My Classroom Adventures

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Not Just Verbs and Tacos


If you are or know a language teacher, send them my way! 

Busy Busy Teacher!

The Mommy Quack has had to be a Quacking Teacher lately!  Such is life- personal, professional, personal, professional. 

I'll be back..... in the mean time, if you are a teacher, you can follow the Spanish teacher blog I'm writing and of course I'm still writing for Women and Family life.....

Quack on!

-Page

I'm traveling

I'm headed south... Lots to post tomorrow. For now, I'm playing with the blogger app on my iPhone so if I post any kooky that is why.

Here is a picture of me going to my friend Bob's Christmas party:

15: I took the weekend off...

So much to say...and I will say it tomorrow.  Sometimes we have to be still...

14: Pulled into Lent...

My day started like it normally does…

My daughter couldn't find her glasses..she found them, good you can still ride the bus. I have sixty projects to grade why did I give myself so much work…my son is eating applesauce out of a jar…I want to run because I feel gross but my hip is efffing killing me and I finally figured out why and I'm throwing away any pair of shoes older than my youngest child.

Went to pick up the Christmas cards and was so excited to mail them out....was going to address them tonight.  Then I got a call that my daughter's found glasses had one lense missing.  I had to finish a session with some 8th graders before I could go digging in her room for a lense...there it is, let's get back to the computer...

Message after message after message.

Are you ok?  Are you ok?  Are the children ok? 

We can't remember what town in Connecticut you live in...

Texts...Facebook messages...IMs at work....a phone call from my frantic aunt in Raleigh...

And just like that…  within the span of thirty minutes, I was pulled out of Advent and into Lent.

Here I sit in my own house teaching on a laptop, feeling very grateful for my job.  Just last night I wrote about how I love the time off from it so I can explore my other interests.  Now I don't want to. 

I'm in Lent:

• A family is torn apart and left to have to deal with it- his problems are international news. How would you like the world to know your family's secrets?
• I am a teacher.  I have taught in traditional elementary schools before.  I'm not a fire fighter. I'm not a policeman. Schools should be safe.  I feel like I lost colleagues today. 
• I am a mom of small children...enough said...breathe....

 

My phone rang one last time...it was my best friend- "Um, what are you going to say to your kids? I have no clue what to say to mine..."

I thought about it for a moment and this is what I will say to my kids:

Someone very ill didn’t get the help he needed and had access to things he shouldn’t have had.

So when you have an ear ache, you go to the doctor for amoxicillin, and when you have a speech delay, you get speech therapy.  And when you have a child that needs counseling, you find a counselor. 

 One tragedy doesn’t mean another isn’t coming.  I would love to protect my children from everything but I can't.  I never ask "Why?"  I don't.  I always ask, "What Now...."

Connecticut is a beautiful state.  I know the people in Connecticut.  Connecticut Yankees helped this Southern Belle during the darkest days of her life.   We will climb out of this hell.  We will do all in our power to make sure every child is loved and comforted and feels safe.   This state will use the resources it has to make sure that all are counseled and this will not happen again.

Lent is longer than Advent. It isn't happy, and it is very, very miserable.  But it ends.

And I'm going back to Advent in the morning- my three children need it.

 

13: 'Twas the night before the last day before the holidays....

This is my 15th year as a teacher. I've never taken a break.  Well, I did take three maternity leaves (although my administrator  did a happy dance  when my last child was born in July ten days early).   

Every time I tried to quit,  another job fell in my lap. The universe must really want me to teach Spanish.

 I have literally taught all ages, levels, and settings. I'm not exaggerating. I've taught preschool, high school, virtual, brick and mortar, suburban, inner city.....and I never taught a single way I didn't like.

Doesn't matter how old they are or where they live. Doesn't matter if they have an elf on the shelf at home.  Doesn't matter if they celebrate Hannukah, Kwanza, or nothing because they are Jehovah's Witnesses.  Doesn't matter how much they like you as a person, whether they hate Spanish or not.  (I've had several over the years tell me they hate Spanish, but I'm their favorite teacher.)

 I know one thing to be true.

The last day before the holiday break....all the kids go crazy.

No one wants to conjugate a verb, or learn about Las Posadas in Mexico or the Reyes Magos in Spain.

And honestly..I don't want to teach it either...I want to get two weeks off just to be who I am.

I am not the only one who feels this way....even fictional teachers deal with it....here it comes...

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of the Fire, each teacher had a different way to approach the holidays and the dance coming along with it.

Flitwick gave up and let them play charm games.....

Snape gave a test (on poison antidotes no less, talk about a buzz kill)....

Binns just kept droning away about Goblin Rebellions.... (Sidenote- I always found it fascinating that he was such a boring teacher, yet he loved it enough to keep doing it after his death...or perhaps he didn't know what else to do???)

McGonagall was business as usual.....

Tomorrow is my last day for, as my colleague Heidi said, eighteen days off in a row.  My "Student children" are working on some projects they have enjoyed doing and get to present them on the web cams.  That's a good way to end the semester.

THEN my own "personal" children and I are spending the evening baking cookies, lighting Advent candles, watching Christmas Classic movies, and practicing lines for the Christmas pageant. Wouldn't you know it, Kenneth begged for a speaking part?  By the time he finishes 5th grade he will probably  have played everybody.  I know I did.  It makes for good memoir writing. :0)

We need to come up with a special name for the last day of school before the holidays!  Other than "last day of school" of course....

Witty and clever suggestions are always welcome....

12:How many other women...

While everyone else is enjoying the fun of 12.12.12, I can say I have always enjoyed December 12th.  It's el Dia de Guadalupe!   It has been since she appeared before the Peasant Juan Diego.   In our modern Quack world, it's the day I come up with something  about Mary...

This is just my opinion, but....

She really should be the one and only star of the Christmas story. 

 My girlfriend Austin always tells women "Happy Birth into motherhood day to you!" on the birthdays of their children.  

She is right.  (Did you read that Austin???)

Really, it's Mary's day.  His comes later, trust me, but his birth should belong to HER. 

Think about it....

How many other women can say they found out they were pregnant six months into it? My friends knew I was pregnant when I ordered decaf coffee and passed on Margarita night.

How many other women had to travel on a donkey to another town? I flew round trip to Atlanta in one day for a wedding-that was hard enough.

How many other women were told they had to give birth behind an inn and put the baby in a feeding trough? I scheduled a c-section.  Seriously, I didn't have a single contraction until the third baby decided he wanted to show me what I had been missing at three am....I still can't believe you guys choose that on purpose.

How many other women had random visitors coming to take a look at her and her child? I would have told all those men to get the heck out....

I am the Quack, Mary is not. 


SO....


This is a little shout out to all moms everywhere....be strong like Mary.  Whatever God gives you, tell Him it will be according to his word.

That's all for tonight.

I have two more days of work and then my blog posts will be much longer, deeper, and funnier. 

I promise. 

How many other women can?