Musings on Life and Living

Many of you know that I am a professional educator. I work in the Freeport School District as the Curriculum Coordinator for 21st Century Teaching and Learning. Whenever I have the opportunity to share this with others upon meeting them for the first time, one of the first questions I get is, “Is that your real hair?” Apparently, there are things people care about more than know what it means to coordinate the teaching and learning efforts of an entire century. (The answer, by the way, is yes, this is my real hair; no, I don’t dye it; yes, it really is this curly; and no, you cannot touch it to see if it is actually a wig.)  Once I am able to get the discussion about my amazing naturally curly hair out of the way, we get back to the question of what it is I actually do. My favourite way to describe my job is that I am a teacher of teachers and that my main responsibility is to get them to put away the worksheets and step away from the PowerPoint so that they can engage their stu...

Two Jehovah's Witnesses came to our door this afternoon. The gentleman at the door (I believe the other person with him was his wife) did most of the talking. He somehow knew that our last name was Valencic and thought perhaps we spoke Croatian. I explained that my ancestors came from present-day Slovenia but most of them spoke Polish. However, my parents and my grandparents spoke only English, except for a few words and phrases in Polish. Abandoning his attempts at speaking Croatian and connecting with us that way, he asked me if I felt like the Hurricane Dorian is God's fault. I told them that I do not blame God for natural disasters and they responded by pointing out that insurance companies call them "acts of God." I observed that there are many archaic terms that we still use but that doesn't change the fact that God is not to be blamed for weather patterns. (If anything, people are, but that gets us into a different topic altogether.) He quickly moved on...