Without fail, after the lesson with her beloved teacher, my 8 year old loves violin. Without fail, after a recital she also loves violin. Without fail, when she plays with other kids who play violin, and they have fun together, she is swelling with pride about her ability. this video is too dark, but you can…
Category: teaching
Vocation | Enneagram: Ugh!
“they tell me” I am a Type 2 “Helper” with a close runner up of “Peacemaker” which would make my parents howl with laughter.
The Atrium
This girl is interacting with the Good Shepherd work. The parable of the Good Shepherd is rich with significance for a child from the ages 3 to 6, as they come to know God as a protector with deep love for them. I have tried for two years to begin talking about something that I…
Being Silenced
This post is about being a female in the United States. It’s different here than in other places, because we expect that we will be treated a certain way: with equality. But it is not different here than other places in that our country by and large is run by older, usually white men. And…
So, this.
When a person writes in the same place for ten years to not ask “what am I doing here?” is unnatural. Perhaps this is what I have aspired to all this time. Maria Popova’s BrainPicking Finally a place where the purpose is not to market oneself, which seems like just the scratch of the surface…
Administrative Superpowers
Originally posted on ChezWhat?:
Consider; an executive without a desk, a zookeeper with animals but no habitats, an actor with no stage, a pilot with no cockpit. Instead, the executive has a suitcase, the zookeeper has a large fenced area where animals roam intermingled, the actor has his body and the pilot has a seat…
The Year of Living Domestically
I guess I was about 13 or so when the movie “The Year of Living Dangerously” came out. I watched it and at that point, I pretty much knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, a journalist in another country. Well, since I foolishly believed people…
Political Correctness (a repost from 2005)
Published in 2005, long before Portlandia… If you have ever listened to Dandy Warhols or listened to Damali Ayo talk about Portland types, it’s clear that I am not alone in noticing Portland types are often a sort of..different. I say this with love, I am a Portlander and I work with Portland “types”. Recently…
Strange fruit: where I tell about a person who I don’t want to fix my tire
Once upon a time, there was a teacher. This teacher was asked to do many, many things. In her enthusiasm, she often (too often) said “Of course!”. She learned eventually that she had to stop doing that. In one such instance, she ended up with a student who could be considered, at the stage in…
Spot on.
One of the great failings of the American education system, in our view, is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad. Study-abroad programs tend to consist of herds of students visiting Oxford or Florence or Paris. We believe that universities should make it a requirement that…
Minding the Gap: In defense of the Gap Year or study abroad experience for stateside high school graduates
Because I teach high school, I see first hand struggles that students sometimes have when high school ends and the time to go to college begins. Senior year can be overwhelming, and it’s not even the beginning. Some youth transition with no big deal. Some already have their paths set out. And some are just…
Some thoughts on being a language teacher: linguistic imperialism
I have been since I decided what I wanted to do, a language teacher. I didn’t end up here by mistake. The first place I went was Russia with Peace Corps. Peace Corps had in high (sarcastic) comedy brought all these “teachers” to one of the most educated countries on the planet to teach the…
