#1: Maintain an extremely high view of God. When you think you have finally acheived this, pray for God's forgiveness for thinking so highly of yourself that you could ever actually understand God and see Him for ALL that He is.
#2: Serve others, always.
#3: Never expect that others can read your mind, your body language, your facial expressions, or your moods... even those people who by all rights SHOULD be able to do so by now. So actually open up your mouth and say what you're thinking.
#4: Remember that quite often, people CAN read your body language, your facial expressions, and your moods, so keep them in check!
#5: Eat a hotdog every once in a while, just to remind yourself that everything deserves a second chance... even disgusting hot dogs!!
#6: Don't take yourself so damn seriously! (My compliments to Ben Zanders for opening my eyes to this one!)
#7: Be quicker to admit your failures than your accomplishments.
#8: Dance often, even when, and ESPECIALLY when, you suck at it! This is not figurative. I literally mean that you need to dance. If you are actually good at dancing, then you need to ocassionally flail your body around like you have no rhythm, just so you can remember what the rest of us feel like.
#9: Remember that you are just as annoying as the next person, just maybe in a different way. If you truly think you're never annoying, then understand that the most annoying thing about you is that you don't realize that you're annoying. So cut others some slack.
#10: Ask for grace. Then give it. Even to yourself.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A List of Conversation Topics
As a part of the Speaking curriculum I've created for my class, I try to teach my students how to be good conversationalists. As a part of this lesson, I put them into groups to come up with a list of topics they could discuss and questions they could ask. I learned a lot about conversations, myself, this past weekend at a family wedding. I learned that, in fact, you can have a conversation about pretty much anything; you just need the right group of people. This past weekend, that group was comprised of my ridiculous, awesome, loving, crazy family.
The following is an addendum to my current list of possible conversation topics, compliments of my extended family, whom I love dearly:
1. what "lmao" stands for, explained in earshot of the hotel receptionist
2. drugs and alcohol and their effects
3. why dancing at a wedding makes you feel like you're in a musical
4. whether a "plain" appetite is considered picky
5. the Will of God versus the Will of Man
6. the growth of chin hair at an early age
7. how working, not age, makes someone old
8. the appropriateness of using holy water to make beer
9. babies and stretch marks
10. what is considered a successful "that's what she said" comment
11. spiritual gifts and whether the "miraculous" gifts are "dead"
12. what to do when a student tells the whole class that he hates everyone
13. the chunkiness of the new Taco Bell meat
14. repition in conversation
15. the pervasiveness of ADD and/or ADHD in the family
16. the hilarity of wearing tennis shoes at a reception
17. whether amaretto is actually an alcohol or just a flavoring
18. the size of shrimp
19. the assuredness of my mother harmonizing to songs played at the reception
20. how saying "it's not personal" doesn't always make things any better
21. whether cheating at card games requiring no skill is actually considered a skill
22. whether placing a group of chairs over spilled water on the dance floor actually constitutes as “cleaning up”
23. whether string cheese should be included on a cheese and cracker plate
24. the ability of my cousin to do the sprinkler dance and pour water on himself at the same time
25. baseball
I’m pretty sure I would tell my students NOT to talk about 99% of the preceding topics. Welcome, everyone, to my family!! :-D
The following is an addendum to my current list of possible conversation topics, compliments of my extended family, whom I love dearly:
1. what "lmao" stands for, explained in earshot of the hotel receptionist
2. drugs and alcohol and their effects
3. why dancing at a wedding makes you feel like you're in a musical
4. whether a "plain" appetite is considered picky
5. the Will of God versus the Will of Man
6. the growth of chin hair at an early age
7. how working, not age, makes someone old
8. the appropriateness of using holy water to make beer
9. babies and stretch marks
10. what is considered a successful "that's what she said" comment
11. spiritual gifts and whether the "miraculous" gifts are "dead"
12. what to do when a student tells the whole class that he hates everyone
13. the chunkiness of the new Taco Bell meat
14. repition in conversation
15. the pervasiveness of ADD and/or ADHD in the family
16. the hilarity of wearing tennis shoes at a reception
17. whether amaretto is actually an alcohol or just a flavoring
18. the size of shrimp
19. the assuredness of my mother harmonizing to songs played at the reception
20. how saying "it's not personal" doesn't always make things any better
21. whether cheating at card games requiring no skill is actually considered a skill
22. whether placing a group of chairs over spilled water on the dance floor actually constitutes as “cleaning up”
23. whether string cheese should be included on a cheese and cracker plate
24. the ability of my cousin to do the sprinkler dance and pour water on himself at the same time
25. baseball
I’m pretty sure I would tell my students NOT to talk about 99% of the preceding topics. Welcome, everyone, to my family!! :-D
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I am ALWAYS clumsy
I really wish I hadn't been born with the Clumsy Curse. It has followed me around my entire life, and it always seems to sneak up at the most inopportune moments. One such case happened recently... in front of my 7th grade students...
The kids were doing group mini-lesson presentations in my Student Mentors Training class. I was standing in the back of the room while the kids were giving the lesson in the front of the room. I had to separate two boys who were talking incessantly in the back, so I went and actually stood between them to make sure they couldn't talk. My desks are set up in rows right now, so this was in the very back row. Everything was going very smoothly... until...
The presentations were finished and a girl came up behind me to ask me a question. I turned around and stepped back all in one motion. Of course, any person who was born with the Clumsy Curse should automatically know to NEVER step backwards. But maybe that's exactly the reason we have the curse... because we never seem to learn from things like this. Because I'm in a class full of kids... who all have bookbags... which all must remain on the floor during class.
FLOP!!!!! That was the sound I made when I hit the floor after tripping backwards over bookbags... in front of the whole class of 7th graders!! Yup, that's right... the teacher fell... in class... while everyone was watching. I didn't just stumble or trip. I mean, I ATE it on the floor!
Praise be to the good Lord above for divinely inspiring me to not shave my legs that day so that I would wear pants and comfy flat shoes, or else this really could have been the worst experience of my life. Students seeing my legs fly up over my head is bad enough... thank goodness they didn't get to see my legs fly up over my head with a skirt on. Because I'm sure that would have been a side of me that NONE of us wants to see!
So I was totally okay. I didn't hurt myself, because people with the Clumsy Curse don't ever really get hurt enough that people would want to make sure you're alright... we always just fall enough to be laughed at hysterically. I thought I had already been the one to live through the horrific years of being laughed at in middle school. But no, I chose to come back for round 2 as an adult, which of course makes the Clumsy Curse even funnier to middle school students. So here I was again... ten years later after my first round of Middle School, once again sitting on the floor after having just fallen down, and having 7th graders all laughing at me.
I guess I lived through it once before, so I can do it again, right?? Maybe this is just the Lord's way of once again reminding me to have empathy for my little students who are constantly being mocked by their peers.
The kids were doing group mini-lesson presentations in my Student Mentors Training class. I was standing in the back of the room while the kids were giving the lesson in the front of the room. I had to separate two boys who were talking incessantly in the back, so I went and actually stood between them to make sure they couldn't talk. My desks are set up in rows right now, so this was in the very back row. Everything was going very smoothly... until...
The presentations were finished and a girl came up behind me to ask me a question. I turned around and stepped back all in one motion. Of course, any person who was born with the Clumsy Curse should automatically know to NEVER step backwards. But maybe that's exactly the reason we have the curse... because we never seem to learn from things like this. Because I'm in a class full of kids... who all have bookbags... which all must remain on the floor during class.
FLOP!!!!! That was the sound I made when I hit the floor after tripping backwards over bookbags... in front of the whole class of 7th graders!! Yup, that's right... the teacher fell... in class... while everyone was watching. I didn't just stumble or trip. I mean, I ATE it on the floor!
Praise be to the good Lord above for divinely inspiring me to not shave my legs that day so that I would wear pants and comfy flat shoes, or else this really could have been the worst experience of my life. Students seeing my legs fly up over my head is bad enough... thank goodness they didn't get to see my legs fly up over my head with a skirt on. Because I'm sure that would have been a side of me that NONE of us wants to see!
So I was totally okay. I didn't hurt myself, because people with the Clumsy Curse don't ever really get hurt enough that people would want to make sure you're alright... we always just fall enough to be laughed at hysterically. I thought I had already been the one to live through the horrific years of being laughed at in middle school. But no, I chose to come back for round 2 as an adult, which of course makes the Clumsy Curse even funnier to middle school students. So here I was again... ten years later after my first round of Middle School, once again sitting on the floor after having just fallen down, and having 7th graders all laughing at me.
I guess I lived through it once before, so I can do it again, right?? Maybe this is just the Lord's way of once again reminding me to have empathy for my little students who are constantly being mocked by their peers.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Great Days of Service
I can't believe it's already October, and I did a really poor job of keeping up with the blog in September. New goal... do better in October.
I also can't believe that I only have one week left with my students before the end of the quarter, when I'll get a brand new pack of kids. I have learned SO MUCH over these past 8 weeks, mainly what to change about my class. But hey, that's a good thing to learn, too. What did Albert Einstein say? Something about how he didn't have 10,000 failures... he just succeeded in finding 10,000 ways to not do something...? I should've started counting a while back...
One thing I really LOVED doing with my 8th grade students this quarter was the Great Days of Service Speeches. I am so proud of them, and I was so happy with how engaged they were with the lessons. I decided about half way through the quarter that I was asking them to give speeches about things that don't really matter. Sure, I was letting them choose to speak about whatever topic they wanted, but at the end of the day, students don't really know what to choose anyway and they don't care. I realized I had to give them something to actually care about.
So I decided we should research and discuss poverty and homelessness. On the first day of this project, I asked students to tell me anything they thought about when they hear the word "homeless." Students called out things such as "bridges, beards, smelly, lazy, shopping carts full of stuff, inner city, trashcans on fire, drugs..." And the list goes on. It became very obvious that they thought of single, crazed men who are smelly and dirty and live in the city. So then I asked them, "Gwinnett County is a pretty affluent county, right? We don't have lots of poor people here, right? So why do we do canned food drives and stuff here?" I literally had a student raise his hand and reply, "Well we send all the food to other counties who really need it." It was astounding to realize their naivete.
Then students got into groups and I gave them different articles and data about poverty in Gwinnett. We learned that 9.6% of people are living below the poverty line in Gwinnett; the unemployment rate is up to 9%; and that just in the month of August, 1 in every 149 homes in Gwinnett county had been foreclosed. Students read articles from the AJC describing food pantries' desperate need of support and that every race, color, ethnicity, gender, and age were represented as patrons of food pantries in the county. The students were apalled when they heard that 5% of children in Gwinnett County lived in extreme poverty, which means that they live off of $8 per day or less. Finally, we looked at the fact that 22% of students at Jones Middle School are considered to be in poverty because they receive free or reduced lunches, and that the Gwinnett Children's Homeless Shelter is just two miles from our school, meaning that those students attend our school. We realized that on a national scale, 1 in 7 people lived in poverty, for a grand total of 43.6 million people, and that 51 million people are without health insurance. Right now in America, 1 in every 5 children are growing up poor. Their eyes were opened, to say the least. And I must admit, mine were too.
The students took all this information, learned how to write speech outlines, use notecards to give a speech, and breathe diaphragmatically. Then, they went out in partnerships to every single homeroom in our school and gave speeches to their peers, persuading them to participate in bringing in canned foods, diapers, and toiletries as a part of Jones Middle School's participation in the Gwinnett Great Days of Service. They did a wonderful job overall!!
I really have no idea what kind of impact it made on all the other students in the school. I saw lots of homerooms collecting canned foods, but I really have no idea if donations were higher than in past years. So I really have no idea what kind of difference it made with everyone else. But I had my Public Speaking students write Self Evaluations of their Speeches, so I got to see in their own words how it affected them. I had many students tell me that they were proud of themselves for overcoming their fear of speaking, and many said that they actually had a lot of fun giving the speeches. The majority of students made some comment about how their view on poverty and homelessness has been changed. One girl said it really well: "I was proud of myself because I realize that as 8th graders, we can make a difference."
In such an egocentric era of their lives, I was so happy to have the chance to help them see outside of themselves and wrestle with some major life issues. They felt empowered, even if on a very small scale. They were engaged in their learning moreso than I've seen before. So, I feel that it's extremely appropriate, and even necessary, to give credit where credit is due...
UGA Middle School Education Program, thank you for teaching me about Service Learning and Social Justice projects for teaching middle schoolers. I will definitely, 100% continue to do projects like this as much as possible.
For all of its many frustrations and irritations, I absolutely love my job!
I also can't believe that I only have one week left with my students before the end of the quarter, when I'll get a brand new pack of kids. I have learned SO MUCH over these past 8 weeks, mainly what to change about my class. But hey, that's a good thing to learn, too. What did Albert Einstein say? Something about how he didn't have 10,000 failures... he just succeeded in finding 10,000 ways to not do something...? I should've started counting a while back...
One thing I really LOVED doing with my 8th grade students this quarter was the Great Days of Service Speeches. I am so proud of them, and I was so happy with how engaged they were with the lessons. I decided about half way through the quarter that I was asking them to give speeches about things that don't really matter. Sure, I was letting them choose to speak about whatever topic they wanted, but at the end of the day, students don't really know what to choose anyway and they don't care. I realized I had to give them something to actually care about.
So I decided we should research and discuss poverty and homelessness. On the first day of this project, I asked students to tell me anything they thought about when they hear the word "homeless." Students called out things such as "bridges, beards, smelly, lazy, shopping carts full of stuff, inner city, trashcans on fire, drugs..." And the list goes on. It became very obvious that they thought of single, crazed men who are smelly and dirty and live in the city. So then I asked them, "Gwinnett County is a pretty affluent county, right? We don't have lots of poor people here, right? So why do we do canned food drives and stuff here?" I literally had a student raise his hand and reply, "Well we send all the food to other counties who really need it." It was astounding to realize their naivete.
Then students got into groups and I gave them different articles and data about poverty in Gwinnett. We learned that 9.6% of people are living below the poverty line in Gwinnett; the unemployment rate is up to 9%; and that just in the month of August, 1 in every 149 homes in Gwinnett county had been foreclosed. Students read articles from the AJC describing food pantries' desperate need of support and that every race, color, ethnicity, gender, and age were represented as patrons of food pantries in the county. The students were apalled when they heard that 5% of children in Gwinnett County lived in extreme poverty, which means that they live off of $8 per day or less. Finally, we looked at the fact that 22% of students at Jones Middle School are considered to be in poverty because they receive free or reduced lunches, and that the Gwinnett Children's Homeless Shelter is just two miles from our school, meaning that those students attend our school. We realized that on a national scale, 1 in 7 people lived in poverty, for a grand total of 43.6 million people, and that 51 million people are without health insurance. Right now in America, 1 in every 5 children are growing up poor. Their eyes were opened, to say the least. And I must admit, mine were too.
The students took all this information, learned how to write speech outlines, use notecards to give a speech, and breathe diaphragmatically. Then, they went out in partnerships to every single homeroom in our school and gave speeches to their peers, persuading them to participate in bringing in canned foods, diapers, and toiletries as a part of Jones Middle School's participation in the Gwinnett Great Days of Service. They did a wonderful job overall!!
I really have no idea what kind of impact it made on all the other students in the school. I saw lots of homerooms collecting canned foods, but I really have no idea if donations were higher than in past years. So I really have no idea what kind of difference it made with everyone else. But I had my Public Speaking students write Self Evaluations of their Speeches, so I got to see in their own words how it affected them. I had many students tell me that they were proud of themselves for overcoming their fear of speaking, and many said that they actually had a lot of fun giving the speeches. The majority of students made some comment about how their view on poverty and homelessness has been changed. One girl said it really well: "I was proud of myself because I realize that as 8th graders, we can make a difference."
In such an egocentric era of their lives, I was so happy to have the chance to help them see outside of themselves and wrestle with some major life issues. They felt empowered, even if on a very small scale. They were engaged in their learning moreso than I've seen before. So, I feel that it's extremely appropriate, and even necessary, to give credit where credit is due...
UGA Middle School Education Program, thank you for teaching me about Service Learning and Social Justice projects for teaching middle schoolers. I will definitely, 100% continue to do projects like this as much as possible.
For all of its many frustrations and irritations, I absolutely love my job!
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