Chapter 13

For anyone who reads my blog for my fanfiction updates, this is for YOU!  Chapter 13 is finally up.  I know that it has been 8 months.  I know that I could have spent all the time writing my blog this year writing "Heart of Gold" (actually, the story has approached novel length, so I might start referring to it as Heart of Gold instead).  I greatly apologize for that.  BUT I promise that you will like the chapter.

Some highlights to whet your appetite:

• Liam and Aislinn decide to do something new
• We finally find out what Christopher Devon is so afraid about
• Regulus and Lily decorate the office for Christmas (note: this shows you what month it was when I started writing the chapter, haha)
• Regulus feels mortal peril ... three times
• Regulus gets into a tiff

Go read.  :)  And review!

Is there something more?

One of my readers asked for more information about IVCF in my previous post, and I was really glad to get that perspective.  IVCF is an organization centered on college students, so they have little direct presence in public schools, however, the organization is involved in promoting service among college students.  A lot of that service work happens in the public school sector, so IVCF does affect public schools indirectly.  In fact, IVCF has an entire conference called Urbana devoted to promoting service and missions work.  The conference happens every three years, and really is an amazing way to spend five days -- I attended the one in 2006.  According to the mission statement of IVCF, its purpose is to establish "witnessing communities" on college campuses and universities mostly in the US, but also around the world and to promote the message of Jesus Christ, growing in love for God and for God's Word, God's purposes for the world, and ethnic reconciliation.

I have seen IVCF have a positive impact at every university I have visited with a chapter, and I have experienced the power of this kind of community first hand.  I went to Urbana with only two other people from my chapter (our staff worker and a law student) so I was "adopted" by several other chapters while I was there.  I went to the conference knowing next to nobody, but left with dozens of new friends.  That alone shows the power that the organization has in welcoming students and drawing them into community.

In terms of this kind of teaching and NCLB, there is obviously something missing in modern schools.  We're test-driven and we've lost a lot of focus on developing our students as people and as future leaders.  Beyond making sure our students get good grades and test scores and go on to make our schools look good, we've lost a concern for helping them discover a future hope and goals.  This was always a part of both private and public education until now, and it's rather tragic that this is so downplayed in modern public schooling.

I do not think that any particular group would say that developing students and people and leaders is a terrible goal for schools, but I think that priorities have changed.  This is one reason why I am looking forward to teaching social studies -- you can't get away with this kind of thinking in a social studies classroom.  Social studies has a dual purpose of teaching the subject and promoting citizenship and the discovery of an enlightened life.  You can't teach history without teaching what people thought, and that is a great opportunity to challenge your students with the thoughts of philosophers and great thinkers, from all over the globe.

The fact is that though students can put up a front about not caring about their education, most of them are searching for the answers to life's big questions.  My high school experienced this in a powerful way.  Two of our social studies teachers proposed starting a Comparative Religion/Philosophy elective for the junior and senior class.  The students would spent half of the year studying religion and the other half studying philosophy.  The school and the school board fought the proposition for months, stating that it would be a waste of resources because no modern student is interested in that kind of thinking.  Our schools are full of atheists and deists now.  Who would take such a class.

How wrong they were!  Half of the senior class and a good chunk of the junior class signed up for the course.  They actually had to open three new sections and ask other teachers in the school if they would be willing to teach religion and philosophy.  The class was fantastic because all of the students were interested in the subject matter and in applying it to their own lives.  We all wanted to consider and answer questions about the meaning of life and how we order the way that we think and the way that we make moral decisions.  The county actually asked the teachers to consolidate their notes so that they could promote the class at other high schools.

Clearly, students do want something more, but they need to be presented with the opportunity to find it.  There is certainly room for this within No Child Left Behind and public education, but it takes initiative, planning, and perseverance.  It takes teachers willing to take a risk and not just stick to the properly approved courses, but to reach out and do something more than is required.  If they really care about their students, they will do that.

What matters?

What matters to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship?  Everything.

I've been having fun promoting InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at W&M over the past couple of days.  I'm so excited to be involved with this chapter this year!  Everyone is friendly and I can really see God working in their lives.  For a summary of what IVCF is all about, check out this video.

A future hope

"I want to talk to you about the subject of plans, life plans and how we all make them, and how we hope that our kids make good, smart, safe plans of their own.  But if we're really honest with ourselves, most of our plans don't work out as we'd hoped.  So instead of asking our young people, "What are your plans?  What do you plan to do with your life?" maybe we should tell them this: Plan to be surprised." ~ Dan In Real Life

Anyone who spends any length of time with my immediate family will quickly come to recognize my father's love for movies.  So, the time I spent at home is generally colored by which movies I watch while I am there.  Lexington was not really a prime location for seeing new movies as our theater only showed three movies at a time and the next closest theater was a 30-45 minute drive.  I really haven't gone to the movies much in the past four years, except when I was at home.  However, whenever I do go home, my family is always discussing some movie that they've all just watched and have a million inside jokes for, and then we usually watch it together.  Dan In Real Life was one of those movies this time.

The movie documents the family vacation of recently-widowed Dan (Steve Carrel) and his three daughters, all in various stages of moving through life.  Dan has tried to rigidly control their lives and his own, and this has become even more apparent since the death of their mother.  Much to Dan's surprise, the reunion turns his life upside down, and he has a completely new perspective on the future by the end of it.  This is when he writes the aforementioned quote on plans.

I used to plan out every detail of my life.  I had this idea that by a certain age I would graduate from college, get my first job, be married, start having children, publish my first book, etc.  I think part of that was wanting to give myself something to dream about when I was bored.  Now, I think that it is a good idea to have goals.  We should be encouraging our young people to have an idea of where they want to go and what they want to do, and I think that it can be good to say that we would like something to happen by a certain date.  BUT only if we have the control to make that happen.

In the movie, Dan's problem is that he is trying to control things that he cannot possibly control.  I think that is the major problem with the planning that we do in our lives.  I have had a lot of people ask me in the past couple months where I think I will be teaching next year.  My answer is that I would love to be back up in Northern Virginia with my family, and hopefully a good number of my cousins, but I know that my life is going to be completely different eight months from now.  Everything about my life can change in a day, for better or for worse, and a single event can sometimes have the intensity to alter my views on where I want to be.  There may be a compelling reason for me not to be in Northern Virginia, and I know that I need to stay open to that.

I like the idea of planning to be surprised, because this gets at the idea that the future is hopeful and something to be experienced and embraced, especially if we don't know what is going to happen.  This is something that we need to instill in young people, especially our students, and in "old people" as well.  :)

Happy birthday (to my blog)

My blog turns a year old this week!  I'm proud of myself that I've kept it relatively up to date for the past year.  I posted 55 entries, which is roughly one per week, so I'm satisfied.  We'll see what the next year holds.  I expect that I will end up posting more because it appears that my entries on schooling are engaging and have led to more readers finding my blog, and I'd like to encourage that discussion.

Since my last posting, I have finished coursework for my first term of graduate school, spent a week in Maine, run a lot of errands at home, and almost finished the first book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, entitled Twilight.  I really like it so far.  She is an extremely engaging writer and I can tell from her writing what she considers most important as an author -- characterization.  Perhaps I'm a bit biased because that is the most important thing to me as an author, too, but the best thing about her stories, and the reason I think so many people have fallen in love with them, is that her characters are very real.  She has thought long and hard about who her characters are, how they react, what matters to them, etc and she does not deviate from that picture.  Of course, she confirms that this is the most important thing to her on her Web site, but I guessed that it was before I went searching.

It's good to have a break, and great to be reading for pleasure again.  I told my family that if food is what keeps us physically sustained, then books are what keeps my soul sustained, if that makes any sense.  Along that analogy, Twilight is like candy.  Fast, easy read, and sweet.  I went to get the next two books at Barnes and Noble yesterday, and I'm trying to space out reading them.  Mostly because I know that I have other things that I need to be doing.  Self-control is key.

That said, they're great books, and I highly recommend them.

Further note on schooling

As a student in a teacher education program, I would never presume to say that the current education system is perfect.  I hate the idea of tracking and the fact that students are judged by a test.  I think that that's awful.  I think that students should be able to pursue their dreams, be they music, sports, reading, writing, physics, whatever.  I think that the kind of education that Summerhill and Sudbury Valley schools offer is wonderful, and I think that public schools have a lot to learn from them.  Creativity is one of the most important traits that students should have.

However I think that there is a definite need for accountability in education, and as someone who hopes to teach in public schools for years to come, I am perfectly willing to submit myself to a standard.  Personally, I like having a bar to start from, but that doesn't mean that I want to teach to the bar.  I want to challenge my future students to reach new levels of learning that they never dreamt of before stepping into my classroom.  I want to challenge students to create and to do something with what they are learning.  I always learned the most in classes where my teachers asked me to respond to something and not just learn it, and I loved those classes more than my lecture classes.

As someone who never attended a private school until college, I think that the public school system produces fine students.  I was lucky to have parents who encouraged my learning outside of school and pushed me to realize my best in my faith, my physical well-being, and my artistic abilities.  I would love to experience Sudbury and Summerhill to a fuller extent than I have in just the two-hour video and discussion that we had my class, but until last Thursday, I did not even realize that these schools existed!  Thank you for the thoughtful comments I have received so far and I hope that you'll understand that I totally agree with you, I'm just the kind of person who needs some structure.  :)

"Alternative" schooling

In Ed Psych last week, we talked about two "alternative" schools built on the humanistic, transformative model of education: Summerhill in the UK and Sudbury Valley in Massachusetts.  The transformative model of education is based on the idea that the main purpose of teaching is to mold each student into the learner that they are becoming, rather than giving students a list of facts to process and memorize.  Transformative education says that knowledge exists within the learner and the teacher exists to shape and create and to kindle that knowledge in their students, based on their individual strengths and values.  Schools like Summerhill and Sudbury Valley allow students to learn whatever they want to, without grades or tests.  Check out the Web sites above, and then read what I have to say about the values of each.  There is a marked difference between Summerhill and Sudbury Valley that I highlight below, but see if you can discover it for yourself.

What I wrote for class:

Some aspects of A.S. Neill’s schooling philosophy resonate well with me. I am very attracted to a transformative education in general. I think that students should learn for learning’s sake, and that learning is more than just books and facts, but this is a viewpoint that has been a part of my view of learning since childhood. My parents have always emphasized learning the arts and being physically active, and they involved my sister and me in many co-educational activities in multiple disciplines. Education is valuable because it gives students tools for understanding who they are and relating that identity to the world around them. A transformative education aids in this discovery, especially one along Neill’s philosophy. I like that students live at Summerhill because this emphasizes that learning is done in community and encourages learning to happen all the time, and not just at school. I also think that Summerhill does a good job of emphasizing classroom learning and keeping it separate from playtime. Students at Summerhill acknowledge the value of learning literature, history, math, science, and other core subjects. Further, they take an active interest in the democratic process and are constantly involved in making it work since they live at the school.

In contrast, Sudbury Valley is more like a daycare center. Students can show up whenever they want and leave pretty much whenever they want as well. It’s a larger school, so there is less accountability for what individual students are learning than at Summerhill. Further, there are many more activities than there are at Summerhill. I am sure that Sudbury Valley would consider this a benefit, but I think that students would learn more of core subjects if they were limited to more academic pursuits. I do think that there is value to playtime pursuits, but maybe students should be limited to them for a certain amount of time each day. I understand that students should be able to choose what they want to learn, but I think that this philosophy gives children too much credit. I wanted to be an astronaut until I was in middle school, and I only discovered that I enjoyed writing and history much more than science and math because I had teachers who pointed my skills and gifts out to me. I am not sure if I would have discovered this on my own. Sometimes we need others to point out our own skills before we can see them for ourselves.

I think that students should be able to develop their own path for learning, within limits. I like that Sudbury Valley and Summerhill provide this opportunity. I think that K-12 schools should value the arts and physical activity just as highly as book learning, and that test scores should be devalued in favor of the development of the whole person. On the whole, SOL standards actually do aim toward the development of the whole person, because there are standards for the arts, but they are not required tests. I think that we should motivate students to learn what is on the SOLs, but give them choices on how they want to learn those subjects and be assessed on them. Students should be able to choose whether they want to write an essay or respond in some other creative way to a subject in literature or history. They should be able to demonstrate their knowledge of math or science in a way consistent with their strengths. I think that the SOLs are beneficial in that they offer a standard for what students should know, but that students should be given the latitude to decide what they want to do with that knowledge.

PGD-I3: Dinner, party of one

It's been a while, so it's time for a new post-graduate discovery: you can save so much more money by cooking in than by eating out.  Again, like my other discoveries, this should be intuitive.  I just never realized how much you can save by cooking your own food.

For example, tonight I made a vegetable and kielbasa sausage saute over about a cup of rice.  Pretty good stuff.  I diced and sauteed (in olive oil) a quarter of a green pepper, an eighth of a red onion, and half of a yellow squash, and I also sauteed half of a sliced package of kielbasa (Polish sausage).  I made the rice in my rice cooker.  Grand total?  $3.06

1/2 sausage = $2.25

rice = probably no more than .10

1/4 green pepper = .22

1/2 yellow squash = .25

1/8 red onion = .14

1/2 tablespoon olive oil = probably no more than .10

Okay, add another .25 for my glass of orange juice (if that).  That brings it up to about $3.30.

Just for kicks, I went online and looked up similar dishes.

Olive Garden has a Mixed Grill for $15.50.

Red Lobster has a Grilled Chicken Breast (with vegetables and rice) for $11.25.

Tuscany Italian, a restaurant in Lexington, probably comes closest with Risotto con Vegetali (Italian sausage with rice and vegetables) for $11.95.

Most restaurants would charge $2ish for a glass of orange juice.

I've made my point.

Oh, a subpoint ... fresh fruits and vegetables are a lot cheaper than processed ones.  Further, making one's own pizza and other such items is cheaper than buying it.  A box of 18 Bagel Bites cost about $4, whereas I bought three apples today for $3.44.

Again, the point is simple.  Eating healthy, making your own food, is cheaper than eating out or eating something fried (which you usually will only get eating out).

Life in the icebox

I've been in the W&M Curriculum and Instruction program for eight weeks now, so I suppose it's time for me to write an update about what I've been doing.  I've been busy, obviously, but that's nothing new.  That seems to be what I write about whenever I do a "life update."  My weekly schedule consists of 16 hours of class, 10-15+ hours at my graduate assistantship (depending on the week), who knows how many hours of homework, and 3-5ish hours of prep work for my impending volunteer staff work with InterVarsity.

I have entitled this entry "Life in the icebox" because the 30+ hours I spend on campus each week are spent in Jones Hall and Morton Hall, where W&M campus staff have seen fit to set the thermostat at sub-70 degree levels.  At least, that's how it feels to me.  I've been bringing socks and zip-up sweaters to class/work so that I stay warm.  :)

My schedule in June was a bit more unpredictable, but my schedule for July is standard: work MWF for 5-8 hours, class TR for 8 hours.  Our class blocks are 4 hours long.  I had been dreading this length of time for class, but now it doesn't seem so bad.  It will be interesting to go back to 1 1/2 hour classes in the fall.  I've been learning a LOT about teaching, curriculum, instruction, assessment, tracking, learning styles, educational psychology, educational research, multidisciplinary learning, ... clearly, there's a lot for beginning teachers to learn.

I was very excited about the program at the end of June, but a bit overwhelmed because I had started to realize how much more I need to learn before I start teaching.  Now, almost done with summer courses, I am still very excited and I feel more confident in my abilities.  We have been spending more time thinking about how to teach in terms of curriculum, instruction, and assessment this term, taking into account learning styles and developmental psychology, and I feel like I have a better grasp on what I am supposed to do as a teacher and different ways that I can do it.

I've been so blessed through other students in the program.  There are 44 of us total, 22 secondary education and 22 elementary education.  There are no men in elementary, and only 8 men in secondary.  So, there are a lot of women in the program, but that just matches the contemporary trend in education.  One of the secondary women, Cati, has been having us over for the past few weeks for dinner to just unwind and enjoy one another's company.  Last week there were about ten of us and this week there were about fifteen to twenty!  We're expecting more next week, and we're planning a BBQ.  :)  We all get along very well.

Work has been fun.  I've been working as a technical writer for the Technology Integration Program, mostly rewriting content for their Web site and writing papers that can be handed out at their events about how to use their various programs.  I'll post a link to these once they go up on the TIP Web site, at the end of the month.

Finally, IV.  I'm so excited that I can continue being involved in this ministry.  I have been so blessed by IV through GCF at W&L, going to Urbana, and going to winter camp, and it's wonderful to be able to give back and serve God through this ministry, even at another campus.  Marty, the W&M campus minister, and I have been meeting and talking about discipleship for the past two months and I'm really excited to get to know students this fall.

So, while life in the icebox is pretty cold, the people in the icebox are very warm and my work is fulfilling.  I can't wait to start classroom work in the fall!

Theological worldview?

I found this quiz to be very interesting, especially in light of the fact that I've been visiting a Methodist church in Williamsburg, haha, and I've never before really attended one.  Though, the description for Wesleyan theology here is pretty much accurate for me.  So I guess this is accurate?

I do find it funny that I'm 50% Roman Catholic and 50% Charismatic/Pentecostal.

What's your theological worldview? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists. Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 96% Fundamentalist 82% Emergent/Postmodern 71% Neo orthodox 64% Reformed Evangelical 64% Roman Catholic 50% Charismatic/Pentecostal 50% Classical Liberal 39% Modern Liberal 29%