CJ and Jenn in Jose Olé

What to write, what to write?! There is just so much going on here I guess I'll just have to break it up into a few different sections:

Jenn's School
Next week brings Jennifer's first midterms in her Chiropractic program. She's spending lots and lots of time studying now. Essentially she needs to know every part of every muscle, bone, nerve, artery, and vein for the lower half of the body. She needs to know how to do all these muscle and nerve tests... frankly it's way over my head and it's a huge amount of information. She's doing really well with it. Many classmates go to her to get "regular English" versions of her professors' lectures. She's nervous about doing well. I know she'll do great!

CJ's School
Tomorrow I have my first observation (official) from my principal. I'm a little nervous because I teach a little differently than most of the teachers at my school, but I hope that is a good thing. When I was getting my teaching cert. I read some articles about inner-city schools teaching their students to obey instead of creatively think and I've noticed a lot of that happening here. Very few of my students have any desire to attend college. Most are only interested in getting through an assignment instead of using it as a tool to learn a new concept. I've been really trying to encourage them but it seems that they've been beaten down pretty low by their poverty level and the fact that very little has been expected of them.

A few weeks ago I found out that 4 of my boys beat a kid up at the bus stop and then did it again the next morning. I couldn't imagine 5th graders giving a "gang-style" beating to a kid with kicking him while he was on the ground and everything... I was so disappointed when I heard about that.

I sort of got offered a job in another school district by a lady at our church who is opening a school for 6-8th graders who have been kicked out of every other school in the district. It is a last ditch effort to get these kids out of the prison-system track. Apparently the cops were at the school the first day of classes. What's really wierd is I found out that the cops here won't arrest a student at school because getting cuffed and taken out to the squad car during school hours apparently "moves them up" with their gang. While all of this is scary, it's also really exciting. When I look at one of my students and give them the "you have great potential" speech, for many of them, it is the first time they've had someone believe in them... ever. Today I had a girl crying because I said I was glad to have her in class today. 90% of my job here is just teaching these kids that they have value.

Lately wanting to get up and go to work has been more difficult because of all the drama. We are in Program Improvement (PI) year 3 and our curriculum and instructional time is very strictly monitored which means many teachers are unhappy. I was frustrated at the beginning of the year but I've found my rhythm and am getting my job done. The other teachers at my school blame a lot of these problems on the principal and are having all these meetings where they get together and come up with a complaint list to present to the principal. I've never had a problem going directly to the person I have a problem with so I have opted out of these meetings- I spend too much time at school as it is. Since I have chosen to stay out of all this drama I have apparently been dubbed the "principal's favorite". Apparently the only thing separating teachers from the students in their charge is their age. Maturity has very little to do with it. If you're offering I pray that you'd help me to continue to keep my head down and simply do my job. I just want to stay out of all the mess and help these kids. That's why I am there. Forget all this other junk.

At Church
We're attending a little church called Orchard Community Church in Campbell. It's a cute little church that reminds us of MCC (we miss you!) and is very missions oriented just like MCC. For halloween we're participating in Trunk or Treat where you line up your cars in the church parking lot and decorate them with a particular theme then hand out candy. Ours is a pirate ship. It should be fun!

Jennifer and I are attending a couples Bible study which is a lot of fun. Shane and I are attending a men's Bible study where we are reading Brennan Manning's book "The Ragamuffin Gospel". Jennifer is also attending a women's Bible study. We're meeting a lot of new people and doing a lot of really fun things.

At Home
Shane is going to school on the weekends and we work all week so we don't see a whole lot of him. We hook up and go to the gym most evenings, which is a lot of fun. We actually just joined a gym that is really cool. It's got a sand volleyball court and TVs on the treadmills. It's pretty preppy. It reminds me of the gym Drago works out at in Rocky IV.

All three of us are addicted to CSI now and Shane and I are watching UFC quite a bit. The Seahawks have been a downer lately so watching football is out... although I do like watching the Raiders lose (though not this weekend!) b/c everyone down here (and my students) are huge Raider fans.

Jennifer and I are in the pre-approval process for a home loan. We attended a class on home-buying put on by ACORN. It was pretty informative. It looks like we're going to be able to slide into a pretty nice place, especially since the market is really slowing down these last few months. We're not rushing anything but we're looking forward to moving to our own little place and viewing our monthly payments as investments instead of just throwing money away!

I'm sure there is a lot more that we could post but I think I've written enough. We're really missing everyone up in WA and hope that ya'll come down and see us soon. We'll kick Shane out and you can sleep in his bed! :)


God Bless,

CJ