Story and Being Human: Imago Dei

In a quiet moment last night with my hubby and youngest, I sat looking at our bookshelves upstairs. We have bookshelves in many places in our house, but these particular shelves have my daughters' old books. Some that they read on their own after they became independent readers, but many that hubby and I read to them at bedtime over many, many years of their childhood.

Oh, the books. Oh, the memories!

Narnia and the Pevensies. Laura and Mary in their Little Houses with Ma and Pa. All the American Girls. Junie B. Jones (the B. stands for Beatrice, but she just likes B and that's all). Anne of Green Gables, the whole series. The Magic Tree House. The Babysitter's Club. All sorts of Dear America history books. Charlotte's Web. Stuart Little. The Mandie series they got from their older cousin.

Oh, I wanted to go back. For a moment, I wanted to be sitting on a bed with one of their heads lying on my chest reading about Aslan singing the world of Narnia into being. I'll be sharing that book with my 6th graders this fall, but no -- it's not the same standing at the front of a classroom as it is snuggling at the head of a bed.

One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling was all the reading I got to do with my daughters. They did read on their own, but I also read literature aloud to them, stuff that was a step above their independent reading level to move them forward. I remember reading Julius Caesar with my eldest when she studied the Roman Empire in fifth grade or so, skipping a few unimportant scenes, stopping to explain stuff as we went, but reveling in the language and reciting my favorite speech of Antony's with mucho gusto. To this day, she claims that Shakespeare is one of her favorite writers.

An article I just read yesterday reiterated what I have heard and known for many years: one of the best things we can do to help our children write better is spend years reading high quality literature aloud to them. Let them hear the rhythm of mature language so they can replicate it naturally.

But reading high quality literature to them is also one of the best things we can do just to help them live better -- to help them become truly Human. The root of the word "educate" means "to draw out." We often think of schooling as a matter of pouring information into someone's head, but no -- it's a matter of drawing out of them what is there so that they can use it well. Which means something has to be in there to be drawn out.

Now, I believe there is a core of "knowing" that God has already instilled in us. It's a part of our being made in God's image. What is lacking is a "language" to couch our knowing in. Does that make sense? There are a lot of things I know, in a sense, but until I draw it out, until I can explain it in words, it is of no use to me. Most of those are spiritual things; thus, they are the most critical things to be educated in.

And this is where stories come in. Stories are a vehicle of knowing. Ideas and concepts can be communicated through story sometimes far more effectively than through exposition. Those inner things we know from God but cannot yet use can become accessible to us through narrative.

When I read about Laura's relationship with her Pa, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know about the security of a father's love, whether I have a father or not.

When I read about Anne breaking her slate over Gilbert's head, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the extent of humanity's foolish pride, whether I'm conscious of my own or not.

When I read of Aslan's death on the Stone Table, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the nobility of and need for sacrifice, whether I recognize my personal need for it or not.

Man has always told stories -- around the campfire, in books, on screens, on stages, in poetry, in song, always and everywhere. Jesus himself told stories to communicate the truths he has to tell us. When I teach my students about the story elements and the plot chart and such, I emphasize to them that this isn't stuff that people made up. We write stories that way because that's how God created story to be. That's how He made our story run. When we tell a good story well, we're imitating God. Imago dei.

Read to your kids people. Read to yourselves now. Read. Read. Read.

Players With No Lines

In the past eight years, I've written four full-length plays, six one-acts, and a boatload of skits, which have all been performed before relatively good-sized audiences. So, I suppose I could call myself a playwright. I still don't quite feel comfortable assuming that label, though. Just looking at those numbers – and remembering the conversation I had with a friend about a year before this binge began in which I stated emphatically that "I am not a writer" – I don't feel like I can really take credit for much of that. This has been a God thing. Every time I sat down to write another drama for somebody, I wondered if this would be the day that the spigot would run dry and God's work would be done in that area of my life.

However, I bring up my play-writing experience because it explains why I think I reacted so strongly to a quote I read in an article a while back. The author was referring to a book about prayer by Paul Miller (which is now on my gift list – Mother's Day is coming up, and my birthday is in August, ahem). Here is the quote that stuck with me:

When we have a praying life, we become aware of and enter into the story God is weaving in our lives. . . . Prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center. . . . We are actors in his drama, listening for our lines, quieting our hearts so we can hear the voice of the Playwright. . . If you are going to enter this divine dance we call prayer, you have to surrender your desire to be in control . . .

God is the playwright. He writes the script of our lives. Our job is to "listen for our lines" so we can submit to his storyline.

That listening can be a challenging task, however. I don't know how many times I've wished I had an actual printed script in hand, with my lines and stage directions written out for me. The Playwright's voice is difficult to hear some days.

But I recall certain times in my writing when a character kind of took over the script – not in a bad way or spooky way. I mean, I created a character, and then I created a situation that the character would be in, and from that point, the lines and stage directions seemed to create themselves. I was almost taking dictation as I wrote – I simply copied down what that character would naturally say and do in that situation. Only if I had a twist to insert for the sake of my greater theme did I inject myself as playwright again. But that often wasn't even necessary; if my characters and situation were set up well, the drama wrote itself.

And I'm wondering now if that isn't something like what the Great Playwright does. He creates us . . . more than that, He continually RE-creates us, if we put ourselves in His hands to do so. He orchestrates the situations around us, a profoundly complex choreography of plotlines and conflicts and climaxes that all promote his general theme. And at some point, when we have submitted to His molding and will, He no longer needs to feed us lines. We can improvise, based on who He has made us and where He has placed us. We do what is natural to us.

So, we don't need to be so worried about saying the right things or doing the right things . . . we just need to be worried about being the right person, being the person God is re-creating us to be. And we know who that person is by knowing who Christ is.

Get to know Him intimately, and the rest falls into place. Know Him well enough to know that you can safely give Him control. That's doable. That's a manageable goal when the world is falling apart around me. Just know the Playwright. 

On Writing and Thinking and Adulting

So, it's been quite a while since I posted. And I'm sitting here trying to figure out exactly why.

I know in the last couple weeks, it had to do with my laptop. It's kinda dead. Kinda. The battery won't charge, only it's not the battery; it's the place where the charger cord connects. I've been borrowing my daughter's laptop for a week or two now, and so I try not to take it from her any more than necessary because she's being really sweet about it.

Before that, I think it was the play she was in. Well, not "in" -- she was the stage manager for The Importance of Being Earnest. Stage manager means she runs the whole show at performances, and she did a great job. I was so proud of her. But the run of a show is a crazy busy time, and I didn't get to my blog then.

Beyond that, though, frankly, I just haven't known what to write about. And that's kind of unusual for me. I always can come up with something to say. And that's been one of the reasons for keeping up this blog . . . to make myself keep thinking about things that matter and trying to communicate those thoughts to people.

I come up with thoughts during the week. The election process gives me all sorts of fodder to write about. Church and Sunday School usually inspire thoughts. Stuff happens in school, and during homeschool, etc. etc. But I don't ever seem to have the time . . . or inclination . . . or computer access . . . to sit and type those thoughts up when they occur to me. And when Monday morning rolls around, I'm dry as a bone. Tired and just forcing one step in front of the other to get started on my morning.

My sleep problems may be a factor. I've noted that my cpap machine doesn't seem to be fitting very well anymore.

General busy-ness is a factor, also. My to-do list is quite long right now. And most of the items on that list are mental items -- things I need to sit and think about. Lesson plans. School plans for next year. Drama plans for summer and fall. Writing gigs. Homeschool plans for my daughter. Oh, the thinks I must think.

Think time requires big chunks of time. And it puts me in a mood -- a self-absorbed, living-in-my-brain mood. And I don't feel like communicating with anyone about anything, unless it is directly connected with my current think.

So, anyway, my apologies for isolating myself from you (if any of you noticed or missed me!). This is spring break, so maybe I'll get caught up on my thinks and writes and have stuff to say when the week's over. I know others of you have spring break this week also. Enjoy your time, and head back to life refreshed next Monday!

For the rest of you who are adulting this week without a spring break, good for you. The world needs more adults. Might you consider jumping into the presidential race?

English Teacher Musings

- I posted a meme on FB a while back that has a bunch of words misspelled -- errors like "could of" instead of "could've," that kind of thing. One of my friends LOL'd it and commented that for me to read that must be like someone with perfect pitch listening to a tone-deaf person sing. Oh, my goodness . . . nailed it.

- Speaking of memes, my husband and I were just commenting on that word yesterday: meme. What a weird word it is. Wondering where in the world it came from. Amazed that it has suddenly become such a commonly used term when it seemed to come out of nowhere a couple years ago.

- And not only is a texting term like "LOL" common in everyday usage anymore, but I just used it as a verb. Language evolution is fascinating.

- And speaking of language evolution, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the word "whom" is just going to fade away in the next hundred years or so. Someday, people will read literature and documents from our time and react to the word "whom" the way we react to the word "thou." What does that mean? Why did people talk so weird back then? Old English -- pah.

- I rarely get to choose the literature I teach in my English classes, and I've decided I don't really want that responsibility. Do you know how much literature there is out there? Good, meaningful, influential, classic literature? A whole heck of a lot. Even though I'm given the curriculum to teach at my school, I get to choose what my homeschooled daughter reads for English, and sometimes it's overwhelming. I want her to read everything.

- "Theme" is one of the story elements that I teach in my literature classes, and the definition we give for it is "the statement about life that an author wants to convey in his/her story." Only that's not entirely accurate . . . because sometimes the theme isn't necessarily a statement. It's just a topic. The story addresses the theme of "conformity," but the author may not be making a clear statement about that topic as much as just wanting us to think more about it. And sometimes an author writes something with no particular "theme" in mind at all -- just writing a good story. Nevertheless, if it is a good story, we readers find a theme. Because this is one of the aspects of our being made in the image of God -- this ability and need to search for meaning.

- I emphasized (with italics) the modifier good with regards to a story. Not all stories are good. And by that, I don't mean that not all stories are entertaining or enjoyable. Those factors are a matter of personal preference, really. But I think we can come up with criteria for what makes a story good, or at least better than another. I don't know what that definition is . . . but I heard one a while back that I thought was a good start to the conversation anyway: good stories, even if they are fictional stories, are TRUE. They express truth. They show us truth. Even if that truth is the ugliness of reality.

- Good stories must have some universal appeal about them, too. Something that rings true in all people, whatever culture they come from.

- An old friend once talked about a play (and therefore, a story) having value if there is a redemptive quality to it. I like that, too.

- When I taught public school twenty-some years ago, every year, I had some smart aleck kid who would declare that literature can mean anything you want it to mean. This declaration usually came sometime in January or February, which was handy because it would be cold enough for me to have my winter coat in the classroom. I would ask my students what color my coat was. Some would say green, some blue, some greenish-blue, some blueish-green, some teal, some aqua . . . we even sometimes discussed how next to a blue wall it would look more green and next to a green wall it would look more blue. I explained to them that any of those answers could be correct, depending on your perspective, your background, your prior knowledge and vocabulary . . .

But if anyone said my coat was hot pink, that was WRONG. Just because there may be more than one acceptable answer to a question doesn't mean any answer is acceptable.

And yes, that shut the smart alecks up, believe it or not. I should've kept that coat just for those purposes. Too many smart alecks in our world need shutting up.

Resuscitate Or Let It Die?

I have this website that many of you know about. It's a place where I sell my scripts that I've written over the years for church dramas and homeschool dramas. I set it up a couple years ago because I figured, I have all these scripts sitting on my hard drive that I have no current use for, and there has to be SOMEBODY out there who would love to use them.

So, I spent the time one summer to create the website. Acting Out Christian Dramas. You can click there to get to it.

Just the process of creating this site was seriously out of my comfort zone. The research involved! Research is actually one of my least favorite activities. I very much enjoy taking information and doing something with it -- I really hate the process of hunting the information down to begin with. But I had to research places to create websites, sites where I could upload the documents safely, ways for the financial transaction to happen online . . . for some of you, this may all be "duh" kind of stuff. But for me, this was a major learning curve.

And then I went through all the grunt work of actually designing the pages (simple as they are), choosing which scripts, creating free "previews" people could download, uploading various things at various sites . . . oh, good heavens. This was a time-consuming process, both to learn how to do and to execute.

But I got it done. And I was rather proud of myself just for doing it.

As I said, that was about two years ago. In the meantime, I have a Facebook page for the website with about 60 likes. And a decent number of those people are folks I have never heard of -- I don't know how they found the page. I seem to get hits on the website pretty frequently.

But in the end, I've only sold a handful of scripts. I'm pretty sure that's because I do very little to market the site; other than putting out a link once a month on the Facebook page, I don't do anything with this. Frankly, it is quite low on the priority list. It's not that I don't want to sell my scripts. There are just other things more important.

And honestly, I hate marketing just about as much as I hate research. When I had my Creative Memories business, that was the part that weighed on me the most. It's the part I hate about teaching in the classroom. I don't like to have to "sell" myself or my "product." If you want what I have to offer and think it will benefit you, great! Let's talk. But I don't want to have to try to convince you that you need what I have. Ugghhh.

Yes, I know. If I intend to be in the script-selling business, I have to buck up. Marketing is what it takes -- just figure it out. And that's why I'm wondering if I really want to be in the script-selling business. I keep hoping that there will be someone in my life who actually has this skill set and maybe enjoys the selling process who will step in and offer to make this work. That's not happening.

Although my website is free, the site that stores the documents costs me $15 a month. Because of some quirks that happened last month when my credit card got changed, my subscription to that site will be cancelled in five days unless I go give them my new credit card info. I'm trying to decide if I'm just going to let it die a quiet death.

Because I'm just not a business person. But more importantly, I don't know how badly I want to be one.

Lessons Learned from the Director's Chair

Last Friday was Summit Christian Academy's performance of  Pilgrim's Progress -- the second play I wrote, my tenth play I've directed, and my third time directing this particular play. I have to say . . . this show probably gave me more gray hairs than any yet. A bunch of new actors in their first full-length play who didn't understand the importance of memorizing lines early. The week of the performance is not the time to get your lines down! And now they know this. :) Yet they still pulled off two great performances on Friday. The power of prayer, people.

The stress I felt this last week sent me back to the very first play we did in Sioux City: "The King and His Dancing Princesses." About fifteen 3rd-5th graders, in their very first play, with a newbie director and newbie producer . . . wow. I distinctly remember about half-way through thinking, "What made me think I could do this?"

I've always loved acting, but now I think I love writing and directing more -- and this was a surprise to me. I never thought I'd be willing to give up the spotlight, but here I am enjoying the behind-the-scenes much more. God has used this "hobby" to teach me so many things. Like . . .

. . . that I'm not really in control of anything. That was a huge adjustment during that first play I directed: realizing that I could only do so much. At some point, the kids themselves had to step up and make this happen, and I couldn't make them do it. All I can do is try to make them want to do it, and give them the tools to do it. In the end, it's all out of my hands.

. . . that my precious words I've written are not as important as I think. I remember a drama performed at our church in Sioux City that got particularly butchered in content as the actors struggled through. The worship leader announced to the congregation at the end of the service that the piece had been written by me. I muttered under my breath, "Well, that somewhat resembled something I wrote . . ."  I've had to learn over and over to let go of my script; it's not going to come out as I planned it. And that's okay.

. . . that learning a new skill comes from imitation. With my beginning student actors, I usually have to show them exactly how I want them to deliver a line, how I want them to stand or move, how loud and slow they need to speak, everything. They mimic me. And eventually, after two or three plays, they start to feel in their own bodies what it feels like when it's done right and they then internalize the skill. It was an awesome thing to direct my last play with my high schoolers in Sioux City and see just how far they'd come. I've applied these lessons to teaching writing as well. We learn a new skill through imitation and repetition.

. . . that the personal growth of my students trumps a good show. Never have we put on a show that I couldn't find some aspect of the performance I wished we'd done better. But in every show, the students have learned something important. They learned how to project their voice. Or they learned how to focus and pay attention. Or they learned how to sympathize with a character-type very different from themselves. And those things are far more important than whether the final performance was stellar quality or not.

So, what did this last group of students learn? The group that didn't get their lines memorized until the final week? Well, not only did they learn that Mrs. K knows what she's talking about when she sets deadlines . . . but I suspect they've learned something about learning. My suspicions are that they were "going over" their lines all that time; they just didn't do what it took to actually learn them. And I have suspicions that similar things are happening with their schoolwork. They "go over" a grammar worksheet enough to get enough right answers to get enough points to satisfy their parents. But they don't do what it takes to learn the grammar concept.

And now I'm excited at the prospect of watching my students learn how to learn in the last couple months of school. If that actually happens, the new gray hairs from the last week will have been well worth it.

Yeah, We Could Make Movies

So, I haven't blogged for a while. Science fair, spring break starting, family in town . . . you know how it goes. We're on spring break this week, but I still won't have an excess of time, because the San Antonio Christian Worldview Film Festival.

Our school was given two free student passes, and our principal offered them to my daughter, the budding young actress who loves to edit video. (The festival organizers graciously allowed me to use the second pass so she wouldn't be going alone.) It's a five day event: two and a half days of workshops and two and a half days of film festival. We get into the whole shebang.

I wasn't sure how excited to get about this at first. For one thing, this is my spring break. I have all sorts of stuff I need to get done this week -- lesson planning, curriculum writing, costume shopping, plus just all the family stuff that gets put off until "I have some extra time." Going to this thing all day for five days would really kill my Spring Break productivity and make me scramble for the next several weeks.

But I also wondered how beneficial it would really be for my daughter. If these workshops are for
serious film-makers, how much would she get out of it? She may not have the base knowledge or background to even understand what they are talking about.

Never fear. "Film-Making 101" with Stacie Graber to the rescue.

Our first workshop yesterday. Perfect. Everything we needed to know about the basic process of putting a real movie together. Oh, my goodness. Are we both psyched now!

The second workshop was more of an acting workshop (Exploring the Spiritual Lives of your Characters), so it had immediate use for us also. And it was also inspiring.

I have always had in the back of my mind that my daughter might enjoy something in the area of film-making someday. But not until yesterday did I realize how doable this is for her NOW. How much potential there is for her to use these skills and interests of hers TODAY. Or soon, at least. I'm listening to the speakers and thinking, "She could make a short film to submit next year."

Next year. Holy cow. That's exciting!

What's more, I'm thinking, I would enjoy this. Not every part of it, but certainly the writing. Certainly the directing. Certainly the whole create-the-vision-for-this-thing part.

Daughter and I talked on the way there yesterday about how conferences like this are often a lot of "rah-rah" to get people excited about their topic . . . and how susceptible she and I are to the "rah-rah." We are easily excited. But really, I think this is something worth our getting excited about.

So, "rah-rah"! Let's see what comes of this.

"It Must Be By His Death . . . " -- Must It?

Rome is Brutus' first love. We read paragraph after paragraph of student writing supporting this thesis in my honors sophomore English class with Mr. Umansky. Frankly, writing and evaluating those paragraphs is all I remember about our Julius Caesar unit that year -- in fact, I wouldn't even remember that we read it except that thesis statement is seared into my brain: Rome is Brutus' first love.

But I've taught Julius Caesar several times since then, and I'm teaching it now, and I LO-O-OVE this play! And I am LOVING the discussions I'm having with this class.

The big debate yesterday: did Brutus have good reasons for joining the conspiracy to kill Caesar? Well, his reasons seem more noble than the others'. He loves Caesar, but he is afraid of what will happen to Rome if Caesar gains too much power, because he predicts power will corrupt him.

But how does he know power will corrupt him? He also predicts that Antony is but a limb of Caesar and won't be any danger. He predicts that the people will rule by their reason and appreciate what the conspirators have done for them. He predicts that letting Antony speak at Caesar's funeral will be to their advantage more than otherwise. And he was dead wrong about it all.

And is there ever a good reason, a noble reason to take a life? (Insert "American Sniper" discussion here.)

And what about Antony? He's noble for standing by Caesar . . . we think . . . but what are his motives? And what a two-faced sneak that man is! Making his peace with the conspirators, shaking their bloody hands, and then turning around and swearing vengeance. Is that noble or not?

How about that funeral oration of his? It's positively masterful. "Brutus is an honorable man" he tells them over and over, all the while proving definitively what a traitor Brutus is. Riling up the crowd with passion, denigrating himself humbly as "a plain, blunt man," -- "no orator, as Brutus is" -- oh, the irony!

And the crowd! The mob! It's laughable how changeable they are! "This Caesar was a tyrant!" One minute, and weeping for him the next. "Caesar's better parts shall be crowned in Brutus!" at one point, and then "Burn! Fire! Kill! Slay! Let not a traitor live!" just a few minutes later. So easily swayed by pretty words. (And when have we heard pretty words sway a changeable crowd into action unwise for the course of a country . . . ?)

Why, that mob actually murdered an innocent man in the streets just because he was unfortunate enough to have the same name as one of the conspirators. "I am Cinna, the poet!" he cried. "I am Cinna, the poet!!"

"Tear him for his bad verses!" the mob growls. Insert images of the Ferguson, Missouri, madness here.

Don't ever tell me that Shakespeare is not relevant to the modern reader. And don't ever tell me it isn't interesting to the modern teenager. They just need to know how to read it -- and to read it like it was meant to be read: with PASSION. Because as Antony tells us (long before Elizabeth Taylor did), "Passion, I see, is catching."

Thinking Literarily

As an English teacher and as a homeschooler, I have many times over the years had to address the question of why we require kids to study literature. Students who hated to read asked it. Moms teaching kids who hated to read asked it. Moms who themselves hated to read asked it. And it is a legitimate question.

Legitimate enough that you would think that at some point, I would have sat down to craft a thorough and articulate response to give every time I was asked. But I never did. I just said whatever came to mind at the time, which sometimes satisfied the inquirer and sometimes didn't. I think I realize now why I was never able to give a complete answer to the question before: because I never really put God in the picture before. Now that I'm teaching at a Christian school, God is always in the picture, and the reasons are more obvious.

When I was discussing the plot chart with my kiddos early in the semester, I pointed out to them that this isn't something people made up. It's not like some brilliant ancient man sat down and decided this was the best way to craft a good story. No, the "plot chart" was God's idea. The history of mankind -- the story of the Bible -- goes according to the traditional plot chart. Exposition in the Garden of Eden . . . conflict begins with the fall . . . rising action throughout the course of history as God works to re-establish relationship with mankind . . . climax at the cross . . . falling action in the two thousand years since . . . resolution at the end.

All of our experience comes to us as story. When man creates stories, he is only copying a pattern that God already established. We see the world through the lens of narrative because we are made in God's image.

The same is true of every literary element and device. Take symbolism. No human being came up with this brilliant idea of having one object represent something else. Really, the concept of speaking figuratively at all is an amazing one. It's remarkable that the human mind is able to conceive of things this way -- to see things in layers, to look at the physical and "see" the abstract. We all do it so easily that we cease to be amazed at the process.

And yet, again, this was God's idea. The Bible just explodes with symbolism, analogy, and figurative language. Jesus spoke over and over again in parables. And he used metaphor constantly to describe himself ("I am the Door . . . I am the Good Shepherd . . . I am the Bread of Life . . .").

None of this is man's invention. We can do this because we are image-bearers. Teaching our students to think "literarily" is bringing out the spark of God in them.

Yes, there is value in the actual stories we read -- truth that my students need to understand and grapple with, or sometimes "truth" to recognize as false and argue against. But teaching literature is not just about the books. Although I'd love for my kiddos to catch the bug and enjoy reading great books for the rest of their lives, it doesn't matter if they do or not. They will watch TV. They will go to movies. They will hear people talk about their lives. They will live their own lives. They will constantly be interacting with narrative . . . with themes and irony . . . with conflicts and resolutions . . . with characters, presented directly or indirectly . . . with metaphor and meter and rhythm and rhyme . . .

"Literature" is not imposed upon us from with-out; it is the eyeglasses through which humanity sees its world. I teach literature so my students can see their world clearly and accurately . . . and recognize the beauty of the Creator in it all.

Worried about The Church

I'm a lousy blogger these days. One of the reasons I put myself on this schedule to blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday was to force myself to write, to sit and think of something to say three times a week, to discipline myself into the mental activity of examining what God is communicating to me on a regular basis and articulate it to the world so I am held accountable.

Then I went "back to work." And I find all sorts of reasons to justify skipping a blog day. Some good reasons, some wimpy ones. I'm a lousy blogger these days.

I keep a document on the computer where I write notes to myself about ideas that pop into my head here and there that I might want to blog about sometime. I read through that list the other day and had to laugh; there are some items on there that I can't remember now what in the world I was thinking about. C'est la vie. That brilliance is lost to the ages.

But I do notice a pattern to my little jottings. I'm worried about The Church. About The Church not being who we are supposed to be . . . and blaming the rest of the world for that instead of ourselves.

Several weeks ago, a teacher in a Sunday School class we were visiting made the comment that we need to worry less about getting prayer back into our schools and more about getting prayer back into our churches. AMEN.

Another item from my list: when Robin Williams died, a good friend of his commented that the remarkable thing about Robin was that when he was tired or frustrated or at the end of his rope, he didn't get cranky and irritable -- he got all the more sweet and kind. Gentleness was his default mode, the place he went when his mask was off and his guard was down. And I thought, what a stunning denunciation on The Church when such a statement could be said of one who very likely was not a believer but could hardly be said of anyone in The Church. I don't think I've ever known anyone like that.

I was reminded this past week of the story in Acts about Paul addressing the Athenians at the Areopagus. He started by mentioning their many temples to many gods and acknowledging their obvious religious devotion. Then he pointed out their temple to "an unknown god" and offered to fill them in about that god they don't know yet. He approached them with gentleness and respect. He quote their own poets and spoke their own language -- not just the Greek language, but the language of education and intellectualism. He didn't berate them for being sinners. How often does The Church berate people for being sinners rather than gently and respectfully filling in the gaps they are missing?

Many in The Church are fond of proclaiming that God is going to punish -- or is already punishing -- our nation because of our sin. Abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, drug abuse, etc. etc. etc. God's wrath is coming upon us, people!

Here's the thing, folks: I think there may be something to that. I think God may allow a level of destruction to fall on our nation . . . but it's not because of the sins listed above. God expects the unregenerated to sin; their consequences are already set. If God punishes the United States, I believe it will be for the sins of The Church. The Church whose first command from her Lord was to preach the gospel -- not morality, not "the Christian nation", but the gospel of forgiveness for and deliverance from sin. The gospel of a New Covenant, a new relationship with the God of the universe. If The Church in America had been serious about fulfilling the Great Commission in our communities for the last several generations rather than simply making ourselves fat and comfortable in our "One Nation Under God," we might not be having to deal with all these other sins.

Revival starts with us, Church. With you and with me.

I Need a 12-Step Grammar Program

I didn't start it. A woman named Charlene did. 

She asked the question on the San Antonio Homeschoolers Facebook page: "In the sentence: My current favorite book is about baby animals. Is current an adjective or adverb. The book says adjective, but doesn't it modify favorite, an adjective, making it an adverb?"

All these people commented on her page that "current" was an adjective modifying book.  One of them even went into a mini-lecture about how it couldn't be an adverb, because adverbs tell us how, where, or when, which "current" clearly doesn't tell us.

And I couldn't stay silent. Because they were all so WRONG.

The word "current" in that sentence is giving us more information about when that book is her favorite, not about when that book is her book. It is modifying -- giving us more information about -- the word "favorite". And the how/where/when business is accurate when the adverb is modifying a verb; when it is modifying an adjective, it is often telling us "to what extent".

And so, I politely explained all this, with a gentle introduction to myself as an English teacher to try to give my words a little more weight in the conversation. I also softened the blow with a remark that this is an unusual construction and English is a pretty crazy language.

But in this sentence, "current" is most definitely an adverb.

Charlene thanked me. And then four or five more people commented on the thread, insisting that it was an adjective modifying book.

Seriously, people????

One tried to explain: "My current favorite book, remove favorite, the sentence still works ..... My current book, and also you can write the sentence as, 'My favorite current book' and it makes sense......which you couldn't do if it was an adverb."

I started to fume inwardly. (For real -- what's wrong with me?) I asked my daughters which word "current" is modifying in that sentence, and even they got it right. I tried to explain -- again, gently -- that although the phrase makes sense with the words switched, the two phrases do not mean the same thing. "One says, 'Of all of my books that I am reading at the moment, this one is my favorite.' The other says, 'Of all of my books, this one is my favorite at the moment.' The words are interchangeable, but the meaning changes when you change the words. That's because the first word is modifying the second in each case."

After a few more exchanges with Charlene about "light blue" (light is obviously modifying blue, but it can't be an adverb, she said -- YES, IT CAN!!), I decided that I'm a pretty sick person to obsess this much about labeling language. I bid them all good night and tried to get it all out of my head and go to sleep.

But friends, "current" is most definitely an adverb in that sentence. Definitely. Harrumph.

Silly Colleges

Preparing kids for college makes us do stupid things.

This has been a conundrum for me this summer as I create my Freshman English class for this fall: do I teach them what they need to know for college, or do I teach them what they need to know for life? Because they are frequently not the same things, and they are often not even compatible.

Any teacher could tell you (and most average people off the street could, too) that standardized tests are a lousy way of telling you what a student knows or can do. Doing well on a standardized test only proves that you have the knowledge and skills required to do well on a standardized test. Yet, we require all students to do well on the MOMMA of all standardized tests before they can even get a foot in the door to higher education. Why?

People say that's because those are the skills they need to do well in college. But doesn't that just call into question the quality of what they're doing in college if the SAT whiz-kid is representative of what colleges successfully produce?

Final exams are in the same category. I would really like to implement the use of a portfolio to assess my students' learning at the end of each year. Much more useful, much more accurate, of much more value to the student, teacher, parent, everyone. Final exams, particularly as high schools and colleges have come to implement them, focus on bits of information as opposed to overall conceptual understanding. They provide only a snapshot of the student's performance at a particular moment in time, which may or may not be representative of their actual achievement level and certainly doesn't show any evidence of growth. They just stink.

But colleges give final exams, so my college-bound students need to learn how to cram ungodly amounts of informational bits in their brains to spit out on a scan sheet so they can succeed in college. Why?

My daughter had to memorize ten vocabulary words a week last year, words that were purportedly for SAT and college preparation . . . and many of them words that I, a word-fanatic English teacher with a master's degree, had never encountered in my life. Words that she, honestly, would not be likely to read again in her life. And words that she most certainly would never be using again in her life. But she has to learn them to succeed in college? Ridiculous.

And academic writing . . . good heavens. For my online course I'm taking this summer, some of the articles I'm having to read are the thickest, most nominalized, most ridiculously obscure writing I've read in a long time. But this is the way you are expected to write in higher academia. (My professor commented on one piece I turned in that I should rewrite lists with bullet points into paragraphs. Forget the fact that the list with the bullet points is significantly more succinct and clear -- clarity is apparently not the goal here.) So, I can teach my kids how to write for college, OR I can teach them how to write well.

And literature! To succeed in a college literature class, my kids have to be able to tear apart a novel into its various elements, analyze them all, critique them all . . . and I'm not arguing that a certain degree of such knowledge isn't beneficial. I can enjoy watching football much more when I have some understanding of the rules and the strategies and the skills involved in doing what the players are doing. It's the same with literature.

But good heavens -- we kill all the joy of reading! Most of my kids are not going to get literature degrees, but I hope they will be life-long readers. Life-long readers don't label and analyze the literary elements of a novel. They read it! They lose themselves in a story. They let it affect their minds and spirits. They talk about it with their book-loving friends. And they respond to it by changing their interaction with the world in some way.

Our students expend so much energy responding to a novel academically, they have nothing left to respond personally . . . if they even understand that a personal response is an option.

Why don't colleges shape up? Why can't they figure out that the way they do things is ineffective and impractical, so the rest of us don't have to make a choice between what is good for our students' educational future and what is good for our students' future?

Because, people, there simply isn't time to teach it all.

Blogging About My Excuses for Not Blogging

I've had family in town for a week . . . I've been working on my online class for my recertification . . . and hubby and I took an anniversary trip to New Orleans last weekend . . . all to say that I've had very good reasons for taking a week off from my blog.

The week break has, however, reinforced for me why I need to be regular about this blogging business if I'm going to do it at all. After such a busy and eventful week, I'm sitting here drawing a blank about what to write about. Well, not exactly what to write about . . . but how to find an angle to any of the things I have to write about that would make them something anyone outside of my brain would care to read.

I could tell you the ins and outs of the various family members who stayed in our house at various points in the last eight or nine days. There were seven of them, none all here at the same time. They came and went. Some of them I didn't see at all while they were here. But, you know . . . does anyone outside the immediate family want to know all that?

I certainly could tell you about my lovely trip to New Orleans with my husband -- three days in the city where he proposed to me, to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (which is actually not until the 29th) . . . doing an Urban Adventure Quest scavenger hunt in the rain . . . eating stuffed eggplant and etouffee at Galatoire's (where 26 years ago the waiter asked us, "How are you this evening?" and I responded breathlessly, "GreatI'mEngaged!!!" and shoved my ring in his face) . . . listening to a couple great jazz bands at Fritzel's for a couple hours sipping hurricanes . . . taking the street cars up to the cemeteries and through the garden district . . . stopping for Willie Mae's fried chicken, a Smoothie King smoothie, and a look through a public library branch in a very old building that was much more interesting on the outside than the inside . . . building a burger (with amazing chili bbq sauce) in a restaurant remodeled from a recording studio where Fats Domino, Little Richard and Lee Dorsey (among many others) recorded hit songs . . . sitting in Lafayette Park talking . . . eating candy bars in the St. James hotel courtyard outside our room . . . yeah, I suppose I could tell you about all that.

But do you really want to know about all that? Eh, maybe. But something in the retelling would diminish it in my mind, I think -- and this is one of those trips that I want housed in my mind more than I want it plastered on the internet.

I could tell you my thoughts about the Malaysian jetliner being shot down and the Israelis' firing on the Gaza strip . . . but I'm still too mellow from my New Orleans weekend to want to get all worked up about that.

I could write about all the things I have to do for the next month to get ready for school starting -- one month from today!!  But you couldn't possibly find that as exciting as I do.

I could write about the stuff I'm learning in the online class about helping students' reading comprehension . . . and some of you would be interested . . . but not many of you.

See, there's all sorts of things I could write about. I just suddenly don't know how to write them in a way that they will make any difference to anyone but me. I lost my mojo. This is what comes of taking a week off.

For a couple years now, I've committed to blogging every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This fall, I'll be teaching on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. I may have to let go of my Fridays. Maybe shift to Saturdays? I don't know, we'll see. But I'm determined to keep blogging regularly. I find that my brain needs to be forced to sift through its contents, determine what would be meaningful for mass consumption, and go through the exercise of actual, genuine writing. I'll be expecting my students to do a lot of this; it will give me some credibility if I can assure them I'm writing just as much as they are.

Please Explain . . . Like I'm Five

I'm an intelligent woman, in all modesty. But three times this past week I felt like a complete idiot.

Tuesday evening, I needed to pick my daughter up at a laser tag place which, the birthday party mom and GPS both told me, was “right behind Hobby Lobby and the movie theater”. That sounds simple. It wasn't. Apart from driving my vehicle right through the doors of these establishments and out the other side, I couldn't figure out how to get to the other side of the buildings. My GPS couldn't even get me there. I wandered in a labyrinth of parking lots until I finally found an outlet to an obscure street, and then I wandered down that street and a couple others until, by chance, I saw the sign for the place. I had to put the GPS back on to find my way home – I still couldn't get to that laser tag place again if I had to. Good grief . . . 

Then yesterday morning, I had to do some online training for a computer system our school uses. From the get-go, I couldn't find the link on the main page that the instructor told us to go to (never did find it). More than that, as he continued, I realized I wasn't following what he was saying at all. I could see his actions on the screen, but I didn't know why he was doing that particular action and why I might want to do it later. After a bit, I realized that this training was apparently for administrators rather than teachers . . . so, yeah, that's it. That's why I wasn't following. (At least that's my story.)

And THEN, I had to run up to my husband's office for a meeting explaining the benefits program to employee spouses that wanted more information. I was the only English-speaking spouse present, so I had the English-speaking presenter all to myself – a one-on-one meeting. This should be helpful, I thought. Nope. The words I understood individually, but the context and meaning behind them eluded me. I kept having to rephrase things and ask the guy if I was correct. “So, these expenses I pay with the benefits card. But these I don't . . Oh, I can? . . Wait, but you said . . . huh?”

As I said, I'm an intelligent woman. Really.

I'm not going to deny that my brain might be a bit off this week, or that I'm less intelligent in some areas than in others -- because both are certainly possibilities. But each incident reminded me of the writing lessons I've been preparing for the fall about how to explain.

Sometimes, you need to do a close-up on the info, to give them more details or specifics. “The laser tag place is behind the movie theater. There's a street (though it doesn't look like a street) running south of the theater parking lot called Embassy Oaks; take that to where it stops in a T and turn left. After a couple curves, you'll see the place on the left.”

Sometimes, you need to back up and give your reader a view with a wider-angle lens. “This box is where you enter the information about this assignment – which is under this larger category of assignments – which is in the info about this particular class – which can be found under the Gradebook tab.”

Sometimes, you need to focus the lens – define your terms – to make things more clear. “FSA stands for Flexible Spending Account – that's what your husband pays into from his paycheck. The HRA, or Health Reimbursement Account, is the employer-funded account where you get deductibles reimbursed from.”

And always examine your assumptions: your readers may not have all the knowledge you think they have. Better to explain something too much than not enough, because they may be like me -- embarrassed to admit how much knowledge they're missing.

Giving Up on The Writing Process?

Because I'm going to be teaching in a classroom again this fall, I've been trying to solidify the lessons I've learned over my homeschooling years about learning and teaching and writing and so forth so I can use those lessons. And since writing is a way of thinking, I'm going to use this post today for that purpose.

See, one of the sacred cows of the English-teaching profession is The Writing Process. It's a primary objective on every list of objectives for every English class in the country (I'm sure) that the students understand and use The Writing Process when they write: pre-writing, roughdraft, revision, editing and proofreading, publishing . . . or some variation of that. Everyone knows that's how good writers write. There are scads of quotes out there from good writers telling us so.

Only, I'm not so sure now.

When I started homeschooling, I had a friend at church at the time who was a professional writer, and an excellent writer, and I asked him if sometime I might be able to have my daughter talk to him about the importance of The Writing Process . . . you know, revision and stuff. He listened thoughtfully and said, "Well, I'd be happy to do that, but the truth is, I don't really revise when I write." That stymied me. What do you mean, you don't revise? ALL good writers revise, right? Well, no, not this good writer. He doesn't even pre-write or plan too much either . . . he just writes.

Now, through later conversations and through working with him on various projects, I realized that, essentially, he does pre-write and revise; he just does it all in his head. You know: if you're asked to write a paragraph on your history exam explaining the causes of the civil war, you may not need to make an outline or notes or anything -- you plan it all in your head. And you don't have time to go back and revise -- you "revise" as you write. That's what he does. He's just good enough that he can do it with much bigger chunks of writing. Like, book-size chunks.

I would have been tempted to say that he's just a freak of nature, some natural-born writing savant that defies all conventions. But the thing is, my eldest daughter seems to be the same way. She hates to "plan out" her essays for school. She just confided to me that when they wrote research papers her junior year, she didn't do any of the notecards and outlines and everything they were required to do because it was just making her crazy. And she doesn't revise much once she's got it written down, either. And yet, her writing is good. The lowest score she got on a paper in her AP English class last semester was an 85 -- and that was only because the website she had to turn it in on erased her underlining and indentions and such. I might be able to make a case to her that her writing would be even better if she employed The Writing Process as prescribed, but the thing is, employing The Writing Process would make her hate writing.

So, is it better to write well, or to write with pleasure? Of course, the preference would be to do both, if I can figure out how to teach that.

Let me shift gears a bit to teaching vocabulary. I've understood for quite a while that there are levels to our vocabulary knowledge. There's our "vague sense" vocabulary, where we have a vague sense of what a word means when we read it or hear it. Putrid . . . that's something bad, I know that. There's our passive vocabulary, which are the words we don't normally think of, but we know what they mean when we see them -- we can pick them out of a thesaurus as the word we need. Repulsive, rancid . . . putrid! That's the word I want! Then there's our active vocabulary, the words that immediately come to our mind when the situation calls for them. Sniff . . . ew! What is this putrid-ness in my kitchen?!?

When a word reaches the level of our active vocabulary, it changes the way we think. And so does learning the skills of good writing. It appears that writers like my friend and my daughter have taken those writing skills we teach people to do in the stages of pre-writing and revision and they've internalized them -- they've become a part of the way they process the information in the first place. Requiring them to go through the steps of The Writing Process like I do will only make the act of writing an artificial, dreadful, despised thing for them.

Instead of being taught to go back to a roughdraft to improve the sentence fluency of her writing, my daughter needed to be taught the principles of sentence fluency so well that it changed the way she thought in sentences, so it changed the way the sentences came out of her head in the first place.

Can I teach other students like her to write that way? Probably. Can I convince parents and other teachers that I'm teaching well when I teach that way? I hope so.

Oo! Oo! I'm All Bubbly Just Thinking About It!

I could not go to sleep last night. It wasn't pity for the Broncos or elation for the Seahawks that delayed my repose (although you can't help but feel sorry for poor Payton -- wow, that was a painful trouncing). It was the prospect of a new English teaching position this fall.

Nothing certain yet -- I just had a casual talk with the principal about the matter with further talk on the way. But already my brain started cranking. A brand new class! Starting from scratch! Oh, the thrill of it all!  A chance to build a curriculum and a system to be whatever I want it to be.

What do I want it to be?

Well, I'd start with the writing curriculum, and fortunately, these kids already have a base in IEW (Institute for Excellence in Writing) training. IEW is great; it's kind of like running drills in basketball practice, or painting the classics by number, or acting through strict imitation. It teaches you the basics of what the deed looks like and FEELS like when done well to train that feeling into your bones.

But by 9th grade, it's time, I think, to step beyond the drills and into the real game of writing where those skills are applied and modified to fit the situation, or writing assignment, at hand. I think it's time to introduce 6-Trait Writing Analysis. (Oooh!  Ahhh!) Papers will be evaluated according to the 6-traits of excellent writing: Ideas and Content, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Grammar and Mechanics, and Voice. (Is anyone else tingly? I'm tingly. Yes, I'm an English geek, and the idea of 6-Trait Writing Analysis makes me tingly!)

Also, since writing is a skill applied to information that is gleaned elsewhere, I would want to work together with the content area teachers (History, Science, Bible and Literature -- though that last one might be me also). I'd want to discuss with them short writing assignments (paragraphs) that they could assign over their topics which we could discuss in writing class. And the other teachers and I can grade them together -- they grade Ideas and Content, I grade the rest.

In addition, I'd want to have some regular routines dealing just with words and language and the fun and beauty of them. Like . . . one vocabulary word a week (not the ten a week my eldest is trudging through in AP English only to forget the minute the quiz is over). One good quality, practical word a week that we define, discuss the usage of, seek to plug into our conversations (with quickie rewards for that -- toss them a piece of taffy?), bonus points for using them in papers . . . and a brief "quiz" or activity every Friday over all the year's words to ensure none of them are forgotten.  To ensure mastery. If high school students master thirty new high-quality, useful, practical words a year that actually become a part of their active vocabulary and alter the way they think as well as write, that would be a great accomplishment right there. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be awesome?  (Pant, pant.)

Literature? I'm not as strong here as I am in the writing area, but I would want to start by making the distinction for the kids between reading for pleasure and reading to study. Both are valuable and necessary skills, but the trick is to teach the latter without killing the former.

The IEW program already taught them the Story Sequence chart which introduces the literary elements. It's a small step from there to analyzing a piece of literature by how the author uses those elements.

Oh -- another thing! Since I last was in the classroom, we've jumped into the computer age! I can have the kids send me assignments online, so I can read and evaluate and make plans for the next class day based on what I see. We can do chatrooms or something on homestudy days to answer questions about the literature their reading. I can create an online literary magazine to "publish" student work! Yeah! Oh, yeah! How cool would that be?

Oh, oh, oh!!! . . . and one of the biggest advantages of working with such a small class is being able to individualize. SO important in my book! Any checklist for a writing assignment I give will also have a item for the student's "Personal Challenge" -- the one thing he and I have identified that he personally wants to work on to improve his writing.  That may be increasing sentence fluency. It may be finding interesting ways to introduce your topic. It may be figuring out how to use commas correctly once and for all. It may be playing with figurative language. Again, if each student has two or three personal challenges during a year that he focuses on and meets to improve the weaker areas of his own writing, that right there is a significant accomplishment.

I'm SO excited about the possibilities here. Can you tell I'm excited about the possibilities here?  I really need to get squared away soon whether or not I have the job -- otherwise, I'll be up every night planning poetry units and grammar units and such for a phantom class I'll never teach . . . and that would be pretty lame. (Although it wouldn't be that different from what I've done in my spare time for the last fifteen years or so. I really need to get back in the classroom . . .)

8 Things I Have to Say About Enumerated Lists

It's no secret that I'm on Facebook a lot (more than I should be, truth be told) and that I like to read articles that friends post there (you may note that they are often fodder for my own blog posts here). So, allow me to make a few enumerated observations about these articles:

1) A large number of these articles are enumerated lists. You know, "6 Things I Learned From Slamming my Finger in the Door".  "8 Reasons to Buy an Eight-Track Tape Player This Holiday Season". "The 40 Best Gregorian Chants of the Decade". Not only that, but I've noted that . . .

2) The number of enumerated lists seems to be increasing. In fact, I believe the majority of FB articles I see posted are these types of articles, and this was not always so. But I see a reason why, because personally, I find that . . .

3) I am more likely to click on and read an article if it is an enumerated list. Even if I might not necessarily be that interested in the topic otherwise. I'm not sure that I would have normally cared about pictures of dogs and their recent misdeeds, but the fact that the title informs me that there are 30 such pictures here available for me to see, for some really bizarre reason, draws me in. In addition . . .

4) My blog posts which are enumerated lists seem to get more hits than normal. Every once in a while, I post a list of three's:  "Three Lies".  "Three Reasons Not To Date".  "Three Things NOT To Do When a Woman is Crying".  I'm always surprised at the traffic they get. And it's not because they are more brilliant than the other things I write. Nobody knows how brilliant they are until they read them, and they have to click on them to read them. People are apparently more likely to click on them when they see the number in the title. In other words, I'm not out of the mainstream in that regard. Now this fact leads to the following . . .

5) I find myself wondering why we are more likely to click on enumerated lists to read. As I said, I don't even have to necessarily be that interested in the topic at hand, but a number in the title draws me. And clearly, others have figured this out, too, or there wouldn't be this plethora of such articles popping up. And I have a theory . . .

6) Enumerated lists are easy to skim. Most of them are formatted the way I have formatted this one: the main point is in bold with an elaboration of that point following. This means that I can just read the points in bold if I choose and get the gist of the thing and decide if it's worth deeper reading. Or I can pick and choose the items that I want to hear more about and read more closely there. And because of how I think, I jump from this fact to a larger observation about our modern world . . .

7) Our attraction to enumerated lists reveals a shallowness in our society . . . or at least in the subsection of society that makes frequent use of social media and the internet as a source of information. We live a mile wide and an inch deep. We revel in sound bites and catchphrases and witty captions plastered over photos of angry-looking cats. If you didn't come to Facebook with ADD, you are likely to leave Facebook with it.  No, that's incorrect -- you're not likely to leave at all.  And a final note . . .

8) My wondering about our attraction to enumerated lists is not in the least bit strange . . . no matter what my eldest says about it. She is always telling me I wonder about the weirdest things.  "Why do you want to know who Wurzbach Parkway is named after?  Who cares? What difference would it make if you knew?" No, this is a very normal and practical wondering I'm engaged in. It speaks to effective communication and the nature of humanity. Nothing weird about it. "Weird" . . . please . . . this from the girl who pondered last week why the rear wheels on school buses are placed so far forward, leaving so much of the body of the vehicle suspended over air in the back.

And she made me wonder about that, too. If anybody can answer that one for me, I'd be much obliged.

Teaching Science to Non-Scientists -- Which is MOST of Us

If you read here much, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm more of an English/History gal than a Math/Science one. My girls are the same -- which is why I'm quite interested in how they are taught math and science, because I suspect some of my dislike for science, anyway, is related to the way I was taught.

So, I was pleased to be invited to a meeting at my youngest's school to discuss the science curriculum they may implement starting next year. (Although I'm still not quite sure why I was invited. I may have signed up for a committee at the beginning of the year. Or I may have annoyed the principal too much with my questions about high school. In any case, I was happy to be there.)

The curriculum they are looking at is brand new.  There are only a couple of textbooks written at the moment, but more in the works. What I liked about them is their approach.

The author (who presented at the meeting) explained that most science textbooks are massive, back-breaking tomes stuffed with far more information that a person can master in a year. (No lie -- have you looked at a high school science textbook lately? Picked one up? Holy smokes.) Because of the overload, students have no choice, really, but to fall into the pattern of cramming for the test and then immediately forgetting everything they've learned to make room for the next flood of information.

(Can I hear an "amen"? Preach it, brutha!!)

This guy's textbook's were small. He said he pared down the content to only the essentials for the course and then focused on mastery of those essentials. 

Mastery!!  Actually learning the stuff. What a concept!

He has taught science for many years and has seen how much more effective this method is. But I didn't need to hear that to be convinced -- COMMON SENSE tells me that's a much more effective method.  What possible good does the cram-test-forget method accomplish?

He also recommended only 5-6 real experiments during the year and teaching the students to write up high quality lab reports over those experiments. Again, an amen from me. Hands-on stuff is important . . . discovery learning has its place . . . but I've observed that the plethora of experiments my eldest has done in her science classes have not accomplished what the teachers hoped they would. Again, it was overload. Do a few really good ones and integrate the writing skills with that.  (I've become more and more convinced that writing cannot be taught well in isolation by high school -- writing has to be about something.)

This guy also had recommendations about math offerings at the high school level, because math and science are so connected.  The one I liked: for the kids who are not math whizzes and who DON'T need to learn trigonometry and math analysis and pre-calculus, offer them AP Statistics after they complete Algebra 2.  (Aha!!) Much more practical, but also at a high academic level to push them a bit . . . and they get college credit when they're done.  Love it.

Really, I loved it all.  It was enough to make me want to be a science teacher. (Ew . . . okay, that was hyperbolic.  Big words. Whew. I feel better.)

Can't See the Forest for the Clichés

So, every once in a while, I'm reminded how I'm really not all that.

I checked a book out of the library a few weeks ago called Woe Is I. The subtitle: A Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English. It's a grammar geek book, basically, explaining common errors people make in spelling, usage, and all.

I just finished a chapter on clichés. The author fills nine pages with words and phrases she thinks are over-used to the point of being annoying and meaningless. 

Tip of the iceberg.

More than meets the eye.

Play it by ear.

I nodded sagely as I read. Mm-hmm. Overused. Annoying.

Going nowhere fast.

Last but not least.

Easier said than done.

Draw a blank.

Then it hit me: I bet I've used every one of these at some point in this blog. I'm quite sure I've used every one of them in conversation. Probably 80-90% of the items on her list are part of my active vocabulary, the first words that come to mind when I need to express the idea.

Ouch.

Should I be disappointed in myself? Is my thinking really so lazy? Is my language really so unoriginal?

I blame Disney and Nickelodeon. Years of having the formulaic shows running on a loop in my house have numbed my brain and stinted my intellectual growth. Lord knows what they've done to my children.

Time to find more adult television entertainment for my daughters. (Well, not adult – you know – just not stupid, made-for-children.) Time to hunt down the documentaries and history channel specials. Maybe we need to constitute a reading hour for everyone every day.

Ohhhh, yeah. Hubby will LOVE that.

On the Road Again

The first post I posted on this blog was on October 8th, 2008.  I wrote it from a hotel in Somerset, PA on the first night of our trip driving from New Jersey to our new home in Sioux City.  I realized that last night as I talked to a friend about our leaving Sioux City today for our trek to our new home, San Antonio.

Something feels a little surreal about that.

I started this blog strictly for a way to keep our Jersey friends informed about our new lives, so I didn't have to write fifty or sixty emails to all the people who wanted to know how we were settling in.  Certain topics invited more personal reflection on my part, and I soon got feedback on those posts that my friends were really liking them.  My pastor even read part of one during a sermon, I was told.  So when I got to the point that we were settled in and there wasn't much transitioning to be reporting about, I let the blog kind of evolve into something of a public journal . . . fully expecting to lose most of my readers.

I didn't.  And as the years have gone by, I've gained many, many more.  I've said this over and over: I never cease to be amazed that there's anyone out there who is interested in the weird workings of my brain. 

So this blog has, in a sense, helped define my time in Sioux City. Now that I'm leaving, it makes me wonder if anything will change in the blog.  I was tempted to sit down last night and read through all of my posts, just to relive my Sioux City experience . . . but there's 652 of them, and I've got too much packing and cleaning to do.  But just glancing through some of the titles reminds me of how much I -- and the rest of my family -- have grown and changed over these five years.

I'm going to cry as I drive away today.  Closing doors and ending seasons is always hard.  And I have a daughter who will be grieving in a serious way who will need my strength and comfort.  But we've done this before, and God has always been faithful.

And in all honesty . . . I can not WAIT to see what God has in store for us in San Antonio!!