My, oh, my.....the life of a teacher!

So I must begin with a funny thing I overheard a student say the other day in class. Let me preface it by saying that my room is being used by another teacher during my plan period so I often stay in my room while she is teaching. The class she is teaching is a group of students who have not yet passed English I, which was to be passed their freshman year. There are several in the class who should technically be juniors by age but are still freshman by credits. Anyways, I don't even know what they were talking about but one student asked the question, "Why did they invent school?" I tried my hardest not to laugh and could only picture our country made up of these types of people who would never ever step foot in a school unless there was some kind of law that made them. Wow, can we say white trash hillbillies taking over the world? There were so many other things I wanted to say to this student, but for a sundry of reasons I kept my mouth shut and continued on with my business.

Do kids today not realize that without an education they are going nowhere? I guess maybe drug dealers or meth manufacturers wouldn't need a high school diploma, but how would they know how much of each substance to measure out, or how much change to give back to a buyer? I am amazed still at the number of kids who think floating through high school without so much as raising a finger or even minutely working is going to get them somewhere. I will admit that school is not for everyone, but what I think that means is school after high school is not for everyone. College is not for everyone is what I mean. This is not the problem I have with the kids I see walk the halls in our school today. The problem I see is apathy. But how can I change a person's attitude and make them care? That is next to impossible. Either we care or we don't. Is there a gray area there? I am positive they care about their cars, money, clothes, friends, having a good time on the weekends, but when it comes to school, that caring is nowhere to be found. So how do we change that?

I am scared for my daughter to grow up in this world. I don't want her to be pulled down by all the negativity around her. I want to shelter her from all the harm and evil the world has to offer. Let me deal with it; Let me face it; Let me take the brunt of the pain for her.

I will save the rest of my rant for another time.
-Jocelyn :)

In and Out of Time

In and Out of Time
by Maya Angelou

The sun has come
the mists have gone
we see in the distance
our long way home

I was always yours to have
you were always mine
we have loved each other
in and out of time

When the first stone looked up at the blazing sun
and the first tree struggled up from the forest floor
I have always loved you more

You freed your braids
gave your hair to the breeze
it hung like a hive of honey bees

I reached in the mass
for the sweet honeycomb there
Hah
God how I loved your hair

You saw me bludgened by circumstance
lost, injured, hurt by chance

I screamed to the Heavens
loudly screamed
trying to change our nightmares
into dreams

The sun has come
the mists have gone
we see in the distance
our long way home

I was yours to have
and you were always mine
we loved each other
in and out, in and out, in and out of time

Is it easier to forgive or to forget?

Tis' easier to forgive than to forget, tis' not? Well, really, I have no idea because I can't seem to do either one of those for some things that have happened in my life. By no means have I had a terrible upbringing that left me with so many emotional scars that I can hardly function, but I have faced some bumps in the road that I need to just plow down so I can lay some new foundation on those spots in my soul.

Last night I sat down to do my nightly reading in one of the three books I am currently trying to simultaneously complete in order to give me some direction in life and help me find some answers to many of tricky scenarios that life throws at each of us, but anyways, the chapter was about getting rid of the junk in your trunk. Now, first off, that phrase still makes me laugh as it did the author too. I won't digress and explain the meaning of what it is to have junk in the trunk (if you don't know then I suggest you go to urbandictionary.com and take a gander), but the meaning of it in this particular book is getting rid of all those things in our lives that seem to be weighing us down making it difficult to move on from those emotional scars that were made so long ago. Needless to say, this was a chapter where I highlighted a number of passages that "spoke" to me. I have junk in my trunk. In order to move on to and give myself to another person I have to unload all that junk so I am fully ready to replace it with new memories, new love, and focus on being a new me.

So that is why I ask if it is harder to forgive or to forget, or are those one in the same? I started a list last night after my reading of some of the "junk" I still carry with me. On this list I included several things that make it hard for me to trust another person, things that make it hard for me to fully internalize that I am worthy of having all that I deserve and what God wants to me have, things that make it difficult for me to look at myself and know that I am a good person. I know all that junk is there, but I need to find a place to unload it. I have already been guilty of unloading some of that junk onto someone else who doesn't deserve to punished for things that happened in my past.

Forgiveness, to me, is a work in progress and does nothing for the person whom I am forgiving. So I am working on forgiveness. I should have done it a long time ago, but I am at a crossroads in my life and starting to realize I can't live with the weight of this "junk" and the hurt that someone caused so long ago. I am not getting any younger, and I don't want to spend the next thirty years of my life with a heavy heart that might stand in the way of ever being able to fully commit to someone. I don't know if it is ever possible to forget, but forgiveness is something I need to make happen in order to get that junk out of my trunk.