Crazy love

So here I am, overwhelmed once again by the love that others have for me right now. Be it my family, my youth group kids, or friends that I've lost touch with recently, I'm feeling it. It's been one of those years where my life's expectations have lowered drastically- I've come to appreciate small packages coming my way and every ounce of feeling loved on a daily basis, even though it comes from someone unexpected.
A pastor from home put it this way last night from Anne Lamott's Blue Shoe, which made me think about how I'm always looking for it elsewhere:

When her mother comes to comfort her, the girl said she was too afraid of the dark to sleep. “But God is with you, protecting you,” said mom.
The little girl whimpered, “but I need someone with skin on.”

And I'm reading Stones for Schools, which I cannot get enough of after Three Cups of Tea:

So for me, THE LAST BEST PLACE sticker on my briefcase doesn't represent a slogan or a marketing campaign to promote the wonders of my home. Instead, those words affirm my beliefs that the people who live in the last places- the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world- often represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are to become. This is the power that last places hold over me and why I have found it impossible to resist their pull.

It's Francis Chan's book that gave me the idea for this blog post, as I'm trying to reconcile all of these "crazy love" things that I've learned from childhood and am trying to apply to life as an adult living in San Francisco. I am loved, I just have to remember that.

Curious George

Today the kids and I read Merry Christmas Curious George. The monkey is the theme of many things for me right now- my Christmas cards, the posters adorning the city of San Francisco, the ever present stuffed animal at our Christmas show and international potluck. See below.

Curious George as some of my friends in my credential program said, needs to be admitted to a mental institution or have his head examined, because of the kinds of stunts that he pulls.

I don't know why I relate so well to this silly little monkey. Maybe it's my own childlike curiosity and how the kids I teach make me laugh all of the time. Or I lose myself in books, and when the vice-principal tells a story about one of my first-grade students gushing over why she likes to read, my eyes well up with tears.

The three Js

2010 is going out with a bang. That's what I've decided. It's been one heck of a year in more ways than one and what better way to end it than kissing 2/3 French boys all of which had the same name in one night while listening to my favorite DJ spin his tunes? As my friend Matt says, "That must have been your dream come true Meg, you must still be reveling in it." Well I am, even though I can't believe it happened and am embarrassed when I run into them at school, turning red in the face. It's all a part of this story of my life, "Les aventures de Meg."

Things you never learned with your credential

As much as I've gone to school over the last year and a half, there are so many things that I haven't learned in the classroom. This is just a few of them that I wish I had:

*How to multi-task 5,000 things at once- parent emails, administration requests, colleagues who speak another language

*How to pare down the curriculum to what's actually necessary and enhance it with project-based learning

*How to best manage transitions (no matter how many yoga posters I put up in the room)

*How not to feel isolated when you are in stress that no one around you understands

*How to enjoy hugs from former students and value each moment even though you are racing from one thing to the next

*How to appear to the outside world that you have it all together- that you are confident and capable riding to school on your bike with your watermelon helmet (even though you aren't)

*How to prepare for observations with administration, even though you've written up so many lesson plans that you can't even count them

*How to find time to go to the bathroom, drink water, not get pulled in one million directions

*How to find time to "make things your own," do what you love, create a space that expresses the classroom environment that you want to create, even though it might mean staying at school until all hours in order to do so

*How to decrease expectations- for yourself, that is

But for the moments at the end of the day in which you feel validated over a beer with a friend, it's worth the effort and the struggle.