justice

Today I got a random-looking piece of mail that said "important legal matters" on the outside, which of course made me curious, and a bit afraid. The first thought that ran through my head was, shoot, someone is sueing me. (Its not uncomon for students in my school to tell their teachers they will sue. So far I haven't heard of anyone following through).

But then I realized that something like that would probably come in an important-looking envelope with fifteen last names in the return address. This was a glorified pamphlet with a "Claims Adjustor" in the return address, reminding me of the many credit card offers and "free" trips to the Bahamas that I win everyday. But on the off-chance that it actually was someone sueing me or someone offering me the big bucks, I opened it.

It turns out that there is a class-action lawsuit against Epson, the printer and ink-cartridge company. Having reading lots and lots of John Grisham novels I feel like I know something about class action lawsuits and what I know about them leaves a bad taste in my mouth (lots of lawyers getting rich on sketchy premises). However, Epson also leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so I felt it might be justified. The reason that Epson leaves a bad taste in my mouth is that first, my printer that I paid pretty good money for, stopped working after about two months. Second, the printer is really bad with ink conservation. After printing about 40 pages, the printer tells me the ink is all gone. When I shake the cartridge I can tell that there is still lots of ink in there, but the printer refused to print and you have to get a new cartridge. Apparently, lots of other people were having the same problem and decided to take the matter to court.

So now, I am the recipient of a $40 credit on Epson's online store, that or $20 in cash and a $25 credit for the online store. Not exactly the big bucks, but it does make me feel a little bit better. Epson made ink-guzzling printers to make us buy more and more cartridges and something is going done. Maybe justice is a strong word for something involving printers. Maybe not.

As always, I haven't posted for a while because the last few weeks have been a whirlwind. I had spring break two weeks ago, which was a much-welcomed chance to rest and recharge. I went to Iowa with Dave for an engagement party in his hometown and it was wonderful. Dave comes from a small town, or at least what I would consider a small town. There are 30,000 people, the population of the neighborhood I grew up in, and the kind of place where his dad still hangs out with his best friend from first grade (isn't that awesome?). Apparently its one of the five largest cities in Iowa. Semantics aside, its small, and cute, and the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, or at least a lot of everyones. I got to meet neighbors, golf buddies, former teachers, former neighbors, hair stylists, and buddies from various community organizations.

I also got to see pictures and read old Christmas letters. And both are amazingly precious. You see, Dave's mom wrote the letter for many years, and then somewhere in his high school years, she decided that she had written the letters long enough and someone else needed to step up to the plate. So Dave volunteered. And when he did, the letters took on a new twist. In addition to family vacations and individuals achievements, letter recipients learned of the passing of Kurt Cobain. They got a top five list of the best movies of the year and a recommendation for albums they should buy. They were asked to send their spare pennies to the "Dave Sandell college fund" and did. And probably the most amazing thing to me is that his parents read the letters in all their unconventionality and sent them. I have a lot of respect for that. Giving your kids creative freedom like that takes a lot of guts, and a lot of love. Similar to the courage my own parents must have had when they sent me to school wearing three different types of plaid because I dressed myself and I insisted that it matched.

Those are a few of the teachable moments from the past few weeks. More to come.

Math is everywhere!

Ok, I'm officially a nerd. For my grad school class on mathematics teaching methods I had to make a folder of articles from the newspaper and magazines about math. When I first heard about the assignment I thought it was sort of lame, blew it off, and procrastinated working on it until the night before. But now that I've done it, I'm really excited. I just found ten articles and blurbs from the paper about math. I found graphs about the weather in March, graphs about the auto industry in China, and an advertisement that can demonstrate lines of symmetry, to name a few...and I think that its really neat that math really is everywhere and its really useful in our lives.

On the classroom front, I had ten students absent today, and as much as I might be ashamed to admit it, it was kind of nice. I finally was able to teach lessons and students actually LEARNED! I did a read aloud out of Artemis Fowl, a science fiction book about a 12-year old genius who dabbles in high-tech illegal activities with help from friends in the fairy world. It sounds weird when you hear about it, but it was one of those books I could barely put down when I read it. And the students loved it! They were actually telling each other to be quiet so that they could hear. We also started a project writing character sketches, which I'm excited about because students are buying in because they can write about anyone they want to write about and they get to choose their own format. I told them they could write an essay, poem, rap, or even spoken word. I'm looking forward to what they write.

I'm also on a mission to reduce negative language, hitting, and disrespect and its going okay. I made student contracts today--basically saying the need to follow the rules, or accept the consequences if they want to go on our class trip. I've had trouble with finding meaninful consequences--I've tried in class punishments and detention, but they don't work too well when parents don't make their kids come to detention. My new system is a mixture of bribery and consequences. I was kind of against bribery at the beginning of the year, but if Starburst and raffle tickets bring order to the classroom, so be it.

Well that's all for today. I've had more late night steam because of daylight savings time, but I need to hit the sack to be ready for tomorrow...

Prayer rocks

Its been a while since I've posted...its been a busy month. Being engaged is wonderful, but what I didn't quite realize is that it comes with a whole bunch of planning that needs to be done. And teaching has not been a cake walk recently, so I've been somewhat out of touch because of that.

But today was a great day and I wanted to write about it. It didn't start out as a great day, in fact it was set up to be a really crummy day. I couldn't sleep at all last night because I have this big project due in a grad school class Monday and I had planning and grading and all that to do as well. Plus, I was sick most of last week and when I did make it back Friday it was somewhat chaotic. So I dreamt of children throwing things and yelling and other weird things and I didn't get much sleep in. This morning, the last thing that I wanted to do was get up and go to church. I wanted to stay in my pajamas and watch silly teen movies all day and work on my lap top.

Somewhere around 10 am (when church starts) I realized that I could stay at home and work myself into a ragged mess worrying, or I could go to church, sit with my friends and have people to pray with. I chose the latter, made it to church late, but because its also the first day of daylight savings time I sort of fit in and in some ways was early. After the service some friends prayed with me. And it was one of the most profound experiences I've had in a while. It wasn't that they said anything fancy, it was that as they prayed the power of God entered into my life in a more real way. The stress and anger and bitterness started melting away and I could breathe again. Then, this afternoon when I got home, instead of my usual Sunday pattern of trying to get stuff done but really accomplishing nothing, I got alot done! I finished my teaching portfolio, I wrote a grant application for a project for my classroom, and wrote a letter to the parents. It was a very productive afternoon, and I wasn't stressed out as much.

So the things that I've learned today is that prayer works, God is awesome, and having friends to pray with is one of the most amazing gifts you can get.