{"id":669,"date":"2008-07-14T21:08:21","date_gmt":"2008-07-15T02:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=669"},"modified":"2008-07-14T21:08:21","modified_gmt":"2008-07-15T02:08:21","slug":"every-spare-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2008\/20080714-669.htm","title":{"rendered":"Every spare moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 9 days, I&#8217;ll get on a plane to fly to Laredo, TX.  I&#8217;ll spend a few days with the family in Laredo while the kids attend a conference, and then I&#8217;ll be in Mexico.  Until then, I need to spend every spare moment preparing.<\/p>\n<p>There are some things that I just need to get done before I go&#8211;the two quilts sitting in the living room, the pile of library books on my desk, final arrangements for the 20S Sunday school when I&#8217;m gone.  I have a date with a friend Wednesday afternoon to work on quilting.  Nytejok had her baby last Friday&#8211;so I&#8217;m already late on that quilt (I still need to sandwich, baste, quilt, and bind it).  I haven&#8217;t heard from Nyayan&#8211;but she&#8217;s due the 17th, so it should be any day.  I only have to bind her quilt.  Sunday School is almost all arranged&#8211;I just need to confirm everything.  The library books, on the other hand&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I just checked my account and I have 39 books currently out.  All are due before I&#8217;ll be back from Mexico.  Some are personal reading: Dr. Seuss, <i>The Essential Canon of Classical Music<\/i>, books on environmental issues, books on managing allergies.  Others are specifically related to Mexico: a Spanish dictionary, a &#8220;learning Spanish&#8221; book, grammar references, math references, reading references, spelling references, creative writing references.<\/p>\n<p>The real task that&#8217;s eating my spare time?  Preparing for any possibility.  I have no idea where my student is at academically except that she&#8217;s fourteen years and she&#8217;s behind.  She could be working anywhere from fourth grade level to eighth grade level&#8211;or be at multiple levels.  She could have all sorts of gaps in her education&#8211;or she could be completely on track.  I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>I know that they haven&#8217;t been using a set curriculum&#8211;instead they&#8217;ve been using a lot of internet resources.  Which means I have no way to gauge what her education has consisted of heretofore.  I know that Caroline wants me to focus on Math and English.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve looked at a Middle School scope and sequence.  I&#8217;ve determined the large scale topics that I <i>may<\/i> need to discuss.  I&#8217;ve begun preparing review sheets&#8211;basically a text that I can use as a resource to &#8220;fill in&#8221; any &#8220;holes&#8221; that may exist.  I have a long way to go.<\/p>\n<p>Today?  I reformatted a <a href=\"downloads\/dictionary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">review sheet<\/a> on using the dictionary.  I began a review sheet on parts of speech.  I started working on a summary of spelling rules.  I read part of a grammar resource.  I read part of a spelling resource.  I played some Spider Solitaire on my computer&#8211;why did I do that?  I don&#8217;t have time for that.  I know I don&#8217;t have time for that.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m overwhelmed by the intensity of this task.  I&#8217;m overwhelmed by how much there is to prepare, by how much there is to do once I&#8217;m there.  I feel incredibly insufficient for the challenge.  How can I even dream of doing this?  How can I even think that I can impart something meaningful in one short month?  How can I think that I can prepare something meaningful in one short week?<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no way.  Which is why I&#8217;m spending every spare moment praying.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.&#8221;<\/i> Matthew 19:26<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 9 days, I&#8217;ll get on a plane to fly to Laredo, TX. I&#8217;ll spend a few days with the family in Laredo while the kids attend a conference, and then I&#8217;ll be in Mexico. Until then, I need to spend every spare moment preparing. There are some things that I just need to get &#8230; <a title=\"Every spare moment\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2008\/20080714-669.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Every spare moment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[4,15],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}