It finally is starting to feel like summer. We had a long finish to our homeschool this year. After that the swim team and a whole bunch of small commitments kept us busy enough so that it did not really seem like we had slowed down after school let out. Last night, though, we went to a Gospel meeting in Fuquay Varina. After meeting, everyone stood around and talked long enough that we did not get home until over an hour after the meeting was over. It was really nice. Kelly and her friend Megan are planned to get together to go swimming and shopping, Christian talked over computer stuff with Hunter and Sterling. Most of all we just stood around and enjoyed the warm evening air. It will be nice to have a few weeks without any pressing commitments to enjoy the sun. There is a Dairy Queen close to where we are having the Gospel meetings. Maybe we will go there after meeting next week. Then it will really feel like summer.
We had two of our ministers, Robert and Harlan stay with us for a couple nights. We enjoyed them a bunch, but they have already moved on to be with some other folks. They really liked the pizza Aunt Julia taught us how to make.
Gosh, Gretchen’s blog was almost too painful to read. I felt so sorry for her; I just
wanted to send her a plane ticket out of there! Made me very glad that I homeschool, not
because Gretchen was having so much trouble, but because of the lack of support and
guidance and direction that was given to her from the administrative staff as she struggled on so
many levels. No wonder we have an alarming rate of teacher burnout in this country. It seemed so ridiculous that she had to make up all these lesson plans and had to try to standardize and match everything to the state objectives….oh, I could just vomit! It was just unconsionable that they would
tell her to ignore students and to just pretty much bide her time….all she had to make
sure was that she was following the damn lesson plan for the day! With these kids, and
having them for such a short amount of time, she would have done better just to
have thrown the written plans expected of her out the window and read books of the kids’
choosing outloud to them and discuss them, keeping in mind that she wanted to point out
key vocabulary, plot formation, main ideas, extremely vivid passages, etc…etc… She
would have accomplished more….oh, I don’t know….man, what a tough and very sad
situation down there. I applaud her for sticking it out and for wanting to make a differ-
ence in the lives of kids, and it sounds like she did make some progress with them. Her
dedication to the kids was evident in her writings and self-relection.
Ruthie
You said it well Ruthie. The said part, having lived in that part of the world, is that those kids really need help and guidance. Gretchen really went down there with a great desire to help out. It is sad to think that it has come to this. On the other hand, Gretchen comes from a writing family and really has an interesting voice in her writing. If she can help one or two kids while she is down there, she will come back with both some satisfaction and a ton of writing material!