Beth On

New School???

I'm reading A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren.  In the section entitled What Do We Do About the Church? Brian makes the following comments:  The church, then, in Paul's mind, must be above all a school of love.  ... It's goal is not simply to pump knowledge into people, but to train them in the "way of love," so they may do the "work of the Lord," empowered by the Holy Spirit, as the embodiment of Christ.   . . . not simply a community where you learn or learn about, but where you learn to.  Not simply a place where you hear lectures and amass information, but a community where you see living examples of Christlikeness and experience inner formation.  . . . to create a new future . . . a school of love - which means a school of listening, dialogue, appreciative inquiry, understanding, preemptive peacemaking, reconciliation, nonviolence, prophetic confrontation, advocacy, generosity, and personal and social transformation.  (pp. 170-171)

Wow.  I want my kids to go to a school like that.  And I want to work in a school like that.  I'm beyond thinking of these concepts as relating to a church or a denomination.  I want to live and work in a world that is like this all the time. 

My ministry right now is at school.  It is hard to be away from all the wonderful people at our former church home and it feels like the right thing for our family, right now.  I don't know where this will lead but I do know that I feel like my job is to continue to grow Cornerstone into the school that Brian talks about above.  We have a good start and there are many people there who are living Christ-like lives.  Let's take it along this path in 2010.

Crowd Science

This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is very interesting to me.  The idea of multiple people analyzing data, contributing to a scientific 'discovery', learning together is very exciting.  This is how we should be using technology in schools.  What if my 8th grade students took the training for Galaxy Zoo and instead of taking a quiz (even an online quiz) to show me what they know, contributed their analysis of the types of galaxies to the project?  How cool would that be?  They get to do something real in addition to 'learning'.  Amazing.  If this is what school looks like in the future, I want to go back.

Finding Faults with Food

Today we watched a movie and did the Finding Faults with Food lab with the Rulerz and the Bomb Squad.  We watched 'Ring of Fire' with the Rulerz which was fuzzy and hard to see.  It was interesting but not great.  They did the lab in about 25 minutes which was a lot faster than I expected.  Shawn started a second movie and they saw part of it.  With the Bomb Squad, we watched a TBS Superstation show about the Caribbean island that was basically wiped out by a volcano.  It was really long and the kids were pretty tired of it by the end.  I thought it was interesting.  Then they did the lab, also in about 25 minutes, although a few groups were more thorough and took about 30 minutes.

Tomorrow, with the Rebels and the SFOs, we are going to watch another volcano movie and see if we like that one better. 

ActivBoard training tonight.  That is going to be a fun tool to use in the classroom.  It will require more planning to be ready to teach.  And I think that will be a good thing for me.

welcome Back

Until I get my school blog up on Typepad, I'm going to use this to post about school reflections for the day.

It was good to see the students today.  They were either hyper or exhausted.  We had one class that would not pay attention at all.  The other class was a little better.  Shawn did a good job of getting their attention.  He and I will talk in the morning about how we plan to track warnings and detentions.  I have a feeling we'll have to hand out a few detentions before they get back on track.

Started Earth Science today.  Right before we started with our first class, Shawn realized that we probably needed to go over the final with them so they can make corrections and be reminded of test taking strategies.  We spent about 25 minutes going over the final.  Many of the students said they would have done a lot better if they had read more carefully or paid attention during the test.

Gave the Earth science pre-test (Gateways/Region 4 assessment #4).  It took 20-25 minutes.  Then traded and graded.  During the first class we tried to go through the questions - mistake.  In the second class we just read the answers - much better.  Trading and grading in the right way = <10 minutes.

Used two mapping activities - one of the a town and one of Hawai'i.  The students worked in pairs.  We gave them 20 minutes but it should only take 15.  They were chatty by the end.

Reviewed a powerpoint presentation about maps.  That took about 25 - 30 minutes including discussion around the slides.  Didn't finish with Da Rulerz.

With the Bomb Squad, we were able to just mention the project.  Didn't mention it to Da Rulerz.  We may have to consider changing the due date.

David said I am addicted to blogging.  I guess he is right.

72%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Dating Site

 

Teacher Nightmares

The teacher nightmares have started.  No control over the kids.  The kids don't respect me or pay attention to me or even want to be with me.  I resort to physical tactics, or yelling, or crying.  It's pretty miserable.  I hope and pray that school will be nothing like these nightmares.  Yikes!!

New beginning

On Monday, I started back to work 'full-time'.  This week I am in Designing and Delivering (Effective) Instruction, DDI, class.  I think the info is valuable and helpful.  Some of the folks in there who have just graduated are really bored and say they have had this material before.  Fortunately, Jill and Karen, the Director and VP of Cornerstone, are teaching this class.  They are just great - a good team, laid-back, focused, discerning, and I like them better every day. 

I'm excited to be back in the mix.

NEW!!

It's been a good week at Summer Celebration.  The kids all had a great time and got along with each other nicely at home.  We swam and played and Sarah and Hannah watched Barbie and the Magic of the Rainbow which made them both very happy.  Sarah had a couple of whiny episodes but so did Hannah.  I got snappy with Sarah once when she did one of those 'nyah, nyah, nyah' things to me but she shaped up pretty quickly.

On Thursday, we exchanged Ben and Sarah for Paul.  David and I had a very nice steak dinner with P along with a nice chat.  He is a great kid.  Mature, responsible, smart, fun to be with, and nice.  Just what I would wish for in a nephew.  We talked a little bit about the situation at home and he was open and practical.  He is excited about driving next month.  I let him drive about 4 blocks to the pool.

Tonight, David took Paul to hit golf balls while I took Hannah and Rachel to the end-of-Summer Celebration festivities at the church.  The girls had little interest in the program (which consisted of too much talking, IMO) and lots of interest in just running around the church.  This tells me that we need to do some physical activities next week.  And maybe we will go up to the church and run around or play basketball or something like that.

This week, I also found out that my iPod shuffle had died.  Something was physically wrong with it and the guy at the Apple store suggested turning it in for 10% off something new or using it to balance an uneven table.  So tonight, I'm ironing (YUCK) and talking with Paul while he is flipping through channels and David comes into the room and says that he has something for me.  I closed my eyes and then opened them.  And there it was . . . my very own iPod nano - red edition!!!  I am so excited.  I've really missed my little shuffle since it has been sickly and I was sad when they pronounced it.  I thought I would have to wait until Christmas but my loving husband took care of me in July.   What a guy!!  Thanks, David.

Mother of 4

David's sister, Eliz., brought her kids to Houston today.  They will be with us through Thursday lunchtime.  We are all very excited about having the cousins here and about Summer Celebration at MDPC which starts tomorrow.  I hope all the kids have a great time.  We are planning to spend a lot of time at the pool this week if the rain actually goes away as predicted.

I got a high-five today for being the oldest of 5 kids.  Rare.

We found a babysitter for the last two weeks in August before school starts.  That is a relief.

Clog wars

My family has been consumed by the comfort of clogs.  Both girls have the cheap version available from Target and David has Crocs. 

Dooce and her husband are staging the clog wars because she has apparently stolen his Crocs and hidden them from him. 

The best part about this war, so far, has been the comments on Jon's blog.  My favorites - two clog haiku:

Darlin' says:

i’m down.

a clog haiku

clogs are quite lovely
but not when made out of wood
then they just look dutch

Rose says:

another clog haiku

my crocs are yellow
I wear them with great joy
comfort, whimsy, mine!