How a great teacher can touch one life

I’ve just finished reading a fellow blog by another mother where she discusses an absolutely amazing thing her sons’ teacher is doing in her classroom. Here is the link: http://momastery.com/blog/2014/01/30/share-schools/

And here is where I find myself thinking that I wished, so very much, for my own daughters’ teachers to have done the same in their classrooms, even just for one teacher to have done something similar. I’d like to think that if it had been done that I would not be homeschooling my youngest daughter.

First, it isn’t a shame to homeschool your child and that is not what I am saying in the least! I can now definitively say that I know what my child is doing in her classes, what her grades are, what she needs to do to improve and I have daily communication from her online teachers. The greatest thing is that if there is something troubling that is submitted for an assignment they do not hesitate to give me a call and we talk about what is going on. They are involved so much more in her education than any of her teachers in the public school ever were.

You see, we wound up in a homeschool program because of bullying primarily. There were some health issues at the time as well, but it boiled down to the safety of my child. I did not trust that she would come home from school unharmed. Why? Because, more often than not, when I picked her up from school there were fresh bruises that she had gotten during the school day. Every day. We live less than a mile away from the school she went to, an easy walk to and from, and I picked her up because once she was off school grounds her life was in even more danger because her attackers would follow her. She was a dancer, so she could outrun them, which was a good thing but she should never have had to be in such great shape just to outrun someone trying to hurt her…every day. I withdrew her from the school three days before the end of the year and because I did so, she was not allowed to continue to the next grade. I did not care. I’d rather her repeat a grade that she didn’t do so well academically in because of the level of fear than to have her be in a high school setting and be clueless as to how to do any of the work.

I have a point. I promise I will get to it.

I watched the system fail so many children and then I began to watch it fail my own. No matter what my husband and I did to try to remedy the situation, ultimately, it always was made worse. We’ve yet to experience a teacher who actually cares about their students and not just about the grades they need to receive on the standardized testing. Actually, no…that isn’t true. Only when we chose to do a homeschool program did we find teachers who care. Accredited teachers who each have either an MA Ed. or a Ph.D Ed. as their highest, and not a single teacher has anything less than a Master’s degree. Teachers who left the traditional school district for many reasons, but the one common theme was the disgust regarding how the districts were effectively tying their hands on educating the students. This homeschool program alone makes me dread when we move to D.C. Because I’m afraid that my child will be failed by the public school system unless we put her into a private school and then I don’t know where that money will come from.

What the teacher in the article is doing is beyond amazing. I can truly find no words to describe how I feel this woman should be recognized. She is helping in ways that these kids won’t really understand, but they’ll learn a lesson that won’t be “formally” taught. This teacher is speaking in a way that parents understand and will appreciate and love this woman for. And I think it’s appropriate that we recognize that and try to share this message with the teachers in our children’s lives.

Maybe most won’t read it or if they do they won’t apply it. But then maybe some will and there will be some improvement for some children and their parents will start to notice. Maybe we need to start being proactive in our children’s education again and stepping in and talking to the teachers without there being an “issue” to talk about. I know it won’t help in all cases, but if we can help stop the violence in our schools, our teachers can actually get back to teaching instead of being a referee.

Just my thoughts. 

*Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep* We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming....

To clean, or not to clean, that is the question. The next question is where do I even start? I’m not talking about just cleaning and picking up. No, this is the truly deep cleaning, throwing crap out and organizing stuff, otherwise known as “spring cleaning”. I know well enough to do one room at a time, but my OCD won’t allow me to just think about one room at a time. It insists on putting a picture of EVERY room in my head and screaming at me, “CLEAN ALL OF US…NOW!” It’s like having a tiny little dictator in your head all the time. It’s not fun. Although, there are times when it creates funny things.

By my calculations, if I start with my bedroom, then I should have the entire house cleaned by…probably never. Because I know me and me won’t actually finish the room I start because of a distraction that will happen somewhere in the universe that will grab my attention. Seriously. They’ll discover a new planet somewhere and I’ll scour the interwebs in an attempt to see the new planet, forever discarding the work I was doing and then it will take me a month to get back to it and by that time it will be so overrun with disorder that I’ll abandon it completely. By this reasoning, I will never be able to buy and renovate an older house. Because me thinking about tackling the cleaning of this house somehow relates to buying and renovating an older home.

I can’t even make myself not get overwhelmed.

A radio would be nice. If I had music to listen to then the cleaning would go quicker and I would not mind doing it. I just noticed that two of my fingernails are bending in on themselves the longer they grow. Nice to notice that little flaw that is going to expand exponentially in my head and I’ll think everyone can see the deformity in my nails. *Sigh* I need a vacation. A real one.

I need a trip where I don’t have to make any plans and neither would Jed. Him and I could sit in our lounge chairs or hammocks and just order a drink. And don’t assume I’m talking about an alcoholic beverage please. Jed isn’t a big drinker and I’m a recovering alcoholic, so when I say drink, I usually mean one of two things: either coffee or water, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t drink soda much anymore, maybe once a week and not a diet soda since it’s worse than regular soda. If I’m going to take the plunge then just give me a regular one, thank you. A trip really would be nice. It’s just not feasible at this point. Talk to me more about this next year.

My brain needs a break. I think I’m going to go watch some shows I have recorded and get ready for Ghost Hunters tonight. Yes, I’m a believer. I will watch just about any paranormal show on except for Ghost Adventures because those two should be ashamed of their behavior on camera and their tactics used to supposedly find ghost activity. In a nutshell, those two are morons.

Now…back to your regularly scheduled programming. 

SMASHING PUMPKINS....

Today is the greatest/Day I’ve ever known/Can’t live for tomorrow/Tomorrow’s much too long/I’ll burn my eyes out/Before I get out….

You’re welcome for the ear worm for those of you who actually know the song without looking up the lyrics. If you do know the song then I know it’s now running through your head as it has mine for the majority of today. Cause it is the greatest…*Singing in my head just as loud as I can!*

So, you remember yesterday, when I said I would save finances for another day? Guess what day today was? No, no…it was NOT the greatest (although I do still have that song in my head)…today was the day where I tackled our finances. Let me tell you something, a secret if you will, about me. I have OCD, particularly with numbers, they must be odd or I will do whatever I have to do to make it so. Now, I am using a lovely program that is guiding me through the process of reducing our debt and, apparently, that program has the same OCD issue that I have because every number it produced to pay towards our bills were all odd numbers. Which leads back to the song…*Today is the greatest…day I’ve ever known.*

It’s a rather convoluted path that my brain takes to get to its destination, but I ALWAYS get there. My husband says, quite often, that sometimes we take a magical journey with me to get to the point, but it’s never boring getting there. He’s a smart man for not saying anything other than the joyful words I consider those. He may have seen combat, but I’ve scraped people and body parts off of just about every surface imaginable and I remember every last detail about gloves, cleaning up after and decontamination. Sure, he could take me while he’s awake, but I can stay awake for days and just wait.

For those of you who do not know what the word facetious means, I highly suggest you look it up, because the latter portion of the preceding paragraph was wrought with nothing but me being just that. And for those of you that are too lazy to look it up…I WAS BEING SARCASTIC.

I only hurt those who deserve it. Usually with big words. A dictionary (or an education) is a priceless gift that keeps on giving!

Just don’t actually injure someone I love and hold dear to my heart. Because then I don’t use big words. I use small, colorful words that are the precursor to the beat down that will come from the sassy, country raised, Southern girl that knows how to throw a punch just as hard as any man because I don’t believe in that smacking, hair pulling, cat fight crap. A nice kick to the side of the knee cap will bring down the biggest of people and that puts you right in the range of a solid punch to the temple. It’s only dirty fighting if you start it from behind. I’m just sayin’.

Oh, finances…yes, yes, yes. (See, I got back to it. We just took a left turn for a moment.) My husband has a separate program that figured our payments out and put the majority of it towards our largest bill and smaller amounts towards the rest. The program I use pays off the higher interest bills first and works its way down. If I use the model his has projected, there won’t be the first bill paid off until the first of NEXT year. If I use the model I projected then by September of this year we can have 5 bills paid off which will leave us with only the car and student loan payments and one remaining credit card. I have decided to go with the model that I projected. I’d rather see the higher interest, lower amounts paid off soon and leave the lower interest, higher amounts to start getting more paid off later this year. I want results and I want to see them quickly. It’s the whole “shiny” thing for me.

By the time I get those first few bills paid off, Jed (there should be at least one person who understands that reference regarding my husband and a certain movie) should be home and then when we’re down to just the car, student loans and one credit card left to pay, we can decide how to best apply the payments…although I personally say we crank that money left from the other paid bills on top of the credit card and yank that amount down rather quickly. Leave the student loans for last since they’re the lowest interest and the lowest payments we have. Just my thoughts though.

In other, non-financial related, news…Puffle (the youngest rugrat) ditched her vegan/vegetarian diet supposedly just until next month. She became hungry and processed cow in the form of a hamburger called out to her. I give her props…Puffle made it 4 whole days on her new “life choice”. According to her, one cannot go into the first month in the New Year without eating meat, but the second month is fair game.

I pretend to understand her most days, but really…I’m just winging it at this point and hoping we can just get her into a good college.

Now…back to my song….

TODAY IS THE GREATEST/DAY I’VE EVER KNOWN!!!!

It's just one of those days

Where you don’t wanna wake up…

Oh, wait…sorry…blogging, not singing. I do have that song as my ear worm for today though and in a bit, I shall share it. So, here I sit at the table writing this, hearing the dog poop clean up guy doing this thing in the back yard, I can see at least two puppies sound asleep, a TV is on in the living room and a bazillion random thoughts are running through my mind at warp speed. Things like I should really get all the paper shredded that I have sitting in a reusable shopping bag before it stages a revolt and begins depositing itself back in the mail box for me to put back in the bag o’stuff to shred, the table needs cleaned off (again) I should really do that, the furniture needs dusting (again) I should REALLY get that done, the carpets need cleaned but the landlord said she was replacing the carpets when we move out because it’s the same carpet the builder installed in 1996, gross…now I’m thinking about all the crap in the carpets that have been in this house for 18 years!, oh hey I did get the floors wiped with one of those big floor duster things for wood floors so yay me, I am so glad that I had kiddo clean out the drawer in my bathroom because it was just gross and I didn’t want to do it and while she was at it I had her organize under the sinks as well, most of the carpets were vacuumed today so that’s improvement, I really need to clean out the closet in our bedroom but it scares me when I walk in so I just keep the door closed so I don’t have to see it, if Pat was home right now and he saw the state of ill repair I have allowed things to get to because I’ve been battling depression for so long I can’t even keep track anymore he would be mortified and holy shit…I really want to just have a beer with some friends but I have no friends here and the only place I know to go to be around people is in an AA room and they HIGHLY frown upon drinking during a meeting so that idea’s out, did I mention that the dogs are sleeping…oh and I got my protein powder today! I really need to order more vitamins but that’s going to have to wait….

Yes…that is just a small portion of my life. Every day. Every moment of every day to be exact. I can’t get anything done because while I’m doing one thing I see something else that needs to be done, so I start on that, then I see something else and go do that…you see where this is going. Then there are the finances and I just can’t even start on that today because my mind will explode. But I just put that thought in my head and now it’s running with that. Oh my dear lord…my brain just needs to STOP. And I need to potty. And now I know that it’s slightly chilly outside. The dogs needed to potty too…because just like kids…if mom has to go then all of a sudden everyone else must go too…right then.

My life is so boring. I mean, really. I have the dogs to talk about when they do stupid stuff, which is daily, but who wants to read that? I’m really trying to retract my political statements from the interwebs, but that’s not possible, so instead I’m just shutting my mouth again…or in this case…I’m not putting it into printed words for others to read.

Holy cow…WHAT is it about a bucket in the backyard that the dogs love so much?! I can hear them kicking this thing around like it’s a soccer ball, but if I put a ball out there then they just stare at it like they don’t understand. Make it something I need to use on a regular basis and they are all over that like white on rice. I think I just lost another bucket. I’m glad they’re only a couple bucks at the Dollar General! I should buy stock. No, really…maybe I should look into stock purchasing…wait, no…I said I wasn’t going into finances today.

I quit.

I need a drink. Oh, hey…water!