Category Archives: Running

New Sandals. A Free Day. Grading.

Posted on 17 May 2011 | 2 comments

One of the most difficult things about teaching is the grading. I want my students to improve, so grading is necessary, but I also don’t like to discourage them by making negative comments on their papers. I can still remember frowning faces drawn by early elementary teachers, comments that said my teachers were very disappointed with me because I was so smart but lazy in intermediate grades, high school teachers who only marked a few pages of the papers I’d spent hours writing, and college professors who said I really needed to learn how to write. I don’t want to put those stumbling blocks in front of my students. Even though I am 37, when I sit down to write, I still have to remind myself to put away the voices of past teachers.

That being said, next year I am bringing out the big guns. My students will not know what hit them. We’re working on kicking everything up a notch. We’re going to write more, read more, learn more literary terms and devices, and we’re going to end up super smart by May, not that my students right now aren’t super smart. I just know that I can drive them much more passionately than what I have this year. The trick is not leaving behind those students who might need more help. This is the dance, and this is where the extra hours come in.

Though, I have to work extra hours, sometimes I get an occasional bonus day, like today, when my students are taking standardized exams. On free days, I grade, write, and read, which I suppose doesn’t really make them free days. I like them, though, because they are slow days. The one drawback is that I miss my students, and I miss watching them learn. That’s the pay-off of teaching, watching your students grasp a new concept or formulate a new idea. There is nothing else like feeling that you somehow had a part in their accomplishments.

*

The barefoot running is going well. I just finished reading this book by Barefoot Ken Bob, and I strongly recommend it if you’re going to try barefoot running. Though it is pretty repetitive, the repetition helped to cement the concepts and techniques into my head. Lift your feet, bend your knees, maintain a straight posture, fall forward at your hips, and increase your cadence. This is the beautiful simplicity of barefoot running.

However, for some reason my right foot keeps getting small blisters on the ball. I am not sure if it is because I toe off or because I land too hard on that side. I do know that my right leg is slightly longer than my left, and that my form has to have something to do with it. They aren’t bad blisters and I know that I can still run much farther without pain than I could in shoes. And my recovery time is far less than it was before. All in all, barefoot running has changed my life.

In order to make sure that change sticks even through winter and super hot summer pavement, I ordered a pair of Brancas last night. They were only $30 and they seem a much better idea than VFFs, because the sole is thinner and it isn’t formed to fit the foot. Simply put, they are a flat piece of rubbery goodness that fits between the sole of the foot and ground to guard from heat or cold and nothing else. They have shipped, so I hope to get them before we head to Cincy on the 8th-grade trip.

2 Comments

Posted in Running, School, Teaching

A Whole New Chapter

Posted on 16 May 2011 | Leave a comment

On June 2, I plan to start a whole new chapter of my life, a technology-free chapter. I have been spending far too many hours with my face smashed into the computer screen, most of which has been spent on Facebook, Twitter, and email. My addiction has gotten to the point where I spend more time clicking back and forth between social networks and email, compulsively and to no good end. When I open my computer, I automatically open several tabs that I check obsessively until I log off the computer. I have found myself mindlessly clicking back and forth from tab to tab for hours. Sometimes a whole day will be taken up with the mindless shuffling between sites. There is no good reason for my compulsion, so I need to stop. I am giving myself an intervention.

On June 2 (and until August 14), I am not going to use the computer at all. Well, correctly stated, I will not use the Internet at all, but I have to use Word to type my dissertation. I plan to only use my cell phone with no texting for the duration of the summer. Why? Two reasons first come to mind: (1) I have become detached from people who are around me, being absorbed into my computer, even when there are people I care about in the room with me, and (2) I have to get a couple of chapters of my dissertation drafted.

I think this will help me to wean myself away from the social sites. Also, I hope to find myself getting much more done, including painting the house, refinishing the floors, drafting two chapters, writing some creative nonfiction, and running and swimming every day, except Saturdays when I will go for bike rides with Bec. I set goals. I don’t always keep them, but I never lose hope that I might, one day, make my goals.

Leave a comment

Posted in Biking, Dissertation, Goals, Reading, Relationships, Running, School, Summer, Swimming, Technology, Writing

Barefoot Running

Posted on 27 April 2011 | Leave a comment

One thing about barefoot running that I will never understand is the way people act like it’s a new concept. I left school the other day to go on my standard 3-mile run. Typically, I wear running shoes, but since I’ve been running barefoot (and loving it) I left the shoes up in my classroom. It was raining just a bit—probably why I got blisters, but if felt so right—and I swear you wouldn’t believe the looks I got! One woman even stopped her car, got out, and started talking to me about it. Thankfully she was positive, but some others weren’t. I have gone barefoot most of my life, including a good chunk of college where I didn’t wear shoes unless there was snow or it was below freezing. I guess I just don’t think of going barefoot as being so revolutionary, but I always have loved Zola Budd. Even when she and Mary Decker had their little tiff, I always loved Zola. Her bare feet were scandalous. 🙂 I love the feeling being barefoot gives me. And I love the low-cost footwear!

Leave a comment

Posted in Running

Gauges. Buddhism. Holy Friday. Running.

Posted on 22 April 2011 | Leave a comment

As I put on my headphones and feel the little puckered holes in my earlobes, I realize I still haven’t put my plugs back into my ears. In a mirror, the holes look like the mouths of hungry children, opening for food. They are rounded, soft, and raw, but almost quiver at the thought of being refilled, as if they’ll burst at too much food. I touch the little mouths again and send up a quick prayer for those same children who have no food, and I think about the large discrepancy between their hunger for food and my comparing my piercings to their pain. It’s a bad metaphor, but I keep it. Then I contemplate how I will manage to get my 1/2″ gauges back through the tight lobes that have returned, over the past three days, to smaller openings. This struggle is waged every other month or so when I take the plugs out of my ears to give them some breathing room. Inevitably, I forget to put them back in, in a timely fashion. Then, when I put them back in, my lobes are sore for a couple of days. As the pain subsides, I forget about the mouths and their hunger. I turn away from thinking about suffering. I move forward, leaving concern behind.

*

Today is Earth Day. Starbucks is giving away free drip coffee if you bring in your own mug. It’s nice.

*

During Lent, I have nearly read four books about spirituality. Along with almost daily readings in the Bible, I have completed The Joy of Living (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche) and An Altar in the World (Barbara Brown Taylor), and I am halfway through Rebel Buddha (Dzogchen Ponlop) and Love Wins (Rob Bell). Reading these four books together, has made me more of a heretic than I already was before Lent. I’m not a dense person, but I just don’t see how Buddhism and Christianity are incompatible teachings, as so many of my more conservative friends seem to need to persuade me to think. I suppose if you adhere in a fundamentalist fashion to either spirituality, you’d not be able to reconcile them. However, if you look past the literal, the overarching message of the two spiritualities is one of love and compassion, in which the believers, celebrants seek to leave a lasting impact of positivity and non-suffering on our world. I have a hard time seeing how these two do not work together. Prayer bleeds into meditation, daily professions faith bleeds into daily practice of compassion, enlightenment bleeds into sanctification, and the eightfold path bleeds into the Sermon on the Mount and the two most important commandments. I think both religions would agree that you should increase love and compassion, while decreasing worldly attachments. I feel no conviction that they are not compatible, as hard as some of my friends try.

*

Today is also Holy Friday. I am not going to church. Instead, I am going to watch the youngest pseudo-stepchild perform in the play, King Lear. I am immersed in Shakespeare. First, my students have been reading Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night’s Dream. And now King Leer. This is an excellent way for me to celebrate Holy Friday. I need something to take my mind off of the fact that Jesus is dying today. Sometimes I get so bogged down in the holy mysteries, I can’t see outside them into the beauty of the world. And, I suppose that is how it should go. At this point in the Christian calendar, I should be consumed by grief, and I should be contemplative about the fact that in whatever way, I did this to Jesus. It’s good, though, that we will be taking in a show instead of participating in a Good Friday service. I need the distraction. I need make believe.

*

May 7 is the Indy-Mini. Am I ready? No. Absolutely not. I think I may just run the first six miles and then leisurely walk the last seven. We’ll see.

Leave a comment

Posted in Buddhism, Children, Christianity, CNF, Coffee, Grace, Poverty, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Writing

Where Does the Time Go?

Posted on 8 April 2011 | Leave a comment

At the risk of sounding like a little old lady, I find myself wondering, sometimes aloud, where the time has gone. And here she crops up again when I say, it seems like just yesterday when I started teaching here at Burris, and now the school year has about two months left. A little less than two months. The time has simply flown past.

In a fashion true to myself, I have already begun planning in my head for next year. I know that grammar is going to be a once a week activity, probably Mondays, and then everything we write that week will incorporate that grammatical lesson. I know that I am going to choose two novels for each grade level, one memoir, which the students will choose from a list I will provide, and one straight up nonfiction book. There will also be a poetry unit and a comic unit. That’s six long units in which we will address different questions, different levels of thinking, and different styles of writing. This should make for a more cohesive school year and more beneficial writing/reading connections.

On a personal level, I feel as if my life right now is the most settled it’s been since maybe early high school. I feel calm and at a strange peace. I have many things I want, but I know this life is fleeting, and there are so many more important things than my personal desires or creature comforts. I think this Lent I’ve had a chance to reflect on not only food, but also my spiritual journey. I need to make it right between God and myself and other creatures. It’s not a personal relationship.

It’s not a waterfall of honey as we sang like a bunch of lemmings in church a couple of Sundays ago. Well, I say we loosely. I couldn’t sing it all because I kept thinking, “Dip me in honey and throw me to the lesbians,” and I probably shouldn’t sing that to Jesus. So, everyone else sang about how Jesus love is like a waterfall of honey, which aside from sounding very sexual also doesn’t sound very appealing. It’d be a bit too sticky for my liking.

But, it’s not about that. It’s about how this whole big world connects. It’s about you and me and how we have that same eternal God part. It’s about us looking into each other and seeing each other and recognizing that divine presence in all creatures. God made all of us, and we need to recognize that intrinsic worth in each other. No matter what that other person has done. No matter who that other person is. No matter. We are all part of that same incredible creation.

I recognize the way I am interconnected with all creatures when I run. The route I run the most travels along the White River, bending and weaving as the river does. Along the path, there are inevitably some ducks and geese milling about quacking and honking. Sometimes the geese hiss and spread their wings, but I talk sweetly to them and explain to them that I love animals so much I don’t eat them or exploit them. Because the geese are relatively tame, though I like to think it has something to do with my reasoning with them, they back away and bob on down to the river. My day is always made better by my interactions with these animals in much the same way that it is also made better by sharing my life with my dogs and my cats. I can get so mad at Celie for being rambunctious,  but she just smiles and licks my hand or leg, as if to say, I know you aren’t really mad, are you?

Leave a comment

Posted in Grace, Religion, Running, School, Teaching