If stress and exhaustion were tangible, I'd be covered in goo.

Yup. It's true.
I'm tired. Exhausted, to be exact. It's a little after 10pm and I have been nodding off for nearly an hour while trying to type up this week's lesson plans. Christin and I spent four hours in Starbuck's, planning this week's math and science lessons. Aye. I'm pooped.
It's almost May!
SOOO much to do before graduation!!
We interns are planning and organizing an art show/dessert potluck for our kids and their families. This week we're teaching them dances and a few more songs. We also have a poem memorized that we need to practice a bit more. And then there's the whole bit about organizing our parent volunteers and delegating jobs. Wow! It's a lot to try to balance along with teaching full time and trying to complete our certification!
School is going well, though. Our StoryPath unit has been awesome. And we started a new science unit on balancing and weighing. Seattle Public Schools uses inquiry-based science kits in all their elem/middle schools, so it's hands-on every day and the kids learn so much from it! The balancing and weighing has been really fun. Last week we made mobiles and hung them all around the room.
Ok, back to typing up a few more lessons and looking through a Basal Reader. Then time for bed.
Night, y'all...

He Is Risen Indeed!

Pastor Steve, to his 4-yr old niece: "He is risen!"
4-yr old niece: "Yep. He's out!"

I love Easter.
I love Bethany Presbyterian.
I love the cross made out of fresh flowers the children constructed in front of the church.
I love all the colorful chalk messages of "He is Risen!" and "Alleluia!" that were written all over the church steps.
I love singing the "Hallelujah Chorus".
I love being packed like sardines into the pews.
I love Bethany Presbyterian.
I love Easter.

Seven Stanzas for Easter

by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit,
the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Forced into productivity

Yup. I'm being productive.
My roommates are watching the super long version of "Pride and Prejudice", so I am in my room, writing a week's worth of lesson plans. One thing is for sure - the three of them swooning over Mr. Darcy for five hours is a sure-fire way to keep me locked in my room and working! I do, of course, exit briefly to fill my Nalgene and go to the bathroom. :)

(Carrie, remember that time you and Maria forced me into watching "Pride and Prejudice," and that Maria tried to cut your hair while watching it? Hahaha...)