Monday morning haiku silliness

Staring at coffee
Thoughts of you and dark ripples
Waking from this dream
-------------------------------------------------

Two weeks and two days...
Change flies on wings and brings rest
What will I be next?
-------------------------------------------------

"Now I'm warm" she said
Buttoned up in my big coat,
Will she remember?
-------------------------------------------------

I'm sorry I failed
At teaching you third grade math
But I've loved you well

Updated funny things my students have said this year!

So here's to the things my 8-year-old students (and a few of the fifth graders too!) have said in the last few months that i HAVE remembered to write down.. Some of these made me halt class (in funny, disguised ways) just so I could walk to my desk for a post-it note and capture the words that made the day a little bit easier (aka, made me chortle :)). Enjoy!..


5-14-10
Fifth Grader’s written response—
Q: "What is the definition of 'reluctantly'?"
A: "Something that’s shaped like a reluctant"

Student: Ms. W, if I go to jail when I’m older will you help me get out?
Ms. W: Why would you go to jail?
Student: I don’t know but if Billy ends up going, I’ll probably end up there too.
Ms. W: Why would Billy go?
Student: For stealing fried chicken, of course! Duh :) You know that crazy-Billy loves fried chicken!
5-13-10
“Your sister has a ducky husband and he smells like chicken. And I know this because I’m awesome!”

“My pencil is a warrior. That’s why it has a hat”

“I’m going to make a lot of airplanes and sell them at recess to kids that don’t have a life”

“Aw… I farted in the hallway again- my bad bugs are acting up! Seriously”

3-24-10
[One of my little girls crawled under the table, sat Indian-style, and dropped her head to her hands]
Me [semi-under the table too]: "what are you doing?"
Little one: "I don’t know"
Me: "are you hiding?"
Little one: "yes, from the monster"
Me: [smiling] "am I the monster?" [nods her head and begins to smile]
Me: "what kind of monster?"
Little one: "the Math Monster"
Me: "what can I do to make it better?"
Little one: "I don’t know yet" [said in a deeeeply whimpery voice]
Me: "but you’ll come out soon and tell me..?"
Little one: [nods her head]
Me: "I love you. Take your time."
Little one: "ok,. I’m ready."

“No, smoking doesn’t make you ugly—that’s only with drugs. Drugs make you look gross and disgusting.. Like Michael Jackson. Drugs made Michael Jackson a girl!”

“Miss W, I think you should have a boyfriend, but I don’t think boys like teachers”

Student #1: “Oooh there’s a duck in this picture”
Ms. W: Is that the picture with a girl holding a duck?”
Student #1: yes!
Ms. W: Oh that’s my sister. She’s a duck.
Student #2: Did you say your sister’s a duck?
Ms. W: yes :)
Student #2: Your sister is a duck! That’s crazy :)

“Are you writing an email to a platypus that saw you in your underwear?!”

“This morning for breakfast, I ate a pooptart. Haha”

”I FORGOT TO TAKE MY PILL TODAY!! THEY SAY I’M HYPERACTIVE! HA HA! NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!”

“I love how my mom forgets stuff! Like she said the other day ‘Im never going to buy you anything else’ or ‘you’re not allowed to watch tv until Friday’ and then she totally forgets and I can’t do it!”

3rd grader #1: “Who’s Jesus. Oh! Jesus. Yeah I just forget who that is sometimes”
#2: “How can you forget Jesus?”
#3: “It happens. I do it too. Like when things are going really good and I’m having a lot of fun I stop thinking about him.”
#2: “yeah I guess sometimes I can even forget I have a family”

“Only my dad can carry a 200 lb. pumpkin, ‘cuz he’s like 73 years old!!”

“I feel so free in these pants!” (as he did a little butt-wiggle)

Fifth grade IEP student transition survey question: "what will you do in your free time after high school?" Student's response: "probably study for college tests and quizzes. that, or spend time making a museum entirely out of legos."

“I feel like I lost two years of my life!” –5th grader after a five-minute tornado drill (HUGE sigh of relief and air escaped the hallway when the announcement came on that it was done)

"monday is my march memesis!"

"I... I must have some bad bugs living in my stomach that are making me do it" -Student's somber explanation for creepy giggling during a test!

3rd Grader #1: "You're not a teacher. You're like a teacher-puppy"
3rd Grader #2: "Heehee...A teacher in a puppy-suit!"
3rd Grader #1: "A puppy in a teacher-suit!"

"Miss WonderTech, aren't you a teeeenager??"

June 6, 2009 - News~ [North Dakota!]

Precious, precious family and friends~

Please forgive any presumptuousness of a mass-email, but time has slipped by me again, and as I find myself on the brink of something I’m really excited about, the loudest emotion cutting its way through my busyness keeps being a throbbing sense of wanting to tell you all about it—So, if you’re reading this, please know you’re special to me; that you’re either a part of my family by blood and beautiful inheritance, or part of my Body at Vineyard, or one of the dear friends I’ve made as a student or as a teacher or as a traveler—all journeys anyway—and it is for all of these reasons that you’re on this list. Also, I am so sorry I didn’t get this out sooner, and if you’ve already been told some or all of this by me, be patient with my impulsive enthusiasm :)~

Two major events are beginning/changing for me, and I have longed to have you “in on it” for the few weeks that I’ve known:

Five years ago I spent a summer in Ghana, West Africa with Wycliffe Bible Translators, praying and testing out a burning heart. It was a sweet time of confirmations, joy-heat and heart-spurs, and all the time since then has been a meandering journey of soul sifting, patience, and preparation. In these years, God has had to realign my compassion to first identify with Him before any personal will to help another, and has deepened the ardor I’d grown for the concept of bringing His words to cultures of people that have no access to it in the language they most understand [in 2008, there were still 2,393 languages without any part of the Bible]. For many of these cultures, their language is still only oral, and there is a thirst for the development of an alphabet in their tongue and literacy in their village. This vision tugs my compassion, my knowledge (of the darkness I experience without Christ’s words as my haven and tower), and my hope (in God’s use of our silly gifts and hobbies to further His Kingdom).

What I mean to share though is that I get to begin training this summer!~ Where there were only 3 schools I could find that offer both the Linguistics and Biblical Exegesis parts together, each of these schools’ schedules require me to quit my job and to move across country—both things that are not yet financially wise for me, if I am to take responsibility for my school debt and to pay everything off before my leaving and needing support ever enter this missions-equation. In fear and twisty hope, I started applying to programs for this fall anyway, and asked God to reveal how I could make this work—ha!—my foolish forcing~ Instead, spring break brought me time to speak to people from Wycliffe and the schools, and opened a new door to begin my first semester of courses now, in an intensive 2-month semester at a school in North Dakota…then return in the fall to teach another year. As everything has fallen in place swiftly, my parents, too, have been the most gracious encouragers, and came alongside me to pray and figure out the practical side—Four weeks ago, I moved back in to their home, and with this gift, I can be done with all college and car debt within a little over a year and truly free to finish training and be assigned to a language project (!!).

The other change I will come home to is that my county has had to shift around a lot of their teachers due to budget changes and a hiring freeze, and I am one of the surplussed teachers, so I will be teaching at an elementary school for next year instead of Sprayberry~ This will be a new adventure for me as well, and I figured with all of the paragraphs I was sending your way, I could throw this in as well :). I have no experience with Elementary Special Ed. yet, but have also come to know that I finally trust God, and will not resist this change, but please pray for my capacity to learn to teach and love these new kids well. SO much new learning for me…

I know this is long now; but I think this is the catch-up :). I get on a plane in just a few hours now…

I love you and so deeply appreciate that no matter how verbose and lengthy this is, or even whether we share the beliefs that are catalyst to my going, there was enough confidence in me of your care and place in my life that I knew I could send it… So PLEASE, keep me this summer (by email or facebook, or blog since I don’t know that each of you want blubbering emails from me often :), I won’t inundate you, but rather, will post here) Hope you sleep so well, and that I hear from you soon, truly.
With love, Monica

Posted on 6 June 2009 at 2:14 AM Comments (0)

March 6, 2009 - Another Experiment

So.. it's one in the morning, and I have just finished an "assignment" that is technically an assignment for my students, but as I think I've mentioned on here before, with creative writing that we ask them to read aloud to the class, my co-teacher and I have promised that we will always write on the topic as well, and come prepared to share what we've written, so it is not just them under a spot-light that's ravaging their confidence, but also us in all our nerdy, adult vulnerability..

It is once again during our unit on the novel The House on Mango Street; just a wonderful little book to teach lyrical/poetic prose with, and to give freshmen a heaving dose of literary devices... So we ask them to write a few vignettes in the style of the author (Sandra Cisneros) and this week's needed to be a treatise on or vivid memory of music in their life.

And here is the bleary teacher's-edition of the mimic-assignment:


There is a silken web that winds itself in and around and under me—shot up my veins like an internal tree running roots down my arms through my throat—the glue between a million little polaroids. It is notes, songs, snatches of harmonies that wind gnarly vines around soul and set it free from body. If travel has been the demolisher of my walls, music was what kept me in one piece during the glorious fall-out. It is the haze that my breath blew on the windows of a boxcar as the train whirred onward to somewhere new; dissonant chords rolling off Thom Yorke's tongue, sent to light the fire in my belly—baby’s got the bends—and so did I… pressurized, and about to burst.

It is the hours spent on a piece of carpet, with a long-adored brother, eyes closed, listening while eternity drips slow to the layers in an album—Innocence Mission—and my heart on fire—O happy, O happy, the end, the end, the end—she says. Because music is like water, whirling around in ringlets of change, lilting through and welding together chapters of life to form a whole. Because it is only music, and light, and water and God that transcend the gaps and gutters that the rest of life digs deep.

It is the wild-hearted drum-circle, spontaneously combusting after the Easter service at my church, and docks that shook with the voices of youth camp kids, cluttered together to join and surpass the worshiping toads. It is the funereal dance around the blazing fire, one white-hot whisper, so much life found in that Ghanaian celebration at another man’s death.

And maybe then we are like notes. Each bobbing along, suspended at times, meeting others to form chords—some combinations disastrous, clashing gongs, but unrelentingly powerful—and others the sweet tilt of harmony, trills in form of relationship. Our own music that breaks wide the marching lines of time and leaves something wispy on a page to mark the crescendo.

Posted on 6 March 2009 at 1:06 AM Comments (1)

Nov. 21, 2008 - Reflections on an odd day, without reflecting on the day at all, but rather adding some small part of it to this place..

So today was a lot.
In a lot of different ways.
But as I was lying down to close it, I smiled at the way the class-part of my day went.. Fun students, and a room full of people trying to turn their memories into metaphors!~ Maybe only a scene an english-nerd could love.. but it was enjoyable.

Today was "I Am" Poem day;.. something I've done since my second semester of teaching with the first co-teacher I ever really clicked with...It's a very structured poem. Only now we were tying it to The House on Mango Street.. how Esperanze (hope!) is told that she cannot erase her memories... "you are Mango Street".. The concept that you are, in some powerful ways, the sum of all your history; all your vivid memories--good or bad--combining to form someone made of dust and sunny days and kinship and cold.

So from a list of topics, each student had to take notes on the most vivid memory they had for each of the categories we gave them. These range from "a pet memory" to "a time you were scared" and "your first crush".. Then we read our examples--To give them an idea of how to re-present their memories as quick images, small sentences, packed polaroids, so much memory pushed into a corner with the hope that there the squeaze-out may be something interesting.. So as an offering to the pillow before me, here's mine (written back the first time we taught the assignment though):


I AM
I am the growing shout of “go-----oal!” husking from my father’s otherwise gentle voice
I am letters written to the love I haven’t met yet I am shove, tear, fight through feeling rawness and weariness, to resplendent joy
I am the single thunder lamp lighting literacy lessons for the Ghanaian village
I am the silly first story written without any expectations
I am glinting Christmas lights squinted at from the base of 20 feet of green
I am the cracking concussion of a head on a swing as I slump to the grass after the fall
I am the apple orchard, bending wide my arms to gather in cousins, juice-pith, and seeds
I am a red-haired chow-chow, dashing at the first glimpse of an accidentally-open door
I am drenched boots and dramatic conclusions cracking through the ice on lake Jenushka
I am whispers to my sister between the bunk bed and wall until stars are yawning, gape-mouthed
I am the summer of 2002, ill, feeling like death and puddles
I am the daughter of Brazilian rhythm laced between the oompa-pa’s
I am the lead foot on the accelerator, trembling for 1,000 miles to see the scars on his wrists
I am red sleds pitched around snowy gutters, playing house with my kindred sis
I am struggling eye sight, blinking, staring, longing for what’s next

Posted on 21 November 2008 at 12:26 AM Comments (0)

July 31, 2008 -- A [long overdue] monica update

31 July 2008
A [long overdue] monica update

Dearhearts, friends and family~
So… I know I’m off the appropriate time for “Christmas and what-I’m-doing-now letters” by about 7 months (or I’m 4 months early! Depending on how you look at it :), but this summer I found myself at my first huge pause in a very long time, and waves of love and missing people hit me as I finished something that felt difficult to me, and I found the largest emotion in me was an ache to reach out and say hello, and ask for prayer, and re-open my side of all these relationships that I haven’t poured into as I’d like to by default… Please know that I am sorry for my lack of communication, and that you have been thought of much in this lapsed time~ I began trying to write all of you in a little house on the Carolina shore… Erik and Mom and Dad were all able to take off work, and we escaped for a whole week, which has never happened, as far back as I can remember. It was beautiful to watch everyone decompress; some of the complexity of the last few years for my family sloughing off, puddling somewhere gracious. I cannot describe how great and poignant it was to have “guitar under the stars time” with my brother, and to have the time to read books just for me, while bathed in sunlight! Right before we left (vacation was in June), I received word that I am now, after two years of teaching High School, finally a “real” teacher :). The last time I wrote to some of you was after Berry and right before Ghana (oh, heart!)… So much has happened since, but I returned to Georgia after Africa and took an office job in the name of getting rid of my school debt so that returning to the mission field could come sooner. God’s plans for the time being were different for me though, and a challenge to my heart. Instead, through some bizarre orchestrations, I fell head-first into teaching English/Literature, mostly in the Special Ed. environment, at my old high school (!) and taking evening classes to get my teaching and Special Ed. certificates. The program allowed me to work in the capacity of a true teacher for two years with the understanding that I would complete all the classes and state tests by the end, and turn in a culminating “digital portfolio” with all kinds of proof that at the end of that, they could trust that I knew what I was doing. Oh the stories I could tell you! The education system here has been such an odd training ground, and these two years have run the gamut from kamikaze days of driving after 7-hours of teaching to my 5-hour certification class (3 days a week!), to teaching a literacy class for a group of 15-19 year olds that were identified as unable to read or write above a 3rd grade level… It was more than I could have been prepared for, but also more than I expected. And now I find the beginning of my third year is just about to begin. It’s funny how much excitement and how much reticence can exist together! In all this time I still find how true it is that a “hope deferred makes the heart grow sick” (“…but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life” Proverbs 13:12)! and though it has been an accomplishment, my longings are as they were, and I feel as convinced of my call to full-time missions as I was before. I do not know how God’s going to use what I’ve learned this way, but I find that in the “extra time” that I have this school year (since I won’t be taking classes for myself), I want to commit to plead for His vision and for guidance for all the parts of my heart finding their way out of ‘sickness’. Please, as part of myself, pray for clarity as I embark on this next year of teaching: that God would direct my use of time, my desire to proactively get out of debt, and my continued questions about and longings for training in Linguistics and Bible Exegesis… And now you have reached the end of my run-on sentences, as this may be the best I can do to summarize where I’ve been all this time. Know that I love you, and again, that I’m sorry for my tendency to get splotchy about staying in touch. There’s so much more I could say; so many more important chapters have been folded inside these few years for me, and so much I have learned about love and heartache, but I know this is long enough. I would love to hear from each of you, and to know what’s been going on in your lives. Truly. With all my heart, Monica

Posted on 31 July 2008 at 2:21 AM Comments (0)