Thursday, December 19, 2013

I Hope She Chooses Life

Life as we know it
is about to be over

Life as we've lived it
is about to become bolder

From Ovid and Seneca
to Plutarch and Chaucer

Shakespeare's Sonnet 18
is a mastery of learning

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date: 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; 

And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

~ William Shakespeare, 1609

This is a road map
to all that we can be

And if you would just see 
all that you can be
As I see ye

(*Written for a former student who has tried to commit suicide three times
and who woke up today who found out her best friend killed themselves yesterday)

I DON'T CARE how smart I am
how big I am
how rich I can become

I CARE about this former student 
who can hold on
to all that they HAVE BECOME
and all that THEY CAN BECOME

And if they don't...
I have failed...
this student

This beautiful....
student

~ Written by
a teacher who cares

 404 years after Shakespeare
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I hope she chooses life

 
 


 

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Intelligent Thoughts Create Abundant Futures




"Your future begins with your next thought." ~ Bryant Mcgill

I took this at 6:30 am yesterday morning running past my school. My classroom is on the 2nd floor just to the right of the entrance. I work hard to make sure all my students have intelligent thoughts that create abundant futures.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Ten Times

I woke up this morning at 3:30 and knew two things.

One was that I was very tired.

The second was that an average of 167,000 people across the world died yesterday, and I wasn't one of them.

And that's all I needed to know.

Hello world! Today I am not just going to give you my best, but I am going to be ten times better than I have eve been:

 

Ten Times

 
Today I'm going to be
ten times better than I have ever been
 
Ten times the teacher
Ten times the reacher
I'm going to stretch my and my students' abilities
Right out of our skin
 
Ten times the father
Ten times the friend
Knowing I couldn't have loved my family more
When this day comes to an end
 
Let's Go!
 
~ Adam Stuart