Alaska’s Inner Passage September 25, 2007

i can never think of titles September 20, 2007

Today it rained, rained, rained all day, and the air was cool. It was refreshing and wonderful, and I’m terrified that next week I will wake up and summer will have returned.

Today in kindergarten, Jing Sun came running back from the swing and said, “Oh! My heart is beating!” It seemed so simple and sweet and lovely, and I wanted to give her a great big hug.

I am neglecting all sorts of things lately: phone calls to my mom, journals, scrapbooks, keeping in touch with friends, cleaning my room, The Office on DVD. I sort of expected this semester to be a lazy one, but I’ve never been so busy! Everyday I wake up early, and spend all day running, running back and forth and around. But I feel like everything is worth it* and everything is helping me grow.

As soon as my knees are all healed up (I took a spill playing capture the flag…I’m all bruised and pretty soon I’ll have big scars), I’m going to start running. Not the crazy five miles a day Kristina does, but just a little. Tiny bits.

Also, I think if I hear the word “tazer” one more time, I might go insane. GET OVER IT.

*Statement retracted. Math for Liberal Arts Majors is NOT worth it.

“deep” was spelled incorrectly this whole time September 17, 2007

I have never been so busy in my entire life.

I didn’t realize this semester would be so crazy like this.

It’s so hard to focus!

i almost cried September 2, 2007

These statistics on American children are from the Children’s Defense Fund in 2003, according to my textbook (Cushner, et al. Human Diversity in Education. McGraw Hill (2006) ):

• 1 in 3 is born to unmarried parents
• 1/2 live in a single parent family at some point in their childhood
• 1 in 4 lives with only one parent
• 1 in8 is born to a teenage mother
• 1 in 13 was born with low birthweight
• 1 in 15 lives at less than half the poverty level
• 1 in 24 lives with neither parent
• 1 in 60 sees their parents divorce in any year
• 1 in 139 will die before their first birthday
• 1 in 1,056 will be killed by guns before age 20
• 1 in 5 is born poor
• 1 in 3 will be poor at some point in their childhood
• 1 in 6 is born to a mother who didn’t receive prenatal care in the first 3 months of pregnancy
• 1 in5 is born to a mother who did not graduate from high school
• 2 in 5 never complete a single year of college
• 1 in 7 has no health insurance
• 1 in 3 is behind a year or more in school
• 1 in 7 has at least one worker in their family but is still poor
• 1 in 8 lives in a family receiving food stamps
• 1 in 8 never graduates from high school

This is why (one of the many reasons) I want to be a teacher–to help remedy some of this. Convince one more kid to graduate, give one more student a little encouragement, maybe help one more mother know that at least in school, her child is getting what he or she needs. At the same time, I feel awfully sad and inadequate knowing that I can not fix this.

Children are so amazing. They need help, but how do we do it? Most days, I just don’t really know.

49-3, baby! September 2, 2007

Our seats were in the second row…Tebow was amazing…

It really IS great to be a Florida Gator!!