Dreaming of Wishing Wells

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...