Right vs. … Right?

One of the first things I was taught as a teacher was never to put myself in a compromising position with a student. The reason? Even a hint of wrongdoing could ruin my teaching career. Forever. I have been scrupulous about keeping that rule, partially because I have seen people who don’t get in lots of trouble.

Enter Boy from High School.

One day last fall when I was leaving school, Boy asked me if I would give his mom a jump. Her car wouldn’t start, and he thought it was her battery. OK fine. I have jumper cables but no idea how to use them. He did know how to use them. No big deal.

In the process of the jump, Boy’s mom cried. She didn’t want to tell me what the matter was, and truthfully, I didn’t think I needed to know, but I did offer to pray with her. And she let me.

You might think that would be the end of the story, but Boy is one of “my” kids, and he would proceed to tell me what was going wrong at his house and that he didn’t know what to do about it. Although he is a very slow worker and does nothing outside of school, he tries when he’s in school. Usually. IF he graduates from high school, he will be the first in his family. I felt for the kid.

I told the hubby about Boy and his mom and we did some things for them. Fixed the trailer wall that blew in and out with the wind. Along with another lady, we provided some needs. That was in November and Boy has not said too much since, so I figured everything was going as OK as it could for him.

Until last Monday. I was leaving and was paged to come to the office. That pretty much never happens. Turns out that Boy, who hadn’t been in school for a while, had left a message for me. He lives outside the school district and so his mom has to take him to school for him to attend our school. Which she had until a week before that day. He told me he had been sick and then his mom’s battery was shot. What he wanted was a ride to school. From me.

Now, as a Christian and a mom, not to mention a woman who goes right by where he lives every day, I knew that I could provide that ride. HOWEVER … the teacher training was screaming in my ear that you are NEVER alone in a car with a problem student. Or any student. Ever. So I told Boy that I would let the powers that be know of his situation. Which I did.

That was a week ago. He has not been back. If it were warmer, he could probably ride his bike to school from where he is living, but it is January. I feel horrible.

I know that teacher-wise, I did the right thing. The Christian part of me, however, isn’t quite as sure.

Menu Plan Monday #12

Menu Plan Monday is hosted by Laura at Organizing Junkie.

Since next weekend will be so busy, this is my menu plan through February 10th. I can’t promise what the plan will look like for the week of the eleventh. If we don’t have to take any snow days, I get a winter break from 2/14 through 2/18!

Last week’s Asian Crock Pot turned out to be pretty good. I had read some reviews of the recipe that said the vegetables got mushy, so we did the meat six hours but the veggies only for four. It was so easy!

I am looking for palatable ways to add flax seed to our diet. I have found some baking recipes that incorporate ground flax seed, but if anybody has any other ideas, I surely am interested.

 

 

Monday: Chinese Pork and Pasta

Tuesday: Chicken Asparagus Chowder

Wednesday: Crock Pot Cream Salsa Chicken

Thursday: Baked Salmon Steaks

Friday: Leftovers

Saturday: Organized (I hope) chaos.  It involves being with my kids and grandkids though, so it’s something to look forward to.

Sunday: More chaos.

Monday: Chicken Pot Pie (American Heart Association Recipe)

Tuesday: Baked salmon with the hubby’s own special seasonings

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Fajita Stew, which I will make with the London Broil that I have on hand

Thursday: Chicken Pesto Pizza, which I will probably make with a Boboli crust (if I can find it) and my sister Amy’s pesto

Friday: The hubby has requested meat loaf.

Saturday: General Tso’s Chicken

Sunday: Leftovers

Lessons Learned While Making Tamales

In my menu plan last week, I listed this tamale recipe that the daughter was going to help me make. There was actually a method to my madness in waiting until she was here to attempt them. She doesn’t frighten as easily as I do. She’s a pretty good cook and has in fact had people comment that she should cook and bake as a business. She thinks that would take the enjoyment out of it all.

Anyway, we thought last night that we would make the tamales up ahead of time so that all we would have to do is bake them when we got home from church. Sounds reasonable, right? Especially since I had cooked up the beef, garlic and onion ahead of time, so I was congratulating myself that we were ahead of the game. WRONG!

Lesson #1: READ THE RECIPE!!

You have to soak the corn husks in water overnight. So much for the early start, and you would think that I would have learned my lesson there. But did I read? Yeah. But not very well. We decided to make the dough ahead. The problem with that was that the dough goes on the corn husks after they have soaked all night and you have patted them dry. Our dough, therefore, went in the refrigerator.

Lesson #2: If you didn’t read the recipe very well the first time, make sure you go through it with a fine-tooth comb the second time.

After we got home from church, the hubby went out to putter in his shed and the daughter and I got busy on the tamales. I was all ready to bake them in the oven until the daughter read the recipe to me and informed me that they needed to be steamed.

Uh-oh.

We tried to figure out what we were going to steam them in and decided to get out my turkey roaster. Sounded good. Problem solved, right? The recipe says the water has to boil, so I turned the roaster to 250 which, last I heard was above boiling, and set the timer for 45 minutes. Then we waited. It was now almost three o’clock and we were all pretty hungry.

The big moment arrived, and the daughter and I called the hubby in to eat. He’s more coordinated than I am, so he volunteered was volunteered to get the tamales out of the roaster. They smelled pretty good, but they were RAW!! Evidently just cooking them in barely boiling water was not enough.

By this time, I was ready to throw the whole $12 experiment into the garbage and go out to eat, but the hubby and the daughter wouldn’t let me. We set the oven to 400 and put the tamales in. Pretty soon we could smell the corn husks. It smelled like they were burning.

Uh-oh. Again.

The pan the tamales were in was aluminum, so I had it sitting on a cookie sheet. I decided to pour water in the cookie sheet, and we resumed cooking. Twenty minutes later, we had tamales! And they were pretty good!

The hubby brought the Masa Harina flour that I had, in frustration, planned to donate to the foods teacher at school back in the house from my car.

I did end up throwing out some of the corn husks. There are a lot of them in the package, and I didn’t think of counting out what I needed before I soaked them. Other than that, though, the tamales were not as big a disaster as I had begun to fear. Which brings me to lesson #3: Appreciate the people in your life who don’t freeze in the face of disaster. I probably would have figured things out eventually, but I knew the daughter had to go back to Ohio and so I felt some pressure time-wise. She, however, kept her head and, as a result, I kept mine.

And for my menu plan next week, I will READ THE RECIPES!!

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever!

The daughter is visiting, and she brought her Southern Living Incredible Cookies Cookbook with her. She had told me that the chocolate chip cookie recipe in there beat the one on the back of the Nestle bag, the Tollhouse recipe, but I doubted her. As of today, I am a believer! We used my new cookie scoop instead of making the cookies jumbo-sized. Here’s the recipe:

JUMBO CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened

1/2 c. shortening

1 c. firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 c. sugar

2 large eggs

2 t. vanilla extract

2 and 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

2 c. (12 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate morsels

1 c. chopped pecans

Beat butter and shortening at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy; gradually add sugars, beating well. Add eggs and vanilla, beating well.

Combine flour, soda and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating well. Stir in chocolate morsels and pecans.

Drop by scant 1/4 cupfuls onto ungreased baking sheets; flatten each cookie into a 3 1/2″ circl, making sure flattened cookies are 2 inches apart.

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Cool slightly on baking sheets; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Yield: 2 dozen

 

Things I Didn’t Know

There are lots of things I don’t know, actually, one of which is that there is a Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. Who would have known? I don’t think it’s common knowledge among English teachers… Add to that the fact that March 4th, which just happens to be my birthday, is National Grammar Day and I was hooked.  (It doesn’t take much to amuse me.)

I found out about the society because I read 46 Ways to Embarrass Yourself in Writing. I do try to avoid such things, but the brain is often faster than the pen. Besides, my particular brain still likes to spell phonetically. I was in my thirties before I caught on to the fact that the American spelling of judgment does not have an e, and I was irritated when my father pointed it out to me. During that same decade, the daughter participated in junior high spelling bees, and it was there that I learned what ordnance meant ( once I figured out that ordinance had not been misspelled on the practice sheet).

We break the rules of English all the time, really, but I do think it helps to know what they are and at least work toward promoting them. If you want to challenge your own spelling, you can take this quiz. I think I spell pretty well, but I only got eleven right. To boost my ego (or so I thought), I took the Evil Twin Word Quiz. At least I got seven right. I was reassured that, according to the commentary on the quiz, at least one of my mistakes is commonly made by professional writers. I think that when we write, our use of words reflects both what we have been taught and what we hear. Common usage of the English language breaks rules all the time.

I remember being a teen and thinking that by the time I was thirty, I would know all I needed to know. Ha! I laugh at that young woman now, mostly because I wonder what I was thinking. What fun would it be to live in a world that held no surprises? I doubt I was thinking about spelling or grammar at the time, but if such little things can trip me up, I guess there’s a lot more left for me to learn.

And now I am going to quit writing so I don’t drive myself crazy looking for mistakes I didn’t know existed. Have a good weekend!

Menu Plan Monday #11

Menu Plan Monday is hosted by Laura at Organizing Junkie.

We ended up having the Sausage French Bread Pizza on Saturday last week, so Sunday was our day for leftovers and General Tso’s Chicken will have to wait. The daughter changed her visit to this weekend. Since she loves to cook, I am hoping she will help me with some big-batch things and she can then take the leftovers home.

 

Monday: Creamy Chicken Potato Soup

Tuesday: Crumb-Topped Salmon

Wednesday: Creole Jambalaya without the shrimp

Thursday: Asian Crock Pot

Friday: Scotch Broth

Saturday: I am hoping the daughter will help me with this Tamale Recipe. When we had pigs back in Ohio, we had people who would make them for us with a pork donation. (Thanks, Pete!) If only we could make them nearly as well….

Sunday: Chi Chi’s Tortilla Soup

 

Books from the High School Library

The kids at my school are required to read books outside of class for English credit. The idea behind this is that if they read more they will like reading and become better at it, but the kids in my classes generally think the requirement is torture. The high school uses the Accelerated Reader program to gauge whether or not the kids actually read and understood the books. They read the books and then report to the school library to take tests on them. They have to get at least a 60% on the test at our school to get any credit for having read at all.

The 60% can be particularly frustrating for the kids with whom I work. For many of them, reading is the problem. While it’s true that some of them don’t even try, many of them are what were called in my reading methods class “word callers.” They’ve got the phonics down, but they struggle so much to get the words sounded out that they lose the meaning of the text in the process. That means they have problems passing the tests. So, how can I help them?

When I taught junior high English, I tried hard to read the things my students were reading so that I could recommend books to them. That quickly became an undoable project, but I did amass a list of favorites that have served me well over the years. I have found that if I recommend books that I have actually read to the kids, and if I can read enough of the book to them to get them started, they might actually finish and pass their tests.

One of the authors that consistently makes the grade with both boys and girls is S. E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders. She wrote a lot of other books too, like That Was Then, This Is Now and Rumblefish, but she’s best known, I think, for The Outsiders. Since the books are about gangs, the boys are amazed when I tell them that S. E. stands for Susan Eloise and that The Outsiders was published when Hinton was seventeen. What draws them to her stories, I think, is the social division that occurs in high school. Our school has its own version of Greasers and Socs, the groups that appear in Hinton’s stories. Even if it didn’t, there’s not a kid alive who doesn’t know how it feels to be on the outside of something looking in. For my kids, what they’re looking in on is, in many cases, success in school. Hinton’s books let them know that they are not alone.

The majority of my students are boys which, since I am not, can create a problem with my recommending booksl. There are some tried and true authors that seem to relate to the better readers, though. Among them are Gary Paulsen and Gary Soto. Paulsen’s adventure stories appeal to the boys, and Soto writes about experiences common to adolescent boys.

The girls are a little easier to please. Most of them will read books by Lurlene McDaniel, Mary Higgins Clark or Nicholas Sparks. I haven’t read any of McDaniel’s books, but I can see from the covers that she writes about kids who face life-threatening diseases and sometimes do not survive. According to our school librarian, by the time some of our girls graduate, they have read every book of McDaniel’s that the library holds.

Recently I forgot my own book, so I decided to check some out from the library. The first book was Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan. The book is rated for ages 7+. In it, an orphaned girl who has been living unhappily with her father’s mother finds happiness when she goes to live with her mother’s family. This book is a quick and simple read, but the fact that it has horses in it would attract a lot of the girls in my classes. Part of the story is actually told from the horse’s point of view.

The second book I checked out was The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by E.L. Konigsburg. I was familiar with Konigsburg, having read her book A View from Saturday aloud to my junior high classes. In her newer book, junior high student Amadeo Kaplan wants to make a name for himself by finding something unique. Amadeo makes friends with his neighbor, Mrs. Zender, a former opera singer, and with William Wilcox, whose mother is liquidating Mrs. Zender’s estate. Mrs. Zender has a story to tell about many of her belongings, and so the mystery unfolds… The book is recommended for ages 10-14, but I think it’s one of those books that people of any age would enjoy.

The books in the high school library, especially the Accelerated Reader books, are often not books that I would chose for my pleasure reading. I happen to agree with the idea that more reading makes for better readers, though, so I will continue to try and keep up on what’s available there so I can recommend books to “my” kids. We live in an age where I think that sitting down and reading a book is becoming a lost art, and I, for one would rather it didn’t. This is what Francis Bacon had to say about reading:

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted;
nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested:
that is, some books are to be read only in parts,
others to be read, but not curiously, and some few
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

If you don’t read a lot of books, how will you know which are which?

 

Who Am I?

I have been thinking a lot about how you find out who you are this week. One of my favorite authors, Madeleine L’Engle, said that we are the sum of all our ages. The daughter and I have discussed that we are the sum of all our experiences. Do we ever find out who we really are? How do we really know? The daughter-in-law posted this on the family website. While it was fun to see what she came up with, if you saw my grandsons in person, you would say, I think, that Tony is the one who looks like her and RJ looks like his daddy. Knowing who you look like just covers your physical characteristics, though. What about who you are inside? Does it help to know about those things?

The seniors at school are writing their senior memory books, and their first chapter is entitled, “Who Am I?” I work with mostly boys, and in typical boy style, they tell me they don’t have anything to say. However, once you get them talking, you really do find out a lot. One of my students talked openly about his ADHD and how weird it was for him to learn. He said most people don’t understand that he has to fidget to take things in. I was impressed that he wanted to include that in his entry; when I told him that, he responded that his ADHD is a big part of who he is. True. I hope he keeps his memory book so that if a child in the next generation of his family has ADHD, he might be comforted or instructed by the story of one of his “people.”

I have actually been thinking about my roots since Christmas. We get together with my niece and nephew then. They really don’t know a lot about our side of the family and they seem hungry for the knowledge. I thought I knew a lot, but my dad was in the mood to share at Christmas and I learned even more. See, I am over six feet tall, but my younger sister is 5′1″ and the older one was 5′4″. My parents aren’t really tall, so I sort of felt out of place growing up. I assumed my height came from my mother’s family. I thought her dad was over six foot, but my father said he wasn’t. This Christmas he showed me a picture of my grandmother’s brother who, he said, was 6′2″ or 6′3,” a really tall man for his time. It made me feel better to know that my “tall” genes came to me from both sides of my family.

Then, in the Beth Moore Bible study that I am doing, Beth talked about the spiritual heritage that you got from your great-grandparents. My greats were all gone by the time I was born. I have heard my dad talk about his mother’s parents, but not so much about his dad’s. So I asked, and this is what he said:

Grandpa and Grandma D. were both Methodists, though he was a member of Mt. Zion Methodist Church and she was a member of Mt. Sharon Methodist Church. I don’t know for sure, but I think the reason for the division was the fact that he smoked a pipe, something she didn’t approve of. They were both firm believers that the the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God and that Jesus is our Savior. They always lived by Christian principles and insisted that others should do so.

Grandma and Grandpa G. were also believers, but I don’t know about their church membership. Both were good examples of Christian behavior, and they always tried to live according to the rules given in the Bible. I will ask June [an aunt who is just a few years older than my dad] about their church membership.

I know that God doesn’t have grandchildren, that we all have to come to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but I am happy to know that my great-grandparents were believers. I know from talking to my dad that he was at his maternal grandfather’s side at his death, and the way that grandpa passed on to heaven, in addition to the way he lived his life, really witnessed to my dad.

My younger sister would disagree with me, but I really think it helps to know your people. When I read the Bible, it helps me to know that the Rebekah of the Old Testament made mistakes just like I do. God told her that her oldest child would serve the younger but, just like I have been known to do on occasion, she tried to get things to happen in her own time. While I am sure that she reaped the consequences of her actions, I am equally sure that, since the inspired authors of Scripture included her story in the Bible, God loved her anyway. Her story inspires me with hope. By its telling I know my people. By its telling I know my Father.

I am sure I won’t know who I am truly meant to be until I get to heaven, but as I travel along, it helps me to know the stories of those who have gone before me. By the time I get to heaven, maybe my faith will again be as pure as it was when I got my tonsils out. I was five, and the church newsletter from that time tells that I prayed with another child who was in the hospital with me. I don’t remember the incident, but I wonder if I would have had such a faith at that age if my “greats” and those that came after had not taken the care to instruct me in the Scriptures.

I can’t wait to get to heaven. But in the meantime, I am grateful for the glimpses I get of the person I am meant to be, and I am thankful for the foundation my “people” laid before me.

Hebrews 11:13-16

13All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

14People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.

15If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.

16Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

 

The Hubby Is Thinking Vacations Already

The hubby is looking forward to my getting out of school already in this almost second week of the semester, and he asked me where I wanted to go for vacation. Our funds are sort of limited until he turns 60, which is a little over three years, but I thought I might like to visit Copper Harbor, MI again. We drove through one day, along Brockway Mountain Drive, and it seemed like a place where anybody could relax.

Like I said, we only drove through, but it looks like there is a lot to do if you vacation at Copper Harbor. You can ride the Isle Royale Queen IV on a sunset cruise of Lake Superior. You can visit the Estivant Pines Sanctuary, home to pine trees that are more than 100 feet tall and 200 years old. You can go on a lighthouse tour or visit a mine or just walk along the shore of Lake Superior. You might even see the aurora borealis or a black bear. (I’d like to see the Northern Lights, but I’m not so sure about the bear…).

The more I think about it, Copper Harbor sounds like a good idea to me, too.

Ah, vacation. It’s only five months away!

Menu Plan Monday #10

Menu Plan Monday is hosted by Laura at Organizing Junkie.

We did pretty well on last week’s meal plan. We ended up having everything but the roast (and therefore its leftovers). On Friday night we made a quick run to Ohio to deliver some things for the daughter and were treated to her homemade pizza. She’s a pretty serious cook, and it was wonderful.

I have to admit that sometimes I am still tempted to eat out.  Old habits die hard.  It helps to remember that the hubby and I are both healthier and a little richer since we have resolved to menu plan.

Have a good week!

Monday: Pasta e Fagioli Soup

Tuesday: The hubby has a dinner out, so I am not sure what I will do here. Maybe some soup leftovers or a grilled cheese with some veggies.

Wednesday: Marinated Pot Roast

Thursday: Mantia’s French Leftover Beef with Cheese Toasts

Friday: The daughter is visiting, so I think I will make something special. She likes Sausage French Bread Pizza, which I make with low fat Alfredo Sauce, the recipe for which is listed below.

Saturday: General Tso’s Chicken

Sunday: Creamy Chicken Potato Soup

 

Low-fat Alfredo Sauce

 

1 c. skim milk

½ c. low-fat cottage cheese

1T. cornstarch

¼ t. salt

1/8 t. pepper

¼ t. garlic powder

½ c. Parmesan cheese

 

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Pour mixture into small saucepan and cook over medium heat until heated through and smooth, stirring occasionally. Serve with hot, cooked fettucini.