Beautiful Stranger

I met a beautiful stranger over the weekend at a bus stop. His name was John and his hair flapped in the wind. He's applying to design schools for architecture and somehow we ended up sprinting to the next bus stop. It was a strange five minutes of my life.

I have this week off of student teaching and it has been wonderfully restful. Now that it's Tuesday, I must get to work on my Inquiry (teacher research) paper. I'm in the library now, drinking a can of coke and blogging. At least I'm in the library. Since I arrived, I had a snack, updated my virus definitions, updated my spyware definitions, updated my OS, and cleaned off my desktop. One of these moments now, I'll start working on my paper. I'm thinking of installing AIM. A lot of my east coast friends still use inferior instant messaging software. Poor souls.

I saw the Boston Marathon yesterday. I didn't expect to be affected so much, but quite a few moments brought tears to my eyes. Seeing the wheelchair racers and watching the determination in people's eyes was a humbling experience. Between the elite runners and the rest of the bunch, I grabbed a slice of pizza and a coke. The irony was not lost on me. I would never run a marathon, but I would consider a half marathon.

Since I've started working with Lesley (my cooperating teacher in the 3rd grade), I have really enjoyed my student teaching. It's a lot of fun working with the same group of kids everyday, introducing them to concepts for the first time, helping them resolve social conflicts. Sometimes it's hard not to laugh at their "serious" problems. For example, one student was almost in tears because she had been accused of "liking" a certain boy. She'll look back and laugh some day. But for now, I try to console and help her gain some perspective. I used to hate it when adults laughed at my problems. Teaching is all about respect. If you don't respect your students, you won't be able to teach them much.