Happy Saint Patrick's Day

All day I had to show my green socks to kids from Mexico who were threatening to pinch me. On days like this, I swear, I do love America . . .

Barbie and Ken

New classroom aide reading the bilingual word wall: I want to learn Spanish. How do you pronounce that word that means 'who?' Q-u-i-e-n.

Student: Kee-en'.

Aide: Oh! I can remember that one! Just like Barbie and Kee-en!

Spanglish

"Coach drive tomorrow, miercoles my friend, jueves: you?
(I don't know, my mom: my mom mad me.)"

"Siempre!"

"Oh yeah, porque I malo."
(Big grin)

fare well

My class said goodbye to our aide today. There were tears in the eyes of some pretty tough boys, and goodbye notes such as this one:

"Thank you for all your helping me? I'm sorry I don't talk to you more. You are really really cute. And so I'm little afraid."

Another student made a list of all the ways in which she had helped him. He hadn't been afraid to talk to her " . . . or about anything," and she had listened.

She never did get all nasty with the math. But I remembered something I was once told in a grief training: "Kids won't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

Thanks for the reminder. We wish you well . . .

nasty math

The teacher's aide in my classroom is leaving us to pursue a career more in line with her interests. She is 19. She told me that her mother is interested in applying for a job in the school system. I asked, "Is she interested in the position you're vacating?"
She replied:

"No, because she can't do the math either. I mean like she knows the basics, but she doesn't like get all nasty with the math."

Rising? on Dark Wings

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light,
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
-Wendell Berry, To Know the Dark

When I moved from the Northeast woods to Utah, it took me a long time to learn that the desert, "too, blooms and sings." I had to stop comparing the desert to the woods, and let the desert be the desert. Then I could begin to appreciate the desert's own distinct beauty; this open space has become a refuge in which I can face and accept my own desert feelings.
Each day now grows darker, as December approaches. The season of Advent begins today, a journey through darkness toward light. Having recently returned from a family funeral in Vermont, I am in a place of bittersweet darkness . . .