Student Success

Today I'm attending a 4-hour retreat on promoting students' success at GCC. I am also finishing up a recommendation for a student graduating from UNT this August who wanted a recommendation for graduate business school. When I went back to spring 2006 when he was in my English 1302 class, I was surprised to find that of the 18 students that started in the class, only 11 finished it with a passing grade. Those numbers really ought to be better, but I remember that the students just weren't showing up for that 8 a.m. class, let alone turning in any of the work. It was as if they just wanted to be enrolled for financial aid purposes, not for the sake of actually getting a college degree. Maybe with the tougher economic climate, people will set higher goals so they can get more because they gave more effort to the plan they had. I hope so. In any event, I'm looking forward to working with our team to see what ideas we can come up with to support the students who really are working to help themselves.

Sunday Mornings

Sunday mornings were always my favorites growing up. We used to go to the First Presbyterian Church in Morrisville for the 9 a.m. service. Afterwards, we would go to the bakery and get some kind of insanely delicious fresh pastry and go home and enjoy it. For lunch, we would go to my grandparents' house to see my aunts, uncles, and cousins while we enjoyed my grandmother's homemade spaghetti sauce. If a person had to work on Sunday, then my grandmother made a special fuss over that person and let them eat first and pampered them a little more than the rest of us. Sometimes, I had to work. I was a lifeguard at the Morrisville Community Swimming Pool--not hard work, but it did last most of the day and into the evening. I think we opened at 1 p.m. on Sundays. Morrisville has fallen on hard times and no longer has a pool, or even much in the way of schools anymore. The town can't really afford to support itself. Even the Presbyterian church has begun laying off staff to beat this tough economy. Still, Sundays are great days for starting the week, for starting fresh with church, good food, and family.

yoga class

This Saturday is my favorite yoga time. I head up to the Denison Nautilus and relax for the next hour and a half with a regular group who enjoys a good stretch and a full breath. I've been thinking about whether or not I want to train for the 200 hour Yoga Alliance certification. I really would like to improve my home practice. I read books and journals for ideas and to understand the theory behind the movements. People have recommended that I download some of the MP3 videos and learn that way. I really benefited from going through physical therapy with an individual trainer who watched me, corrected my movements, and challenged me. I'm debating whether to do YogaFit or to drive into Dallas. Part of what I have to do is checkout the drive to Dallas and how I work with the instructor there. It's nice to have good choices.

Born to Blog

I hardly think that I was born to blog, but when my husband urged me to check it out, I thought, why not? After all, I do enjoy writing things down and reading them later. I can't imagine that I want to invest much time in blogging, but today was a slow starting morning. I was reading a variety of articles, one on how fitness buffs are overdoing the core exercises. My conclusion, is that most people tend to overdo good things. That's what keeps the good life as an elusive journey, one that requires continuous travel.