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The Impact of Words

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    This week was an especially hard week at school. The first few weeks are always hard because you are setting up procedures, rules, and expectations. However, the most important thing you are setting up is a relationship with your students. I tell my students that I try to be firm, fair, and friendly. I let them know that once we set up our rules I am going to hold them to it, but if they feel something is unfair, they are welcome to let me know and we can vote on it as a class. One thing I have found especially true for 6th grade is that you have to earn their respect, but once you do they will go far for you.       During this week I felt frustrated at times. I have a few students who just don't seem to care regardless of the motivation or consequence. I decided to have a class discussion where I was open and honest about how I was feeling. I modeled for my students the faces I was seeing during class and asked them how it would make them feel if they were presenting. I remin
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Balance

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     Balance. The ability to give your time to multiple parts of your life. For years I've been trying to find this, trying to give myself some. It hasn't come. I have been all consumed by one thing, and although it's positive and rewarding, it's had a negative impact too. This year while sitting in a meeting, talking about advice for the new year, I heard someone say, "This job is tough. It's a 365 day/24 hour job. It can take all you've got, but if you're not enjoying the ride, it's not worth it. All of a sudden it hit me. I wasn't enjoying the ride. I was going through the motions, trying as hard as I could to be the ultimate best I could be, pushing and pushing myself to the limit.  I was exhausted and still came home feeling unsuccessful and frustrated. For years I had heard that I needed to let the small stuff slide and take part in other things. Someone even gave me a gift card to go to the movies. The card said, "For balance."
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Overwhelmed: That Feeling and Why It's a Good Thing

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     Many things in life can overwhelm us. Our responsibilities, jobs, finances, and family all have the power to make us feel overcome with stress and worry. People handle this in all different ways. Some people avoid everything that overwhelms them. Some people shut down. Other people just keep going.     When I get overwhelmed, my mom always asks me the same question. "How do you eat an elephant?"  And I reply, "One bite at a time."  Normally, feeling overwhelmed seems like such a bad thing. Lately though, I've been realizing why it's  a good thing. Feeling overwhelmed helps me to realize why I'm so grateful for all the things I'm overwhelmed by. For example:  My job: The knowledge that school starts in 2.5 weeks makes me feel a little overwhelmed. Thinking about all the things I need to do to get ready makes me anxious. However, it also makes me grateful for my job too. Recently, I just started tutoring a 15 year old boy who fai
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All About Quiet Books

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    I know this adorable almost two year old. He's a curious little guy who loves toy cars, his brother, and learning new words. I've enjoyed getting to know him over the past year. A month ago, I realized this little boy's birthday was coming up and decided to make him something. I had seen some ideas for quiet books at the Orem Summerfest and decided I would try to make my own. I have always loved crafting. Over the years, I have sewn two quilts, pajama pants, pillows, and a few other random things. I scrapbook sometimes too. Thanks to Pinterest, I found some amazing pictures and ideas to make a cute quiet book for the little guy. Here's some pictures. Front Cover- weave pattern Road Page (for the original idea and template, click here ) (Note: To make the toy car stay in the pocket better, I would put it so the car is sitting in it vertically instead of horizontally. ) Farm Page  The barn opens up to show animal finger puppets inside. (for the origina
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Maybe It's For Me

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        As most of you know, I have been serving in Young Womens for the past couple of months. It's been fun but an adjustment too. I have fond memories of YW and I loved my leaders and the other youth. We became close and spent a lot of time together. Even after coming to college, one of my YW leaders moved to Orem and would pick all of us YW up that were attending BYU to go to her house for dinner and desserts. We even babysat for her a couple of times. It was fun and I was sad to see her move away. ready to leave for girls camp/youth conference one summer       Experiencing YW from the leader point of view has been way different. There are very few youth in the ward. There are only about 10 YW total and not all of them come. I am in charge of beehives and we recently just had a new girl turn 12 so there are now 3 girls. I've had a hard time adjusting to it all. Maybe it was because in my mind I imagined coming in, being introduced to all the girls and leaders, instant
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It's Spring!

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It has been so nice to finally have the weather feel more like spring. On Monday I went out and bought some flowers for our front. I got Gerbera Daisies of course!  Planting flowers in my yard made me think about making flowers for mother's day. Here's some paper flowers that my students made. For instructions on how to make them, click here .  We also made cards for mother's day today. They were pretty creative!  Happy Spring! 
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Experiencing the Holocaust

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     The past few weeks, my students have been studying the Holocaust. I decided that they were learning, but it wasn't personal enough and that's when true learning occurs. I found a book called "The Butterfly" by Patricia Palocco. It's a children's book based on the true story of a German girl whose family hid Jewish families during the Holocaust. In the end, the family tries to get the Jewish girl and her family to freedom but they don't know if they made it. Then the German girl sees a huge swarm of butterflies and knows her friend made it to freedom. After reading the book, we talked about how the butterflies symbolized freedom in the story, something that Jews didn't have.       After our discussion, I read my students the poem, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by Pavel Friedman. It is from the book, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" which is a complication of poems from the Terezin concentration camp. It was a "model
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