I just realized that I sort-of left my readers (all 4 of you) hanging with my last blog post. Sorry about that. I guess I should finish the story.

If you didn't catch it on Facebook a few weeks ago, I have some news: I am going back to graduate school. Yes, I, the perpetual student, couldn't handle being away from school for this long. If all goes according to plan, three years from now I'll be receiving an Ed.D. in Leadership for Educational Justice from the University of Redlands.

I'm really, really, really excited about this! As most of you know, I'm a school junkie, so this has the potential to be very cool for me. The program looks like a lot of fun, and it's broad enough not to lock me in to have to become a principal. I DO NOT want to become a principal!

So school starts in September, with a summer institute the last week of July. I wish it started tomorrow! The best part is that the program will allow me to keep my job and work probably just as much as I am working now. Yay!

So thanks for your prayers and support. I am really excited to be starting this new phase of my life. :)

I was not at all surprised by the results of a study recently conducted by the Josephson Institute. You can read about the study here. According to the study,

In the past year, 30 percent of U.S. high school students have stolen from a store and 64 percent have cheated on a test.

Sadly, this is not news to me. After all, I DID used to teach high school.

These days, I spend a lot of time emphasizing how paranoid test administrators are about people cheating. My students are always amazed at all of the restrictions and hoops that they are made to jump through in order to minimize cheating. I guess GRE and GMAT administrators have a reason to expect cheating?

So sad . . .

I've been going through the old photo albums lately. I've been looking for pictures to use at my parents' anniversary party. I went through the old family albums, and today I moved on to the more recent vacation albums. For some reason, mixed in with those were some of my scrapbooks from when I was teaching at Alemany. Looking at some of those pictures made me really nostalgic for those days. I know there were a lot of reasons to get out of the traditional classroom, and those are still valid. But seeing all of those pictures reminded me of what I loved about teaching high school--my students.

I miss the relationships I developed with my students, something that I can't do now. I mean, it's amazing how close I can get to some of them even now, but, really, they are gone after 8, or maybe even 4, weeks.

I miss the exhuberance of youth that so many of my students had. Some of them still have it, and some of my currents students do, too. But so many people I encounter now have lost that and are stuck in the rat race of their lives. When I am the most lively person in the room, something is seriously wrong in the world.

As I said, I know I'm in the right place for now, but some days I really miss what I had before. It's especially difficult this time of year, when I want to get ready for the new school year.

I'm a bit melancholy today. Ah well. This, too, shall pass. *sigh*

I've just been finding such interesting things lately!

I read this article about Texas schools that are creating ninth-grade only campuses. It's a really fascinating concept--sort-of like when we (at Alemany) decided to keep the freshmen out of the regular geometry classes because of the negative influence from the older students. (No, we didn't keep them from taking geometry; we just gave them their own class.)

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting idea. I'm not entirely sold on it, but I can definitely see the advantages. I wonder how they handle staffing, though.

Any thoughts?

I've been on a serious education kick lately. Beware if you see me in person! I may just tell you how I really feel about the educational system.

I found this fascinating article recently. It says that teenagers who attend church have a higher average GPA than teenagers who don't attend church. The article lists several factors that may contribute to this, including socialization with adults, participation in extracurricular activities, and strong friendships. Interestingly, the author doesn't give much value to the "God factor," and even states that any organization that offers the above-mentioned factors would do just as well as church. Despite my previous life as "church girl," I tend to agree with the author's assertions. Let me know what you think.