Ringing Like a Bell

A few guys I taught last year are crazy. I don't mean literally crazy. They're loud, and somehow they manage to find me wherever I am. One morning I walked up to another hall to visit one of my teacher friends. I sat down in one of her student desks for a quick chat before school when these students burst through the door panting. "There she is!" They yelled. They'd tracked me down. Last year they waged one of the best student council election campaigns I've ever seen. They didn't hand out Jolly Ranchers or make empty promises to the student body. Oh no! They just screamed. A lot. In between classes they constantly yelled, "Vote for him!!" Over. AND OVER. They followed that up with a series of posters with Conan the Barbarian [Arnold Schwarzenegger] giving a hearty endorsement. It was obnoxious, but what can I say? He won. There's this thing they love to do - The Trust Fall . It might be familiar to you from corporate team- building work...

I'm a Hallmark movie kind of girl, so of course I got emotional waiting for my brother at the airport. I stood there on the day before Thanksgiving with about fifty other people. In any other situation, it would have been awkward standing so close to complete strangers, just waiting around in public, but all of us were united in the camaraderie created by waiting for our loved ones. A flight landed just before my brother's, so people started to trickle out. I watched as people I didn't know jumped into each others' arms, and little children cheered, "Grandma!" As I stood there, a lump developed in my throat. I hadn't seen any of my family in months, so I was already excited. I also felt moved by the love I could sense in the reunions of strangers standing around me. I recently read a book called Edmund Persuader . If you're a Jane Austen fan, you should check it out. Here's a quote that came to mind while I was waiting in the airport: It ...

A few days ago, I found out that one of my close college friends unexpectedly passed away over the summer. As you can imagine, I am grieved. The more I think about it, the worse I feel. Losing him is bad enough, but not knowing about it for months makes it even worse. Thankfully, one of our  mutual friends contacted me. I find myself regretting not keeping in better touch with him for the last few years. It's not a new regret. Since I moved away from my home state, I have been troubled about the friends that have slipped off the edges of my daily life. Distance separates us, and there never seems to be enough -- enough time, energy, or opportunity -- to keep those relationships healthy.  Deep down it feels like a personal failing because I genuinely love my friends. I want to know all about them and their lives. I want them to know how important they are to me. I also don't think I'm alone in this. The globe has gotten pretty small, and we spend differ...

Of all the things I need to teach my students, one of the most difficult is clear pronoun-antecedent agreement. For those of you who don't speak 'grammarian', that's the connection between the thing you just talked about and the he, she, or it that replaces that thing later on. When my students write, they are forever rattling off a list of men like Bob, Charles, Tom, and Alex. Then they begin the next sentence with 'he.' I've lost count of the number of times I've written, "which guy?," in the margins of  student essays. A few days ago, one of my classes was discussing a writing assignment. The thread of conversation carried us around to the topic of homeless veterans, which might have seemed illogical, but you've got to remember that I'm teaching a herd of fifteen-year-olds. One girls said, "That's messed up. They shouldn't let that happen." Her friend chimed in, "Yeah, They need to do something about that....

The kickball game was supposed to be a reward. The only problem was that the kids who were dying to play kickball were all inside doing classwork. The rest of us seventh and eighth graders, out on the P.E. field, would have been much happier with light refreshments in the library. The 'positive reinforcement' didn't seem all that positive for me. I still have nightmares about middle school P.E. class, and in my young mind the kickball game was an extension of that class. I was chubby and uncoordinated -- still am. I had always been picked last for teams; I'd been hit in the face with Frisbees, badminton rackets, dodge balls, baseballs, basketballs, and golf clubs. Sports and I still aren't friends. The only reason I haven't entirely blocked that day from my memory as a traumatic experience is that something really awesome and life-altering happened. I hit it off with my Best-Good-Friend. We were on opposing teams. If I recall correctly, she was serving as...

A bunch of vultures has been circling around our school. I'm not sure how long they've been there, but I noticed them a week or two ago. Out here in our rural area, we see buzzards sometimes. They eat roadkill, which is helpful, so seeing them isn't that strange. However, I initially noticed this group because there were so many of them. I mentioned it to my husband one morning on the phone. I even counted them -- there were at least twenty. I expected it to be a random, one day occurrence, but they're still out there. This afternoon they'd broken into two groups, each one circling around a different end of campus. I've mentioned their appearance to other people, and they've noticed them too. About an hour and a half ago, three things happened at once. I thought about those vultures, the lights in my classroom switched off (we have power-saving motion sensors in our classrooms.), and I watched this YouTube video. *It has one, slightly offensive word i...

I end up focusing on a quote or motto every year. I don't plan it. It happens organically. Like many other people who work serving others, it takes a lot to keep me going. I don't do my job for money or fame, so my motivation has to come from somewhere else. It's the same for other teachers, nurses, customer service representatives, or anybody else that spends lots of time helping other people. The first year I taught, it was Philippians 4:13, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me," for obvious reasons. Yep, that year was quite a challenge, but whatdaya know -- Christ did strengthen me, and I made it through. A few years later, it ended up being a quote by this lady named Lorie Keene, " Whether we are biological mothers or not, each of us has been given a special gift as a woman that   can be used to love, cherish, encourage, and nurture the children God places in our circle of influence ." I've already written about that yea...