This Old Soul

A midwestern fifth grade teacher with a black cat and a big voice.

[edevrie2-blog]

Random bursting emotion

Ever get that? Where out of nowhere you are just filled with so much love and appreciation for someone that you can't help but smile?

[edevrie2-blog]

Tuesdays

Must be my bad diet days or something recently? I ate like nine of those frosted sugar cookies at work today AND Mexican food for lunch. So now I really need to hit my workout hard. Also I am addicted to True Blood. Why have I never given this show a chance before?

[edevrie2-blog]

Pizza

Is just so fucking good. Especially after losing three pounds this week.

Also my sister might be moving to San Francisco and I’m kind of jealous and am trying to coach myself to not be jealous. I chose my life in Indiana and it’s beautiful. I had my adventures while I was in college. Right?

[thepersonalquotes]

Feelings in words

[thepersonalquotes]

Feelings in words

[edevrie2-blog]

Namaste, Supergirl

Long weekends are the best. Especially when the weather is gorgeous and that vitamin D soaks into my brain and makes me feel naturally joyful.

Okay, so on Thursday I wrote a reminder to myself to write about my little super hero student. One of my favorite projects to do with my science classes is our “Element Superhero/Villain” assignment as part of our chemistry unit. The kids pick an element and design a comic book hero or villain around that element. Their costume needs to resemble their element, and they need to gain their powers from whatever element they chose. My kids did a phenomenal job with it this year, so I put their projects up in the hallway. 

In second grade, there’s a very autistic little girl named S. Socially, she struggles. She becomes inconsolable and runs around the building when she goes into a bad place, and is very difficult to talk to. But the kid is a genius. Her IQ is off the charts, she makes our smartest fifth graders look average, and she talks like a 40-year-old philosophy professor. She’s incredibly exhausting, but incredible in herself. Her teacher is trying to challenge her at her level this year, and has to differentiate a lot of S’s assignments accordingly. 

Every day, S comes down the fifth grade hallway and stops to stare at the wall of hero projects, and every day someone has to drag her by the hand away from them. I figure she’s just looking at the pretty pictures that my kids drew. S’s teacher tells me that she wants S to do the project. So I sit down with this 8 year old girl and explain the criteria to her. And she starts rattling off the stories that my students wrote. Like, down to the smallest and most accurate details. These heroes and villains that my kids created became real to this little girl, and I had to scoop my jaw off of the floor. This is why I do this job.

Anyway, she chose osmium as her element, so who knows what the project will turn out like. But I can’t wait to see it.

Unrelated but also great - N and I went out for Indian food last night in a neighboring town. We found the restaurant on Yelp, never heard of it, figured we’d try it. It’s in an old Long John Silver’s building and looks preeetty sketchy. Best meal I’ve had in months. Thank God for family businesses... and immigrant families that bring their beautiful food and culture to our country. 

[edevrie2-blog]

The thing about working out

It blows... I always feel so miserable and stupid trying to force my big body to do things that it shouldn’t. I jiggle all over the place and detest looking in the mirror at my pudgy belly and my dimply thighs. But it forces me to practice self care. Sometimes I’m so depressed that even the thought of taking a shower is exhausting. I’ve gone three days with dry shampoo hair before. But working out on a semi-regular basis forces me to care for myself. It forces me to think harder about how I’m eating, forces me to shower regularly, makes me sleepy enough to go to bed at a normal hour.

I need to remind myself of this when it gets hard to stay motivated.

[love-personal]

[edevrie2-blog]

Reminder

Tomorrow I need to write about the superhero student. Tonight I’m just not feeling like writing. 

[bolo-de-chocolate-site]

Ideas de Bolo de Chocolate - http://ift.tt/1IR1Hcy

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Mardi-Tines

We had our class party today for Valentine’s Day, except our room moms decided to go with a Mardi Gras theme. Cue the beads, masks, and paper crowns. In all seriousness though, it was actually super cute and the kids had a lot of fun with it. Blew my fucking diet today though… damn kid who showed up with one of those giant Costco muffins that are laced with crack. And Reese's cups.

[edevrie2-blog]

LOVE

[earth]

[edevrie2-blog]

I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours first. Let’s compare scars, I’ll tell you whose is worse. Let’s unwrite these pages and replace them with our own words.

[helloancolie]

😌🌨

[rediscoveringearth-deactivated2]

Sunwapta Falls, Jasper National Park, Canada

More of our amazing world

[just-shower-thoughts]

In the future, we will probably hear another “Tear down this wall!” speech.