"Life is a highway" - Tom Cochrane


Can life can be compared to as being a highway?  I think it can.  We all "drive on" this highway called life.  For some of us, it is a long ride filled with high points and low points and many curves.  For others, the drive is too short, it is over way to quickly.  Sometimes we get to choose the road to drive on.  Some will chose the nice direct route, flat and predictable.  Others will pick the way that's the most complicated probably getting lost along the way.  We have people we come across during the course of our lives who are like a GPS or maps.  These individuals help us to find our way through the road of life. 

Sometimes though, you are on the nice, direct route.  Everything seems hopeful.  You have plans to get somewhere, you plan of taking your time and enjoying the scenery.  But something happens, maybe your car breaks down or maybe you have an accident and the car doesn't quite function like it used to.  These people may simple get their cars fixed and carry on down the road of life.   I like these people the best.  They continue on living, even if their cars don't work as well or look like they used to.  Will they get to their finial destination?  You bet.  Maybe not the way they expected to, but they will get there.

What about me?  What kind of road did I pick to travel on?  If you ask my family, they would probably say that I am on a road to a dead end.  I am  going to come to a point where the road will just stop and I will have to turn around and return to my former self.  I assure you, this is not the case.  I may not have picked a route that is straight and direct.   My road is windy, maybe not even paved.  It mat appear to be a tough, bumpy route to others, but I am ok,I'll get through it.  I believe this is a short cut, that one day I will hit a smoothly paved highway and it will be a gentle ride from there.   

Welcome 2014!

It is a New Year and I'm ready.  2013 will be known as the year that I officially stopped being a witness. I stopped attending meetings and turning in field service time in July.  That means this month I officially become an "inactive" witness.  I just came back fom a visit with my mother and it was one of the best visits with her that I have ever had.  I think she has finally accepted the fact that I will not return to the Jehovah's Witnesses.  She was non confrontational so we had a real nice time together.  I had a real relaxing New Year's Day.  I enjoyed this holiday season and I even got to celebrate my first Christmas in 27 years.  I'm starting this New year feeling great!

Hate

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I open this post with a quote from Dr. King.  He was a man who lived his life in a very non violent, loving way.  The quote above is excellent and I should really practice it myself.  Should is a very important word.  I have hate in my heart right now for my sister and brother in law.  I hate them.  I'm not supposed to hate, especially your own family, but I do.  I prayed last night for the first time in a long time, I asked god to take this rage I have out of my heart, I asked him to bring peace to my soul again.  I don't wish to hate.  Unfortunately the emotion still lives inside of me.  

So I have decided to cut out destructive influences in my life, the ones that cause this unsettling feelings in my soul.  I cut out the the religion that was causing me bad feeling, next I will cut off my sister.  I'm sorry.  You may be family but you have broken me this weekend.  Your words and actions have caused some sort of divide in my life that my love and I have spent the last day trying to fix. I hate you.  I will try to learn from peaceful people like Dr. King.  But for right now, I'm done with you.

Beautiful lights

 I haven't been to a Jehovah's Witness meeting since this summer.  I decided to actually celebrate the holidays this year, without guilt.  I enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with my boyfriend and his family.  I ate way too many desserts, we played  Bingo and even sang karaoke, it was quite an enjoyable evening.  The next night, I got a phone call from my party pooper mother.    "Why would you celebrate such a pagan holiday?" she yelled through the phone.  I informed her that the holiday had no religious roots and it's main theme was for families to get together for a meal.  Then a few days after that, my sister texted me saying "please give thanks to God every day and not just one day a year by eating turkey."  Geez, they clearly have missed the point of the holiday which is to be with family.  Which doesn't surprise  me since our family can't get together without some sort of major argument.

Since I am now like the spawn of Satan because I have decided to celebrate holidays, I figured I would go all out and even decorate my house a little.

I spent this evening watching the Rockefeller tree lighting special, and I even got little butterflies in my stomach when the tree lit up.  I'm beginning to like holidays...

Common Core Modules

Education is not the same anymore.  I haven’t been doing this job for very long.  I completed my teacher education program in May 2003.   After that, I was a substitute teacher, and then I worked as a ESL/Pre GED instructor at a for family literacy program.  I didn’t get my first teaching job until 2006, months after I finished my Master’s degree in Special Education.  In the last few years, there has been significant shifts in education.  One of the major shifts has been the Common Core State standards.  The Common Core State Standards are an initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula into alignment with each other.  The idea behind having national standards may be good. I worked in various states thought my career, each state use to have their own set of standards.  If we are a united country, it may be necessary for our school systems to be united too, and to have one goal…to prepare our students to be college and career ready by the end of 12^th grade.

 One of the major problems I have with the Common Core with are the one size fits all Common Core modules that were adopted by the school district I work for, and many other school in New York.  The New York State Department of Education has provided curriculum modules and units in English Language Arts and Math.  These modules are very scripted.  Most everything the teacher must say and do within the lesson is written down.  How much time it takes to do certain activities is also  listed.   The Child's classwork and homework are created by the state.  These teachers are becoming actors, and merely following a script.  There is hardly any room for creativity.  One of my colleagues informed me she gave one of the state created module exams.  There was forty minutes allotted for giving the exam, but none of the students finished in 40 minutes.  She had to continue on in order to get the whole module completed by the end of the quarter.   I teach Social Studies, the state of New York has not yet come out with modules for Social Studies.  But teachers of math and ELA must follow these scripted modules. 

Recently one of my Facebook friends posted about the Common Core modules.  Her son is gifted and at age ten has already skipped a grade.  He graduated from a private elementary school and had to go to public school, because there are no private Middle Schools in her area.  The child is board at school.  He finishes his work quickly and has to wait for other children to catch up.  The teachers can't give this child a different assignment because they must follow these scripted modules.  It was suggested that he be put into a 7th or 8th grade ELA class, but the books they read in these class, based on common core modules, have murder and rape in them so they are not age appropriate.  Everyone's hands are tied in this situation.

One teacher wrote an excellent post about his take on the Common Core modules.  Please read it, and form your own opinions on the Common Core.

theplainsatisfactions.wordpress.com/.../teacher-ken-siders-not-to-miss-perspective-on-classroom-modules/‎

 

Changes...

"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living."

Gail Sheehy

"You've changed". That's what I was told by my mother this summer.  She really doesn't think I have made positive changes in my life, i think that I have.  I believe  all the  so called "changes" I have made are just normal human development. I have set "life" goals for myself.  I have more than just a job, I have a career, one that I enjoy tremendously.  I am beginning to establish roots, I purchased my first home and I have the cutest dog.  I learned about true unconditional love.  I have a stable, loving relationship with my very best friend.  Yes I have changed.

I found this cute little quote that is quite appropriate for me!

"The Declaration is a magnificent document."
Paul Gillmor

My Declaration of Independence

I hold these truths to be self evident, that all people are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Some of us believe that worshiping a God will help us in our pursuit of happiness.   It is our right as a human to worship God if we choose.   That to secure the right, religion is set up among men.  When a religion becomes destructive, it is the right of the individual to alter his beliefs, or abolish them.  We have a right to follow a new religion, or no religion at all.  It is up to the individual  to decide how to worship, thus likely  effecting their safety and happiness.

When religion has a long train of abuses, and when a person is forced to serve a religious "dictatorship" it is their right, to throw away such a religion and to be concerned about their future mental security. 

Such has affected me as a Jehovah's Witness, and such is now the necessity which forced me to alter my former religion. 

I, therefore do solemnly declare that I am free and independent from the Watchtower Society and that all connection between me and the Society is and ought to be totally dissolved and that I am a free and independent person.  I have full power to decided to serve god on the way I see fit and to develop relationships with who I want, and to think in the way I want and to do all other acts in which independent people do.