"Readicide" and Other Teaching Thoughts

Merry Christmas, all!

Today I finally read the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher (highly recommend it for all educators!). It was recommended to me by a fellow Lang. Arts teacher with whom I had some excellent discussions about the purpose of teaching and what's going on in our schools today. Basically the premise of the book is that the hyper-focus on testing and test preparation now prevalent in our schools is not only ineffective but is actually killing budding potential readers (hence the read-icide). I found myself frequently "amen"-ing throughout this book.

The main reason I wanted to write about it here is that I really felt affirmed in my instincts as a teacher after reading this book. As those of you who have been reading along with me this year may have noticed, I've been struggling a lot with feeling uncertain and discouraged about teaching. This whole test-prep thing is disheartening for me, since what I really love is books and learning, so it feels really encouraging and affirming to see suggested in an excellent book the very same framework and ideas for teaching books/reading/learning that I have been wanting to do all year long! Examples include spending almost as much time on "leisure reading" as academic reading, having reading time in class (even though we have SSR during our advisory) and having kids read as much and many types of reading material as is humanly possible.

Feeling reenergized for the new semester. I WILL make this work; I WILL teach in a way that embodies my love of books and learning; and I WILL ensure that my kids leave my classroom knowing more than just how to pick a theme off a four-item list.

~Rebekah

Life Update

Wow, it's been a long time since we put anything on here! Well, here's what's been going on lately:

• Yesterday (Saturday), Daniel and I rearranged our house! It's still in process (aka we have some cleaning to do...), but we will post some pictures soon. =)
• Today church was just really fun. We both continue to enjoy and feel nurtured and loved by our awesome church family at Central Christian. I especially enjoyed our "post-church church" today -- we almost always eat together after the service. We are looking forward to hopefully being able to host "post-church church" at our place sometime soon!
• Teaching is... well, teaching. I would say that overall I've been feeling better about how teaching is going... I had kind of a hard, negative stretch around Thanksgiving there... but I'd say December has gone a bit better. However, I'm still continuing to struggle with discerning whether this is something I'm called to long-term. I know there are a million variables -- it being my first year, there being lots of new initiatives and such, yada yada -- but I still wonder, even though there's no way for me to actually know right now. Questions that I would appreciate the answer to: How fulfilling is your job supposed to feel/be? Is it possible to be both an introvert and a successful middle school teacher? (If so, how do you do it??) How can you tell the difference between God challenging you with hard things to overcome and God making something hard/gross as a message for you to stop it and look elsewhere?
• In slightly less existentially confusing teaching news, I'm excited about opportunities for more awesome collaboration and teamwork with my fellow Language Arts (and other) teachers! There have been a lot of exciting ideas and plans floating around, so I'm looking forward to continued discussions and seeing some of these helpful collaborative ideas come to fruition!
• Daniel and I have been doing pretty well just in terms of ourselves also, I think. We've been continuing to work on things (individually and together), and we're hoping our new furniture arrangement will help us to spend more time together while we're working (moved my "grading couch" up to the office). We are totally also looking forward to being able to spend time with both sides of the S-J family this Christmas! Yayyyyyy! Recently we were really moved by a cool article where a 5-year-old asked why, on Jesus' birthday, we give everyone but Him presents, so we're looking into how we can make this holiday more about doing things for Jesus (via "the least of these") and less about what material things we want for ourselves. (see our "Christmas list" here.)

So that's the round-up, more or less! Plotting Christmas travel and counting down the school days (but only for my kids' benefit, of course...). Hope you and yours are well and wishing you all a fantabulous Christmas!

~Rebekah