(Levi is in the kitchen as I am walking (or painfully limping, as it may be) through the front room with a hurt foot.)
Levi: Your gait is unmistakable. You’re lurching.
(No sneaking up on him to see if he is on task…)
(He has been s-l-o-w-l-y working through tasks and begging to be released from servitude. As he finishes the dishes, he asks, in a somewhat exasperated manner…)
Levi: May I disperse myself with the seven winds?
(When this kid’s writing skills and maturity catch up with his verbal processing skills, watch out.)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
I have Minecraft birthday party pictures to share. And beach pictures.
But I also have a time deficit. (More of a self-management issue than a time deficit issue, but, whatever.)
Between a beach trip on Saturday, a painful foot (going to the chiropractor today to see if he can help), serious practicum prep (hours and hours and hours yesterday and the rest of this week), and a lengthy debate in the comments of my Common Core post (so not my forte and very energy- and emotion-sapping for me), my house has taken a serious hit. I’m so thankful for my friend Cheris who had my kids for something like nine hours yesterday so that they weren’t totally devoid of care.
I’ve decided to close my eyes when I walk limp through my house today so that I can pretend it doesn’t look like a bomb exploded in here.
Not only has my house taken a serious hit, but the chocolate consumption is out of control.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
As I’m preparing for practicum speaking, a truth has become manifest.
Leigh Bortins talks about her vision of “copiousness” for Classical Conversations practicum speakers. Ideally, we would fill ourselves full of skills, content, stories, and ideas, so that we will not be scraping the bottom of the barrel when we are speaking. We don’t merely study what we must to cover the information that we must, but we fill ourselves to overflowing.
And out of abundance, the best, the cream, rises to the top and pours out.
I hope, I pray, that will be the case in reality, as there are other contributing factors—such as the fact that I have never, ever spoken in front of a group like this [gulp!], and I’m not sure that I’ll be able to control anything coming out of my brain and mouth. Inspires confidence in y’all, right? [wry gin]
But there is truth here. What we fill our lives with will come pouring out. What we invest in will be what we are passionate and excited about. Copiousness. Out of abundance.
In our lives as teachers, we must first be learners.
And we must know God in order to make Him known.
[I’ve also personally discovered that when a brain’s capacity is small, overflowing happens very quickly. Ahem.]