the flavors of fall

Every once in a while I put down my pile of "how to" Science books to brush up on my neglected but not forgotten quest towards domestication.   One recipe that recently dirtied my mixing bowl, happened to capture the essence of fall and the approval of my friends.  After all, Panera is not the only one who can whip up a good  Moist Pumpkin Spice Muffin.  

snapshots

Every time I grab my laptop with the intention of sorting through my thoughts long enough to blog, I have numerous topics, both significant and insignificant, that compete to be cemented in writing.  It's not that I have so many noteworthy things happen that I can't keep up with sharing them all, or even that I want to publish a variety of information about myself on the internet.   Rather, I sort through the avalanche of information which bombard my thoughts in order to find the focus of posts because it is the process of writing that de-clutters my brain, helps sort truth from untruth and waters seeds of rest which are growing alongside a harvest of stress. 

I could write a humerus, yet truthful post about how Ritz Classic Cheddar Crackerfuls might single-handily unravel all of the progress I made training for my half-marathon.   I could write a creative and insightful editorial about how talking for a living has significantly decreased the number of phone calls I return.  There is of course the funny-student stories which pepper my workdays and help anchor my sanity.   I could make fun of myself for listening to this song when I need some teacher-inspiration.  Given the right mood, I could share about the obstacles which seem to prevent me from changing my single status, such as spending my free time recouping from my extroverted job.   If I had better track of my time I would share how long it takes me to wash and then also put away my laundry.   We could all get a few smiles and a couple of groans out of the description of my messy and (most likely) germ-infested bathroom.   This list is endless because it is ever-changing and therefore reflective of both the growth and consistencies of my life.   As is appropriate for  an internet based, and therefore very public outlet, you only see a snapshot of my life at any given time.   Although genuine, this snapshot is often edited, narrowed, and written with an audience in mind.   I am a writer at my core so I save all of my unedited topics for my journal.   After all, nothing beats sipping a cup of hot chocolate at my favorite coffee shop, while settling into a big cushy chair with my trusty green pen and journal in hand.  

Time

Time moves quickly.  The only tangible evidence I have to prove the rapid nature of the seconds, minutes and hours that make up my days are the things that fill those spaces.   All throughout college I kept I very detailed planner, which was affectionately named my "gopher guide".  Time has a way of promoting us to new forms of scheduling because I have upgraded my gopher guide to a teacher plan book.  In addition to being a clear indicator of my career, this book keeps a very detailed record of what I do between the hours of 7am and 3pm, Monday through Friday.  I have recently realized that having a planner which limits the days and hours that can be scheduled has created an unspoken importance for that time frame.   Ordinarily I am pretty mindful of my commitments as a whole, but since becoming a special education teacher,  I accomplish nothing that is not written down.   I start and end my day with an overwhelmingly full mind and time moves too quickly for my thoughts to catch up with the speed with which life continues to be executed at.  For example, MEA has come and gone and in its place, I have almost another full week of teaching under my belt.

Time is a funny thing, isn't it?  So much happens in my days (99% of which takes place in my classroom between the hours of 7 and 3) that I can't believe it's almost November.   When I started my job, I had high hopes that by now I would be teaching instead of surviving.   I thought I would know how to establish classroom boundaries and routines in order to have better behaved students.  I believed I would know how to teach, what to teach and how to effectively prepare the material.  The bottom line: I thought I would be better at my job.  But time is a funny thing and I thought wrong. 

I am still in survival mode, I don't have strong classroom boundaries or routines and I still don't know what to teach, how to teach it or how to effectively prepare the material.    Although I am certain that I have grown as a teacher since the start of the school year, I think that my growth is masked both by my perpetual exhaustion and need to make significant improvements in numerous areas. 

Despite being so tired I could cry or the pressing need to be better at what I do, I am still thankful that I get to wake up everyday and love the little children the Lord has appointed in my life.  Time may feel quick here, but I am mindful that I am making eternal investments which will put all of this in perspective when that day comes. 

capturing fall

The air has gotten colder, the evenings have gotten darker and the air feels more damp.  With the prediction of snow circulating among local weather men, I needed to do something to capture the essence of fall while I still had a chance.  Here are some of my pictures: 

Thankful

It's 9:45am on a Thursday and I just woke up.  For the first time in weeks I got out of bed wrapped in peace  and motivated by joy.   You see, today marks the start of statewide teacher conferences for all educators in Minnesota.  As a new teacher with limited resources, I debated for a long time about whether or not I should go.  After taking a hard look at the amount of stress and anxiety I have been carrying with me throughout the start of my career, I made the decision that even though I was given time off for the conference, using this time to attend the conference would do more harm than good.   So here I sit, on my bedroom floor, in my pajamas, able to finally lay my burdens down.  

Even though my days have been threaded with angst, they have been blanketed by blessings.  The harshness of the children I work with has primed my heart to be especially sensitive to gentleness.  In that sensitivity, the Lord showed me His gentleness by planting various things to surface with the purpose of calming my heart.    If your life has even been threaded by angst or bracketed by stress then you know what it's like for the most unlikely things to surface and minister to your heart.   These messengers of gentleness are much-needed reminders of the Lord's Sovereignty.  One would never assume that their bed or the length of their commute, their garage or the cost of their laundry would carry such an important message but these simple and sometimes silly reminders are altogether necessary.  There are many things that have tickled my heart with reminders of my King, but for now I invite you to meet two of my messengers:

•  My bed.  If you remember back to when I moved mid-July, my Aunt Joy generously donated her queen bed to me.   At the time I was aware that upgrading my twin for this queen would be much more "adult" but I wasn't aware that it would be incredibly comfortable to sleep on.  I lay in bed every single night and think "I am so thankful for this bed" and every single morning when I am reluctantly pushing away the covers, my thoughts once again echo similar thanks.  Ultimately, I am thankful that the Lord chose to take care of my heart in a way that I would have never deemed necessary on my own.  
• My garage.  When I first signed the lease to the apartment I am now living in, I had the choice to pay extra to rent a remote-opened garage.   Jaded by the amount of time I spent scraping off my car when I was already running late the winter before, I signed up for one without hesitation.   Leave it to the Lord to move mightily, even here, because my garage is directly outside of the stairwell to my apartment.   It takes me less than 2 minutes to get from my bedroom to the inside my garage each morning.  The consistency of this time frame, the closeness of my vehicle to my living quarters and my ever present clear windshield causes me to be thankful everyday.   I no longer have to remember where I parked or that I need to wake up early to thaw any pesky Minnesota moister off my windows.  I never expected that this garage would bless me directly each and everyday, but the Lord clearly cares about every insignificant detail of day.   

My biggest messenger or gentleness today is time off.   I may even get out my Kitchen Aid Mixer to make one of the new recipes in the cookbook I bought for $4.00. 

Because it's a short week at school I decided to abandon national standards and teach about germs, volcanoes, and magnets. After all, every child should know how to make paste out of flour and water.

As an added bonus: everyone loves being able to wear safety goggles and lab coats in Science class.  It doesn't get more scientific than that!  

Let's be honest: I don't cope well without sleep  After spending way too much time in the airport today traveling home from a wedding, I took a long Sunday afternoon nap.   I still haven't gotten nearly enough work done to have a successful Monday at school BUT my body is more rested then it was 3 hours ago and right now that is all that matters. 

Love.

How many times do you go throughout your day with an unmistakable ache in the pit of your stomach because you just need someone to hug you?  How often do you interact with your coworkers and long for a kind word to be shared or a gesture that shows support?  For me, I feel this way everyday.  But there is a purpose for every ache because it's these very feelings that prompt me to love my students.   To hug them.  To share kind words. To demonstrate that I believe in them. To do whatever I can to support their learning.  To value their effort - even when it doesn't meet my expectations. 

When I drive to work in the morning and I feel hopelessly unprepared, I remind myself to choose love.  It may seem silly and a little bit cliche, but the reality is that sometimes I teach good Science, sometimes I teach mediocre Science, and most of the time I have no idea how I made it from 7:40 - 2:35.  That's okay because school is about more than academic intervention; it's about modeling good character and communicating worth to these kids.   

Today a little boy asked me if he could go home with me.  Why? Because he knows that I love him.  
Today another little boy got out of his chair over 10 times during my 50 minute class period to give me a hug.  Why? Because he knows that I love him.  

I may not have the right tools to teach Science in a way that is going to raise test scores, but I didn't become a teacher to help kids test well. I became a teacher so that I could communicate value to the students who have been told their whole lives that they are stupid or worthless or unlovable.  I became a teacher so that I could care for the kids who don't get cared for by anyone else.  I became a teacher so that I could make sure that these kids hear at least one nice thing about themselves a day.

I share this because I feel so stressed that I'm jittery.   I know why I am doing what I'm doing but sometimes I just need to write it down or share it with someone else so that I can stop feeling inadequate.   So thanks for stepping into my classroom for a few minutes and rallying with me.    We all need a little support to be able to do the things that really matter in life.      

The silver lining

There are countless phrases which offer hope and purpose for the struggles that surround our lives.  While idioms such as "every cloud has a silver lining" can be comforting at times, I think many people struggle to find the silver lining before the storm hits and washes it away.   So, because it is Sunday afternoon and another work week is knocking at my door, I wanted to uncover some of my silver lining:

Since starting my teaching career at the beginning of September, my days have been bracketed by a constant struggle to learn and teach Science.  I remember learning about the weather as part of Physical Science in 8th grade and hating every second of trying to learn the names of the different clouds.  When I was at a Science training on Tuesday, some guy flippantly referenced the different types of clouds like they were common knowledge.   My eyes burned with un-shed tears as I sat in my chair and realized that people who teach Science are the people who understood it the first time around.  Not only did I not understand Science when I was in elementary school,  more often then not I find myself disliking the subject more and more. 

The reality is that I hate Science because I don't understand it.  I don't care of its "just" elementary science, I have yet to uncover a topic that I didn't have to spend a ton of time researching in order to teach it.  Contrary to the common belief that I was going to realize how much Science I already knew, this has not yet happened. 

However, as I was explaining to one of my friends that I feel silly and helpless handling a subject that I was never trained it, I realized that because I'm not trained in it I have a natural filter with which to determine what the kids will or will not understand. You see, most subjects build on themselves as you progress through school but because I don't know what was taught in the past, I really can't assume my students have any kind of prior background knowledge at all.   Even though I am having a hard time learning Science day in and day out, I am confident that I am not teaching concepts that are above my students heads.  If I don't understand it, they won't either.    And that, my friends, is my silver lining. 

Bigger, brighter, faster

As you may have noticed, within the last couple of months my posts have shifted from updates about running miles to updates about running a classroom.   Each form of running requires stamina, patience, commitment and a certain level of skill.  Although, one is clearly better for my health than the other :).

The shift of "topics" was unintentional on my part, especially because I strive to be the kind of blogger  who writes about a wide spectrum of things.  I have learned that my best writing comes from where ever my best energy is going.   Right now my best energy is going towards teaching.  Actually its hard to imagine my energy being spent anywhere else but I guess we can all stay tuned to find out. 

Anyway. . . the point of this post is really to annouce that I am writing you from my classroom for the first time ever!  You see, the computer that was handed down to me from the previous Science teacher had its fair share of issues, so I requested a different one.   Assuming that the tech department was going to rustle up a computer with less issues from a storage closet somewhere, I was shocked when my boss sent me an email letting me know that she had purchased me a new iMac.   I wasn't sure how this new computer would change my classroom experience until it arrived today.   You see. there is a  large divide that stands between Mac users and PC users and I happen to stand on the PC side of the divide.  I have been questioning the amount of energy I have to actually take steps towards bridging the divide, but today I have my answer.  

This computer is incredible.  It's bigger, the screen is brighter and it's light years faster than the other one.   I am breathing so much easier knowing that I will be able to do the paperwork/research/email side of my job with a lot more efficiency.  

It was good news, so I had to share it.  

Endless grace

If it wasn't quickly approaching 10pm, I would take the time to fill you in on how things are going.   But alas, my bedtime is quickly approaching so you'll have to settle for a quick update:

My week got off to a rough start, largely due to a weekend bracketed by stress.  I'm still praying a lot about what my "free" time should look like, especially since I exert the vast majority of my extroverted energy at my job.  By Friday the only thing I want to do is put on my sweatpants and crawl into my room.  I'm not watching tv, I'm not talking on the phone, I'm not even reading books or knitting.   I'm just sitting.  The activity of the week takes its toll and everything in my needs to be still.  While reading the details of how I am currently handling my weekends, please bear in mind that I am still in the thick of a major life transition and I have a lot  to juggle. The stillness may be merited, at least for now but it's hard to be still and to be actively investing in my friendships.

I know that I need people in my life but I have been struggling with how to include them while still allowing myself rest.   When I do make plans, I end up canceling them or falling off the radar in an attempt to throw myself a life-line and recoup some of the resources I expended over the course of the week.   Last weekend in particular I was sick, so I had to cancel all of my plans so that I could sleep (seriously, I slept for over 30 hours.  Insane.) but because I had the stomach flu the weekend before, my "no I can't hang out with you, I'm sick" explanation was not very well received.  Hence, the stress.  Today when I was navigating downtown Saint Paul traffic, this song came on the radio reminding me that the grace that I desperately crave in my life can only be found in Jesus.      

So tonight I am crawling into bed wrapped in the promise that I serve God who is bigger than my exhaustion.  He is purposeful in all things and never hesitates to wrap me in endless grace.    

some sweet yeast

There are always obstacles that stand in the way of doing something you really enjoy, aren't there?  Lately, warm weather, exhaustion, illness and a busy schedule have kept me from spending the kind of time I want in my kitchen.  Cooking is grounding for me because it meets a need and provides an outlet for my creative juices to flow free.  As someone who functions best in the context of concrete goals, I am never without at least one cooking goal.  This fall I decided to learn how to bake with active dry yeast.  Since my cooking goal remained untouched, my recent kitchen sabbatical needed to come to an end. 

Even though I am still very much under the weather, I spent some time making these today.   I substituted skim milk for whole milk and vegetable oil for canola oil but the result was still a gooey sweet treat on a crisp fall day. I recommend giving them a whirl!