“It’s like this giant Monday.” I’m walking to school with my roommate, Anna, on this clear Tuesday morning, the first day of second semester. “I mean, I’m always a little lost on Mondays, like I’ve forgotten how to teach. And this… this is way worse.” This is a different “first day back” than any I’ve…
Tag: teaching
NaNoWriMo
Short Story Ideas: Chick Flick Action Story Damsel in Distress/Platonic Ideal: Super smart and hot Creator made a weapon and then lost it. Quest: Find it and destroy it. Wants to make something better. Trickster/damsel befriends creator, tricks him into finding the Magic Weapon. Once they find it, she steals it and threatens the platonic…
Remembering
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. from “In Flanders Fields,” John McRae, MD This…
Where They’re From
It is approximately the third question we ask each other. Unless we’ve found something interesting in the answers to “What’s your name?” and “What do you do?” we move on to “Where are you from?” It’s the most universal of the first-conversation questions. After a while you just can’t tell if someone should be in…
Time and Space
“Ms. Dahlstrom… can you read my paper?” -Everyone English 11 has a paper due in an hour and a half. Originally, I hadn’t intended that they would turn in their first literary essay at 10:00 PM on a Friday night. It had been Tuesday morning, at the beginning of class. Later, remembering that our department…
The Western Front
“Comrade, I did not want to kill you…. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades,…
The Canadians
It’s about pace, the First Nations versus the European explorers. Like shopping. If you’re just looking, you might spend ages in the store, trying everything on and deciding if you need it. If you want a white tank top, you go to the store, find the tank tops, pick up the right sized white one,…
Parents
“Oh hey, I met your mother yesterday!” I know this observation won’t make me any cooler. As “the new English teacher”–a title that makes me feel like I’m teaching in a small homesteading town instead of an international Christian school–I could probably use some credibility points. But it’s been ages since being cool was my…
E11 & CH
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. James 4:13-14 “So you teach English?” “Yes. Eleventh grade.” “And… you’re not Canadian?’ “Um……
TeachBeyond Orientation: Quantitative and Qualitative
Quantitative Date: 2010/6/24 Local Time, 24-Hour Style: 18:57 Celsius Temperature: 27° New Missions Staff to Orient: 39 Continents Where We’ll Be Working: Three (Asia, Africa and Europe) Denominational Backgrounds: Many God to Serve: One Qualitative Greetings from Minnesota! I’m writing from my second (and last) night of TeachBeyond New Staff Orientation, which I’ve “stopped by”…
The Way Home 