The past few days have been an incredible experience for me - one I never could have imagined and one I will never forget. Friday night, the Texas Exes and the University of Texas honored me and eleven other teachers from around the state as Outstanding Teachers. Honestly, finding out I had been nominated, and then selected, was more attention than I am accustomed to. The way I was treated during the couple of days I was in Austin, though, was beyond belief.

We arrived Thursday and checked in at the AT&T Conference Center and Hotel on the campus of the University of Texas. The Texas Exes, as part of our award, took care of all our expenses while there, and the accommodations they provided were very nice. After check in, I went to an orientation meeting with the other honorees, and it was here that we received our first set of gifts.

I received this book, "Between Heaven and Texas," a collection of beautiful photographs, essays and poems. I love photographs of nature, and this book is full of landscapes, sunsets, clouds and other images, all taken in our great state.


Next was a tin of various flavors of popcorn. This will not last long at my house.


And last in this group of gifts was this personalized bottle of wine. It is a Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile, and the dilemma we face is one of opening it and saving the bottle, or saving bottle, wine and all for our next special occasion...say the third Tuesday of the month.

After this "orientation" session, we took our gifts to our rooms and then met back downstairs to catch a chartered bus to the UT Alumni Center. There we were greeted by alumni (imagine that) and honorees from years past. There I made several new friends, among whom was Porky Haberman. Sorry, I don't know his real name, because he insists on being called Porky. Porky is the Texas Ex who started this teacher recognition program in 1987 and continues to be involved in the selection of honorees today. He is one of the friendliest, genuinely warm people you could ever meet. He does not forget names, and he loves teachers! Meeting him was one of the highlights of the whole experience. At the alumni center, we had cocktail hour first. I don't have to tell those of you who are teachers, but for those unfamiliar with a teacher's world, cocktail parties are not given in our honor. (I hate throwing out absolutes, so I should say I have never seen a cocktail party given for teachers before Thursday night.) After cocktails, we were served a delicious dinner, which included a braised chicken breast on a bed of wilted spinach (remember this), parmesan risotto with sun dried tomatoes, a delicious salad of mixed greens and chocolate mousse pie/cake for dessert. Dinner was served with a nice red wine and coffee with dessert. After dinner, the new honorees were given the privilege of introducing ourselves to our new friends and telling our stories of how we found out about being selected for the award. Since my story was rather dry and the former winners' stories were so good, I made up a story of my own, which was a composite of all the stories told around my table during dinner. It got a few laughs and was much better than what really happened.

The next morning we met again to catch the bus to the alumni center for a continental breakfast. It was continental in the sense that we went through line to get what we wanted, but there were great choices - breakfast burritos, fruits, breads, juices, excellent coffee, teas, etc. No one left hungry.

We had several sessions during the day. Some were informational, others were focused on discussions about relevant topics in education, and all were attended by a variety of people. There were teachers, students studying to be teachers, professors, both from the college of education and from other colleges, lawmakers, the college of education advisory council and others from I don't know where.





The student teachers and advisory council presented each of the new honorees with a granite apple and stand.

Lunch was delicious. Soup followed by turkey wraps (with spinach) and an excellent pastry with creme and strawberries. Not too heavy, but truly outstanding.

After our sessions, the new honorees were taken back to the ballroom at the conference center, where we had a walk-through of the upcoming evening festivities. After that, we had about an hour and a half to go to our rooms, clean up, change clothes and try to compose ourselves for what lay ahead.

The evening began with a brief cocktail time in the lobby outside the ballroom. Shortly after 6 p.m., the doors were opened and we went into the ballroom. It was decorated beautifully. It was a formal evening, so the tables were set accordingly for dinner. The stage was simple, with a deep crimson curtain as a back drop. At our table were myself, Deneen, my brother John, another honoree and her family and the two sisters who have endowed the award I received in honor of their mother. Carolyn and Julie were fantastic! Their friendliness and conversation throughout the evening helped so much in easing the nervous tension I was feeling about receiving this award and speaking in front of several hundred people. Dinner was great...again. We begin with a spinach salad. Melanie, the other honoree at our table, and I decided they were doing their best to get one of us up in front of the crowd with spinach between our teeth. Breakfast was the only meal where I didn't see spinach, and that may have been because I just overlooked it. Short ribs and mashed potatoes were the main course, and a hazelnut brownie was served for dessert. Again, dinner was served with a nice wine, which I have to say, helped a lot in calming my nerves...almost as much as Julie and Carolyn.

The presentation of the honorees was incredible. I feel so blessed to have been honored with the group I was with. They are such amazing teachers and people, and I find it hard to put myself in the same category with them. The accolades that came from our principals, former students, parents, colleagues and friends was so humbling, and to have a group such as the Texas Exes heap such praises on us was not easy for any of us. As teachers, we do what we do because we love kids, teaching and the relationships we get to have with so many good people.


Above is the sculpture, which was presented to me at the ceremony, that was commissioned on behalf of this year's recipients.
Below is the inscription on the sculpture's base.





This silver frame was a gift given to me by the donors of my award, Carolyn and Julie. They are so generous!


The last of our awards was a proclamation from Governor Perry in recognition of our accomplishments. No matter what you may think of him, you have to admire his willingness, as an Aggie, to make this proclamation via the Texas Exes. I know I do.

And, attached to the back of the proclamation was a nice check from the Texas Exes. I think I will finally get that widescreen TV!

The honor, recognition and gifts I received at this event were beyond my wildest dreams. The new friends I made and the realization that there are so many passionate, caring teachers out there was refreshing and even more meaningful than all the accolades. I am so glad to have these colleagues as new friends, and I look forward to communicating with them and seeing them in years to come.

As a part of our remarks upon receiving our awards, each of the recipients talked about what the award means to us, and we each tried to express our thanks to a variety of people. I'm sure I didn't do that the justice it deserves due to nerves, so I will try again here.

I am so thankful to the University of Texas and the Texas Exes, for the award and for their commitment to training quality teachers for the future. Their dedication to making the teaching profession one deserving of honor is to be commended.

I am thankful for people like Porky Haberman who started this recognition and who, evidently, helps keep it going some 25 years later.

I am thankful for the generosity of Carolyn and Julie, who honor their mom as their first and best teacher by giving of themselves to honor teachers who are important in the lives of others.

I am thankful to my principal, Gavan Goodrich, for nominating me for this award, and to my superintendent, Ted Moore, and assistant superintendent, Dennis Muizers, for taking time to come to Austin to be with me at the awards ceremony.

I am thankful to Brian Sperry and Adam Lowder, former students and current friends, Lynn Sperry, mother of Brian and school board member in McKinney ISD and Darla Emerson, friend and fellow teacher, all who wrote the kindest, most generous letters on my behalf.

I am thankful for my parents, who instilled in me a strong work ethic and the belief that hard work, in and of itself, is a virtue.

I am thankful for my brother, John, for his presence at such an important event for me, and for his presence throughout my life. John has taught me the importance of self-confidence and the peace of mind that comes from accepting myself as I am. His pride in what I do means more to me than I can ever express.

And of course, I am thankful for Deneen. Deneen has supported me, encouraged me, listened to me gripe and now rejoined me in the classroom after a 21-year absence. I could never have been the teacher I am without her doing the things she's done. Like the foundation under a house, she has not been noticed much, but without her there, I often would've crumbled. Her willingness to live on a teacher's salary, and to do so cheerfully, has made the wonderful life we have together possible. I love her more than anything in this world.

OK. That's it. I doubt I will ever experience anything like this again. That's OK, though. I now plan to be on the lookout for the excellent teachers around me so I can nominate them. More teachers need this sort of recognition, and I'm going to do my part.

A New Endeavor

This past week I did something I have never done before. Two things, really. First, I went snorkeling with whale sharks in the Gulf of Mexico / Caribbean Sea. There may be another blog dedicated to that later. The other was reading the New Testament (Matthew - Jude) in this very short time. I took a couple of novels with me on vacation, but I had finished both of those by the end of the 4th day under the palms, so I needed something else to read. I decided to read the New Testament, not as an academic study, but just to get a broader sense of the things I've been reading and taught from my whole life. I must say it was quite a difficult, eye-opening experience. By reading the whole thing at once, I found myself engrossed in just a few themes that kept recurring throughout. I was disappointed (even a little angry at times) that my biblical education has been mostly about proving one thing or another about Christian life, spiritual behavior, church rules, what one can or cannot do, etc., but very little about living life as a creation of God.
I will share, ever so briefly, the overwhelming theme I felt during my reading. I know this will be overly simplistic, but that, too, is something that I came out of this with - that God didn't intend for spirituality to be rocket science.

I think God intended for humans to get along. More than that, I think He wants us to love each other, treat each other with respect and dignity and genuine concern for each others' well-being. It wasn't long after he created us, though, that that got pretty screwed up. Almost immediately, humans got selfish and started doing what we wanted and killing each other to get our way. He tried wiping out all the bad guys with a flood, but the evil still crept back in, and people just weren't doing for each other what He intended. In fact, it went so far for so long, that people didn't even remember what things they were supposed to do. That's where the law came in. God gave his law to the Israelites so they could have a check list (more or less) of the things they needed to do to keep themselves pure, with God and with each other. This law existed only because of the ignorance of human beings to understand what God had intended in the first place, so it was there to get them back on track. Nothing about the law was bad, except maybe for the fact that it was impossible! Good grief, very few of us are perfect (that's sarcasm, OK?), so no way will humans do very well at following a list like "the law." (Side note: read Leviticus in your best Monty Python Holy Hand Grenade voice. It works, it's hilarious, and it's pretty much the only way to get through that book with your sanity.) Any way, the law was good in that it got people back on the track of living as the humans God had intended, but it was never going to be good enough. It was just a bunch of rules to be read and followed. The academically inclined liked to talk about the meanings of all the words and what they meant we have to do (which sounds a lot like the church I grew up in and have experienced for lots of my life), but no one was good enough to show someone how to live it. So God came down to earth to show us how to do it. When Jesus was here, he didn't tell us the way to live is to spend our time in church or with our noses in scriptures, he SHOWED us how to love each other. Everything Jesus did and taught was about relationships - human to human relationships. I really believe that Jesus' message was, "if you want to get reconciled to God and live the life your creator intended, you need to take care of each other." When he was asked his stance on the law, he clearly said he wasn't here to do away with it. The law was not the problem. There's good stuff for daily living in there. When he was asked to sum up the law, though, he told us to love God and love each other. See what I mean? All that stuff in the law can be taken care of by loving, and God himself came down here to show us how to do it. Sending down a manual on how to do it wasn't enough. We needed to see it, so he sacrificed himself so we could have an example to look at. Then, as if that wasn't enough, he left part of himself with us to guide us from the inside. That's what I think spiritual living is all about - love. Jesus disciples and the apostles seemed to think the same thing. Everything I read about in Paul's letters and the writings of others in the Bible points me to the same thing.

Like I said, this has been more than a little overwhelming. This kind of thinking is not what I grew up with. I have prayed that God will keep pushing me to find out more if this is really what he intended and to squelch this if it's not. I don't know where this will lead. I'm going to start over in the gospels and try to document (maybe in this blog) the instances that I read that make me feel these things. We'll see.

Someday soon, I'll post pictures of the whale sharks too. They were pretty overwhelming themselves!

Spring Broke

It probably sounds a little cliche', but I think I'm ready to go back to work to get some rest. Physical rest, anyway. This week, Spring Break, has been a very productive week for us. There are so many things in the yard that have been neglected since last fall. It was time to knock out some of those tasks or face them at the beginning of summer by when they would have been even bigger jobs. So, this post is an attempt to log, in no particular order, the things accomplished this week.

Prepped the garden (turned the soil, pulled the grass, added compost).
Planted tomatoes and peppers.
Mulched the new garden plants.
Pulled weeds and grass from flower beds and pruned out dead plants.
Dug out two huge pampas grass stumps, divided them into 25 smaller plants and replanted all the new ones.
Cut down other pampas grass with chain saw.
Spread 18 bags of mulch in flower beds.
Dug post holes and built a new 16-foot split-rail fence.
Dug out rose bush and transplanted to grow on split-rail fence.
Pruned all other rose bushes.
Loaded pickup with cut limbs, lumber, etc. and hauled to landfill...twice.
Cut down 4 shrubs in front flower beds.
(Side story: The biggest shrubs in the front flower bed have never been our favorites, but they're what we have, so we've lived with them. The two biggest, by the front doorway, had grown big enough to cover the house number, and pruning them back was not going to be a very attractive option. So, we just decided to take them out completely. They, and others, suffered some leaf damage during all the ice and snow this winter, and some of the more attractive shrubs were beginning to fill in better, so we decided to take out more than just the two largest. So, I got my chainsaw, put on the work gloves and got down on my knees and started cutting. I cut the lower limbs out of the first one, then immediately made a cross cut at the base of the trunk and took that sucker out all at once. I stood up, pulled the whole shrub out and stood back to admire my work only to realize I'd just cut down the wrong bush! We had planned to take out 3, not 4. Oh well. It was ugly, too!)
Cleaned out leaves and dead grass from front flower beds.
Mowed and collected grass clippings.

It was good to get outside and get some fresh air and use muscles that have been dormant for a while, but now I'm ready to get back to the mental labor of teaching calculus. I thinking doing these major jobs this week will make coming home in the afternoons and doing a few minor jobs much more manageable and enjoyable.

My blog title "Spring Broke" is not meant to imply anything's broken, it's just a past tense thing, as in "Spring Break has come to an end."

That's Right, Wii Fit

I really do have to overcome my pride to say that I get my exercise on a Wii, but using the Wii Fit is about all I've got right now, so I'm taking what I can get. In the last two weeks, I've only missed working out 3 days, and the days I have worked out, I've done so anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. I have a few exercises I always do - a step warmup, anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes, a 10-minute jog (1.5 miles today) and a 12-minute boxing routine. After these, I vary what I do. I try to do some that help with muscle tone and a little flexibility / agility. I have only recently discovered two new items - the snowball fight, which consists of bending left or right at the waist and hurling and dodging snowballs, and the obstacle course, which involves running and jumping at varying paces, all the while avoiding swinging objects and infinte chasms. I know it's not much, but I have managed to lose 8 pounds in these two weeks, so I do believe I'll continue the "regimen."

Upswing

It is just amazing how feeling bad can make feeling good so much better. Really, when people ask "How ya doin'," and you say "good" or "fine" or whatever it is you say, it's all relative. I've had a scratchy throat and dry cough for so long it was easy to say I didn't feel good. But now that I've had a cold for the last week and it is subsiding, I can say "good" and mean it, even though I still have the throat and cough thing going on. Having finally seen the movie Crash over the weekend, it all makes me wonder how many aspects of our lives are relative. Right now I think probably most are. Truly, how I react to any given situation is tempered so much by whether I've had my coffee, somebody cut me off in traffic, how I saw my dad react, I'm protecting my wife or child, my shirt fits comfortably, the seat warmer is on low or high, Johnny showed up to take a test like he said he would, I got enough sleep last night, my TV show got recorded, I remembered to get milk at the grocery store, I had a glass of my favorite wine, and the list just goes on and on. And who bears the brunt of things going less than perfectly? I don't know. I'd like to think these things only effect me minimally, but I can remember my own poor reactions after having just a single, minute instance of things not being perfect. Maybe my reactions are changed and I don't even recognize it. Where did this start? Oh yes, I'm feeling much better, thank you. Now your day can be better too.

Weary

I am just so tired of all the physical aches and discomforts of the last 2 years. After starting out seeing an orthopedist about what we thought was a problem with my elbow, it seems that the difficulties have only escalated. I have been seeing Dr. Martin, the neurologist, for over 2 years now, and the inflammation in my spinal cord and subsequent discomfort in my hands remains unchanged. It takes such a mental toll on me to have this tingling / stinging / burning always in the background, no matter what I do. I think the stress of this has made my general health much worse. It's not that I worry about it, but I find that no matter how I sit, lie, walk, run, ride, lift, mow, bathe, etc. I cannot escape the discomforts, and this inability to escape beats me down. Every cold or allergy sniffle, cough, bruise, cut and ache is just piled on top of that which does not go away, and so the accumulation of symptoms to overcome feels insurmountable. I want to work in the yard, exercise, play basketball, go for walks and ENJOY them, but that seems like a distant dream for now. I keep praying that God will take this away, but He has other plans, I guess. I've heard that sometimes things have to be broken down before they can be made stronger. I'm ready for the stronger part!

Snow Days

Yesterday, God sent a beautiful blanket of snow to cover McKinney. Deneen, Curt and I had such a good time out in snow in our back yard. It was just barely below freezing, so being outside wasn't terribly uncomfortable. First we built a snow man, which Curt has named Geoffrey.

After a few pictures with Geoffrey, Curt had me take lots of pictures of him running and jumping in the snow. It reminded me of how our dogs react to changes in the weather. When the temperatures drop, they get a lot more energetic and run and play with each other. I think something similar happens with Curt. He took one of the sequences of photos and merged them in PhotoShop with great affect. I love how he can do this.

After the fun in our yard, Deneen and I went for a walk through the park and enjoyed seeing kids out sliding on the snow. It was fun to hear their laughter, see their snowball fights and just be out in the brisk air. It was a short walk, though, as the breeze and our cold toes forced us home.

Good news came later in the evening when we got a call from school letting us know schools were closed for Monday. So, today, we have enjoyed drinking coffee and getting caught up on some school work that probably would've been done tonight after work. It'll mean making up the day later this semester, but snow days are always special. The unexpected day off always provides relaxation and relief of some tension.

Thank you, Lord, for the beauty you provided and the other benefits that have come with it.