O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel,…
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Taking a break from my usual blogging pattern of circumstance-reflection-revelation, here’s a humorous little list that most of you teachers out there should be able to relate to. You know you’re a teacher when… … you have to resist introducing yourself by your last name when meeting someone new. … your hands are perpetually covered…
read more »My younger brother recently asked me an intriguing question: “If you died right now—like, if you dropped dead in front of me—do you think you’d go to heaven?” I didn’t know if he was joking or serious (I can never really tell), so I took the safe way out: “Um, yeah. I’d like to think…
read more »It seems fitting—symmetric, at the very least—that I should be writing my last entry of 2011 the same way I wrote the first: in an airport terminal, waiting for my flight while reflecting on what lay before and what lies ahead. In the past four months, I have embarked on the toughest journey of my…
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Fact #1: I’ve spent a majority of the past 72 hours sleeping like a baby. Fact #2: I had to take half days on Tuesday and Wednesday because of flu-like symptoms and a splitting headache that made it hard to even stand up straight. Fact #3: Yesterday was my fourth time spending Thanksgiving away from…
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To say that Teach For America places a strong emphasis on planning would probably be an understatement. According to one of the six characteristics of TFA’s Teaching As Leadership framework, high effective teachers “plan purposefully.” (Without ascribing undue significance to the order of said characteristics, it’s interesting to note that “plan purposefully” comes before “execute…
read more »Student reactions upon seeing me in a V-neck and AF-1s on Casual Friday J.: “You mad fresh today, Mr. K.” N.: “Dangggg look at you with your Air Forces.” K.: “Hip-hop! Hip-hop!” D.: “Mister, you look like a middle schooler today.” L.: “Mr. K, you look so cute!” I mentioned in my last post that…
read more »Overheard during whiteboard time D.: *sigh* “This class gets more and more organized every day.” Let me be real for a moment. I mean really real, not kinda sorta real, like I usually am when an acquaintance asks how TFA is going to be polite. Teaching is hard. This past week has been hard. This…
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Overheard during Independent Practice B. (to D.): “You’re ruining our lives and eating all our steak!” I may have to resort to blogging less regularly. It’s not a matter of not having enough free time (though heaven knows that’s true). Simply put, forcing myself to write every weekend isn’t always conducive to substantive, meaningful posts…
read more »Overheard at the end of a block N.: “Ohmigoshhh I lost my exit slip!” An unintended consequence of blogging on weekends is that I’m usually writing when I’m physically and emotionally at my peak. I get to catch up (somewhat) on sleep, I can actually spend some time reading for pleasure and chatting with non-teacher…
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