"Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future."
-Ruth Benedict
Yesterday... after a bummer of a day where nothing seemed to go right, I had a visit from two of my students from last year. I know that you're not supposed to pick favorites, but one of these girls I felt a special connection to. She wasn't the most diligent student... in fact, she had to go to summer school for the first semester. But she kicked it into gear second semester, and she came back to tell me that she currently has an A in 9th grade math (a class which kicks many students' butts!). I'm so proud of her!
Today... I'm feeling like a really naive teacher, thinking that when you teach a concept for two weeks the students should actually learn it. I'm also feeling like I've spent all week running behind the bus, trying to catch up. Deadlines are upon me. The stack of papers to grade is growing. Meetings are scheduled. I haven't even started to think about my certification assignments. Aaahhh!!
Tomorrow... is Friday! Thank goodness for short weeks! I tutor Saturday morning, and of course have to plan lessons for the week. But, I'm also looking forward to football games, dinners out, and maybe even a bike ride! And, sleeping in... oh the joy!!
In keeping with tradition (here and here), I wanted to give Rob something leather to celebrate our third anniversary. I found this great leather-bound national park atlas from Orvis and had it monogrammed for him. To personalize the book to represent us, I recreated national park stamps to match the places we've been together. I used PhotoShop and rscottjones' photostream to copy and paste the correct dates to the stamp image. Then I printed them and stapled them to the appropriate pages of the atlas. 
We haven't been collectors of national park stamps thus far, but I imagine we will be from now on.
