Twice Blessed China Mom: Summer Blessings

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Summer Blessings

We never needed our time together as much as we did, this summer. Hannah and I had many good chats as we floated in the pool this summer...lots of processing the past year. Lots of Rummikub. Many bowls of ice-cream. Weekly trips to the library. Hannah really enjoys reading books when she can pop a CD in to hear the book read aloud, as she reads.

I read books! I love to read! Before I was a mom I was often reading three books at the same time. For the past decade, most of my reading has been People Magazine!

Thank You, God, for the blessing of this summer. I know many people think teachers have summers off, but this was only my third summer in my teaching career that I've taken the entire time off. Other summers I spent time teaching summer school, working on my Masters, pursued additional certifications, tested new students, and took additional classes. This really is the norm, and I don't know many teachers that aren't working an awful lot during the summer! This was a year that I KNEW we both needed me to be home, and I'm so thankful I had the ability to take the time for us.

I can take deep breaths again. My bambinos are safe. We are doing well.

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I'm a single, adoptive mom in the Midwest.

I am also a teacher and love learning from my students, who are from all over the world. I worked as a special education teacher for nine years, and have worked as an ESL teacher for the past twenty-two years. I also tutor, and my favorite thing to do as a teacher is to teach children to read--especially those that struggle. While I understand the many strategies we use to help children learn to be literate, it still is absolute magic to me when it happens!

We're always seeking new understanding of how children learn, and I'm excited to learn new strategies for helping my students succeed at school. I've been learning a lot about early numeracy, and am so excited to be able to help my students in this area. Often people assume that math is easy for second language learners, but there is a massive amount of language in the way that we teach math, these days, especially when we ask students to write extended responses, explaining the steps they took to solve the problem.

Subtractive Bilingualism is a topic that interests me, greatly. So many of our children have been affected by the loss of their first language. I wrote a month long series on language issues and international adoption. Check it out here.
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I'm entering my third year as a Super Couponer. In the past, I read about women who purchased massive amounts of groceries for a few dollars and had no idea how they did it! When I started reading about the families in the US that are challenging themselves to a $1200 budget a year for groceries, household, and personal hygiene items, I thought they ate cardboard and didn't use deodorant. Now I know they have spent time learning how to shop only when items are at their lowest price, and use manufacturer and store coupons, and take advantage of promotions with catalinas. Until I became a Super Couponer, I thought "catalina" was a type of salad dressing. No more! I know that the families that have taken on this challenge are disciplined, and determined to save in an area of their life that they can learn to be more economical. I hadn't shopped at Jewel or Dominick's for several years, but I am back, when they have their special promotions! I've always hated shopping, for anything, except books. I still have a lot to learn! I do well with promotions, but there are many Coupon Queens who do better, so I continue to learn from them. Our outrageous out of pocket medical bills brought me to this, but I have to say that once I knew it was possible to shop in this way, for me, it wouldn't be possible to return to shopping as I did, prior to learning from the Coupon Queens. The money saved each month is applied to medical debt. Wish it could be applied to something else, but this is one strategy that will allow me to decrease debt, one month at a time...