Dreaming of Wishing Wells

Every year it amazes me how quickly I'm able to adjust to summer time. At the end of the school, it seems like I'm never going to get used to not going to work every day and not seeing my students. But after a couple days, I adjust to summer mode and it almost seems hard to remember getting up early every day and teaching. I've seen a few of my students this summer so far, which has probably been the highlight of the season. I've been keeping busy helping out our Head of School playing secretary and whatever other jobs she needs help with, and one of the camps meets at the school building. Two of my students that were in my class this year go to that camp, and five of my former students are there. It makes my day every time I see them. This past weekend, I took two boys to a Blue Rocks baseball game, and we had a great time. Plus there were good fireworks at the end. One of the boys had never seen fireworks, so it was really neat to get to experience that with him. Othe...

Here are some pictures from the Kindergarten Graduation ceremony this week. The good pictures were taken by James on his nice camera. The not as good ones are from my camera, which I think I had on a weird setting. All in all, it was tons of fun, even with two kids crying most of the way through, which if you think about it was a quarter of my class. The last morning was pretty fun too. I'm still working on packing up my classroom. It's a big job. I'm throwing away a lot because I don't have room to store it, but if I end up with my own classroom again, I'm probably going to wish I still had some of this stuff. I'm not looking forward to handing in my classroom key, because my classroom has been like my second home here in Wilmington, and I'm going to miss it! I liked being able to go there on the weekends and eat my lunch and listen to music while I did my lesson plans. So I think I'll keep my key until someone realizes I need to turn it in!

Well, today was the last day of school. Dismissal was at 11:30 today, and my last student left just about 45 minutes ago. It definitely hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm sure it will at some point. I'm not sure if it'll happen gradually or all of a sudden. Graduation last night was a big success and I think helped me and the students to get some closure. It turned into a pretty big, over the top thing, and for a while I was really wondering if trying to do this was a stupid move on my part. Thankfully, Justin's church, Wilmington City Vineyard Church , volunteered to provide refreshments and help with setup and cleanup. They were a huge help, and it made everything way nicer than if I had just done it myself. I was just planning on throwing a pack of cookies and some juice on a table, but they had tablecloths and healthy snacks and got me folding chairs and all sorts of helpful stuff. I'd say there were about 60 people there, plus my 8 students and the volunteers from...

I watched the finale of Oprah yesterday. It's hard to believe the Oprah show is over. Somewhat interesting fact: the show premiered three months after I was born. No, the end of Oprah is not the ending I was referring to in the title of my blog post, but I'll get to school stuff in a minute. I made it to the gym right at 4:00 and got an elliptical right in front of the TV that shows Oprah and actually did 60 minutes of cardio so I could watch the whole show. I think that might be a workout strategy for the summer...find some good viewing and schedule my gym time around it. Anyway, I can see why there's a book called The Gospel According to Oprah . This last show definitely indoctrinated viewers in Oprah's personal gospel, which I found very interesting. She started off with a whole segment about finding your calling, which I pretty much completely agreed with, but then got into some stuff about the energy we give off and karma type stuff that I wasn't agreeing with ...

Oh man. This month is so busy. Here are a few pictures of what I've been up to, including taking my class to see two plays at the Dupont Theater, going to Border Cafe for a lovely grad school celebration dinner organized by Kristin, fingerpainting (why do I do that to myself?), acting out the Good Samaritan, visiting Brittany and baby Khloe, generally having fun and goofing around with my students, taking two girls to Chick Fil A for Veggie Tales night (they got free meals if they wore costumes!), and going to the Enchanted Woods and Winterthur Gardens. Wow! And it's only half done. I also wrote a blog post for the Urban Promise website which you can read here . Big things yet to come in May include road tripping out to Grove City and Pittsburgh for Jenn and Albert's wedding and to hang out with Cassandra, the Philadelphia Zoo field trip which I'm in charge of planning, field day, spirit week, and probably lots more.

I have once again neglected my blog for a while. Not sure why I didn't write at all over spring break. I guess I was too busy reading Hunger Games (I'm on the third one now and can't put it down. I even brought it to school and snuck in a few pages while my class did independent reading) and consignment shopping. What I really should have been doing was my summer curriculum, which is still not completely written. So I have to finish this weekend. Boo. I guess the biggest news is that I've officially chose a grad school. I'll be going to University of Delaware and getting a master's in Human Development and Family Studies with a concentration in Early Childhood Education. Yay! And I got a full assistantship. Yay yay! But then I got offered a second assistantship opportunity and now I have to choose between them. So that's not so great. I didn't really know that was an option, and I had been waiting so long to hear from the department about funding that I...

April 15th, my decision deadline for choosing a grad school, has come and gone, still with no decision. I got an extension until May 1st from Vanderbilt and am still waiting to hear from Delaware about funding. I really, really hope I hear something this week. My week at school was pretty good. Tuesday morning I had a sub so I could start doing DIBELS testing for the school. I am so tired of DIBELS. I feel likes it's all I've been doing lately! Well, I was excited to have a sub and to play reading specialist for the day. I did the testing in the "art room," which is really the old 2nd grade classroom that has basically become another storage place for junk. When they thought they were going to use it for art, they painted the walls an obnoxiously bright yellow. I don't know what exactly started it, but I got a migraine within an hour of being in that room. I blame the walls. It also could have been that I was staring at tiny numbers all morning and listening to ki...

I had the privilege of taking two boys from my class to Red Robin this week. They both worked hard to earn Student of the Month, plus Urban Promise was doing a fundraiser night at the restaurant. So it worked out all around. The boys were so excited in the car that they could hardly contain themselves. Yes, I know the boy on the bottom doesn't look especially excited. But I promise he was. At the restaurant we colored kid's menus and talked to the waitress and they told me all sorts of things their parents probably don't want me to know. Plus one of the boys is scared of the Statue of Liberty (because of Ghostbusters), and there was a Statue of Liberty replica in the restaurant kept freaking him out. This kid is also terrified of mannequins. And anytime I change my appearance. We had a great time, and it was fun to hear them talking about it the next morning. (Hey, remember that time Miss Seefeldt took us to Red Robin?) And neither of them ate much, so I got to take their ...

There's been lots going on lately, and my blog has gotten kind of neglected in the busyness. But I am back with some highlights from the past few busy weeks. So here we go... 1. I got into all the grad schools I applied to and now am waiting to hear about financial aid. I'm really hoping I get some information this week, because April 15th (when I have to let schools know my decision) is getting closer and closer. It seems like the more information I get from schools, the more complicated things get. I'm getting partial scholarships and ideas about campus jobs I could apply for, and trying to figure out what each school would actually cost is not proving to be easy. 2. Kaitlin came to visit! It was so great to see her and fun to have her at school for a couple days. We went to some of our favorite places, including the park, Five Guys, Target (twice), and Border Cafe. I know her former students and everyone at Urban Promise loved seeing her too. I'm hoping I'll be a...

It was a busy week, plus there were five whole days of school in a row, so it wore me out! We celebrated our 100th day of school and Dr. Seuss' birthday and had a week's worth of mystery readers. Here are some pictures from the festivities. And we made Oobleck too, which I can't believe I didn't get any pictures of. Well, I guess it's hard to take pictures when your hands and arms are covered in green slime. You'll just have to picture it yourself. When I look at all these pictures, I don't feel so bad about being tired this weekend!

Here are some pictures of the latest happenings in kindergarten: Decorating cookies on Valentine's Day A group of volunteers came and did a fun reading event for my class last week. They donated over 100 paperback books to the school, and each kid got to take a few home. I took two girls who'd gotten Student of the Month out on Saturday morning. We went to Target, where they were having a story time for Dr. Seuss' birthday. The girls got balloons and goody bags, and they enjoyed it. But I think they enjoyed perusing the toy section more. We had fun pressing buttons on all the interactive displays. And they were so good...they didn't even ask for anything. Then we had some time to kill until it was late enough for lunch, so I took them to Dollar Tree and let them pick something out. One of the girls suggested we get a baby card for Justin and Barbara. Justin works at Urban Promise, and they had a baby on Friday. I thought that was very thoughtful! Eventually we went to M...

Just coming off a four day weekend...well, Friday was an inservice day, so I guess it was a three day weekend. I spent it with my parents in Camp Hill which was fun and relaxing, and then yesterday afternoon I begrudgingly drove back to Delaware. But as an act of rebellion (even though no one else cares except me, so rebellion's probably not the right word) I didn't go in to school to finish my lesson plans. Take that, lesson plans. Instead I watched a very good French movie called The Chorus about a boarding school for troubled boys and an inspirational teacher who starts a choir. As my roommate noted, I'm a sucker for redemption stories about troubled kids, which you could probably figure out by looking at my career choice. Anyway, my night got even better when I saw there was an official winter storm warning for overnight. After a pretty sleepless night that involved checking my phone repeatedly to see if we had a delay, at 6:00 I got the text that school was canceled! ...

I sat down to work on my portion of the summer camp curriculum but decided I'd rather write in my blog instead. I also didn't go in to school to do stuff for next week, so I'll have to do that tomorrow. I like this time of year at school. It's always fun celebrating Valentine's Day, the 100th day, and Dr. Seuss' birthday. It definitely takes more work in the planning department though. I had a tiring week at school getting back into the swing of things after recruiting. My new student continued to terrorize me Monday and Tuesday. I felt like banging my head against the wall because I wasn't really able to teach anything well to the rest of the class while he was carrying on. Wednesday started out similarly, but then he got really out of control. When the class went to art, I took him to our principal and told her what was going on. She called his parents, and in the meantime he threw a complete tantrum and started tearing apart her office and had to be restr...

Friday night I arrived back in Delaware after a whirlwind week of recruiting. We made stops at Westminster, Geneva, Grove City, Pitt, Allegheny, and Duquesne. It was especially thankful for the opportunity to speak in education classes at Grove City. The students seemed interested in hearing about my experiences and asked some good questions. One of the students made a comment that I just seemed like an average "Grover," and if I could be successful teaching in an urban school, it made him feel like maybe he could do it too. That was really encouraging to hear, because that's really what I was trying to communicate. All in all, it was exhausting, especially with all the public speaking and staying up late and having to initiate conversation with students who probably didn't want to talk to me at camp fairs. So yesterday I didn't do much of anything, and it was great. Well, I did attempt Level 3 of the 30 Day Shred...it was really, really hard. Today I went in to s...

I'm sitting in a coffee shop in New Wilmington, PA, right now during our annual western PA recruiting trip. We're on our second day recruiting and are having a great time so far and keeping very busy. We've been to Allegheny College and Westminster College so far with stops later in the week at Pitt, Duquesne, Grove City, and Geneva. It's always a privilege to be able to share with college students about what we do at Urban Promise and especially encouraging when they seem excited about maybe coming to be an intern. Plus it's always a great chance for me to reflect on why I work here and remember all the really good things about my job. Sometimes in the daily grind it's easy to forget how blessed I am to work with these kids and with such a great organization. But after just a day or two away, I'm able to get things in perspective again. So I'm very thankful for this week. And the chance to travel with Rob and Kristin and enjoy their company. And for the...

Last week my class went to the Delaware Children's Museum. It just opened this summer, and it was really nice! There were so many things for the kids to do and play with, and we all had a great time. I took some pictures, but they didn't turn out that great. Mostly I was focusing my attention on not losing anyone, so the pictures were an afterthought. It was a great trip, but I'd love to go back again sometime soon and only take 2 or 3 kids with me. That way I could do some of the stuff too! Here are a few of the pictures... This was a game one of the kids invented that I enthusiastically encouraged...who can freeze like the Christopher Columbus statue the longest. It kept the van ride to the museum very quiet. While this child did the best job copying the facial expression and pose of the statue, he kept bursting out laughing so sadly didn't win. The same child ready to do some constructing. Here you got to dance on a stage (you were supposed to imitate the kids on the...

Somehow after having not too much to do last weekend, I ended up with lots to do this one. But it's still been kind of a lazy Sunday (which makes me think of this little gem), mostly because I haven't left the apartment. Funny, because I had three places I was going to go today, and then I just decided not to. I guess my excuse is that my car is getting checked out at the garage, but I did have an alternate way to get to all of those places (church, another church, and a surprise party). When I checked weather.com this morning and saw it was 20 degrees but felt like 7, I decided not to walk to church. I listened to a Rob Bell sermon about Ecclesiastes which was good, read the Bible, and played the guitar for a little while. It was nice and relaxing. Then I got to work on my report cards and lesson plans...not as nice. Ugh. I just finished the report cards. I'm glad I only have to do them twice a year in kindergarten! Yesterday while I was at school working on getting stuf...

Nothing like updating my blog on a Sunday afternoon at Starbucks in the middle of a long weekend. (Thanks Linda for the gift card!!!) Did I mention I'm leaving for a beach retreat tomorrow? Life is good. I didn't have much to do this weekend for the first time in a while. My grad school applications and financial aid applications are finished so now I just wait for the decisions. I was at school a while yesterday and got my lesson plans done. I still have some more school stuff to do, but I'm taking the day off today. I'll miss two days of school this week because I'm helping to write summer camp curriculum and we have a writer's retreat at a condo in New Jersey. It's two blocks from the beach, but I'm sure I'll head down to the beach at all since it's so cold! I've been fortunate to have opportunities to miss school to do some neat things. I've never taken a sick day or a personal day, but I've gotten to go recruiting each year and a...

Yes, it's a snow day. And I am excited! I definitely like snow days more now than when I was in school. I think one reason I like them so much is that because we don't have to make them up! It's pretty great. I didn't sleep very well last night because I kept dreaming about finding out if school was closed. And I kept waking up to check my phone to see what time it was and if anyone had texted me yet to tell me there was no school. I had one really stressful dream (which didn't really make sense) about how I'd assumed there'd be a snow day, so I went back home to Camp Hill, and then school wasn't closed and I couldn't get back and everyone was mad at me. But I woke up from that dream to the sound of a text message at 5:31 am that there was no school! So it all turned out OK. I'm going to be missing some school in the next two weeks, so I plan to use today to start getting ready for that, doing as much as I can from home, which might not be that m...