I went to Tufts University’s indoor track today to watch my fiance run in the alumni “Has Beens” mile in a meet against Coast Guard Academy, MIT, UMass Boston, and more. While waiting for his race to start, I watched various heats of the women’s and men’s mile. As the runners in heat 2 of the men’s mile sped by, I heard a kid behind me yell “Go Charles!” To my surprise, the Charles in question was one of my former students (JQUS ’12), now running for Bridgewater State University. Still learning how to take selfies; had to get out of the way of the 60m hurdles He finished in…
-
-
kidspiration
A wise soul once told me to keep my eye on the small victories in teaching–those “smile file” moments that warm your heart and solidify that “yes, *this* is why I’m a teacher” feeling. In spite of the repeated 5:30 a.m. call of the iPhone Harp alarm, the frustrations of lessons gone awry, and the gallons of iced coffee consumed, these small victories keep me going. In October 2009, my colleagues invited me to come to Franklin Park for the JQUS cross-country team’s last practice of the season. As a second-year teacher, I hadn’t yet considered taking on any extracurricular activities beyond the scope of my calculus, pre-calculus, ESL, and…
-
the most guts
Today Tufts Medical school students (Melody and Dave) held auditions for the JQUS a cappella group. The group used my classroom for the auditions, so I sat in the corner observing while I typed up an awards ceremony program. One of my favorite students (let’s call her Little Sally) came in to audition because her friends kept bugging her to join. She was extremely nervous and claimed to be a bad singer, so she had a hard time starting. Melody and Dave did a fake audition for her, and we offered to turn away (and I offered to stick my fingers in my ears). She agreed to sing after Dave…
