Grace and Courtesy

Grace, Gratitude and Goodness Gratitude has become popular these days. Psychology has caught up to biblical theology in understanding that a grateful disposition is connected to a healthy mind. What becomes strange to me is the fact that, without Christ, we don't have a direction for our gratitude.  It is a wonderful thing that we can be thankful that we have another day of life, or that we get to work with children (what a privilege!) or that we have food in our refrigerators. But we miss out on deeper joy if we don't know to whom we can be grateful. There is a Person who has given these things to us. Getting to the Person--namely, Jesus--allows us to get to the praise, producing deep joy. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm 100:4 I often like to tell the children in my care that I am thankful for them, that they are in my class and that I get the chance to see them. This reiterates the reali...

Moving forward A few weeks ago I celebrated one year of living in Massachusetts. A year ago, I drove a UHaul truck with my few belongings to a storage unit, and began living with a 92 year old woman who'd been in her town all her life. She's a lovely Christian woman, who I learned so much from in those months. One thing in particular is that it is easy to become accustomed to doing things your way. I never want to become too comfortable in that mindset. Working with children has the ability to amplify your desire to have power "over", or it can increase your flexibility to have power "with". Both ways of being require practice. So after ten years of living in New York City, working at a total of 3 schools in 10 years, I decided that I was done in the Big Apple. I wanted to leave before I hated the place. The extremes of humanity so easily found in Gotham wore on my heart and mind. To experience it daily--homelessness, unfathomable wealth, continued partialit...

Often times, when you are making decisions in life, some incidences seem like an accident. But I've grown to learn that God is at the helm of your life; everything that occurs therein has a purpose. Learning about Montessori pedagogy is no exception. I'd recently come to New York City around 2015. Fresh out of college and growing antsy from the Midwestern lifestyle I grew up in, I was ready for the cultural saturation that I believed NYC could give me. I was living in the South Bronx and had recently finished a year of Americorps (City Year) as well as beginning (and being kicked out of) an accelerated teaching program. This would give me the opportunity to teach at the high school level while getting my Masters in education. It took a few tries before I was actually able to get that Masters...but that's getting ahead of the story.  At that point, my goal was to get a few years of teaching under my belt, find some back doors to getting into a graduate program without the di...