Thoughts on Teaching

Though I plan meticulously and teach brilliantly yet have not love, I am nothing.

Though my procedures and routines are thorough and consistent, if I have not love, I am accomplishing nothing of lasting value.

Though every child passes TCAP and Gateway and obtains scholarships to college, if I have not loved them, it has been in vain.

Excellence in education is important, but temporal.  It will pass away.

Love, on the other hand, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails

And that's why we do what we do. 

Las Chicas Moradas (or what I did last Friday night)

Last Friday was the final day of our first two graduate classes. In four weeks, we completed 6 credit hours, 3 each in Cultural Foundations and Classroom Leadership. Those four weeks were filled with new ideas, thought provoking papers, fun classes, boring classes, tedious work, great examples of how to teach, a few examples of how not to teach, a lot of laughter, and a lot of fun. We learned much, but we are glad to have finished our first two classes. To celebrate, Justin, Austin, Mollie, and Amanda  decided to throw a party:

They called it "Colors of Excellence Dance Party." Colors of Excellence is a variation of an acronym, COE, which stands for "Class of Excellence" (that is the 2012 Resident Class nickname) We've come up with all sorts of fun variations of COE: Friday at noon we were "Cows of Excellence." We've also been "Children of Eve," "Caretakers of Earth," and "Consumers of Eggs..." Anyway, friday night, we were Colors of Excellence.

Many, many Colors of Excellence...

Heidi and I, being such incredibly clever young ladies, decided to go to the dance party as Las Chicas Moradas, a little Peruvian play on words. Chicha Morada is a rather disgusting Peruvian beverage of which neither Heidi nor myself are particularly fond, though we both agree that it can be tolerated when served quite cold. It is made by boiling purple corn, then adding sugar, cinnamon, apple juice, pineapple juice, and sometimes lime juice to purple broth.  See the picture below:

Heidi and I were both dressing in head-to-toe purple for the COE party, and decided to go as Las Chicas Moradas (roughly translated: the purple ladies), a phrase which would be recognized as a fun little pun by anyone who knows what Chicha Morada is. Of course, it loses much of its humor when I have to go to great lengths to explain it to you all...but it was fun in our minds!

We never managed to get a picture of  Las Chicas Moradas together, but here are a few gems from the evening:

Not sure that I have an explanation for this...

 Kelly, Angela, and Heidi getting their groove on...

Even the Montagues made an appearance, with David (our MTR Director) dressed in a crayon costume. Here are his lovely wife and daughters, also in color costume. Still not sure what I'm doing here...

The food was color-themed (Heidi and I brought M&M's! Yum. ), the decor consisted of construction paper taped to walls, bright streamers, balloons, and large crayons scattered around. Besides fun music and strobe lights, the evening's entertainment included jumbo sized coloring books and crayons and Jim and Matt rapping the Instructional Maturities (part of our assessment rubric here at MTR). A weird but oh-so-excellent party, COE style. It's what we do.

I dressed up like a cow today and got free food.

WHAT?!?!?! Yes. I still can't believe I did that....but I did. I dressed up like a cow today and got free food. WHAT?!?!?! To further add to the absurdity, costumes were awarded food in varying degrees...if your costume was half-hearted, you earned an entree. I, however, was considered "head-to-toe cow," and I received my choice of combo meal! Any one I wanted.

Before today, all of the statements below were true:
1) Never have I dressed up to receive free food
2) Never have I dressed up like a cow.
3) Never have I eaten at a restaurant with a group of people who "mooed" at everyone who walked through the door.
4) Never have I had my picture taken with a restaurant mascot.
5) Never have I led a group cheer in a restaurant (GOOD JOB CHIK-FIL-A! THANK YOU!)

I can now say that all of the above are true.

Ice Cream: the good, the bad, the ugly

I like ice cream, but I'm not one of those people who buys nor eats it regularly. When I do eat it, I scoop a reasonable amount into a mug and enjoy it that way. I'm not one of those people who can eat unlimited amounts of ice cream. My sister Meredith is one of those people. So is my hermanita, Rachel. They will eat   2/3 of a carton of ice cream in one sitting, just scooping out spoon after spoon. They come by it honestly. My mother has probably been known to eat an entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, and Rachel's parents used to go on dates and buy a 1/2 gallon of ice cream and eat the whole darn thing. So it's natural that they can eat so much ice cream. I just am not one of those ice cream people. Or I wasn't. Until I met my roommate, Heidi, who believes that ice cream is it's own food group. It is a staple in her freezer. Ice cream is to Heidi what coffee is to me. But thanks to my ice-cream-loving roommate, ice cream is a staple in our freezer and I eat it more than I normally would or should. There is this DELIGHTFUL brand of ice cream here in Memphis called Blue Bell. It still comes in a 1/2 gallon carton, instead of 1.75 qts. And the Cookies 'N Cream flavor is quite possibly the best store bought ice cream I've ever eaten. Heidi and I have consumed an entire gallon of this deliciousness (ok, we also fed it to company on two different occasions - we didn't eat it all by ourselves).  Here is a picture of the wonderful stuff:

When I went to Schnucks (the name of a tragic little grocery store here in Memphis) store the other day, I decided that we should branch out and try something a little different. So I bought Schnucks brand Moose Tracks ice cream. WORST decision EVER. Schnucks makes the WORST Moose Tracks ice cream in the WORLD. I should have stuck with Blue Bell. The moral of this story? DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT buy Schnucks brand ice cream, EVER. And if you can find Blue Bell ice cream, go buy some right now. It will change your life in an incredibly positive way. Thanks for listening to this ice cream rant.