Along the Road to Home

As the seasons of life come and go, I'm realizing myself to be preparing for the early stages of my Winter.  There is no denying it.  Spring and Summer are distant memories for me now and Autumn has been most wonderful but even it will soon be in the past.  I turned 64 in October and if my quest to make it to the age of 100 comes to fruition, then I've got 36 more years to enjoy this thing called life . I have to say, those first 36 years flew by kinda quickly. I don't think the next 36 will go any slower. The bottom line is that it is all in the good Lord's timing.   Whether it's next week or the year 2055, He calls the shots. Truth is, I am glad that it's already all figured out for me by someone much wiser than I will ever profess to be. Winter~it's probably not so bad after all. It was in winter of 2013, early January to be exact, when I made a trip that ended up changing my life forever.  As fate would have it, I got in contact with a guy wh...

As a teacher I have been most fortunate.  I don't count that great fortune in dollars and cents, but since I never got into the business of education to become rich in the first place, it has worked out pretty well.  Rather, my fortune has come in the experiences that I have had, the children who have called me their teacher, and the many kind people along the way who have helped me and made my job so much easier.   And if you are reading this, there's a very good chance that you are one of those kind people. I would like to tell you about a group of such folks who are helping me with my fifth graders at Liberty Elementary this year as the writing buddies of my 20 students.  They all have a personal connection to me, mostly that we all grew up or lived in the very same small town in south central Kansas.  I'm blessed enough to call 3 of them my family members, and if your family is behind you, well that's pretty awesome.  Another person in the gro...

We drove to Ft. Sill National Cemetery yesterday to participate in the Wreaths Across America program that provided freshly made Christmas wreaths for the graves of fallen soldiers.  I had read about it online several weeks back and decided to ask Mike if he would like to help volunteer that day.  He didn't hesitate one moment and gladly said "yes" that we should do it, and so we did. I took many pictures yesterday as a way to remember this special occasion that was something neither of us had done before.  As I went back to look through the photos to see them once again, I came across one that I had taken of Mike about 45 minutes before the ceremony began.  The more I looked at the picture, the more I liked it.  There was just something about it. Mike and I had brought a bag of 500 pennies from home that day with the intent and purpose of placing them atop the gravestones of the fallen in Section 2.  It's my brother-in-law's section and we thought ...

We had a spelling bee at school yesterday.  22 nervous contestants took to the stage in the elementary school gym to take their turn at reciting aloud the correct spellings of a variety of words.  All of them have been practicing for it since October, and the day had finally arrived to show their skill at orthography. As the pronouncer, I had no idea how many words to even think we might go through or how long it might take to find a school champion.  Would it be over in 5 minutes or would we be racing the clock to be finished before our school dismissal time?  If I checked correctly, we needed 30 minutes of actual spell time to find the school champion who ended up being a young man from one of the fourth grade classes.   I met with all 22 students involved in the spelling bee shortly before the contest began.  I could tell their nerves were on edge and how anxious they must have felt about it all.  I reminded them that no matter what, I was ...

The calendar on the wall reflects the fact that we are now less than two weeks away from Christmas.  School will dismiss here for the holidays at the end of the day on the 20th, and each of us will get the chance to stay home and enjoy time with our families for a while.   It will be a welcomed relief for all.  Between sickness going around and a multitude of things that daily present themselves to do, one thing is for certain. We have been busy. I've nearly made it through my first semester of being a fifth grade teacher, a position I had never done before in 40 years of being an educator.  I have survived 5th grade math by trying always to be one step ahead of the kids.  Mostly that works.  I have made mistakes aplenty and in retrospect I am thankful that I did.  One of the life lessons I always like to teach kids is that even grownups make mistakes and continually have room for improvement. It keeps me humble.   It has been ...

4 decades of Christmas seasons have come and gone since I first began teaching. I have always made it the habit of trying to decorate my classroom as much as I could for the upcoming holiday.  In the early days we made green and red paper chains that were so long it took the entire class to pick one of them up so we could drape it along the windows.  We sang Christmas carols and studied the manner in which other countries celebrated the season that all kids wait for in December.  Once, when I was teaching back in Yoder, we got brave and strung popcorn and cranberries.  That might have been considered a fiasco, but then again we had fun with only minimal injuries from sharp pointed needles.   And one thing else. I have always had a tree for the kids to enjoy. It takes some work to get one decorated with its lights strung properly and base securely fastened.  Allowing  kids to help with the ornaments is sometimes not the easiest of things to ...