Kindergarten

I think that I'd be the last one to tell you that I would like to teach kindergarten, but after yesterday, needless to say, teaching kindergarten is not that bad. Seriously, who would have thunk it?!

Yesterday and today was type of cementing for me. That regardless of what grade I teach, I still love to do it. Regardless of how obnoxious or rowdy some of the kids can get I really love to do it. After yesterday and today, I thank God for equipping me in this way that I can teach any grade and still love doing it. Not many people can say this, thus, I thank my God for this awesome blessing!

Whirlwind

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind, full of weddings, rehearsals, meetings, trainings, celebrations, fellowship, games, and to top it off, the last day of school!

Two weddings in the span of a week, pretty brutal, but so awesome to see how God has united these two couples. Being involved in weddings is so fun, yet exhausting, but it is so rewarding and an honour to be a part of your friends' big day! The rehearsal for Erik and Ruth was quick and simple - yet the wedding party still had issues the following day =p The rehearsal dinner was yum in my tummy and the laughs that we had after were great! Man, some of the apps that the iphone has are ridiculous! And God definitely came through with the weather! Both weddings were sandwiched between days that had tons of rain, but on the day of their weddings, it was gorgeous sunshine and sometimes a little to hot for comfort - but who could really complain?! Congratulations to Ruth & Erik Meechem and Jamie & Kevin Kwok!

[sidenote: sitting during the wedding ceremony as a bridesmaid was so great! =)]

Looking back at the last two weeks, I realized how many meetings I actually attended! Mainly for ministry, but also to meet up with my old AT to talk about job stuff. Jobs are slowly being posted, but I'm being selective - I don't know if that is the best move on my part, but I do not feel like I would do well on the interviews if I got one since I do not really want to teach - further I do not think that God is calling me to apply to every job on VIP. I'm still trying to remain patient and not apply to everything I am qualified for. I know that God has a plan for me but much like a lot of people, sometimes it is hard to wait for it to unfold in His timing. Please pray that I continue to hold steadfast to Him and not be wavered by the temptations of this world.

Other meetings in the past week have been to catch up with people - Aban and Jessy to be precise. I love my relationship with these two women of Christ. Even though we have not seen each other for the longest time, we are able just to pick up where we left off the last time we spent time together - talking about everything under the sun! Family, friends, ministry, work and lots lots more! I love these two ladies to pieces and I'm truly thankful that God has placed them in my life to challenge me and inspire me.

Two jam-packed trainings on a Saturday morning was pretty intense. It was the day after the first buddy groups for WWJD fellowship and it was encouraging to go to the meeting and share my experiences of the last month being in youth ministry. From the unexpected thanks from parents, to awesome talks with my girls, to seeing the girls in their own skin, and so much more, it is great to be in those meetings where we hear these praise reports and updates on how God is working! The youth pastor has really engrained it into me how it is so important to share and experience the joys of YM together, just to get through the valleys that we are bound to face during the long haul. After the YMC meeting, I went to the Jr. High camp meeting where I was welcomed in as one of the group. I know that God placed this camp on my heart for a reason - not only are all my girls going - but when I got to the meeting, I would be working with a number of the parents of the WWJD kids. How exciting (and frightful) is this?! There is a reason for everything that happens. It'll be an interesting week indeed.

The last day of school was almost a week ago now. And what a great day it was. I received a card from the kids and a great present (Lindt truffles - my favourite!) from the teacher. It was sad to see them all go and to see the kid that I have been helping go off as well - I can only pray that he gets the support he needs at home and during the next school year.

God has blessed me abundantly the last two weeks, and may I remember this every day, especially in hours of wanting, stupidity, and loathing - how can I ask for more when God has done so much for me. I can only imagine what God has planned for the rest of the summer.

Some prayer requests:

- WWJD camp (I'm organizing, yet I do not have much done yet!)

- that I remember to pray for all the WWJD kids

- Jr. High VBS camp

- first youth service

- consistent daily QT and God time

- Kev is starting work in Aug - only God knows what is in store for us after that!

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

Today during play day I was partnered up to follow around a kid in my class. He is such a sweet boy, but cognitively is functioning really low. But today, after a small mishap during one of the actvities he says: "My arm is out of commission."

That made my day. *heart*

Parable of the Pencil

I heard this story today at an assembly.  I don't quite remember, but I think that she amended some parts of the story to make it more inclusive. *sigh*

The Pencil Maker took the pencil aside, just before putting him into the box. 

"There are 5 things you need to know," he told the pencil, "Before I send you out into the world. Always remember them and never forget, and you will become the best pencil you can be."
"One: You will be able to do many great things, but only if you allow yourself to be held in Someone's hand."
"Two: You will experience a painful sharpening from time to time, but you'll need it to become a better pencil."
"Three: You will be able to correct any mistakes you might make."
"Four: The most important part of you will always be what's inside."
"And Five: On every surface you are used on, you must leave your mark. No matter what the condition, you must continue to write."
The pencil understood and promised to remember, and went into the box with purpose in its heart.

Now replacing the place of the pencil with you.  Always remember them and never forget, and you will become the best person you can be. 
One: You will be able to do many great things, but only if you allow yourself to be held in God's hand. And allow other human beings to access you for the many gifts you possess.
Two: You will experience a painful sharpening from time to time, by going through various problems in life, but you'll need it to become a stronger person. 
Three: You will be able to correct any mistakes you might make. 
Four: The most important part of you will always be what's on the inside.
And Five: On every surface you walk through, you must leave your mark. No matter what the situation, you must continue to do your duties.

Allow this parable on the pencil to encourage you to know that you are a special person and only you can fulfill the purpose to which you were born to accomplish.
Never allow yourself to get discouraged and think that your life is insignificant and cannot make a change.

I really liked this story.  I actually like this one I found online even better because while the principal was reading it, I was actually thinking about how it parallels our Christian walks (I think she omitted the part about God in her explanation of point 1).  

But yes, when she was reading about point 1, I was thinking about how God holds me in the palm of His hand and how I can accomplish so much with Him in my life, by his power doing all the work!  Point 2 probably resonated more powerfully than some of the other points as I feel that I have gone through so much sharpening in the last 6 months, from family, work, and ministry.  But God has definitely made me a much stronger person for it.  It has also allowed me to rely on him evermore so!  And with God I can definitely correct any mistakes, or sins, that I have made.  It is through the daily renewal and washing only given by the blood of Jesus Christ!  Hallelujah!  Point 4 is quite the cliche, but still very true.  Too often we get sucked into the consumeristic antics of the North American society, but at the end of the day none of that matters if you are a sucky person on the inside.  God doesn't care for the outside, but really looks at our hearts.  I have to continually search my heart and ensure I am living my life for Him, and Him alone!  Point 5 spoke to me as well, with all the stuff that God has been putting me through.  It is true that whatever situation God puts me in, I have to respond in a way that is holy and pleasing to him.

I love how God speaks to me, regardless of the medium.  Love, love, love!

Decisions

Teaching is definitely one of my passions in my life.  God has definitely instilled this in me.  However, I am now at a crossroads in my very green teaching career.  At the moment I am qualified to teach grades 4-10.  It is quite a large range, and seriously, with only two placements in teacher's college and the limited number of placement options, I got placed in grade 6 and 8--not that much a difference in terms of teaching styles and students' needs.  However, I have placed myself in a situation where I have been able to expose myself to the younger kids and hopefully to high school students as well.  And now I am pondering about my next ABQ course, whether to take the Primary ABQ or the Senior ABQ.  I know I have not prayed enough about it, and I know that God will tell me something.  I am just confused right now.

Family Ties

My first day volunteering at a junior school, God revealed how truly blessed I am.  I shared with Felix and Kelly that evening how truly lucky and blessed we are to have families that love us so much and cared for us for the past 20+ years!  I don't believe we truly grasp how much our family does for us until we witness what other children/people are going through or went through as children.

We joke now as adults about how frayed the featherduster was or how many broken chopsticks there were but we now understand more clearly why our parents had to discipline us.  There is love behind that discipline, they want us to grow up into individuals who understand right from wrong, to be compassionate to others, and to have integrity, doing the right thing when people are not looking. 

As a teacher, I come across many students of various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds.  We are taught as teachers in teacher's college and within the various school boards that we need to be accepting of all individuals.  I may comment on this another day in regards to how I can demonstrate Jesus in my workplace, but this post is about something else, something that saddens me.

Without getting into too many specifics, I was working with a boy and he had a bit of a breakdown because that morning, his breakfast consisted of one piece of luncheon ham.  It was snacktime and he was eating parts of his lunch because that is all his parent had packed him.  The teacher made him stop or else he would not have a lunch to eat and lunchtime.  He was a little upset at this fact and it just snowballed from there.  He could not concentrate on the language work he was supposed to complete, complaining his stomach hurt and that he was hungry.  It just broke my heart, but also frustrated and angered me as well.  Afterwards, speaking with the teacher, it seems like this is not the first time.

This put some things into perspective for me.  When sharing with Felix and Kelly that night, it showed me how truly blessed we are.  We have a family that loves us, a roof over our heads, a warm bed to crawl into at night, clothes on our back, and food to eat at our disposal.  In addition, we have the luxuries of attending post-secondary education, gadgets at our fingertips, and cars to get us to places.  Too often we take this for granted.  I seriously do not remember a time when I went to school hungry when I was in grade school(of course, high school and university don't count because I was dumb and too cool for breakfst).  I am so grateful for my parents who have worked so incredibly hard their entire lives to provide the essentials, and so much more, for me.  It's just sad that I needed a wake-up call like this hard situation to realize and remember this fact.

Stretching

This weekend has definitely been about stretching, and lots of it from God.  He forced me to step out of my comfort zone and made me rely on him ever more so the past few days, and in the end I am humbled and grateful.

On Friday the junior high fellowship I help out in were carolling at a senior's home.  I don't believe I prayed enough for the event, but God helped me through.  He provided me opportunities to speak with people, the kids, adults, and seniors alike.  The kids are starting to trust me, even though I still get some of their names wrong sometimes!  In reflection, I was touched that one of the parents took the time to learn my name, as one of the new counsellors of WWJD.  And I had the opportunity to help a small group of girls talk to the seniors, one gentleman was a reverend and he was so grateful to have had us sing to him and another I was able to talk to without abandonement about hockey. =)

Saturday was an interesting day.  Stretched in terms of relationships and in terms of living out my faith in my community.  Something happened early in the day which humbled me and caused me to rely on God evermore.  However, he always delivers.  Everything is good now, not great or awesome, but I will take good for now--God will deliver awesomeness in his time.

The prayer walk at Square One was also interesting.  I liked that we took the time to pray for a number of things going on in the mall, where we can see God working amongst all the crazy shoppers and the rush of commercialism at this time of the year.  I pray that our monkey goes to a child in need and for him or her to feel joy even in his or her circumstances.

That night my family went out to dinner to celebrate my brother's birthday that had just passed the day before.  We went to Pizza Hut where we had some good family time.  My daddy ordered a yummy pasta dish to share amongst the family alongside our pizzas, it was delish!  I know that God had been telling me to share something with my parents for a while now.  I got the courage after a trip to the washroom where I did a quick prayer and when I got back to the table I asked my parents and brother if they wanted to attend the Christmas banquet at church.  It was surreal to me in a sense, that I was actually asking my parents to come to a church event--I had always thought that God would provide others to bring the gospel to my parents, but lo and behold he has been constantly pruning me for this instance.  They asked questions about it, they  show some to little interest (they think that buffets destroy your stomach... hahaha), but I am glad that I asked them.  However, I think I failed when my dad breached the subject again later in the evening, I did not adequately answer him or spend time talking with him about it.  This just showed how unprepared I still am, which brought me before God again asking for his forgiveness and being stupid.  I am scared to pray about it because I know God will hear me and give more more opportunities, I know I'm silly, but this is new and foreign to me, look how long it has taken me to get this far!  But I know I have to, thus, if my parents don't come to the banquet this year, I know that God is working in them, and I am his vessel.

Today was a day full of rollercoasters.  This morning's message was interesting, I don't know what to totally make of it yet.  Will need to pray about it more, but Rev. Tim Wai did remind me of a couple of things, nothing I have is mine, it belongs to God and I need to give back to where I take from, the church.  One more thing that spoke to me after the day before, was that there are consequences to our actions.  How true.

After church, Richard and I went to a shelter to carol and pass out gifts which was organized by Auntie Vivian.  I have to admit, I was not totally sold on the idea when it was brought up at our meeting Thursday, but God was telling me to go.  And I'm glad that I did.  

The interaction with the residents was probably the best part.  During carolling I was looking out into the small crowd of mainly children and teens, with some parents on the side supervising their kids, when I noticed this one girl staring intently at me.  Not once or twice, but a number of times when I looked up from my song sheet.  She looked familiar to me and I think she had the same feelings as well.  I couldn't place it for a long while, where had I seen her before?  But then it finally clicked, I had taught her during my last placement.  She had not been there when I was teaching the first time, but she was in the classroom I observed alongside the Special Education teacher.  It actually broke my heart because just from being in the classroom full of kids, you will never know their full stories.  If I had been her actual teacher of course I would have looked through the OSRs and would have found out.  However, as a mere observer and assistant at times, it is hard if not nearly impossible to know the stories behind each face.  God knows though, he knows all and he cares for all his children.  Now, I do not know if her or her family are saved, but I know that God convicted me to go for a reason, and seeing her and talking with her and her brother made all my fears, anxieties, worries, and doubts about going to the shelter disappear.  This makes me a better teacher but even more importantly a better follower of Christ within the classrooms.

I thank God for this weekend full of stretching.  It was definitely needed even if I didn't want it, he humbled me and put me in my place.

Class

Today I was supply teaching for a grade 6 class for the learning centre that I work at on Saturdays. I wish I had this class. It probably is because of the numbers, but these kids were actually well behaved because of Hallowe'en and all, but the three that I had for each class were well behaved. I do not believe that my classroom management skills are top notch, but sometimes some of the kids in my class get to me to no end, and I have to rely on the skills that I acquired to calm myself down and think of a strategy to calm the kids down. The material I was teaching was not that bad, helping verbs for English and decimals/fractions/percents for math.

My experiences with these kids and my tutoring of kids of a wide age range has solidified the fact that I can not handle kids under Grade 4 - and that grade is even pushing it! =p

Decimals

When I was tutoring yesterday, we were working on decimals, multiplying and dividing decimals to be precise. While in teacher's college we went through the theory behind all of this, but when looking at it yesterday, I had a mini panic attack in my mind because I had forgotten it all and was not able to effectively communicate the theory to my student. However, thank God for textbooks because I opened it up and it provided a wonderful example and everything came flooding back!

When looking at my student's questions yesterday and when I learned the theory behind multiplying and dividing decimals, I reflected back upon my own learning of this material and realized that I never really learned the theory behind it, but I just did it, mostly by rote. Although I know many of our careers and jobs do not really need us to multiply or divide decimals, I wonder if any one in the working world now actually understands the theory behind it.

The question my student had to answer was (paraphrased because I can't really remember):
How come when you multiply 0.4 and 0.7, it will equal a smaller number/decimal?

Learning about this in particular was very enlightening when I was in teacher's college and was glad kids were able to learn how this actually worked, versus doing just everything by rote. However, there were some things that I also learned in teachers college especially in math and numeracy that was to a point disturbing. I say this because one of my students is in Grade 7 and is still having difficulties with her 4 times tables at times, and I am thinking back to my days in Grade 7 and I would think that I had a better grasp of the times tables and long division. For me, I find that as teachers we go so far to accommodate for some students but sometimes might be more detrimental than helping them. I feel that there are times for rote memorization and times for new strategies as well. It also could be because of my background as a CBC where my Chinese parents drilled the times table into my head after I could grasp the concept of multiplication. However, I think when I have kids I will do the same, because watching my student struggle yesterday with long division questions and sometimes even simple addition was frustrating and sad to me at the same time. It will be interesting to see how my tune will change when I actually get into the classroom myself.