Brrr!!!

Today is quite chilly in the Dallas area. After mid 80's two days ago, these colder temperatures are an unwelcome regression into winter. Not that it's frigid by any means...just colder than it has been in awhile. Right now I'm in Starbucks freezing by the door but trying to warm my bones with a delicious Carmel Apple Spice drink and paying for wi-fi internet access. (GRRRR!) My Sprint card broke once again (the fourth time in a year) and they have to order a new one. I'm very perturbed because that darn thing is so expensive anyway and now I'm still having to pay to get on the internet somewhere! When I intially got it, I thought it would be so convenient because I worked, was in school, and away from the house a lot, but needed a computer a lot. It has been convenient, but the speed doesn't really meet my standards and the cost is ridiculous, so I probably should have thought that one through better. You have to have a two year contract just like a phone so it will be September before I can go back to reasonable internet bills and a satisfying broadband speed! When I went to the Sprint store today and they informed me it woudl be Tuesday or Wednesday before the new one would come in, I was very irritated and told them how much I depend on it for my online classes (assignments due every Sunday night). They so generously offered to let me upgrade to a new device that they had in the store for the mere cost of another two year contract. No way!!!!!! I'll wait until Wednesday, thank you very much!

In other news, the grant visit went well on Friday. I'm not sure what their expectations were, but I was really proud of the girls and how they presented themselves. Hopefully we'll know the outcome in a few weeks...in the meantime, I have a couple more grant applications in the works to focus on!

By the way, why is no one blogging anymore? It seems like just as soon as I got into the game, everybody else decided to bench themselves. What is up with that??

House Church

I have been in Dallas for six years now and the entire time I have been here I have failed to find a church home that has really felt right to me. I have visited numerous congregations and some I have visited for extended periods of times. Yet Dallas has been such a struggle for me. When I was in Lubbock, I attended the Central church, and for those of you who were there when Leonard Jarman was there know what a dynamic place it was. That was a church that was truly missional to its community and neighborhood and where anyone from any walk of life could come in and be at home. But then I came to Dallas and it has really been a struggle. Dallas is known for its very materialistic culture, and this has definitely carried over into its religious sector. I've been in huge beautiful buildings with all the best stuff. I've been in congregations that have a million and one programs and outreaches and ministries. But I haven't been in one that I felt in my heart was truly following after the simplicity of the New Testament church. Not just in doctrine but in design. As a result, I had become somewhat disillusioned and almost just going through the motions. I knew what I was looking for but I just couldn't find it and kind of gave up on finding it.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, Tricia invited me to a "house church" in Uptown. This was a refreshing experience. There is a group of young people who have committed to a new kind of church planting vision that is supported by a couple of larger congregations in the area. They have begun meeting in homes every Sunday, sharing a meal, Bible study, and communion. Once a group gets too large for one home, they form another group in another home, but still come together once a month for a joint worship time together and other things throughout the week. I visited again Sunday and truly enjoyed the simplicity and sincerity of the group. For the first time in my life I felt like I was participating in something that was actually reflecting in the purest sense of what we read of in the New Testament. By not spending zillions of dollars on buildings and fancy stuff (most of which is targeted toward ourselves rather than others), the group's resources can go right into the community around them. It has really caused me to think hard about our "institution" of church. It has caused me to think really hard about our man-made traditions and expectations and the "church" culture we have created. There is so much stuff that I don't understand how we justify if we're using the New Testament as our standard. But this group has stripped away all the "institution" and just left the heart of what "church" is meant to be. I am truly excited to learn more about this group and perhaps begin rebuilding the connections and relationships that have been missing for six years.

I encourage every one to stop and just re-examine what the church was initially and what we have made it over time. The institution is not appealing to this generation...but the simplicity of God's original design will always be timeless.

Bill Gates Gets It!!

I recently heard about a speech that Bill Gates made at the 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference. He spoke about various initiatives that his Foundation is involved in, and I was pleased to hear that when it comes to education, he is interested in focusing on teacher quality. Read what he had to say here:

Now let me turn to a second question, a fairly different question, but I'd say equally important. And this is: How do you make a teacher great? It seems like the kind of question that people would spend a lot of time on, and we'd understand very well. And the answer is, really, that we don't. Let's start with why this is important. Well, all of us here, I'll bet, had some great teachers. We all had a wonderful education. That's part of the reason we're here today, part of the reason we're successful. I can say that, even though I'm a college drop-out. I had great teachers.

In fact, in the United States, the teaching system has worked fairly well. There are fairly effective teachers in a narrow set of places. So the top 20 percent of students have gotten a good education. And those top 20 percent have been the best in the world, if you measure them against the other top 20 percent. And they've gone on to create the revolutions in software and biotechnology and keep the U.S. at the forefront.

Now, the strength for those top 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis, but even more concerning is the education that the balance of people are getting. Not only has that been weak; it's getting weaker. And if you look at the economy, it really is only providing opportunities now to people with a better education. And we have to change this. We have to change it so that people have equal opportunity. We have to change it so that the country is strong and stays at the forefront of things that are driven by advanced education, like science and mathematics.

When I first learned the statistics I was pretty stunned at how bad things are. Over 30 percent of kids never finish high school. And that had been covered up for a long time because they always took the dropout rate as the number who started in senior year and compared it to the number who finished senior year. Because they weren't tracking where the kids were before that. But most of the dropouts had taken place before that. They had to raise the stated dropout rate as soon as that tracking was done to over 30 percent. For minority kids, it's over 50 percent. And even if you graduate from high school, if you're low-income, you have less than a 25 percent chance of ever completing a college degree. If you're low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn't seem entirely fair.

So, how do you make education better?

Now, our foundation, for the last nine years, has invested in this. There's many people working on it. We've worked on small schools, we've funded scholarships, we've done things in libraries. A lot of these things had a good effect. But the more we looked at it, the more we realized that having great teachers was the very key thing. And we hooked up with some people studying how much variation is there between teachers, between, say, the top quartile -- the very best -- and the bottom quartile. How much variation is there within a school or between schools? And the answer is that these variations are absolutely unbelievable. A top quartile teacher will increase the performance of their class -- based on test scores -- by over 10 percent in a single year. What does that mean? That means that if the entire U.S., for two years, had top quartile teachers, the entire difference between us and Asia would go away. Within four years we would be blowing everyone in the world away.

So, it's simple. All you need are those top quartile teachers. And so you'd say, "Wow, we should reward those people. We should retain those people. We should find out what they're doing and transfer that skill to other people." But I can tell you that absolutely is not happening today.

What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What do they look like? You might think these must be very senior teachers. And the answer is no. Once somebody has taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The variation is very, very small. You might think these are people with master's degrees. They've gone back and they've gotten their Master's of Education. This chart takes four different factors and says how much do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which says there's no effect at all, is a master's degree.

Now, the way the pay system works is there's two things that are rewarded. One is seniority. Because your pay goes up and you vest into your pension. The second is giving extra money to people who get their master's degree. But it in no way is associated with being a better teacher. Teach for America: slight effect. For math teachers majoring in math there's a measurable effect. But, overwhelmingly, it's your past performance. There are some people who are very good at this. And we've done almost nothing to study what that is and to draw it in and to replicate it, to raise the average capability -- or to encourage the people with it to stay in the system.

You might say, "Do the good teachers stay and the bad teacher's leave?" The answer is, on average, the slightly better teachers leave the system. And it's a system with very high turnover.

Now, there are a few places -- very few -- where great teachers are being made. A good example of one is a set of charter schools called KIPP. KIPP means Knowledge Is Power. It's an unbelievable thing. They have 66 schools -- mostly middle schools, some high schools -- and what goes on is great teaching. They take the poorest kids, and over 96 percent of their high school graduates go to four-year colleges. And the whole spirit and attitude in those schools is very different than in the normal public schools. They're team teaching. They're constantly improving their teachers. They're taking data, the test scores, and saying to a teacher, "Hey, you caused this amount of increase." They're deeply engaged in making teaching better.

When you actually go and sit in one of these classrooms, at first it's very bizarre. I sat down and I thought, "What is going on?" The teacher was running around, and the energy level was high. I thought, "I'm in the sports rally or something. What's going on?" And the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren't paying attention, which kids were bored, and calling kids rapidly, putting things up on the board. It was a very dynamic environment, because particularly in those middle school years -- fifth through eighth grade -- keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everybody in the classroom needs to pay attention, nobody gets to make fun of it or have the position of the kid who doesn't want to be there. Everybody needs to be involved. And so KIPP is doing it.

How does that compare to a normal school? Well, in a normal school teachers aren't told how good they are. The data isn't gathered. In the teacher's contract, it will limit the number of times the principal can come into the classroom -- sometimes to once per year. And they need advanced notice to do that. So imagine running a factory where you've got these workers, some of them just making crap and the management is told, "Hey, you can only come down here once a year, but you need to let us know, because we might actually fool you, and try and do a good job in that one brief moment."

Even a teacher who wants to improve doesn't have the tools to do it. They don't have the test scores, and there's a whole thing of trying to block the data. For example, New York passed a law that said that the teacher improvement data could not be made available and used in the tenure decision for the teachers. And so that's sort of working in the opposite direction. But I'm optimistic about this, I think there are some clear things we can do.

First of all, there's a lot more testing going on, and that's given us the picture of where we are. And that allows us to understand who's doing it well, and call them out, and find out what those techniques are. Of course, digital video is cheap now. Putting a few cameras in the classroom and saying that things are being recorded on an ongoing basis is very practical in all public schools. And so every few weeks teachers could sit down and say, "OK, here's a little clip of something I thought I did well. Here's a little clip of something I think I did poorly. Advise me -- when this kid acted up, how should I have dealt with that?" And they could all sit and work together on those problems. You can take the very best teachers and kind of annotate it, have it so everyone sees who is the very best at teaching this stuff.

You can take those great courses and make them available so that a kid could go out and watch the physics course, learn from that. If you have a kid who's behind, you would know you could assign them that video to watch and review the concept. And in fact, these free courses could not only be available just on the Internet, but you could make it so that DVDs were always available, and so anybody who has access to a DVD player can have the very best teachers. And so by thinking of this as a personnel system, we can do it much better.

Now there's a book actually, about KIPP -- the place that this is going on -- that Jay Matthews, a news reporter, wrote -- called, "Work Hard, Be Nice." And I thought it was so fantastic. It gave you a sense of what a good teacher does. I'm going to send everyone here a free copy of this book. (Applause)

Now, we put a lot of money into education, and I really think that education is the most important thing to get right for the country to have as strong a future as it should have. In fact we have in the stimulus bill -- it's interesting -- the House version actually had money in it for these data systems, and it was taken out in the Senate because there are people who are threatened by these things.

But I -- I'm optimistic. I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is, and it really can make a difference for millions of lives, if we get it right. I only had time to frame those two problems. There's a lot more problems like that -- AIDS, pneumonia -- I can just see you're getting excited, just at the very name of these things. And the skill sets required to tackle these things are very broad. You know, the system doesn't naturally make it happen. Governments don't naturally pick these things in the right way. The private sector doesn't naturally put its resources into these things.

So it's going to take brilliant people like you to study these things, get other people involved -- and you're helping to come up with solutions. And with that, I think there's some great things that will come out of it.

Now I do have to say that I would like to know more about what Gates means when he is referring to teacher improvement data. In Dallas ISD, we have something called CEI's, which stands for Classroom Effectivness Index. Each teacher is given an annual CEI score based on student performance on standardized tests. It's actually a huge complicated formula that no one really understands, but the district does place a lot of emphasis on these scores, which I have never felt were accurate or fairly calculated. Our principals are alllowed to come in and observe at any time, not just once a year, although only certain visits are allowed to be used in the summative evaluation. And the district does make all the student data readily available and encourages us to use it regularly in making instructional decisions. All that does is result in an unbelievable amount of paperwork and documentation. So although these things are in place, I don't feel they are necessarily leading to improvment in teacher quality. I would be interested to know more what Gates had in mind or what he had observed that led him to this recommendation. But other than that, I thought he made some great points that echo very closely what I have been feeling strongly about for some time. Hopefully others with the power will get on board as well!!

School Funding

I was reading an editorial in the Dallas Morning News discussing the issue of school financing in Texas. According to the way school financing is set up based on property taxes, property rich taxes have to return some of their income each year to be redistributed to property poor districts. This is known as the "Robin Hood" school financing system. However, this article noted that Dallas and Houston are on the verge of becoming "wealthy" districts despite the fact that a large majority of our students come from economically disadvantaged sectors, because wealth is determined not by income but by property values. In Dallas ISD, close to 90% meet the economically disadvantaged designation, yet we are a wealthy district?? Here we are having to cut 500 jobs and cut corners every where to meet the budget shortfall and may have to send money back to the state on top of that?? I'm baffled. The editorial mentioned that Texas school financing is a mess because of its dependence on property taxes. However, I'm no expert on this kind of thing and have been wondering...how do other states fund education? What states are doing a good job of funding education and how do they do it? What are some solutions to solve this problematic system that Texas is stuck in?

Any brilliant minds out there, feel free to enlighten me!!

A Learning Week!

Well, this week sure did disappear on me! It was quite busy. Today I had a culminating event for my "Team Bluebonnet"...a group of sixth grade students who have been reading 20 books that were nominated for the annual Texas Bluebonnet Award for children's literature. Students across Texas read these books and then vote for the winners. Now that I'm not in the classroom, it is a little more difficult to connect with kids and recruit them to these kinds of things, but I did have a nice little group participate. We had a reading campout this morning, a hot dog lunch, and then voting. Here are some pics:





Tonight I will be taking a few girls from my book club to see Tyler Perry's "Madea Goes to Jail." If you have never watched Tyler Perry movies or plays, they are quite humorous and usually have a positive message or theme. We are going to the theatre in Lancaster which is only $4 for even new releases...quite the bargain in this day and age of $11 movies. If you go before 6:00, it's actually only $2! Amazing! Of course, it's not exactly convenient, but the extra drive is well worth it in my opinion.

I got the official date for my grant site visit this week. Next Friday at 11:30am it is. As a result, I have been furiously scrambling to polish up details and documentation that will hopefully convince the committee that we're a worthy cause. However, I've got a few other irons in the fire and the flames are getting mighty warm, folks. In other words, your girl is starting to get a little overwhelmed. So far it's still manageable, but there's just a lot on the brain.

For example. In addition to my six hours of graduate work (one of which is an educational technology class), I have agreed to attend 12 hours of technology training with the district in order to receive a very awesome package of technology to be used in our media center. This package will include a mobile cart of laptops, a desktop computer, a document camera (Elmo...very cool invention!), a eInstruction Student Response system, a SMARTboard air slate, and data projector. Now if you are like me and just now getting brave enough to dip more than three toes in the ocean of technology (those toes being email, word processing, and Facebook), then you probably don't know what half those things are, but let me assure you, they are amazing (and very expensive) pieces of equipment that could be powerful tools for instruction and learning! I plan to rant and rave in another post about the appalling lack of decent technology in this school, but let me save that for now. Let it suffice to say that I am beyond thrilled for the opportunity to procure these items for our media center, even though it stinks to have to go to 12 hours of classes to try to get stuff that should be here anyways. (On the other hand, I need the classes to learn how to use the stuff.) Well I'm rambling. Onward to the point. Last night I attended a podcasting class, which was very interesting. I learned all about Audacity and Windows Movie Maker and Photo Story 3 and more. I am very excited to use my new knowledge to work with the PEARLS on creating a fantastic video with which we can dazzle the grant people next week! I actually already created one about Team Bluebonnet which I tried to post above, but it was too large or something so I'm going to have to keep playing with that. My ETEC 562 class is requiring me to experiment with some other innovative things so by the end of the semester I should be quite techno-savvy. Or at least for me. I know that I'm probably a good 3-4 years behind on this stuff, but it's exciting to me right now. You all may be my test mice on a few projects, so please be patient with me and don't laugh at my valiant attempts to become more technologically proficient.

In other news, Holly and Aaron and I are going to be undertaking a new venture at the Dallas Life Foundation in the next week or so. Awhile back, I posted about the importance of early childhood education and promoting literacy among pre-school kids and their families. As I stated then, it is just something I feel strongly about and wanted to get more involved in advocating. Around Christmas, I had a book club girl (Dezeray---such a sweetheart!) have the idea that she wanted to organize a toy drive. Although I am not always a huge fun of such endeavors, I was encouraged by Dezerary's heart and genuine desire to do something positive in her community and so agreed to help her. She did a great job of facilitating the toy drive and then together we took the toys to the Dallas Life Foundation a few days before Christmas. I was surprised at the number of very small children who are living there at the shelter. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Later, I had the idea that maybe I could start going to the shelter periodically to read to the kids and work with them on literacy-related activities and games in order to just be a small part of laying that crucial foundation they will need in a few short years or months when they arrive at kindergarten. I know that books and learning opportuniites are probably few and far between in such a dismal setting, so I thought maybe this would be a good place to start. I hadn't really acted on it though, until Holly contacted me last week about ideas for places she could do some work toward her service learning hours required for one of her classes at DBU. I suggested the reading class idea and she agreed! I'm excited about it! It looks like we will be going on Friday evenings from 7-9 while the moms shower. Eventually it would be nice to have a time where the moms are there too so we can share some ideas with them on how to work with their kids, but we'll try this time and see how it goes! I think next Friday will be our first week, so hopefully we can get together this weekend and make some plans and preparations!

My final random thought in this blog are congratulatory shout-outs to some of my friends who have announced exciting news in the past several months and I would like them to know I'm thrilled for them and they're in my prayers! Crystal who is now engaged! LynnAnne, who is now engaged! Natalie and Daniel who are expecting baby boy Clayton! Woo-hoo! Rachel and Braughn who are expecting baby Curtis! Woo-hoo! And of course it's just a few short weeks until Maddy will be here! Woo-hoo! And not too much longer until Brandon and Amanda are chasing after a little one! So there are a lot of big changes in the works, but an exciting time for all! Love ya'll!

And now I think I have far exceeded my length limit and probably only the dedicated few have reached this point in the blog, so I shall desist. Have a great weekend to all!

Missing Wyshina

It has been three months today since we lost our wonderful friend Wyshina. There has not been a day go by that I have not thought of her many times. I never really knew what it meant to miss someone in the way that I have found myself missing Wyshina and her friendship. I went to take Jazmine and Jordan some Valentines' treats on Saturday and every time I see them I am just weighted down with such a heavy sadness...and missing their mom in a whole new way. It's difficult to imagine how her family feels that loss....I know it is what I feel magnified by a hundred.

Janet put together some awesome memory books for the kids in which so many people wrote in and shared their memories and impressions of Wyshina. It was amazing to see how many different people she had touched and impacted and who were moved to take the time to share those memories. I wish that I could give everyone I know one of those books just so they could get a glimpse of what a beautiful person she was. This is what I shared for the book:

I still remember the day I met Wyshina. I was interviewing for the position at the After School Academy and Janet had asked a group of parents to participate as well. Wyshina was friendly, yet firm, and from that first meeting it was obvious how serious she was about her children. It was clear how she only wanted the very best for them and how careful she was when making decisions that would affect them. That impression would only deepen in the years I would know her and work beside her. Only a few short months later, Wyshina moved from dedicated parent volunteer to an employee within the after school program and that’s where our friendship began to grow. Wyshina was an amazing person to know and work with. She was always positive, upbeat, and open to anything. She loved the kids and parents and created a warm, welcoming, comfortable, and safe atmosphere just with her presence and smile. Although technically I was her supervisor at first, it never felt that way. We were truly a team and together we worked, laughed, and dreamed dreams for the program and for the kids and for ourselves. Every day before the kids arrived, Wyshina and I would go to the community room to begin setting up and every day as we worked, we had some of the best conversations about life, about our struggles, about our successes. Wyshina was one of those rare people I have come across in my life that I could just be 100% myself around…I could talk to her about anything, vent to her about anything, and get wisdom from her about anything. We shared so many laughs, so many funny moments, so many “aha!” moments. Even after I left the ASA and Wyshina continued to work with the other team members in building a beautiful program, we remained close friends. We both loved Mexican food, especially On the Border, and that would often be a special place we would go to just talk and catch up. However, it was hard to get together or find time to talk to Wyshina as much as I wanted to because she was always busy… working, taking care of her kids, and taking care of her family. She loved her parents so much and felt a deep commitment to caring for them and being there for them, especially during the times her mom might have health problems or surgeries. I used to admire her so much for being so patient and so uncomplaining about the many things on her plate, the many responsibilities and concerns she was always juggling, and yet she maintained the ability to stay positive and smiling and willing to do whatever was needed wherever she was at day after day. Wyshina was so independent. She often wouldn’t let you too close because she didn’t want to worry you with the worries and struggles she was facing. She wanted to deal with it herself, which was sometimes hard for us who were her friends and wanted to lighten her load at times. I know she often struggled and she faced so many challenges that few of us really even knew about or understood, but the beautiful thing is she always made a way. She was so strong and determined and her kids, Jazmine and Jordan, always came first. No matter how tired and weary she was from just dealing with life, her kids were always, always, always, loved, hugged, and cared for with the utmost quality. Their needs, their education, their health, their well-being were always Wyshina’s top priority and she did a wonderful job making sure all those things were more than adequately supplied, even if resources were at times limited…she made a way. And then, amazingly, she had plenty of love and laughter left over for her friends, the kids in the program, and the community as a whole. Wyshina was such a beautiful and special person. She was an inspiration to so many, including myself. I will miss her friendship, our talks, and just what I learned from her unselfish and giving spirit. I will miss the way she brought out and encouraged the best in me and in others. I will miss her enthusiasm, her exuberance, her enjoyment of the little things in life. I will miss the light and laughter she brought to her little corner of the world wherever she was at. But at the same time, I am so thankful that our lives were allowed to cross and thankful for the years of friendship and partnership that we did share...I am thankful for all I’ve learned and will always love, treasure, and remember about this beautiful person, mother, daughter, leader, and friend.

Three months. Soon it will be three years, or even three decades. And we won't have spoken to her or heard her laugh or seen her smile. But we will still be remembering her and missing her and loving her very much.

Grant Update

Today I got an email stating that we made it past the initial step in the grant process (for the Dallas Women's Foundation grant that I was stressing over about a month ago) and will be scheduled for a site visit within the next couple of weeks. On one hand this is very exciting. On the other hand I am extremely nervous because our group has been struggling since the Christmas break. With all the scheduling changes, I haven't really gotten a consistent group back in place. I also tried to expand our meetings to Mondays and Tuesdays after school so that we could have more time for reading, discussion, and blogging...but so far, that is not catching on at all. I'm afraid if I don't get a good strong group established and some functions in place, our site visit will be embarrassing. They'll be like "You're asking this much money for what????" I have such an active imagination and can envision all kinds of wonderful things, but turning those ideas into reality is so HARD sometimes!!! I can make it look and sound great on paper, but an acutal observation.....that's a whole lot harder to convince people with.

I am going to confess something I have been struggling with lately and that is just a feeling of wanting to just be....average. Of wanting to be okay with mediocre. Sometimes I just want to do my job and that's it. I want to not care sometimes. Lately, I have just felt so at a loss. It's like I want so much to be doing things that matter. I look around me at people who are being so effective and passionate and who are so creative and really know how to bring people together to do some amazing things...and I have no idea how to do it. And trying to figure it out exhausts me. Sometimes I'm just tired and just wonder why I can't be one of those people who can go home at the end of the day and leave their job behind. Why can't I just stick to my job description like everyone else? A part of me wants to give up on the grant thing and the P.E.A.R.L.S. and just say I don't know how to make this work. I don't know how to make this a truly effective program. I don't know how to make it grow. I don't know what to say, what to read, what to do. Part of me wants to call the grant people and just withdraw our application. But I just can't seem to be okay with that. So therefore...I stress! And hope that someday I will wake up and have the sudden ability to turn ideas into something real!

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. - Marian Wright Edelmen

Oh No!

Man! I was pretty pleased with myself on the regularity and variety of my blog posts and suddenly the past few days I have hit a dry spell. I am posting tonight to try to keep it from turning into another ten month hiatus even though I really can't thing of a darn thing to write about. I mean I have a million things going on in my head but concentrating on any one of them long enough to fashion a coherent post seems impossible.

Therefore I shall leave you with a quote (of course!) This one is by Marie Curie, the famous Nobel-prize winning scientist. I immediately connected with this quote because I feel it verbalizes the internal sense of urgency I seem to constantly feel about my life...I always feel there is so much that must be done in order to play my part in making this world a better place and it's hard sometimes to just be still at times. Anyways, that just might be the beginnings of my next post! So think of this quote as a preview to next time...

"I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done. "- Marie Curie

(Hopefully this post was short enough for you, Aaron and Tricia! :-) )