Mcgilla’s Weblog

tomorrow i’m visiting a friend’s church because it’s his last sunday to lead worship.  Our other friend, who invited me, told me that they are having a drawing for all the first time visitors for this super nice grill and a ridiculously nice set of steaks….. keep your fingers crossed that i win.  Not that i have anywhere to put a bbq grill…. but still, i WANT IT!

for my third post today…. i realize that you are sick of me…. but this needed to be shared.  I wore a really cute jacket all day and it has one of those collars that kinda sticks up so it’s not like a lapel….. i don’t really know how to explain it…. but anyway, it rubbed my neck all day long, and now it looks like i have a big ole hicky… or actually 2 one on each side.

Exhibit A

exhibit b

gah… this would happen to me

that’s john, not joe.  He’s my friend. He plays basketball.  He’s really tall.  6′9″. Coach decided that the team needed to be clean shaven. you know, like duke. After much sweet talking, i talked him into the fumanchoo before shaving it all. Awesome

Today, Mrs. Story was to be out of the room to do testing.  She had a sub planned for the day, but basically the day was given to me.  I’m still not planning, so my teacher got regular sub plans together, but i did all the teaching.  I was a little nervous going into today, but i was excited to get a whole day under my belt without being watched by my master teacher.  The sub (who is a regular in the building) all day said over and over, i don’t even know why i’m here, i can’t believe this is your first week, i could have never gotten as much done as you have.  So, that makes me feel good… but my favorite moment of the day was when one of my boys gave his table a sunday school lesson while they worked.  He said, do you know who our REAL father is?  I’ll give you a hint, he created the WHOLE world…. it’s GOD!  And then he added that they were all three the same. And one of the girls asked who was the same, and said, you know… God, Jesus, and the Holy Moley!…… Well… at least he’s excited about it… we can work out better names later.   The only bad thing was, this lesson he was giving started a bit of a disagreement.  He said that God created the world, while the girl next to him said that Jesus created the world, and then they came to ask me who was right….. all my bible school education and i didn’t know how to answer…. I’m pretty sure i avoided the question and told them to get back to work.

it’s funny how sometimes taking a story you know well out of it’s normal context can illuminate new stuff for you.  I recently read the story in Mark chapter 5ish where Jesus meets Legion, the man with all the demons.  This guy is nuts, he throws himself into fire and terrorizes an entire town.  Jesus meets him and casts all the demons out of the man and into a huge herd? of pigs.  The pigs go crazy and drown themselves.  This basically crushes the economy of the whole town, the people are less than thrilled and want Jesus to leave.

now normally i read this story when talking about how powerful Jesus is, those demons ain’t got nothin on Him…. or talking about His miracles… that sort of thing…. and I’ve always kinda had the thought… now why would Jesus throw those demons into the pigs??… those poor people losing their livelihood.  I’d even had the passing thought that it was a bit of an oops moment for Jesus.

Then i put the story into the “Jesus loves us” context.  What if, Jesus saw the situation (because he is fully God and that makes him omniscient) and knew that there was two choices.  1. don’t do anything for this guy and this whole town will be receptive to him and he can go talk to all of them 2. free this guy and ruin the town and they’re gonna kick him out.

Jesus didn’t go with the numbers, he left the 99 to go find the 1.  Jesus knew that this would make the whole town want him to leave, but he loved this man so much that he set him free anyway.  He then told the man to go and tell everyone what the Lord had done for him.

The great thing is that love applies to me too.  God loves me so much that he would sacrifice everything to prove to me how much.  And maybe the town kicked Jesus out… but I bet he knew what he was doing when he told the man to go and tell what the Lord had done.  After a while, i’d be willing to bet that several of those town’s people saw for themselves the awesomeness and came around to accepting that Jesus was who he said he was.  So, now that i know how much He loves me, what should i do? I should go and tell what the Lord has done for me…. And lookie there… the great commission…. kinda cool how that whole book fits together.

Today i did draft book with the kids.  Basically we make a circle map the middle is what our theme is (this week our theme is bears) and then the outter circle you write things about what is in the middle, then the kids have to write two sentences about the theme.  We would have done bears but since it was icey today and Texan kids don’t get that very often we made a circle map about ice.  I was asking the kids things they knew about ice and for the most part i got normal answers…. Ice is cold. Ice is slippery, You can play on ice. ect.  Then came Camden who said, ” Ice is bad because it makes the power go out, and then the house gets cold and it makes momma cuss.” Classy.

Today was my first day of official student teaching…. i did morning calendar and counting and a couple other songs.  Then… in the afternoon, my teacher was like… so you haven’t been here for math yet, right.  I said right.  And she said ok…. have you ever used an elmo? (which is like a camera that you put your book under and it projects it onto the screen) Nope, i haven’t used one before.  And she said… oh… well here’s the math book, we’re doing these pages, you go do it…… Wait, what? were we in the same conversation because i’m pretty sure she asked me if i had seen her do math yet and if i had ever used an elmo before… i said no to both of those questions…. yet she still just gave it all to me without anytime to even look over the pages and see what i was presenting…. It went fine… but jeez edith!!! Oh and Thursday there’s going to be sub… aka, the class is mine all day! YIKES!

I watched the vols/memphis game today, i was rooting for the vols, and they lost a heart-breaker, just one hoop…. then tonight i went to the SAGU boys game…. they lost by i think 5.  They should have won… at one point they were up by 12.  for some reason, our guys play a crazy sloppy 2nd half, and if my count was right they missed 15 free throws… FIFTEEN!  GAR.  It’s been a rough day…. On the bright side, i got this cute hat today on clearance for two funky dollars.

hey… i kinda look like i have a dimple in this picture… weird.  OH! and everyone is trying to tell me that i’m not too old to put a purple chunk in the back of my hair in the under-layer. I don’t agree. I think i’m too old for sure… but people are working hard to talk me into it.

Today my cooperating professor came to my classroom to talk to my master teacher about what the university expects of me and when she can come and observe me, yadda yadda.  So, i was left in the classroom by myself for the first time.  Mrs. Story gave me a couple of things to have the kids do and then a “if you have time” activity.  I looked at what she gave me and was pretty sure i wasn’t going to have enough to keep us busy, but she was rushed because Dr. Boone was pulling her out in the hallway so i figured i’d deal with it.  So…. within about 15 min we had finished the work given to us plus learned a poem (the if you have time activity) and then we made up motions to go with the poem.  By my calculations i still had about 10min to fill so i had a few kids who didn’t finish their morning work, get their stuff out and get to work and i had the rest of the kids get their library books and spread out to read.  A few mins later Mrs. Story came waltzing back in and had a rather confused look on her face when she saw her kids sprawled around the classroom quitely looking at books or sitting in the corner reading their books to one another.  This was the conversation that followed:

Mrs. Story: are they reading their library books

Me: yes, we finished our work and i wasn’t sure how long you’d be, so rather than start something else i thought they could read

Mrs. Story: they finished both pages?

Me: Yup, and i checked them all for names and dates and they are turned into the box on my desk

Mrs. Story: did you go over the poem

Me: yep, the whole class recited it a few times, and then we made up motions for it and sang it a few more times

Mrs. Story: Wait, they did both papers?

Me: yep, everyone finished them, and then we did the poem and made up motions, and now they’re reading

Mrs Story: …… wow.

Me: =D  (thinking haha i win)

Today i put two boys in timeout at recess and during the work day i made two kids “pull their pins” (not good).  It’s not all giggles and rainbows anymore…. Ms McGill has come to town.