school

I know I’ve been complaining about how busy I’ve been this semester, so you would think I would have been reluctant to add anything else to my already bursting schedule. After all, I’ve been working on doing less things, not more. And yet, I still added an honest-to-goodness college class that I’m taking as a student, the first one I’ve done in years. Why in the world would I have done that? Well, a few reasons. First of all, Denisa’s taking the class with me. We’ve been wanting to find something to do for dates other than “go to movie”

In our class this semester, we begin each day with a question. Nothing too deep, but a chance for the students to go around the room and tell us a bit about themselves. “What’s your comfort food?” That sort of thing. Today’s started out as “Who’s someone you admire and why?” I went first, and I said right off the bat, “I admire my thirteen-year-old daughter, because she’s going through middle school right now and doing a tremendous job.” From there, the entire class started talking about how horrendous middle school is, to the point that the question changed. Instead

If you had asked me at the beginning of the semester how I thought the semester was going to go, I would have told you, “It’s going to be busy.” That’s my typical response, and it’s always accurate. This September’s actually been one I’ve kind of been dreading. Between the impending kitchen renovation, the return of early morning seminary drives, an upcoming novel revision (with a deadline), my continuing church commitments, getting kids to school on time when Denisa’s teaching early, and getting a Makerspace on campus up and running, I definitely had more than enough to keep me busy.

It’s the school budget vote today. So first off, if you haven’t voted yet, get out there and vote. You can find out all the details about the budget and where and when to vote over here. But beyond that, it’s a strange year for the vote. Yes, last year we had the whole COVID thing to deal with, which swallowed up any recollection I have of the vote. (It passed the first time? I think? I honestly can’t remember what happened.) But every year before that, the community had its annual flamewars on the local online paper, The Daily

I was listening to a story the other day on NPR about how different areas of the country have implemented school during these days of the pandemic, and I was struck for a moment about how grateful I am for my school district and the efforts they’ve made to keep kids safe but also keep them learning. Back when the pandemic first hit, I was disappointed with how the school transitioned to online learning. Anything that was done once kids moved to at-home learning couldn’t be officially graded, and so a lot of kids just checked out of the learning