Letter to Leah

1:37 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (3)

Note from Christa: Leah Thornton is the main character in my debut novel Walking on Broken Glass.

Dear Leah:

After living with you for over a year, I’ve experienced palpable separation anxiety since February 1 when you broke out on your own. Considering what you experienced because of me, perhaps that comes as a relief to you. I hope this letter is your passport to real freedom.

A few chapters in, I almost changed your name. I’d chosen it because it was lyrical and soft without being prissy. Then, one morning reading my Bible, I came across the story of the manipulation of your father, Laban, in giving you to Jacob after he worked seven years to marry your sister. So, instead of the rivetingly beautiful in face and form Rachel, he found himself husband to her “dull-eyed” sister, Leah. And though Jacob accepted Leah as his wife, he worked another seven years for Laban to reward him with Rachel.

I ached for Leah, for the seven years she spent birthing sons for a man whose sweat and labor daily brought her younger sister one day closer to his bed. And after Rachel became his wife, the contest between the two sisters played itself out in pregnancies. Leah gave Jacob six sons and a daughter, and never felt as if she had acquired his affections. Rachel died giving birth to her second son, and never felt as if she’d earned his affections. The sisters never understood that fertility or barrenness did not earn Jacob’s love.

I didn’t want you to be this Leah. This woman who seemed weak and insecure and cast off. But, I reasoned, I’m writing fiction. I can develop Leah into a character with resilience and confidence and charisma. And so I wrote.

The irony I discovered along the way both surprised and horrified me. You drank and pretended to be the Leah I wanted because you saw yourself as the Leah I didn’t want. The gauntlet was thrown, and the challenge was mine to accept or refuse. Could I turn you inside out to reveal what you had drowned with years of drinking? Could I love you enough to risk your hating me for the wounds you’d experience that would heal themselves in your wholeness?

Maybe this doesn’t help now, but I want you to know you never suffered alone. I shadowed you with each step of hope that led to leaps of faith. I can hear God say to you, “Here is my servant whom I have chosen, the one I love, in whom I delight. . .” (Matthew 12:18 NIV). The journey is yours now.

Blessings,
Christa

1:37 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (3)

Happy Birthday Erin!

2:53 am // Limbs on the Family Tree // Comments (0)

Bloopers and bloopees

2:15 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

These are not mine. . .these have been collected over the years from various sources in my teacher universe.

I saw one of my former students working at a local clothing store and asked
about college and her future plans. She replied that she was attending a
local junior college but had plans to transfer to a state university in
order to pursue her “bachelorette” degree.
Macbeth was a genital in Duncan’s army.
“Without God, the Bible would have been a bust.”
What if you let your baby stay with people in Britain while they were growing up. Would they speak British or at least English with a British accent”?
“Do you think your tongue could get so big it couldn’t fit in your mouth?”
About MLK Jr: “He received the nobody piece prize.”
Daisy (in Gatsby) has a “Whoa is me” attitude.
Hamlet and Gertrude have an “intestinal” relationship

2:15 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

Doing nothing is something

9:52 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (4)

I’m reading Experiencing God by Henry T. Blackaby and Claude T. King because I want to (experience God, that is) and because someone on some blog I frequent recommended it highly. I wish I could remember the name of that blogger person so I could thank him/her.

Highlighting and note-jotting my way through Chapter 3, my eye-brakes slammed at this:

“I think God is crying out and shouting to us, ‘Don’t just do something. Stand there! Enter into a love relationship with Me. Get to know Me. Adjust your life to Me. Let Me love you and reveal myself to you as I work through you.’ “

Excuse me. I’m now going to simply stand and do nothing.

9:52 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (4)

LARRY FERLAZZO: Did You Know That THE Key To Saving American Education Is Firing Bad Teachers?

2:04 pm // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

Because I couldn’t say it better myself:

Newsweek’s cover this week proclaimed that “The Key To Saving American Education” was that “we must fire bad teachers.”

Now, that’s what I call a sophisticated analysis of a complex problem….

Yes, there are bad teachers. But, as the saying goes, if the only tool you have is a hammer, than every problem looks like a nail.

Instead of only scapegoating teachers, perhaps a more accurate and non-black/white solution would be to also look at curriculum, school and district leadership, parent engagement, and community pressures like unemployment, safety, and health care. Is it really too much to ask that experienced journalists (and others) recognize that most problems of any kind require a multi-pronged approach?

And it might be helpful if the writers didn’t say that teaching doesn’t attract “the best and the brightest.” Questioning the overall intelligence of teachers is not only insulting, it’s wrong (see Do Teachers REALLY Come From The Bottom Third Of Colleges? Or Is That Statistic A Bunch Of Baloney?)

READ THE REST HERE.

2:04 pm // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

Accidental learning doesn’t require insurance

3:45 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

Overheard: “I have Mrs. Allan. We don’t learn anything in that class.”

Well, if you learned you didn’t learn anything, wasn’t that learning?

Too many students measure learning using the following formula: student + worksheet = assignment of worthwhile consequence.

Sad. How did that happen?

Recently, one of my students, writhing in her desk, alternately moaning and whining, groaned out, “Can’t you teach like everyone else? Can’t we just memorize this stuff? You expect us to be able to use it too.”

Me: “No. No. Yes.”

During my brief twenty years of educating high school students, I’ve learned that the most significant learning can be purely accidental. The learning that catches you by surprise years later when an event triggers some memory, for example, and my “you have to know what to do when you don’t know what to do” suddenly makes sense.

Maybe in the yawning midst of the lesson on uses of semi-colons, there’s the lesson in perseverance or patience or possibilities.

I’d like to pat my own back for that particular “accidental” learning, but I can’t. Actually, my role is to provide the opportunity for the serendipity, not to provide the moment it happens.

3:45 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (0)

Sewing my life together

2:54 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (0)

Sometimes it seems like the creatures in my head are unraveling stories, like Penelope who stitched by day and unwove by night to ward off obnoxious suitors anxious for Odysseus’ treasures–both in his bank and in his bed.

But the threads fray when I’m frantic to shove them all through the eye of the needle of sanity. I want to make order out of chaos, but the memories and the pictures and the stories waiting to be told are like bolts of lightning–powerful, visible, yet impossible to clutch.

I think this happens most when I’m creatively procrastinating embarking on what will be an emotional archeological dig. The feelings are buried alive, and I’ve been content to ignore them. Hoping, dreaming, praying that logic will suffocate them. But, no. They demand to be noticed. And while I create chaos, thinking I will somehow murder them with inattention, they wait patiently.

And what do I fear? Having to bear the weigh of regret, pain, loss? Even too much sunshine burns and blinds.

But I know I must continue to stitch the stories together, to resist the untangling of the threads, and to listen to the whisper in my soul.

2:54 am // Moments of Grace // Comments (0)

Logical fallacy?

5:34 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (9)

You know all those people who scream and yell and rant about teachers being responsible for the dumbing of kids? Um…just wondering…how did “those people” get so smart?

For added entertainment while I’m off dumbing down the next generation, go to VISUWORDS. Enjoy.

5:34 am // ej-oo-key-shuhn // Comments (9)

Because I just can’t say it better than this:

9:31 pm // Uncategorized // Comments (1)

nola.com

Mardi Gras Who Dat Nation just wants to say: Thanks, Drew

By Mark Lorando, The Times-Picayune

February 13, 2010, 11:38PM

st saints parade 0182 Scott Threlkeld / The Times-PicayuneThe Saints Super Bowl parade last week was just a warm-up for Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who will reign Sunday night as Bacchus.

This is what he will hear:

“DREWWWWWW!!! OHMYGOD!!! OHMYGOD!!! RIGHT HERE, DREW!!! I’M OPEN!!! THROW ME SOMETHING, DREW!!! I LOVE YOU, DREWWWWWW!!! WHO DAT, BABY!!! WILL YOU MARRY ME, DREW?!?!?!? I KNOW YOU’RE MARRIED, SO AM I, WE CAN WORK THAT OUT!!! REALLY!!! MY HUSBAND WON’T MIND, HE’S GOT A CRUSH ON YOU, TOO!!! DREWWWWWW!!! DREWWWWWW!!! OHMYGOD, DID YOU SEE THAT?!?!?!? HE THREW IT RIGHT TO ME!!! YOU DA MAN, DREWWWWWW!!!”

But that’s not exactly what the Who Dats on the parade route want to say.

It’s hard to be eloquent when a float is rolling past. So little time, so much pressure — you wait seven hours on a curb in the hopes of catching something, ANYTHING, directly from the hand of Super Bowl XLIV MVP and Bacchus 2010 Drew Brees. How can you possibly be expected to get his attention AND snag a flying doubloon AND put everything you’re feeling into words in just a few, fleeting seconds?

You can’t. So Drew is going to have to read between the lines. He’s going to have to know that when we say all of that, what we really want to tell him is this:

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing your broken shoulder to town and rebuilding yourself right alongside us.

Thank you for teaching us how to finish strong.

Thank you for always facing adversity with your shoulders back, your head up, your upper lip stiff, your eyes on fire.

Thank you for giving us Feb. 7 to ease the pain of Aug. 29.

Thank you for reminding every woman in New Orleans, and Katie Couric, how it feels to have a schoolgirl crush. (Katie, sweetheart, we know he’s a dreamboat, but try not to be so obvious next time!)

Thank you for making your beautiful family part of our beautiful city. So many star athletes parachute in for the season and catch the first flight out. You put down roots. That means a lot to us. It makes you one of us.

One suggestion: The next time you play in the Super Bowl (Feb. 6, 2011, in Dallas, see you there!), have Brittany and Baylen watch the game on the sideline on a Mardi Gras ladder. Every time you get flushed out of the pocket, he can scream, “Throw me something, Daddy!”

How cool would that be?
Ted Jackson / The Times-PicayuneNew Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, with his wife Brittany at left, holds their son Baylen, 1, aloft in celebration after the Saints win Super Bowl XLIV in Miami. If we’re going to go to the Super Bowl every year, we might as well give it a little New Orleans flavor.

Remember how you felt when you held Baylen in your arms after the Super Bowl? How you held him close and saw all of your hopes and dreams for the future in his little face and you cried?

Well, that’s how the Who Dat Nation feels when we look at you. You are a son of New Orleans now. In you we see the best of ourselves, and a future filled with possibilities, and a pride that moves us to tears, too.

This is the part the national media always gets wrong. They see us crying, and they think it’s because you have “given the people of New Orleans a reason to feel good about themselves.”

If we heard that once last week, we heard it a hundred times.

But that’s not it at all. We’ve always felt good about ourselves. New Orleans is home to some of the most fascinating, fun-loving, hard-working, resilient, creative, smart, sexy, generous, loving, tolerant people on the planet. We have some of the richest culinary, musical, artistic and architectural traditions in the world. What’s not to feel good about? Do Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest look like events organized by people with an inferiority complex?

Please.

We celebrate ourselves from January to December. What we have needed is someone worthy to represent us. Someone the rest of the world can associate with New Orleans who is not on the way to jail, hell, or an NFL Films blooper reel.

The national symbols of New Orleans have too often been laughingstocks and losers. We’ve always known we deserved better.

You’re better.

That’s why we get choked up. Not because we don’t think we deserve you. Because we know how much we deserve each other.

Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune

Right here, big boy. Come to papa.

So, like we said: Thank you. For representing. And for allowing us to go completely overboard about you. We know that nobody could be as good as we’re making you out to be right now. But we’ve been a little bit hero-deprived around here lately. If it’s not too uncomfortable up there, we’d like to keep you on the pedestal a little while longer.

And one last thing, Drew.

You know that fistful of black-and-gold doubloons you’re holding? Right here, big boy. Come to papa. The game is on the line and I’m Jeremy Shockey. Cock that golden arm and let ’em fly. Put them where you’ve put everything since the day you hit town:

Right in the sweet spot.

Features editor Mark Lorando can be reached at mlorando@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3430.

9:31 pm // Uncategorized // Comments (1)