I greatly admire those with the concentrated expertise to create Top 10 Lists at the ends of years. There seem endless iterations, from the predictable books and movies to the more niche markets, like Mediterranean cruises or ways to prepare bacon. Yet my admiration can’t make up for the fact that there are only a…
Tag: thanks
Of Thanks and Windowsills
Thanksgiving Day, American Literature Class. I confess that many of my creative writing lessons come from reading McSweeney’s, a creative literary journal whose online concern usually contains well-crafted and humorous prose. The Open Letter of Thanks is one of those lessons, modified for the students of Ingraham and now Black Forest Academy, on the occasion…
An Account of Blessings: 27th Birthday Edition
Taco Salad Surprise Lunch: 1 Rousing renditions of “Happy Birthday”: 5 Birthday Cakes: 3 Icabod Crane Piñata: 1 Times Watching Disney’s 1949 “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (narrated by Bing Crosby!) With Eleventh Graders: 2 Long Walk Through Golden Forest: 1 Notes of love and greeting from friends, family and students: Countless Thanks to all, near…
Miss Gruwell and Miss Potter
Like all good teachers, I went to see the 2007 film Freedom Writers as soon as it came out. As some people are with sports or science fiction movies, I am with teacher movies. I love them. Long before I was a teacher–even when I was struggling with teaching as a calling–I would watch Dead Poets’ Society or,…
A Year On the Map
On my living room wall in Kandern, there are three maps. (We have lots of maps, actually. An old map of Germany, a Metro guide to Paris, maps of Europe and the world that we bought at the grocery store a while ago. We live in a house of maps.) These three, however, take center…
A Monday Tuesday
“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…
Things that Made Life Better This Year: 2010 Edition
The sun is sparkling through the windows of my childhood home in Seattle. It has been a week of rest and reconnection, so much so that I woke up today, surprised to find that it’s the last day of the year. And of the decade, for that matter. I’m neither old enough nor wise enough…
This Week, I’ve Learned
One of my hopes for life is to keep learning forever. This week of continuing to grow up seems like an appropriate time to celebrate that I’m learning more now than ever. Here are a few lessons, some serious and other less so, from this week. This Week, I’ve Learned: Recycling is financially profitable in…
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…
Bright Things (Come to Confusion)
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied night… And ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So quick bright things come to confusion. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (I, i) I am ending the Ingraham ninth grade year with…
The Way Home 