Apocalypse - a Story of a Water Beetle

 One day, at the end of the school year, I decided to take a little walk to Cenex during a break.  When I left the school, the streets were unusually quiet.  The air felt strange to me.  I felt as though some life lesson or major life event was about to take place.
 
I skipped a bit and looked down.  That's when I saw a bug.  This bug was the biggest bug I had ever seen in my entire life.  So, I took a picture of it with my cell phone.

 

 

The picture was very, very disappointing.  There's no way anyone could have imagined how  big this bug was to me.

That's when I saw two seniors walking into the school.  I was actually relieved because I started wondering if, in fact, I had been left behind and was living in an apocalyptic world inhabited just by me and these scary looking bugs.

 They pondered the bug with me for a while, and we went on our separate ways.  I, to Cenex - They, to class.

I thought about this bug.  I wondered about it and suddenly found myself in front of the store with a big bang.  My shoe had caught on to the first step.  I fell with a thud with my cheek basically smearing down the glass door.  It was not unlike a bird who flies into a fresh window.

A man rushed out of the store and helped me up.  I brushed myself off and found myself inside Cenex which had a bustle of people giggling at my mishap.

I reached for the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and reached inside my purse to find the money to pay.  And, inside I found I had some yogurt which had sprayed it's contents entirely over my delightful purse.  Key lime pie flavored coins and make up were part of my world.

I went back to school and cleaned up in the teacher's lounge sharing my story with my colleagues. The Biology teacher knew which bug I was talking about right away.

I hadn't imagined size of this bug.  And I wasn't LEFT BEHIND to fight an apocalyptic battle against zombies, either.

Today is the sort of day that makes me think of haikus

A cool, gentle rain
Making me forget worries
I don't have worries.

Call Me Maybe

This weekend, I found this video made from some of the boys on the Fosston Baseball team.. 



They gave credit to the Harvard Baseball team for the idea.




It cracked me up! 

Being who they want to be.

One of my favorite parts of summer is regrouping from the school year.  Part of re-grouping is reading what other teachers have to say.  As I've mentioned before one of my favorite blogs comes from Teacherscribe - Mr. Reynolds always provides great professional reading links and thoughts on becoming a better teacher.  He pointed out this blog post recently and offered his own thoughts in another post. 

George Courous  prioritizes getting to know students as the number one way to becoming a master teacher.  I agree.  Over the weekend, I had been thinking about what makes an effective teacher.  Courous listed "Knowing Students" as a number one priority.  I think this means putting aside their test scores, what we know about their family, and what other teachers say.

We need to show an interest in who they are, and sometimes, this means knowing who they want to be.  Who they want to be is much more important than who they are.  We need to look at their potential.  Who could they be if they had the right cheerleader?  Who could they be if they had one person believing in them?

I'm one of those teachers who always cheers for the underdog.  I get it - kids can do some rotten things to each other.  Sometimes, we just need to point out that it was a poor choice and move on.

Kids need to know we know who they want to be.  Kids need to know we want to help them be who they want to be.