Student Teachin'

Currently Listening To: The Lumineers. They performed in Cville last night, and we got fro yo and stood outside the venue and listened in. It was pretty good.

Many apologies for the prolonged absence, but it's been because I've been settling in to my new role as a student teacher...followed by an incredibly full and fun weekend celebrating my roommate Brittney's marriage (and getting to catch up with and hang out with all the friends I've missed all summer long)!

To be honest, though, student teaching so far has been a lot more relaxed than anticipated. Of course, it is still professional days, so no students yet (they come on Wednesday!), but my teacher is so nice and pretty casual -- I knew this from the very first day when we, along with two of her former students now going into high school, went out to lunch and then to Wal-Mart -- and I've gotten to come in a little later and leave a little later and kind of ease into the whole thing. It's been mostly mornings full of meetings and afternoons full of setting up the classroom and planning out the first few weeks of class, but we did have an 'Open House' where we got to meet a bunch of our students and their parents! I'm excited for Wednesday to come and things to start for real, but I know it will be really busy and different at that point.

Thanks for bearing with me through this! 

[image via We Heart It] [p.s. my classroom looks nothing like this]

Thought of the Day

Currently Listening To: Freelance Whales
Three Days Til: I start student-teaching!

[image via Fairytales Are True]

Love Does

Currently Listening To: Love & War: B-Sides and Remixes EP, Josh Garrels

 

 

While I was flying last week, I read the book Love Does by Bob Goff. It was wonderful, in a way that made me grin like crazy the whole time I was reading it, at all the shenanigans and capers and fully-engaged-living that Bob does. It’s full of stories like how he left peanut butter sandwiches under his wife’s windshield everyday when he was trying to woo her to how he didn’t get in to law school and so he sat outside the dean’s office for seven days until the dean admitted him and how he goes to Uganda and frees kids from prison. Through everything, however, he is humble and straightforward and constantly pointing back to God, and how living a life for Jesus doesn’t involve being safe or just talking about things, but doing them: "I think Jesus had in mind that we would not just be “believers” but “participants.” Not because it’s hip, but because it’s more accurate, more fitting that way. He wanted people who get the “do” part of faith, not because He wanted activity, but because He wanted our faith to matter to us."

My absolute favorite chapter of the book was where he told the story of how, after 9/11, he asked each of his three kids what they would tell the leaders of the world if they could. The youngest said he would invite them over to his house. The next said he’d ask each what they were hoping for, and the oldest said she would interview the leaders and share their answers with each other. So Bob had the kids write their ideas into one letter, and they looked up the names and addresses of every world leader they could find, and sent them all letters. Bob and his wife promised that if any of the leaders responded yes to meeting with the kids, they’d take them. Twenty-nine said yes. And so off they went!

I was reading this chapter on the plane and I was smiling so big as I did that the guy with tattoo sleeves and a military haircut just across the aisle probably thought I was insane. (On the other side of me was a kid, who couldn’t care less.) But I couldn’t help it – I just love how boldly and audaciously Bob Goff lives, and how much fun he has doing it! “Being engaged is a way of doing life,” he says, “a way of living and loving. It’s about going to the extremes and expressing the bright hope that life offers us, a hope that makes us brave and expels darkness with light. That’s what I want my life to be all about—full of abandon, whimsy, and in love. I want to be engaged to life and with life.”

And it is. And if you want to smile or be challenged to live bigger and bolder, you should check this book out. You can even borrow it from me, if you’d like!

p.s. The forward is by Don Miller. So we all know that's a selling point. I mean, it was for me...

[image sources: 1 | 2 ]

Raise My Hands, Paint My Spirit Gold

I've been playing Mumford & Son's new single on repeat to see if I like it. And I'm pretty sure I do. Check it out:

It's so unfortunate that it's over a month until the rest of their album comes out, isn't it?

Ethiopia Yichalal!

Congratulations to Tirunesh Dibaba and Tiki Gelana of Ethiopia for their gold medals! (In the Women's 10,000m and marathon, respectively.) And to Teriku Bekele and Kenenisa Bekele for finishing 3rd and 4th in the Men's 10,000m. Those Ethiopians can run long distances, let me tell you. (And, just fyi, I'm making this sound in celebration right now.*)

*not really. Because I actually can't. But I could if I would!

[image source]

The Waiting Place

Currently Watching: The Olympics!

At XTrack, our theme was “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” – based off of the Dr. Seuss book, of course. For the five weeks we were there, we would start off each Monday by reading the book out loud to the kids. And, pretty soon, I soon learned that of the three teachers, I was a third-tier Oh, The Places You’ll Go reader-alouder, even when armed with the pop-up version. On the third week, I read it to them, leaving off the ends of lines (“You have brains in you…” “HEAD!” “and feet in your…” “SHOES!”) (because three weeks in means they were more than halfway done with memorizing the whole thing), when they informed me that “When Mr. Colin reads it, he leaves out words in the middle. Mr. Colin leaves out the hard words for us.” Clearly I needed to step up my game.

But then, the next week, I got to hear Emily read it to the kids. And let me just tell you that although Emily is good at many things (fake Russian accents and certain card games among them), reading this book aloud to children might fall in the top ten category of Things Emily Is Good At. She has it down to an art, and she is particularly good at a certain page, about The Waiting Place. She prides herself in it, even: the way she is able to read the whole tongue-twistery double page in a single breath, super fast.

The first time she took a deep breath and read it all in lightning speed (because she usually does it a few times through and then let’s a few of the kids give it a shot), I was sitting in the back of the room, and when she was done the kids all simultaneously whipped their heads around to look at me, as if to say “What now, Miss Caroline?”

This memory makes me laugh, but at the same time The Waiting Place is hitting a little close to home. Now, I know my Waiting Place isn’t exactly like the “most useless place” of the book, but I feel like I’m in a lull nonetheless: the three weeks of downtime in between a busy, exciting summer and the busy, exciting semester that is about to unfold – student teaching in a 6^th grade language arts classroom. It’s been a strange place…and yet, as only one week is left until I being this big new step, I don’t know what to think or how to prepare myself for it. It’s something I’m going to have to just dive into and figure out as I go…and so for now, I’m just Waiting.

Thanks to the many, many times I read through and heard Oh, The Places You’ll Go this summer, though, I do know the next page: “NO!
 That's not for you! / 

Somehow you'll escape
/ all that waiting and staying
/ You'll find the bright places
/ where Boom Bands are playing.”

And, even better, how the whole book ends:

And will you succeed?

Yes! You will, indeed!

(98 ¾ percent guaranteed)

KID YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

And as I think of the way our kids at XTrack would recite along with those words, yelling that last line with all their might, I can believe it. And keep on Waiting for just another week.

image sources: 1 | 2 | 3

Olympics and Such

Currently Reading: Love Does by Bob Goff

One thing I am a fan of as I've been watching this year's Olympics is this song the network has been playing every time they intro the Fab Five for gymnastics:

Love it. And also, I just love the Olympics. Especially gymnastics. Confession: I may have known absolutely nothing about the women competing for Team USA in gymnastics just four days ago, but I have definitely benn fully invested watching them compete over the past few days....and I might have even teared up when they won gold last night. (And got goosebumps at McKayla Maroney's amazing vault.) To be honest, I am not always the most patriotic of Americans (and I can't wait for the running events to cheer on my Ethiopians...and even my Kenyans), but I was definitely rooting for Team USA this time.

And now I settle in for another Olympics-filled evening...starting with synchronized diving right now. (What an intriguing sport...)

[image source]