Time for a lighter post.
Yesterday I pulled a piece of paper off of my overhead cart and all my papers came cascading down. One of my students goes "See Ms. Maxwell! That's why you gotta CLEAN" Then she stayed after school with me and helped me clean up the room.
Last night my roommate and I and our friend watched Muppets in Space, which if you haven't seen it, is absolutely hilarious. Anyway, the little Prawn Pepe made me laugh so hard that today in 3rd period reading class I did his voice...for most of the time. We were laughing so hard, I loved it.
I read a story out loud to my class about this guy that worked at the zoo and there was a funny trick ending. It was really funny to see the reactions of the different classes because my first perioed class has 3 gifted students in it who got the joke right away and were laughing like crazy. However, my next period is my ESL class and no one really got it at all. Finally in third period, there were about 2 seconds of silence after I finished reading and then they all started laughing really loudly. Today was one of those days when no matter how many kids get in trouble or don't bring their homework or how inadequate I feel as a teacher, I love it.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
On sadness, hopelessness, and how useful those are.
this week one of my student's fathers (who just got out of jail) stole his mom's truck.
last week one of my students whose father is an alcoholic and whose two older brothers are both in juvey and only owns his uniform clothes moved off to FL where I hope to God someone will take care of him better than here.
two weeks ago one of my students was crying every 5 minutes in class because she was worried that her family wouldn't be able to pay their mortgage. When I was a kid, I didn't even realize my parents HAD a mortgage.
This job of teaching inner city kids is emotionally draining, at times feels completely pointless, and makes me, more than anything else, doubt that God really loves these kids. However, here is a quote from Brennan Manning that is slowly sinking into my distrusting heart:
"The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials...David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history, was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure, and even sinister plots to destroy him; yet he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust."
It seems then that trust that God is good comes through situations where it really looks like God is actually not good at all.
last week one of my students whose father is an alcoholic and whose two older brothers are both in juvey and only owns his uniform clothes moved off to FL where I hope to God someone will take care of him better than here.
two weeks ago one of my students was crying every 5 minutes in class because she was worried that her family wouldn't be able to pay their mortgage. When I was a kid, I didn't even realize my parents HAD a mortgage.
This job of teaching inner city kids is emotionally draining, at times feels completely pointless, and makes me, more than anything else, doubt that God really loves these kids. However, here is a quote from Brennan Manning that is slowly sinking into my distrusting heart:
"The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials...David, the most beloved figure of Jewish history, was no stranger to terror, loneliness, failure, and even sinister plots to destroy him; yet he ravished the heart of God with his unwavering trust."
It seems then that trust that God is good comes through situations where it really looks like God is actually not good at all.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Some more Texas
It's been a while, I've seen a lot more of Texas life, and enjoyed most of it immensely. Here are a few Texas tidbits for my anxious readers.
I was an Aggie for Halloween. If you don't know what that is, it's a person who went to Texas A&M University. So I wore a class ring and cowboy boots and a jean skirt and a shirt that said "You may all go to hell, but I will go to Texas" and I had big hair. I may have offended some people since most people I know went to aTm.
The past week we have been studying the Holocaust in my 5th grade class. You know, when you need to teach your class how to spell a word and write it on the board lots of times, you learn how to spell it. Holocaust and Renaissance, two words I finally know how to spell. Anyway, we are reading Number the Stars, which is a wonderful book, and we were talking about how Denmark didn't fight back against the Nazis but allowed them to take over in return for political independence. One student raised his hand and said, "But didn't they have an army?" and I said, "Yes, but a small one, not big enough to win against the Nazis." And then one kid randomly calls out, "Yeah, but they couldn't beat TEXAS."
Teaching about the Holocaust has given me a really big sadness and horror about the state of the world, but at the same time, teaching Number the Stars has been wonderful. It's estimated that there were 7,300 Jews living in Denmark at the beginning of WWII. All but 300 of them were able to escape through fishing boats to Sweden and it's estimated only 50 Danish Jews died in the Holocaust. It's such a beautiful story of courage and what people can do, but it makes me really sad to think of what we didn't do at the same time. Hand in hand with teaching the Holocaust I'm teaching about Japanese Interment camps in the U.S. and in Social Studies the kids are studying colonists and Native Americans. Poor kids--that's a lot to take all at once. To go along with teaching the Holocaust, we read the allegory Terrible Things by Eve Bunting. I'd highly recommend it if you are ever trying to get a child to understand what can happen if we don't stick up for what's right.
On a lighter note, I like Lonestar beer now. Who would have guessed.
I'm enjoying 70 degree sunny weather every day in November, new girl friends, biking around the city to church and along the Bayou, having beautiful symphony music at my fingertips, and finding new places to dance and speak Spanish. Life is normalizing a little more, but I'm still missing Chicago and Maryland. Why is it that life ends up so spread out?
I was an Aggie for Halloween. If you don't know what that is, it's a person who went to Texas A&M University. So I wore a class ring and cowboy boots and a jean skirt and a shirt that said "You may all go to hell, but I will go to Texas" and I had big hair. I may have offended some people since most people I know went to aTm.
The past week we have been studying the Holocaust in my 5th grade class. You know, when you need to teach your class how to spell a word and write it on the board lots of times, you learn how to spell it. Holocaust and Renaissance, two words I finally know how to spell. Anyway, we are reading Number the Stars, which is a wonderful book, and we were talking about how Denmark didn't fight back against the Nazis but allowed them to take over in return for political independence. One student raised his hand and said, "But didn't they have an army?" and I said, "Yes, but a small one, not big enough to win against the Nazis." And then one kid randomly calls out, "Yeah, but they couldn't beat TEXAS."
Teaching about the Holocaust has given me a really big sadness and horror about the state of the world, but at the same time, teaching Number the Stars has been wonderful. It's estimated that there were 7,300 Jews living in Denmark at the beginning of WWII. All but 300 of them were able to escape through fishing boats to Sweden and it's estimated only 50 Danish Jews died in the Holocaust. It's such a beautiful story of courage and what people can do, but it makes me really sad to think of what we didn't do at the same time. Hand in hand with teaching the Holocaust I'm teaching about Japanese Interment camps in the U.S. and in Social Studies the kids are studying colonists and Native Americans. Poor kids--that's a lot to take all at once. To go along with teaching the Holocaust, we read the allegory Terrible Things by Eve Bunting. I'd highly recommend it if you are ever trying to get a child to understand what can happen if we don't stick up for what's right.
On a lighter note, I like Lonestar beer now. Who would have guessed.
I'm enjoying 70 degree sunny weather every day in November, new girl friends, biking around the city to church and along the Bayou, having beautiful symphony music at my fingertips, and finding new places to dance and speak Spanish. Life is normalizing a little more, but I'm still missing Chicago and Maryland. Why is it that life ends up so spread out?
Monday, July 20, 2009
On Mexi-Cowboys and such
2 months ago I moved to Houston.
1 month and 3 weeks ago I turned on the AC and haven't turned it off since.
1 month and 2 weeks ago I started reading Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne. Houston + Claiborne, you can see where this is going.
1 month ago I bought cowboy boots. That night I went Country Western dancing and met the tight-panted, Latino, rich but living simply, orphaned, bike-riding, tattoed, man who wants to foster children of my dreams. Or maybe that actually didn't happen. What maybe did happen was this:
A girl walks into a bar. After noticing the disco balls in the shape of saddles, she walks to the other side of the skating rink shaped dance floor and greets her friends. Her friends happen to be talking to some boys who ask her if she knows how to Country Western dance. To which she replies "no, I just moved here from going to school in Chicago and pretty much the only Country Western dancing done in Chicago is at gay bars." Boy #1 laughs. He says, "Maybe half of 1 % of the guys at my school were gay, and if you were you certainly didn't tell anyone. Also, you didn't tell anyone if you were a Democrat." Boy #2 walks up, boy #1 turns to him and says "Describe Obama in three words." Boy #2: "Marxist, incompetent, and self-absorbed"
3 weeks ago my aunt sent me a pair of TOMS. I was pretty excited after driving my car a LOT that week and struggling with what Shane Claiborne has to say. I put the TOMS on, read the tag, and sadly, they are made in China. Yay TOMS for being cute, for donating to children in Africa.......and for manufacturing your shoes in compliance with local labor laws. Thankfully China has really great labor standards.
2 weeks ago I was driving behind a pick up truck that said "We can achieve change. Palin 2012"
1 week ago I decided that in order to begin assimilating to Texan culture I no longer think hunting is a bad thing to do, and am ok with other people doing it and eating what they shoot. Yum.
3 hours ago I went to the auto parts store to get a new tail lightbulb and air filter for my car. The guy called me baby and installed everything into my car just to be nice and asked me all about my job and where I was from and told me I didn't sound like a Yankee.
So maybe I don't sound like a Yankee with my accent, but my inner dialogue is definitely still Yankee and I'm experiencing culture shock much more than I thought I would. In Chicago I was conservative, in Texas I'm crazy liberal, and learning to be loving and live simply is nearly impossible no matter what state you live in. Thank God for grace, for wonderful people who challenge me, and phone conversations with Hannah Foster.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Latin America
"Events of massive public suffering defy quantitative analysis. How can one really understand statistics citing the death of 6 million Jews or graphs of third world starvation? Do numbers really reveal the agony, the interruption, the questions that these victims put to the meaning and nature of our individual lives and life as a whole?"
Today I learned that on September 11 in Chile in 1973 there was a coup, financed by the U.S. that overthrew the socialist democratically elected president and killed 30,000 people that year. But 30,000 is still just a number to me. Sometimes suffering is so big and so catastrophic that it numbs me because it is so incomprehensible. Pinochet's ruling regime cut up an artist into four parts, shipped each part off to a different part of Chile to teach them a lesson, the U.S. knew about this and didn't say a word. President Nixon called Pinochet's take over of Chile a triumph for democracy.
I'm taking a Latin American Studies course and each week I come home liking America less and feeling like there are more conflicts in the world I, and most others, have no idea about than ones we actually know about. So much suffering, so many wars, so much heartache and poverty and violence, it's hard to process even a small piece of it.
Today at school we were talking about why it wasn't a good idea to play pretend guns. We talked about how guns aren't good because they kill people and when you take someone's life from the you can never give it back. My first graders understand this but I'm not sure I really do. One of the questions I had to answer today was, "How does what we do contribute to the suffering of the people living in desperate conditions and what can we do to change this?" good question.
As we were leaving class today my teacher said, "Remember, silence and inaction are actions as well. They are still decisions."
I have a lot to think about.
Today I learned that on September 11 in Chile in 1973 there was a coup, financed by the U.S. that overthrew the socialist democratically elected president and killed 30,000 people that year. But 30,000 is still just a number to me. Sometimes suffering is so big and so catastrophic that it numbs me because it is so incomprehensible. Pinochet's ruling regime cut up an artist into four parts, shipped each part off to a different part of Chile to teach them a lesson, the U.S. knew about this and didn't say a word. President Nixon called Pinochet's take over of Chile a triumph for democracy.
I'm taking a Latin American Studies course and each week I come home liking America less and feeling like there are more conflicts in the world I, and most others, have no idea about than ones we actually know about. So much suffering, so many wars, so much heartache and poverty and violence, it's hard to process even a small piece of it.
Today at school we were talking about why it wasn't a good idea to play pretend guns. We talked about how guns aren't good because they kill people and when you take someone's life from the you can never give it back. My first graders understand this but I'm not sure I really do. One of the questions I had to answer today was, "How does what we do contribute to the suffering of the people living in desperate conditions and what can we do to change this?" good question.
As we were leaving class today my teacher said, "Remember, silence and inaction are actions as well. They are still decisions."
I have a lot to think about.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Joy
One of my favorite things about Christmas, very very very much secondary to family and caroling and friends and presents is the Joy tea from Starbucks. It's just so yummy. I never buy it any other time of year because I want it to be special. I haven't even had any yet but soon.
Today I wore a yellow and brown polka dotted dress to school. It made quite a stir, I guess people don't wear dresses that often. Anyway, on the walk home I was waiting at a light when I turned to see a woman literally an inch away from my face. And she says, "Don't move honey, your underwear are showing." So on the corner of a busy Chicago street, in the snow no less, a random strange woman grabs the bottom of my skirt and yanks it down to cover my undies. Though, they weren't really underwear, they were like short leggings under my skirt to keep me warm. But then, instead of laughing and walking away, she proceeds to put her arm around me and walk me across the street saying, "Don't worry honey, it's just that static electricity! Oh that static electricity, get's you every time. I used to wear those colors when I was young, they used to be my favorite colors to wear." Then we crossed the street, she released me, and disappeared.
Today I wore a yellow and brown polka dotted dress to school. It made quite a stir, I guess people don't wear dresses that often. Anyway, on the walk home I was waiting at a light when I turned to see a woman literally an inch away from my face. And she says, "Don't move honey, your underwear are showing." So on the corner of a busy Chicago street, in the snow no less, a random strange woman grabs the bottom of my skirt and yanks it down to cover my undies. Though, they weren't really underwear, they were like short leggings under my skirt to keep me warm. But then, instead of laughing and walking away, she proceeds to put her arm around me and walk me across the street saying, "Don't worry honey, it's just that static electricity! Oh that static electricity, get's you every time. I used to wear those colors when I was young, they used to be my favorite colors to wear." Then we crossed the street, she released me, and disappeared.
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