try, try again.

I hope to one day recover from my lack of blogging because I miss it so much. We havent had internet since we got married two months or so ago and really... its killing me. You dont realize how much you love some things until you no longer have them. I have failed at blogging lately, but all I can do is keep on keepin on. Try, try again.

Life is great these days. Jeff and I have been enjoying our summer to its absolute fullest. Even with school starting we still like to pretend it is summer and take weekend trips to Bear Lake to play with family and friends. This past labor day we spent the weekend swimming in the big bear, sailing, canoeing, kayaking, paddle boating, tubing, playing tennis, getting lots and lots of sun (burns for me, the whitey!) and just having the best time playing with all the kiddies and celebrating Ryno's birthday. The weekend was filled with strawberries, blueberries, peaches, yummy homemade ice cream [mint chocolate chip, peach, and strawberry] made by me and my hubby and Jake and Ash, yummy cheesecake, lots of candy, and lots of love. A much needed vacation that felt so much longer than just a three day weekend.

School has started and I begin teaching full swing tomorrow. Am I really a teacher? I had a student the other day tell me he couldn't do the assignment because he was stupid. He is a second language speaker from Iraq and really an intelligent boy, but he is scared of making a mistake. I have seen his writing and it isn't pretty, BUT he trys. How else do we ever get better unless we try? I told him that he wasn't stupid, it was obvious he had intelligence and knowledge and COULD write the story. When he turned in the one and a half page story about the God of War I couldn't help but smile from ear to ear. There wasnt a space between the words on the page, hardly a period or grammatical mark, but he tried. He overcame a fear of failure, if even for one assignment! Instead of just sitting there all class long not doing one thing, he did the work, he tried to write in English, a foregin language that he is still learning and getting to know and I know he is better because of it. I was so happy that he had accomplished that. There were lots of other native English speakers that didn't even write as much as he did. I think that is an accomplishment in itself. He is so NOT stupid.

I get nervous that the students aren't learning anything, but I hope that if I can teach them anything, it is to believe in themselves. You can never succeed if you never try. These kids may fail over and over in the eyes of the world, but if they try to improve and gain knowledge, that is no failure to me. I get this feeling that our world is so afraid of failure, we look down upon those who fail and the world tries to portray this image of perfection. You can never really succeed at a thing unless you first try to do it and if you fail, then you fail, but the next time you try you will be better and eventually you will conquer the thing you once could not do.

I hope my students get that.