How Do You Spell "Arithmetic?"

I tend to learn how to spell words by seeing them, and having read a lot, I have a decent vocabulary. I can spell "eschatology" and "anachronism" and "absquatulate" off the bat. My spell check doesn't even recognize that last one, but take my word or Google's - it's real. 

To spell "arithmetic" I actually had to look it up. Why? Because I never see it. 

There are other places I never see arithmetic, and when I say that, I mean the practice, not the word. Let me explain. In my math class, on the first day, my math professor asked for our math backgrounds. Pretty much the entire class said that they didn't like math, and I was also guilty - the very word "calculus" sends a shiver of intimidation through me. I remember being a kid whining over my pre-algebra and driving my engineer daddy to distraction. It's not something I'm particularly confident with.
This is several classes later, after my professor became the 924th person to tell me I overthink things. From him it seems kind of rich, given his level of observation, as you'll see. We were talking before class, and into the beginning, and we got onto the topic of people not liking math. I became his victim very quickly. 

"I've seen you! You do all your calculations by hand! Don't even use the calculator! I notice these things..." He stabbed his finger at one of my classmates. "Do you like math?" She shook her head dumbly. "You don't do the figures on paper, you just punch it into a calculator, right?" She nodded.

"Because," he said triumphantly, "that's what people who don't like math do! You actually do have a thing for math." 

It would have been useless to argue that doing it on paper is actually faster for me, like navigating through a hard copy Bible instead of my Bible app on my iPod (which is why I always carry a hard version). What I can argue is that I don't want to lose the ability to do math by hand - if I don't remember how to do it, I can't teach it.

The point? Too many people can't do arithmetic nowadays - calculators make that skill unnecessary, but it's a dangerous precedent leading to scary levels of innumeracy. The fact that doing it on paper is seen as meaning I have a "thing" for arithmetic is mind-blowing (because I don't). And I bet a bunch of them can't spell it, either.

Maybe This is Useless

A friend asked for my opinion on recent events in the Middle East a few days ago. While I could provide a basic overview of my thoughts, I have to wonder if maybe it's useless. The government says one thing, facts as I've heard them say another, and maybe...maybe trying to speculate about what's going on is useless.

Let me ask now, and please try to understand. If we can't trust our government or our leaders or our media to tell us the truth...where is our country?

We can be left nominally free to make the decisions, but if we're given misinformation to act off of, how can we vote and choose well or responsibly? If we make choices off the information that those in power give us, they become their choices, don't they?

We say the Pledge of Allegiance at the school I volunteer at now, and it's something I look forward to on kindergarten mornings - standing in front of the flag and pledging allegiance.We end fife and drum rehearsals at attention in parade formation, playing the national anthem. I love America, and its freedom and how it treats its citizens. As a Christian it is my responsibility to pray for and obey those who govern. 

But Uncle Sam is lying to me and to you, to the extent that, when I hear their statements, particularly out of the White House, I don't know what is true and what isn't, and that scares me.

Maybe this is useless. All I can do is pray for wisdom, vote, and put my faith in God and His direction for our country.

"Ka-ZAM!" He Said

The senior fifers in my corps at present consist of six front- and second-line musicians. Of these, I am the only girl, and an adult. The others are all fourteen- and thirteen-year-old boys, including my little brother, who fiddle around with the Star Wars theme (on fife) and are very energetic. Our instructor is a sophisticated and very quiet young woman who color-coordinates her dress and jewelery and who, when the entire corps is drilling together, will stand with the other instructors and not comment. 

Bit of a strange group? Yeah. But in our defense...we're pretty good musicians.

For the past few weeks, we've had an interesting breakout of a strange behavior - hysterical laughing. It all started with these goats and...never mind. The long and short of it is, we think everything is funny. The instructor will go upstairs and we'll form into a tableaux for when she gets back, or one of the boys will whip out his phone and turn on Lord of the Rings theme and we'll all pretend to be intently playing it, etc. We make fun of the fact that we're still practicing the standpiece we've had for two years, and we make fun of ourselves really thoroughly when we screw it up. We laugh at the fact we're rehearsing Christmas music and of how completely clear our instructor is that she is totally against playing Christmas music in September.

And she has, self-admittedly, just as much enjoyment in our rehearsals as we do, cracking jokes and laughing at statements that aren't really funny, because she knows that the rest of us will also laugh very hard. I know for a fact that she has been having a really bad year. She did, however, describe the rehearsals as the bright spot of her summer. For Monday nights, that's not bad.

We did not get through all the music we were supposed to rehearse last night. But thinking about when one of the boys took his sheet music and exclaimed "Ka-ZAM!" when placing it on the stand, I feel good about the fact that someone's mood is brightened by all this madness.

Why I'm in Education

Every once in a while, I stop and wonder why I've been pursuing a career and training as a teacher. Then, of of the kindergarteners I work with comes out with something really adorable and I think Awwww! That's why! And every once in a while, I'm reading the college newspaper or a syllabus and see a wrong spelling of a word, or a dreadful mistake in punctuation or grammar, and I think Ugh! That's why!

I really ought to have titled this post "How Easily Elisabeth Gets Off Track." 

Yesterday I got out of math and went to meet a friend of mine, as previously arranged. We were in Computers 101 last fall, and as we happened to be about the same age, and to be the members of the degenerate yet technologically literate generation that the older people in the class would turn to for assistance, we wound up hanging out, sitting next to each other in class, etc. In our quiet discussions and in class break we got to know each other some and now we're back again, hanging out.

We wound up, yesterday, on the topic of public schools. Or rather, her experiences in hers. She shared some things about her school and why she dropped out (she's very smart and very practical), and about her life in general. The things I heard about the school clicked with things I'd heard about others, perhaps summed up as said in The Outsiders: "Things are rough all around." 

I strolled with her to meet her ride, and we talked about languages and geography. However, she had no sooner driven away when I felt a tremendous pressure, the Holy Spirit telling me to go, sit down, pray for the school system, right then. I found the nearest picnic table and sat right down - the order was not optional - and prayed what the Spirit brought up to my heart for several minutes, realizing most of the way through that I was speaking aloud, regardless of who might be going by. What I prayed was for the people in the schools, not the financial or administrative issues, but for the futures of the people in them. It was for healing.

After that...and after a good while spent slightly stunned, before my next class...I went to my first Developmental Psychology class where (just for extra measure) I heard more about what is going on inside our schools (our professor a) was in the education field for 38 years in counseling, etc. and b) loves talking about himself and his experiences). 

Basically, I got a solid reminder as to why I'm really in this field. It's because the kids in our schools need help. It's because they need the hope that can only be given by God, the love He demonstrated in Jesus. It's not for the moment when one of them mixes blue and yellow and cries out in delight, "It's like magic!" It's for the moment when a little boy starts yelling obscenities he learned from his family and bursts out the door, making a dash to get off school property. It's for the moment when a high school underclassman is forced to deal with a friend's suicide attempt, and has to make the decision as to how to react. 

It's for those moments when God uses someone to be part of the healing process for a broken person in a broken system, and provide hope for even one person.

School Again

Y'know, I find it amusing that the only level of class I've never seen is high school.

As a fully matriculated community college student, I have reentered the scholarly game with a vengeance - do what I can this semester before transferring to a campus where they don't know me yet. >Gives evil laugh< Or rather, don't know me or either of my brothers. (I actually have a professor this semester who had my older brother a couple years back.) 

Basically, returning to school means learning my schedule, learning when are the best times to do homework and when I have time to eat (the cafe on campus has 35 cent hunks of pita bread), learning the shuttle schedule, and so forth.

I do have a confession to make here, and y'all are going to have to forgive me.

I enjoy my classes. I enjoy a bunch of my homework. There's a reason I call it a game, and that's because it's fun. 

I do not enjoy all my homework, not being a bug-eyed alien from Mars or even, more forgivably, a genuine nerd or even a genuine geek. Yet, still, there is something about looking for the most challenging yet most accurate answer I can find. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. However, it's worth doing. It doesn't work in math class or in science class, but in literature...ooooh yeah.

I am also working with yet another group of kindergarteners...in the same classroom with the same teacher (though a new para) as I have for 4.5 years. The kids learned the letter 'M' on their second day of school. It's a good year.

So, thoughts on morality? That's what we hit in literature today - why should we be moral? My top answer was basically "Because God." Yes, that's a full explanation. Still, it's interesting to hear my classmates' thoughts.

Goodbye, Summer

And autumn can't come soon enough. 

Having banged my head against the wall wishing for people all summer, it is time to begin a new chapter - one that will in all probability last only one semester.

This semester, I'm taking five credit courses and one non-credit. My junior corps won't kick me out until I transfer in January to a residential school, but I'm still joining one or two more corps, and signing up as a youth leader at my church. 

Oddly enough, I am excited again. Excited to take literature and ed courses because when it comes to those, not only can I play the scholarly game, I'm good at it and even enjoy it. Less excited for math and science, because those are, typically enough, my problem areas, but confident that it'll go fine. And excited to be back in people's lives, ready to serve in new ways, ready to see and be part of God's love for and plan for the world in more active ways.

So, one more weekend. One more parade. And on the fifth, it's back to school.