school, but they especially wanted to maximize our time with the kiddos.
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- This little boy LOVED to speak Spanish. “Please try again. This time in English.”
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- My phonics training came in very handy with this little pupil who was struggling to read. He had a hard time knowing what vowels made what sounds.
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- Welcome to SueEllen’s First Grade!
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- First Grade. We spent more time with the first and sixth graders than with any of the other classes.
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- Buddies.
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- Teammates.
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- Jump!
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- The sixth grade class was thrilled to be kept after school everyday for the duration of our stay. Can you tell?
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- Conversations with the sixth grade kiddos were my favorite part of the trip. We got to talk about how to glorify God with schoolwork and why it is important. I got to work with them on grammar, and I got to attempt to answer Axel’s question: “I know that God created everything, but where did He come from? Who created him?”
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- Regis was also one of my sixth grade tutoring students. He had mean soccer skills and an inquisative mind. We had a long discussion together when he asked me, “What is faith? People talk about that word, but what is it?”
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- Another example of how God prepared us beforehand. I tutored Siwa in math. Everyone knows math is not my forte, but he happened to be in my favorite section percentages. I have that section down thanks to my amazing Jr. High math teacher Mrs. McCuller and I had the same book when I was in school, so I knew how they taught it and didn’t confuse him.
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- A Beka phonics not my fave, but working with these kiddos I enjoyed immensly.
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- Monkey bars.
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- Now you got it!
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- Christa took care of her classmate with down syndrome inspite of the other little girl yelling that Christa needed a spanking when Christa did something she didn’t like.
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- Traveling around Lima was quite entertaining. You never knew if there would be a band on the bus or even live chickens. We lived with a group of single, female teachers and were responsible for getting to and from school on our own.
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- On Our Way Home – different than when we left LA and with more friends and people we cared about than we would have imagined.
Filed under: Christian Living, Community, Discipleship, Lessons Learned, Teaching, work
More good notes from SLS class:
As a leader, whether in the classroom, in the church, or in the home there is never a moment to let down your guard. People are looking to see if you act the way you should or do you live what you claim you believe. All of us fail, but it is about consistency in repentance and truthfulness. What you do when you sin is what matters? Consistency is not about being perfect, but is the rhythm and tempo of your life moving in the upward call of Christ?
Happy first day of classes! If you are interested in the four kinds of students described in the Talmud, click here. What kind are you?
This list of Methods of Instruction comes from Counseling: How to Counsel Biblically, but it is good to apply to the classroom. The definitions were altered for classroom use.
- lecture: monologue on a particular issue
- observation: teach by example
- experience: learn by doing
- research: study assignments on a topic
- discussion: talking openly, a dialogue
- questions: Socratic method, lead students to conclusions
- assignments: read books, homework, essays
- evaluation: evaluate and assess a statement, idea, or practice
- self-disclosure: relate personal experiences relevant to topic
- role-playing: act out
- interview: ask others questions who are knowledgeable in a particular area
Wayne Mack then writes, “Using a wide variety of instructional methods is helpful because people learn in many different ways, and some people learn better in one way than another” (173).
This prompted me to ask how I did in those areas as a formal teacher. Here are my thoughts:
- lecture: I did this a lot. When I first started teaching 8 years ago, this is all I did. I thought this was equivalent to teaching. Lecture is helpful, but it is more of an American idea of education. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I think there is something wrong with only using this method. A+
- observation: I used this some in math, a lot in study skills, in life, and the Christian walk. B+
- experience: I grew in this, in large part from my dear friend Kellie visiting my classroom and kindly and lovingly, without being asked, writing a note of encouragement in what she saw me do well in the class and areas where I could grow. That and the ACSI conference were a turning point in my classroom. From a F to a B
- research: I love homework that teaches. I utilized research assignments quite a bit, but I don’t think I helped them enough in learning how to do research. C+
- discussion: I utilized this in literature, politics, history, science, and Bible. B-
- questions: I definitely need to grow in this. I did utilize it some in our discussions, and I’m not sure how much more I could have used it in my classroom of Jr. Highers, but I would like to work at it. I had two high school teacher who were extremely instrumental in my life who put this in practice: Mr. Camburn and Mr. Paz. D+
- assignments: I think my students would say I am really good at this. A-
- evaluation: I didn’t use this much. They were thinkers, so I wish I would have. D
- self-disclosure: I think I did this well. A
- role-playing: Nope, but this would have been fantastic for history, Bible, literature. F
- interview: I can’t wait to use this in the future. I think they did have a couple Bible assignments like this that were a part of the curriculum. I didn’t create them. D+
Yikes! I have some room for improvement. I’m thankful for this list to consider ways I can improve.
Filed under: Christian Living, Cool Finds, Discipline, Lessons Learned, My life, school days, Teaching, These are a few of my favorite things... | Tags: Scripture memory, Seeds, Sovereign Grace
I had a phenomenal run yesterday and by run I mean run/walk/jog/walk/jog/walk/walk/walk. Despite not being officially a run, it was great exercise and I pushed myself farther than I have the last couple months and loved it. I did the pushing more in the first half of my jaunt than the second. Towards the end I found myself singing II Cor. 4:17-18 one of my favorite passages. It says, “For this light and momentary affliction is achieving for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
I did not notice that I was singing the passage or the thoughts which led up to that point until I reached the end of the verse and sang the reference. At that point I asked myself, “Self, what made me start singing this verse?” I then traced back my thought process. As I walked I felt the pain of pushing my body. I thought about the pain and how the pain was not there when I was 20. I thought about aging, which then led me to think about the outer man decaying but inwardly being renewed day by day (verse 16 of II Cor. 4). By the end of that verse I was breaking into song. My spontaneous singing/humming has also happened a lot recently as I find myself day dreaming or as I think in a critical manner about others. I often find myself humming Philippians 4:8 and am reminded of what I should be thinking on: whatever is true, noble, excellent, praise worthy.
Thank you, Sovereign Grace Ministries, for your CDs of Scripture verses. I also appreciate the Seeds music for the same reason. I would much rather chase my thought process backwards to see how I got to thinking on what is right and true than to try to follow my thoughts and heart back to the beginning of wrong, false, or impure thoughts that led to a mess of sin.
My Jr. High students may have laughed at the fact that for their Scripture memory each week we used a song, but music helps the memory. The passages with a corresponding song will be the ones they remember. I know for me personally I want the Scripture to be deeply ingrained in my heart to affect my life. If a song will help do that and will help me bring it to memory when I am tempted to sin, then bring them on!
Filed under: Community, Discipleship, Friends, FUN!, My life, school days, Teaching, These are a few of my favorite things...
It amazes me how many families filter in and out of the school I attended in my youth and taught at two years ago. People bring their younger children back after years; students come back to visit and see other students and staff; high school students choose to do their service hours at the school; former students send their children; even the former staff return. It’s like coming home to an extended family. As we gathered for an eighth grade graduation (the last of my students is now out of junior high – yes, it’s true … I’m old) it was hard to settle the crowd down because of reunions, conversations, and hugs. I had a great time hanging out with my former students (11 out of my class of 16 were there). It was neat to see their responsibility, growth, achievements, respect, and care for others. I’m so proud of all of them, but want to give a special shout out to AU, the eighth grade graduate, who has turned into such a well-rounded, mover, shaker, sweetheart, scholar, singer and God-honoring woman. I can’t wait to see what God has planned for her. Congrats!
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