First item up for discussion: social media and the gospel.
A few years back Elder Ballard invited us to use social media sources to share our testimonies. I thought, cool! The church has since started a YouTube channel, updated its site again with new directory profiles, created facebook pages, etc. And I was ok with it since I have often carried on gospel related chats with some friends who aren't members. But I felt pretty off when people started facebook fan pages of Christ. It's not that I'm not a fan, but it just seemed that "out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being" we should "avoid the too frequent use of his name". I am also a staunch supporter of only supporting official sources. As a missionary I campaigned against the use of the official church logo on t-shirts, and avoided commercial sources for materials such as Deseret Book. I am not a huge fan of facebook either, and I choose not to display a lot of personal information on there anyway. Broadcasting myself is not what I do, especially when it concerns something so sacred. I have, though, always been a supporter of mormon.org and the Church's banner ads that I've seen pop up on the web.
This led me to avoid things like the Mormon Channel or 'liking' many religiously themed messages of any of my friends online. But the week before Conference in Priesthood meeting we watched a couple of the Mormon Messages put out by the Church. I really, really liked them. They were not trite tidbits of Utah-Mormon culture, but genuine, Spirit-filled media spots. That prepared me to be receptive of the message given by Elder Nelson at the General Priesthood Meeting. So, I went on the web and started following the LDS Newsroom, and I am in the process of creating a public profile on mormon.org. When in discussions with students of an evangelical tradition from BIOLA a couple years ago, I admired how they talked so easily of their faith. I do have a testimony, and I don't want to over-bushel my light.
Second item: school
I started my first real teaching job in August. Last year I worked as an intern. I cannot say enough how much that has helped me. If I had only done regular student teaching I would have tanked. I'm not sure I would still be alive right now.
My school, La Academia de Esperanza is a charter school focused on helping students that have moderate to severe social and learning disabilities as well as serving a population that cannot successfully function in regular schools. Many of my students have parents who are or have been in jail, have been in jail themselves, have absentee parents, have a number of substance abuse issues, etc. I have a few students who were very concerned about being convicted of crimes as juveniles. I have another who has been pulled out from class a couple times to meet with her parole officer. I have a kid who wears a hoodie in class and hardly speaks. He's smart, but supremely unmotivated and uncooperative. I think I have about 5 kids who AREN"T pierced, most in some bizarre manner.
When leaving Orem JH, I told the principal that the most important thing I learned was that I could do it. I could teach. I could wrangle teenagers into some half-hazard submission. I could deal with self-centered coworkers that didn't support me. And it turns out that's mostly all I could have learned that would have served me here. I teach US and World History and Government and Economics. That's only two different classes. Apparently our goal is to graduate as many students as possible, which means that they need to fulfill credits. There is no end-of-course exam for social studies like there is for math, science, or reading. So they lump the students into US/World and US/NM history classes. I had a student that transferred from a US to a World history class, but she stayed in the same period. It's only dependent on what credit she needs to graduate. When I tried to wrap my head around it, I couldn't. What do I teach? There's no way I can teach the state core for both classes. I can't teach one half of the class one thing, and the other something else. It would be pure chaos. My Government/Economics class has 15 taking government and 3 taking econ. So, I just teach them history and civics. And as one of the other teachers told me, if they get repeated information, so be it. They need to know it. If they miss something, they won't know and it will be filed along with all the things that they forget even day to day, regardless of long-term retention.
I have issues with this. I know that colleges are have more and more trouble with incoming freshman that have to spend time remediating because they didn't learn it in high school. Getting an A with me is far easier than an A at a regular institution because I'm shooting at the median. How do I maintain higher standards? How do I maintain regular standards? I have some brilliant students, and some who are very motivated to learn. But so many of them have been gone more in the last month than I was through all of high school. And because the situations that have led them to be at our school are still affecting them, we must support them. Because that's what we do. We have to be the ones that care.
Third: Albuquerque
We live by the zoo. Like, not close enough that we can smell it, but at night you can hear the seals barking and the exotic birds having a go at each other. Every day we cross the Rio Grande. During the day the water looks like mud, and it's mostly all that's there. But in the mornings, the light hits the water so that it shimmers white. Kamila's grandma told me in a moment of clarity that her favorite part of Albuquerque was the river. I can see why.
I like the cold more than the heat. I was surprised when I lived in Arizona during a summer that the feat was even possible. But I love fall the most. All during the summer i could not get over the weirdness of the sun. It cannot possibly be 9:30, the sun is still up! And the winter is just as bad. It just doesn't seem natural for it to be so dark so much. But the fall just grooves with you. It's cool at night! The day ends when your activities are ending. As a teacher its when you've got things in order and the kids are finally used to being in school again. I love the fall.
This weekend we went to see the morning Balloon Launch at the International Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. It was one of the most spectacular sights ever. I don't think I enjoyed the experience of it as much as I could have since I was madly taking pictures, but I enjoyed it tremendously! If anyone visits Albuquerque only once it should be during the Balloon Fiesta. Every morning this last week there were balloons in the air. There's just a special wimzy in the air.
