Sunday Funday September 27
Yay! Let’s celebrate:)! I am so grateful to have been able to finish/put together this long project of putting online (and in this book), my best English Teacher Resources. I had three big goals before we left Brazil: 1. To visit Flavio and Mercia in Boa Esperanca (check!) 2. To have a nice (short) family vacation to the beach while we still live near one (check!) and 3. To finish my English Teacher Resource book. This book is especially important for the teachers and volunteers at Living Stones, as they make learning fun for their students. I also made a version of this video in Portuguese, if you wanted to check it out:).
Prayers and Praises
Prayers for us as we are in that (strange) inbetween of not staying, but not leaving yet.
Interweb Reads
Maybe it’s not so bad (Coronavirus and schools)? PLEASE PLEASE—I hope the Brazilian government reads this and lets my Living Stones kids get some education sooner than later. Because they’ve gotten nothing since the first part of March. NOTHING. (Washington Post)
When your Role Changes and you wish it Hadn’t: “Here are a few signs of you might be experiencing role deprivation: Your emotional responses out of proportion to the situation. You notice you are hustling for your worth. Do you sense yourself being defensive or questioning what others think about you or how you use your time? Your hustling might be related to role deprivation. Role deprivation is unavoidable but not unnameable … naming helps us make sense of what is going on. Transitioning from the field makes you aware of roles that had become so automatic you may not have noticed them in years.” (A Life Overseas)
The Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre and the Wagalla Massacre: “I am interested in my personal response to these events in history. In our response as Americans, as humans. I’m an American and have lived in the Horn of Africa for 18 of my 42 years. I tell myself that I care deeply about both my passport country and the African nations that have hosted me. But do I even know them? Do I know their histories and what part my nation, ancestors, and people of my skin color have played in these histories? Do I know what role these realities still play? Does it matter that I know these things? It does matter. If I want to understand my current identity and presence and the way people receive me, how they perceive my work and words and behavior, I need to understand the context. Context without history is incomplete. Placing myself in relationship and trying to do effective work without understanding history is irresponsible. It also matters that I interrogate my response because through that interrogation, in which I will become increasingly uncomfortable, I learn, grow, change.” (Do Good Better)
The Awful Realities of the Breonna Taylor Case: It continues to amaze me how two different friends will post two different stories related to Breonna Taylor with two different sets of facts. And if I question any of them, the just point back to their facts—even though these two sets of facts set completely different narratives that cannot be held together. I am grateful for the respite I find at The Holy Post, The Dispatch, and the AND campaign with people I respect who refuse to be entrapped into one narrative/political party/political story. I appriciated, while mourning, this story. (The Dispatch)