It's the little things...

It's always said that it's the little things in life that bring the most joy. Perhaps the little things can also bring on the most fear, confusion, doubt, or other negative feelings. Every once in a while a thought will cross my mind that will make me terrified to start teaching this fall. Example: Just the other day I was thinking about teaching, and I realized that I have to give out grades. I have to assign point values to student work that will determine what grade they get in my class. Fears stemming from this are multi-leveled. Partly this comes from knowing many students who I have poured large amounts of energy into and while I saw growth in our one-on-one times, the student would often not fare any better on written work. So there is a sadness in having to give a poor grade to a student who has shown improvement.

But then there is also the lack of trust I have in myself to be consistent. Can I indeed hold the same standards for every paper that crosses my desk and therefore grade "fairly"? I doubt myself.

And then there is personal failure. When a student (or many many students) bomb a test, who actually fails? Many would say that it is the student who earns his or her grade in a class, but when you consider that I am the one who taught the material to the students, and I am also the one who designed the test, it seems that the blame may fall closer to here than there.

I'd like to think that my teaching experience will be all sorts of joy and fun times. But I know (or rather I have been told) that this is a stressful job, and that the first year or years are the toughest. Friends will tell me "you have nothing to worry about" "you're going to be great" ... and I thank them for supporting me. However, it is really only me who will determine how the first year and years go. Will I be able to hold myself together? Will I be able to act out all the things I've learned about teaching adolescents in the past years? Can I maintain sanity and get out of the year having done at least a decent job at teaching?

I say "I" and those of you who know me really well know that I very much believe in the Christian God, so therefore believe all the things the Bible says about never truly being alone and not being able to do anything without the aid of Christ. And that all does apply here. But yet so much does rely on me, because if I can't stay focused on and connected to Christ, then I will not benefit from that fruit (that's the whole "vine and branches" thing you'll find in the book of John). And I prove to myself over and over again that I will enjoy periods of wonderful connectedness, only to go through weeks or months of distance from really living what I believe.

Such problems there are with human nature. Not being able to consistently act on what we believe is among them.

Perhaps I've gotten too heavy for 11:30 on a Saturday night. Time for some sleep.

Much love,

NYTimes.com: Moses' Top Ten

Guest Columnist: Moses' Top Ten
By SARAH VOWELL
The Ten Commandments and original sins.


A bit of a rip on Texas, but it's also a rip on every person to ever live.

Into the Orange and Black

It has happened. I have a job. This fall I will be teaching Algebra and Geometry to mostly freshmen at Oregon High School. (Oregon is a city just south of Madison, WI, for those of you who didn't know. I lived in Madison 2 or 3 years before I knew that such a place existed, so don't feel like you should know...)

It is all fun and exciting, but after the initial flattery of being offered a job, I'm back to feeling like life is as it has been for the past 22 years. But in a couple weeks I will be signing a contract and learning about my benefits and getting keys to a school and room that will be mine. At that point I expect I will have a better understanding that life has indeed changed. That I am truly an adult now. And that I will be solely responsible for the acquisition of math knowledge for a select group of students. A new adventure it is.

My school colors are orange and black. I do not recall what my mascot is, probably some sort of cat. (Of course, once a Badger, always a Badger...) Orange and black are such awful colors. I was majorly involved in my high school: choir, band, forensics, theatre, sports, even a bit of school government. I loved being at football games and dressing from head to toe in purple and gold and painting my fingernails purple and gold and making hair ribbons that were purple and gold. My high school's number one enemy was the Plymouth Panthers -- school colors: orange and black. My dad went to the same high school I did, so he knows the evil of orange and black as well. My mom went to a different high school whose colors were red and black, but their enemy school had orange and black as colors, so she knows they are evil too. But now I have to embrace them. The good news is I like wearing black. And some fashionable things can be done with orange. I think I'll get used to it :)