Spirit Week!

This week was a fantastic week.  During the school year, possibly in elementary/middle school but definitely in high school, you probably went through a week where each day is themed and everyone dresses up-- you know, Spirit Week!  Usually for high schools, spirit week ends in Homecoming, both a dance and a football game, but at Breakthrough, we have a very unique way of capping off Spirit Week.  But I'll get to that in a bit.

Here is the line-up from this week:

• Monday: Twin Day
• Tuesday: Sports Day
• Wednesday: Formal Day/Prom
• Thursday: Pajama Day
• Friday: Crazy Hair, Crazy Wear

I participated in all but Friday, as far as dressing up goes.  Normally I don't like participating in days like this, but it's totally different when you're dressing up for Spirit Week during high school than it is for Spirit Week at Breakthrough.  I've gotten used to looking very silly and making dumb mistakes in front of my kids this summer.  I've learned to not resist the silly.  If you can't beat the silly, join in!  So I did.  On Monday, for Twin Day, I was a dragon with my elective co-teacher Tanner.

Tuesday I borrowed a Minnesota Twins baseball shirt from my mom, Wednesday I wore a dress that I wore to a high school dance (one that actually still fit me), and Thursday I had on pajama bottoms with stars and moons on them.

The women of BTC in their nice clothes/prom dresses :)

And then Spirit Day happened.

The kids had all four of their classes for 45 minutes like every Friday, they did ASM, had lunch, and then spent the rest of the day in their colleges.  They went and played games to earn points against the other colleges!  There were games like Lilypad, where you had to get your entire college across the "pond" while always having one foot or more on each "lilypad" or else an alligator could take it from them making it harder to cross the "pond."  There was also an obstacle course, mat races (don't get me started... such an unsafe activity), Jeopardy, and some others.

Mat races... a game that I hope we don't play again for safety reasons-- Courtesy of the BTC Photographers

Jeopardy-- Courtesy of the BTC Photographers

After the games were over, everyone came outside and picked a spot in the amphitheater so that we could take another BTC-MPA picture.  Silver College is in the front on the right.

And then the fun began.  The college with the most points was announced and so was the college with the most spirit.  Their reward... they got to pie a teacher.  Each student in the college got to choose which teacher they wanted to pie and the teachers couldn't say no unless they said no before that day.  One of the ninth graders in my college pied me in the face.  It's a weird sort of affirmation, being pied in the face because you're liked by the kids you work with.

Pictures courtesy of BTC Photographers

It's been a day and I can still smell the whipped cream-sitting-in-the-sun-for-a-while smell on my skin, although it's subtle.

So spirit week was a lot of fun.  I had an absolutely amazing week!

But I still had classes to teach.  We had some amazing moments and victories there as well that made my entire week.  My literature kids have started their celebration project, which is to recreate scenes from Of Mice and Men in film.  I have two classes and I have both classes working to make one movie each, since there are only seven kids in each class.  Each class chose which scenes they wanted to do, so I have my Class A doing the beginning of the book where George and Lennie talk about their dream of owning land and living on their own.  My Class C chose the end where Curley's wife dies and where Lennie dies (sorry, spoilers).  I've been very impressed by both of these groups.  They've been working on scripting and have learned about storyboarding.  On Monday, they'll have their (supposedly) last day filming for their movie.  Later this week, they'll learn to edit videos and they'll get everything ready for Celebration, which takes place on Saturday.  I'm very excited for Saturday, but also dreading it.  I love working with these kids so much.

George and Lennie in my Class A :)

Class C figuring out how to best film the death of Curley's wife.

I was especially impressed because both of my classes tend to get quite distracted and during this project, all of them just focused in, even if they weren't the ones actively being filmed.  Behind the scenes work is absolutely fascinating.  It's amazing the amount of work that goes into one movie, even a short one.  I can't wait to share their videos at Celebration and also on this blog.

I have one more week of teaching and then one more week of wrap-up.  This six weeks of teaching and nine weeks total of Breakthrough has been life-changing.  I'm sad to see it come to an end for the summer.  But I'll save my sad for next week.  I need to keep it together this week, at least until Saturday.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

Thoughts on Failure

I failed a class.  I tried to not fail a class.  I tried really hard, but still I failed.  I've never failed a class before, although I've done not as well as I hoped I would.  It feels different.  It's unfamiliar and it's uncomfortable.  This is what I've been learning (or trying to learn) about failure...

1. Failure has nothing to do with personal character.  I failed something, but that does not make me a failure.  I continue to struggle with this a lot.  I have to consciously tell myself that this is true.

2. Sometimes We're Not Ready For Certain Challenges.  And that's okay.  We can't be good at everything we do, although we certainly can and really should try to do so.  But you can't get up off the couch and expect that you'll be able to run a full marathon without facing any repercussions.  I know from what I've learned while teaching that it's important to scaffold students and work within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).  That is, learners need to be able to see the next stepping stone and feel confident that they'll be able to make it to the next step on the road to mastery.  It's not that I was incapable and now I know that it wasn't because of my emotional state, this failure is because I just wasn't ready (in part).

3. Failure is an Opportunity for Growth.  I have learned a thing or two about what I can do next time in a great effort to not fail.  I know that I need to ask for help sooner, even if I'm not entirely sure what I'm asking for help with.  I know that I need to help myself learn as much as my professors are there to help me learn.  I know that I need to find a good way for me to process information and more importantly, I need to make time to process that information.

I'm still not comfortable with the fact that I didn't do well in a class at all, but I'm getting more comfortable with the fact that there's nothing left for me to do but move forward from this point.  And that's okay.

Thanks for Reading.

--Jude

College Week (Week 4)

This week at Breakthrough was College Week.  One of the very unique things about Breakthrough compared to other summer school programs is that there is a focus on getting to college.  The idea is that the kids who are part of Breakthrough sign on for six years.  They go to summer school for their sixth and seventh grade summer (before they enter seventh and eighth grade), potentially come for their eighth grade summer to join the Breakthrough Leaders Program (BLP), and then continue to get tutoring during high school and get help with college essays, resumes, and college applications.  The cool thing is that Breakthrough doesn't take students as they are to get them into college, but it helps students become better learners as well as helping them get into college.  So right now I have eighth grade students who are reading at a fourth grade level, give or take a year or two, but I know that while they are with Breakthrough, in and out of the normal school year, eventually they will be reading and doing math at or above grade level.  In this case, the phrase "It takes a village" is totally true.  My kids won't magically start reading at an eighth grade level or higher after being in my class, but I can help them by teaching them skills that they'll need in high school and college.  For example, we've been working on building discussion skills using accountable talk and by talking about Of Mice and Men.  We've had discussions on power, particularly when it comes to characters like Curley's Wife (the only woman in the book with dialogue), Crooks (the only African American), and Candy (the oldest and the only one who is physically disabled).  So we've been talking about the "-isms"-- sexism, racism, able-ism.  Since it has real-world applications, they've been pretty interested.

Any way, I digress.

College week started out pretty simply.  Monday, we gave students a piece of paper with the names of all the teachers, program interns, and staff.  Students had to go around asking all of the staff and faculty where they went to school.  I didn't get a lot of time to eat lunch that day because so many students were coming up to use asking us to initial their sheets and asking us where we went to school.

Tuesday was a similar activity.  It was a  Bingo sheet filled with activities and traits of a college experience.  Students had to go around asking staff and faculty asking us questions from that sheet.  I could answer that I go to a small college, I have an on-campus job, I work on the student newspaper and am involved in student government... things like that.  It was a way to see what kind of things you can do while you're living and learning at college.

Wednesday students could make their own student ID.  More importantly, there was a panel where some of us teachers would answer the questions of the students about college.  I know that the kids really liked this.  They liked it so much that my students would ask me questions during class time, asking about my college experience.

Thursday was a lot more exciting.  We didn't teach any classes and there was no Tutorial or Yo-Time.  Instead, we were gone the entire day.  We went to St. John's/St. Ben's in Collegeville, MN for a visit.  For the seventh graders, it was their very first college visit.  For eighth graders, I think it was their second and for BLP, they've visited at least two college before and some during the school year on the weekend.  So we were on the bus for about three hours.  It was good college bonding time.  We took a way too brief tour of St. John's University (we were supposed to have about half an hour to walk around and we had fifteen, if even that.  So we saw two buildings... the kids were a little disappointed).  I think the kids generally liked the feeling of being on a college campus.  There were a few kids afterwards who admitted that before, they weren't sure if they even wanted to go to college.  But after setting foot on a college campus and after hearing their college student teachers say how much they liked college, they were sure that college was something they wanted for their lives.  It's amazing what a field trip can do for someone.

Mounds Park Academy (MPA, which is my site), St. Paul Central (SPC), and Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ) altogether at last.  This is outside of the Abbey on the St. John's campus.

They saw fish in the fountain and got really excited.

It doesn't seem like a big deal to us, but some of the most important things that the students wanted to see that college students might find trivial were the dorms, a classroom, and the dining room.  We only got to see a classroom of those three, but I think it helped show students what it was like to be in a real life college classroom.  It's easier to see yourself in a similar situation later in life.  So it was really cool that they got to experience a college classroom.

Neutral Cluster Kids (Silver, Brown and White colleges)

Friday, was the best day of college week, by far.  We did a Day in the Life of a College Student.  College Leaders, myself included, paired up our students and made them "roommates" for the day.  They had to fill out a survey and then once they were paired up, they had to fill out a roommate agreement.  They even got to choose a major or two to "study."  There were a lot of physical science people, a couple social science interests (like anthropology, sociology, and psychology), and there was even one English major, which I got really excited about, especially since she's in my English class this summer.  They went on a scavenger hunt to see what it's like to sign up for high school classes that they'll potentially have if they are in the St. Paul public schools system.  Afterwards, they played an intramural dodge ball game (by cluster, students vs. teachers).  In order to get a teacher out in dodge ball, students had to make eye contact with us and say the name of our real college before they hit us.  At one point, I was the only teacher left on our side so I just had a bunch of kids shouting, "St. Kate's!  St. Kate's!!  St. Kate's!!!" at me in an effort to get me out.  I've never been more terrified of the name of my school in my life.  The coolest part of Friday, I think, was the commencement ceremony.  At the end of the day, all students got their "Bachelor's Degrees" from the college or university that they chose to represent their color college.  So all of the kids in silver college got a degree with City University of New York Queen's College and their name written in nice lettering.  This was an excellent end of the day and the end of a really good week overall.

Talk to you next week-- the end is creeping a little bit closer.  It's crazy that I only have two weeks of teaching left, celebration, and wrap-up week and then I'll have finished my first summer with Breakthrough.  But I won't jump the gun just yet.  I want to enjoy this time while I still have it.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Whole Lotta Crazy

I know a few people who will read that title and cringe, but that's the feeling that I'm emerging from this week and last week with!

Last week we were introduced to something called Kid Talk, which is our way to track a student's progress.  We don't grade homework, but we grade exit tickets to numerically keep track of mastery.  Kid Talk is a way to numerically keep track of behavior and attitudes with our kids so that we can best help each of our students while they are with us this summer and throughout their six year commitment with Breakthrough.  Kid Talk is not something that has been done in the past, but it's supposed to make conferences easier to prepare for.  There were a few snags to work out and it was yet another thing to ask of us as Teaching Fellows.

This past week brought normal classes, but also our first Visitor's Day, Conferences, and a school-wide game of Predator and Prey.  All things that I've never experienced before and had to take in stride.

Visitor's Day was actually pretty fun.  I only teach one core class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I was a tour guide that day.  Our group was made up of parents, current teaching fellows, future and current board members, past teaching fellows... you name it.  It was really cool, I think, to walk into the classrooms of my fellow teachers and see the really neat things that they are doing in their classes and see them in their element.  It was a little weird just to walk in and stand there and listen to a lesson that we weren't privy to.  It was even stranger for me to see the people on the tour and ask their students what they're learning in class.  I thought it was going to be a "look but don't touch" approach, so to speak, like visiting a museum.  Show them what Breakthrough does and share why it works, but not much else.  It was kind of cool to see our visitors be that interested in Breakthrough though.

Conferences was something that I've never had to do before, so I was a little nervous.  But I have three advisees, so it's not like it was going to be a long and arduous night.  In fact, I only got to talk to two of my advisees and their families on conference night.  The longest one lasted about twenty minutes and I felt good about that.  The shortest was about five minutes.  I didn't feel so good about that.  I learned really quickly that conferences ought to be a conversation between the teacher (myself) and the family.  I shouldn't just talk about what I want to see from my students, it should also be what goals the student themselves and the family have for personal and academic success.

And then Friday came.  I made sure my classes were pretty chill until finally, right after lunch, the games began (that game being Predator and Prey).  I got to tell the kids in my college that they were going to be prey (they had been theorizing and predicting for days.  They were convinced that we were going to be omnivores because of the number of people in our college, which proved to be nonsensical).  I think my college was pretty excited to be prey.  Our job was simple: find food and shelter cards on the ground and try our best to not get eaten.  The whole game was about two hours long.  Silver college (my college) was incredible.  They had excellent teamwork.  Even though I was the instinct that they had to stick by, they were good about offering up their own ideas and making decisions together.

Right away, as soon as we got out into the field and started picking up cards, we picked up a disease card.  We had told the kids before that the disease card didn't exist this year, so they were very surprised and mildly outraged.  But it proved to be fine.  Getting the disease card doesn't mean that you automatically lose the game.  You can keep playing, but getting the disease card means that in the event that you are attacked, you may not run, you can only walk quickly.  We used the disease card to our advantage when it became necessary.  We were pretty good about evading those who wanted to "eat" us, but in the event that someone did try to attack, we shouted, "We have the disease card!!!"  If our whole group got eaten, the omnivore or the predator would get that disease card and when they wanted to attack, they would have had to fast walk to take the reflexes of the prey they were attacking.  We managed to get all of the food and shelter cards we needed plus the three necessary water breaks.  After two hours and after losing half of silver college to an attack, we managed to make it through Predator and Prey and survived!  Woohoo!  Predator and Prey is an awesome game that requires a lot of strategy and teamwork.  I think it helped to really bring our college together as well as other colleges.

Thus ends a really crazy week three at Breakthrough.  It was hectic, but really great, despite being sick for most of the time.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

First Week of Teaching!

This has been the most difficult and most rewarding week.  Students arrived bright and early on Monday.  Seventh graders looked terrified and confused, eighth graders and BLPs (ninth graders in the Breakthrough Leaders Program) were very much okay with our wild and crazy selves while we were doing bus greeting and doing the bus game.

Maybe I should take you through an average day at Breakthrough:

• All teachers and Program Interns arrive by 7:10 (lots of us show up at 6:30, including me.  So my morning begins at 5:00 every day) and we do announcements, play a game until the buses start arriving, assign Yo-Time activities, and other things to prepare for the day.
• As the buses start to pull up, we all go to greet the students coming off the bus.  Afterwards, we go in the gym and we play a game until it's time to go to breakfast.
• Breakfast, we sit with the kids and get them talking and excited for the day.
• First classes start.  Half of the week, I teach a class during this time and the other half I have a prep period.
• Second class starts (and a snack time is included).  Tuesdays and Thursdays I have a class during this time.
• Third class starts (see first class).
• All School Meeting (or ASM)!  Everyone crowds into the recital hall and all of the teachers (or their twins, any way) do improv based on the summer's theme, which is time travel.  My "twin" is Anne Frank.  The one time I performed last week, I was stuck in a time with dinosaurs.
• It's time for lunch!  Same deal as with breakfast.  All of the teachers disperse and we sit and talk with the students.
• College time!  This is the advisory period.  Kids fill out the Word of the Day and we talk about actual college sometimes.  This past week, we were busy preparing for College Bowl, so we were working on a cheer, making a poster, and making sure my college, Silver College, had grey shirts to wear for Friday.
• Elective time.  I'm co-teaching a video production course this summer.  It's really fun-- the kids are catching on and seem to be enjoying what they're doing, even if they're just quick handshake videos.  They're really putting a lot of thought into their videos.
• After elective comes Yo-Time, which is structured recess.  Teachers don't teach during this time, but hang out with the kids.  It's not my time, it's YO-time!
• After Yo-Time, the kids go to their lockers, grab their bags, and we head out to the buses!  Some buses come later than others, so while we wait, we play games with the kids.  After everyone is sent home, we all breathe a sigh of happiness-relief-exhaustion and we head inside where we have meetings until 4:30.  After 4:30, we have the option to stay until 6:00 at the latest as we prepare for classes the next day or further in the future or we can go home.

Maybe you feel my exhaustion.  Teaching at Breakthrough is an incredible amount of work, but it still feels worth it.  The kids are great, the other teachers and staff are so nice.  I'm really enjoying my time working here.  

This picture is of all the kids and teachers at our site this summer.  My college kids are in grey, but all of my students are in grey, white, and brown.

This week has been challenging.  I definitely broke down once during the week when I got nothing but blank stares in my class.  I think I've discovered how to make that class work.  This past week has been a steep learning curve.  You learn about the demeanor of your class and you get used to getting up in front of the class and teaching on a regular basis.

This past week has been emotional and rewarding.  I can't wait for the rest of the summer!  I love my job.  Working at Breakthrough was kind of a way to test whether this is something that I want to do with the rest of my life.  It's early, but I can say that this job makes me happy and I see myself doing this for a really long time.  I can't wait.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

Breakthrough Orientation and Training Weeks

Week One

This past week, I haven't been laying around the house or occasionally going to work.  My summer has been officially kicked off because I've started not only the two jobs that I've done previous summers and during the school year, but I've started teacher training.

I feel bad, because I came to work in north St. Paul feeling a mixture of excited and annoyed.  Excited because this is a job directly related to what I ultimately want to do with my life, but annoyed because I had so little information coming into the week.  I didn't know what grade or what book I was teaching and I didn't know which elective I was teaching.  I only knew that I was teaching literature.  So it's taken me all week, but I have warmed up to the job quite a bit, especially now that I have more information and can start preparing now.

I am trying to move on from the thought that I would have like to have started preparing a couple weeks ago and I'm trying to move forward.  I go into major planning mode this week as we meet with our Instructional Coaches, or ICs.  These are people who are certified teachers.  Their job is to support us, the Teaching Fellows, in lesson planning and making adjustments to what we're teaching as needed.  They're also there for general support, since they've actually taught before and in classes that are probably two or three times the size of the classes we'll have.  That's not saying too much because between my two literature sections, I have fifteen students.

So now I know that I'll be teaching 8th grade literature (so we'll be reading Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck) and that I'll be co-teaching a TV/Movie Production elective class.  I can begin to foster the level of organization that works for me now.  Slowly but surely, I'm gaining more control over the work I do.

Week Two

This week, I found out that I am a co-Art Director this summer.  I have quickly learned that Breakthrough is part summer school, which I knew about, but also part summer camp.  So we do a lot of cheers and games to keep students' energy up during the day.  We also picked a theme (Time Travel!) for the summer and then had to decorate the main parts of the school according to that theme.  My job, since not a lot of people felt confident in their artistic ability and I felt more confident, was to go around the building making preliminary drawings for the walls and lockers.  From there, we asked everyone to stay after and help support hallway decoration and pitch in.  I so wish that I had pictures, but that'll have to wait until next week.  We have a Time Machine, a couple time portals, an Ice Age scene, we have a camel to go with the "Arabian Nights" scene (that camel is adorable-- he's so round!), we have a couple dinosaurs... we have a lot of stuff.  It's absolutely amazing how much a school can transform after about three days of work and 40 sets of hands pitching in.

This week has also been heavy on lesson-planning and on practice teaching.  It hasn't been clear until this week how much effort lesson-planning would take.  We were given objectives and proving behaviors for each of our subjects and we could edit those plans as we saw fit.  The thing is, no one told us how terrible the original lesson plans were.  So in the literature department, 7th grade and 8th grade literature alike, we've basically had to start from scratch.  I only have a few lesson plans completely done (I'm going to have five finished by the end of the day), but they are drastically different from what was originally available for lesson plans.  I have a game about making character inferences (thanks to one of my fellow teachers), I have a history lesson planned about the Great Depression, I have my students making character maps... very different from looking at a paragraph and looking at the different parts of that paragraph.  That just sounded really boring to me.

This week, I also had a chance to meet some of my students, two of whom are my advisees.  I think meeting the kids we were going to be working with got everyone excited.  All of the kids who came to the open house on Thursday were so shy that we as the teachers had to go up to them with the biggest smiles on our faces and say, "Hi!  My name is _____ and I'm going to be your _________ teacher this summer!" and then we'd bring them over to our posters and talk to them and answer their questions.  They were the nicest kids.  They had the most involved parents.  I had a mom come up to me and tell me some of her concerns about her child in regards to school.  The other parents stood behind them, letting their student meet their teachers and they stood their smiling, happy for their student.  It was such a cool thing.  I won't be able to get over it.  There was even another literature teacher who studies history, not with a teaching concentration, and she said, "I think I want to be a teacher."  That was even more beautiful to me.

So next week, bright and early Monday morning, we'll greet the kids straight off the bus, we'll play games and have breakfast, and then I teach my first class.  I'm equal parts nervous and excited.  I feel prepared though.  I have my lesson for Monday ready to teach.  We've had two weeks of training leading up to this.  I change my mind.  I think I'm more excited than anything.  Sometimes excitement can feel like nervousness.

All On One Paper

I have one and a half years left at my school.  I met with my advisor in the Education department a couple of months ago so that I'd know what classes I needed to sign up for next semester.  She took the time to lay out what I'd need to do for the rest of my college career... it fit all on one paper.  I had to sit back in my seat.

I really love my school.  In the spring of 2012 I had an acceptance letter from the University of Minnesota-Duluth and an acceptance letter from St. Kate's.  For the longest time I told everyone that I was going to UMD and that was a pretty well-accepted fact... and then I chose St. Kate's.  To this day, I don't really know what swayed my decision.  It wasn't financial aid, because after scholarships, my tuition that I would owe would be roughly the same.  Both schools were in cities I loved and both had the programs I wanted to study.  But I still chose St. Kate's, and I don't regret that.

St. Kate's undergraduate program is for women (it opens up more if you're in a Master's program or are in weekend school or in a professional program).  I thought that being surrounded by women all the time would be an adjustment, but it really hasn't been.  I think that it's helped me learn about myself and what it means to be a woman in the context of the world.  More importantly, St. Kate's helps us think about the world and social justice no matter what we choose to study.  Again, something I thought would be annoying going into it, but has really taken the forefront of my mind in whatever I set out to do in or outside of school.

I think that if you're where you're supposed to be in life, you truly feel it.  Maybe I could have done my growing up at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, but maybe not.  St. Kate's has been my safe-space where I've felt good about growing up a little bit surrounded by wonderful and talented women who I hope to call my friends for the rest of my life.  I feel that I've grown a lot as a person.  I'm happy that I have a year and a half left.  I can really do a lot in that time.  I can really make this next full year count.  When I start student teaching in Fall 2016, right before I graduate, I will make that really count too.

I'm excited for the rest of my life, post-college to start, but I'm happy for the time I have left here.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

Summer Reading List

Summer is upon me and even though I have a busy summer ahead of me, I still want to get a lot of reading done between my work.  So I'm making a list of books to choose from this summer to read.  Some of these books I own and are reading from my shelf while others I'll need to borrow from the library or download to my eReader.

Feel free to click on the image to read the text.  The text is the story and rationale behind why I picked these particular books for my summer reading.  If you've read any of these books or even heard good (or bad) things about them, I'd love to know!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

Why the 2014-2015 School Year Was By Far The Best Yet

The 2014-2015 school marks my third year of college and I'm extremely happy to say, it has been an absolute joy!  That's not to say that it didn't come without its challenges, because it did, but ultimately, I think that's what makes a school year worth being proud of.  Here are some things that I did that I'm extremely proud of:

1. I Studied Abroad!  I won't speak too much about this, because I spent all of fall writing about my adventures, but nevertheless, this is still something that I'm extremely proud of myself for doing.  It was scary, many tears were shed, and I ended up (metaphorically) leaving a piece of my heart in the Netherlands.  You can't do that in a classroom.

2. I Got Published!  My school has an art and literary journal where you can submit paintings, ceramics, photos, poems, short stories... pretty much anything you want.  I submitted a photo that I took during Ontzet in Leiden and it was published!  I keep looking at page 2 of the 109th edition of Ariston (that's what the journal is called) and just looking at my name.  It's so different seeing your name this way than if you see your name on a blog.  It's really cool because other people thought that something you did was good enough to be in this journal.  So that's really special.  I'm hoping to do this again next year.  Perhaps some pictures, but this time I'd like to shoot for writing.

3. I Presented My Research At The GSJ Symposium!  The capstone class for every student who passes through my school, St. Catherine University, is called Global Search for Justice.  In this class, we learn about different forms of oppression and what this looks like in the world and what people are doing to fight this oppression.  Not only that, but we have to do projects on a social justice issue of our choice and if you're asked to, you present it with other GSJ students.  I did my project on access to healthcare for transgender people and I was asked to present my research.  The presentation was different, in that students came to me and I wasn't talking to everyone as a whole group, but it went extremely well.  I think mine was the only project related to transgender issues.

4. I'm Taking On More Activities And Challenges!  Although these things don't really start until next school year, I'm very excited about them right now.  I was sworn in to Student Senate as a Commuter Senator and I also accepted a position to write for The Wheel, which is my school newspaper.  I don't really know what challenges either of these activities will bring, but I'm excited to get started!

5. I Interviewed For An Was Accepted Into A Really Great-Sounding Job!  I say great-sounding because I haven't officially started yet.  This summer, I will be teaching incoming seventh and eighth graders literature!  I'm going to be a teacher!  I'm sure you'll hear more about this over the summer because this is something that I care about so much.  I can't wait to get started!

I have had an amazing school year.  I can't wait to see what my last full year will bring!*

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

*I have a year and a half until I graduate, but that extra semester will consist of student teaching, so I won't be on campus very much.

How To Host An Exchange Student

My family has hosted three students, two from France and recently one from Austria, since 2010.  In 2012, I was hosted by a French family.  Between these experiences, I've learned a thing or two about how to host a student from another country.  That's right, it's list time!

Marie, the first French girl we hosted, when she came to us early in 2010.
She's in the middle.

1. Understand What It Means To Host Someone.  Sometimes students will come with a group and they'll basically have a plan for the entire time that they're there, keeping them busy during the day.  Sometimes there will be very few plans leaving a lot of the work for the host families.  As a prospective host family, it's important to understand what's being asked of you before you commit.  With the French students, my family was largely responsible for showing them around our state a bit.  Very few activities were planned for our French students.  For our Austrian student however, she had activities to do with her group pretty much every day except for the weekend.  We provided a bed for her, made sure she made it to wherever she needed to go, and made her feel like part of the family after she returned from her activities.

It's also important to consider how long students are coming to visit.  Our French students each came for three weeks, while our Austrian student was only in our state for eight days.  Figure out what works for your family.

Clementine, the second French girl we hosted, summer 2010.
She's the second farthest away in the picture.

2. Choose Students That Seem Like A Good Match For Your Household.  Have pets?  Don't host someone who is allergic to pet hair.  Vegetarian?  Don't host a carnivore.  The goal is to keep living as you normally would but also to make your guest feel comfortable as well.  This doesn't mean that the student you're hosting needs to come from a family that looks like yours.  What's part of the experience is learning to live a little bit differently.  When I was hosted in France, my host sister had a brother, but she lived alone with her parents in an apartment.  I'd never lived in an apartment before with a sister who was a partier and with parents who smoked (they smoked outside, so I wasn't bothered).  It was part of the experience!

3. Communicate As Early As Possible.  This was a problem when we hosted our Austrian student (not her fault and not ours either), but when we were able to do this for our French students, it was wonderful.  It was a good way to let the students know who they were going to be living with and it was a good way to start getting to know each other.  It was a good way for the exchange student to know what to pack, ask questions about what they might want to do while they were visiting, give them something concrete to look forward to... that kind of thing.  Being an exchange student myself, however briefly, this was something I really appreciated as well.  I was able to Facebook creep and when the bus pulled up near the school my host sister attended, I knew a little bit about my host sister and I knew what she looked like.

My French host family: Evelyn, Mathilde, and Gilles.  They were so good to me :)

4. Actually Do Something With Your Exchange Student.  This sounds like a no-brainer, but believe me, there are host families who don't do a lot with their exchange students.  My family has done this for all of our exchange students and I was lucky enough to be put in a family in France who did the same for me.  Sometimes the kids are into the idea of hosting someone but the parents aren't, sometimes the parents are more into the idea, and sometimes no one is absolutely gung-ho about the idea but they don't want a student to be homeless for their stay and really, the hope is that every student has their own family and aren't doubled-up, since it's easier to learn the host language that way and it's easier to make a connection with your host family.  The things you do with your exchange student don't have to cost an arm, a leg, and a kidney to do.  My host family brought me to a citadel that you didn't have to pay to enter unless you were going into the museum part, which was closed at the time.  They took me to the beach where I saw starfish.  They drove me to some of the coastal cities and showed me around.  Simple things, but things that I still remember three years after the fact.

Eva, the third girl we hosted, but the first from Germany/Austria.
She's on the far left.

5. Prepare To Become Attached.  In the best situations, the student you're hosting feels like your brother or sister and you realize that they are some of the best people you will ever meet.  Both you and your exchange student are sharing your cultures and you're learning and teaching... it's a very rewarding experience and I will encourage everyone I meet for the rest of my life to host an exchange student.  You don't even have to know the exchange student's mother tongue, because oftentimes, they are coming to your country to learn your language.

These have been really important parts of my life, so I just wanted to share that with you and more importantly, encourage loving families to host students whenever they possibly can.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

What I've Been Reading 2015 (Part 1)

At the end of last year I think I said in my 2015 goals that I wouldn't post regular reviews because I wanted to focus on other things this year.  Well... lately I've been missing writing about the books that I read.  Some of them are flops, some are okay, and some I just have too many thoughts because they're so good.  So I wanted to keep up an occasional review thing every few months or so.  So, here  are some of the books that I've finished this year so far (at least the ones that I remember)!

***Just click any box to make them bigger, if the writing is too small.***

A Friend of the Earth-- GoodReads

Chronicle of a Death Foretold-- GoodReads 

 Cinderella Ate My Daughter-- GoodReads

Fire on the Mountain-- GoodReads 

Gandhi--  GoodReads

The Virgin Suicides-- GoodReads

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

A Personal Manifesto

I decided something last night.  I'm tired of feeling unattractive and down about myself, so I'm making a change.  I call it my Happiness and Health manifesto.  I've struggled with my weight and how I look for many years* and I've attached this feeling of attractiveness to how big I feel from day to day.  You know, the bigger I am, the less attractive.  That's been my mentality.  I've known that this is unhealthy for a while, but I'm learning that in order for me to make a mental change, I need to make a physical change.  So today, I made an exercise calendar, a checklist, and a manifesto, which is just a list of general statements to live my life by.

I don't want to make a change just to lose weight, but I ultimately want to feel happier.  Earlier this year, I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and that book has given me a number of ideas on things I can do to be happier and how to keep track of my progress and keep myself accountable.  So I've been trying to utilize some of those ideas.  That's why I've made a weekly checklist of basic things that I can do that I've realized make me happier.  Incidentally, these are also things that I have trouble doing or keeping up with.  Things like socializing or taking time for myself aren't on this list because when I want to do these things, I pursue them.  Things like finishing my reading for school (I don't think I've finished 100% of required texts for any of my classes since freshman year... who can?  There are so many books and texts to read... too many, given the time that I'm given to read everything), exercising every day for half an hour, cleaning my room... things that I do every once in a while, but not nearly as often as I should.  So I'm prioritizing them.

I didn't want to wait until New Years to put this idea into action.  I've learned that unless I do something as soon as I think of it, the idea goes away or lose its luster.  So I must do it now, in the middle of life and school and things like that.  How else will I learn to handle my life with these changes if I don't give myself a strict learning curve?

Let's see how this works.  I hope it yields good results.

Thanks for reading.

--Jude

*It should be noted that these hang-ups of mine aren't so serious where I've needed to receive medical attention.  It's just a thought process that I need to work on reversing.  There's no need to worry, especially now that I'm trying to implement a change.

The Twin Cities Bridal Fair!

I mentioned this before a couple months ago, but in late December, I got engaged to my high school sweetheart!  Now, even though we're about a year and a half out, the planning begins.  I've been calling around to venues, thinking about places to go for our honeymoon, thinking about the guest list... that kind of thing.  On top of that, I also went to the Twin Cities Bridal Fair with my sister, who is my Maid of Honor.  While, there, I took some pictures...

The Bridal Fair had everything you could possibly want at a wedding, from bakeries, DJs, tuxes and dresses, and even a company that sold these band things so you look thin (basically a glorified corset).  Frankly, I found the glorified corset people insulting... probably because I like cake a lot.  So that's where we spent most of our time-- trying cake!  A lot of the bakeries there had samples, which was smart, because that's their selling point.  We found a delicious raspberry-flavored one.  My sister, when we swung by this particular bakery's booth a second time, grabbed a second raspberry sample.  Their chocolate was pretty good too!

At this point in the game, I already have my wedding dress.  That was a fast process.  I brought my mom with me the first time, ordered my dress at that point, then came back several weeks later with my sister and my fiance's two sisters to come pick it up with me and they also chose bridesmaid dresses that looked nice on all of them.  They even match, which I wasn't really expecting to happen!

Any way, since we were at the Bridal Fair and even though I already had my dress, it was still fun to peek in on the fashion show going on.  There were some great dresses out there.  I think if I hadn't picked out my dress at this time, it would be overwhelming.

My sister wants me to get a bus limo thing... I'm not sure where she thinks I've tucked my money away.  She'll probably get this for her wedding someday.  It's not really my style.  Shannon's a little more over-the-top than I am (sometimes).

Such a beautiful dress... the bottom part was surprisingly soft.

I think my biggest realization during the Bridal Fair was that there was so much to think about that I hadn't even thought to think about.  I'd thought about the place where we could get married, I'd secured the Pastor, I had figured out what to wear the day-of, but I guess I hadn't really thought about what the reception afterwards would look like-- how to set up the tables, what kind of flowers... that kind of thing.  I'm glad this is a team effort, or I might explode.  Wedding planners deserve a special place in heaven.

So that was my experience at the Twin Cities Bridal Fair!  I'm glad that I went, but holy cow... we've got some work to do.

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude

P.S. Happy Pi Day!  3.141592653 (3/14/15 at 9:26:53).