I Love Kelle Hampton!

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Mrs Odie

April 1, 2014

From her pigeon-toed, open-mouthed selfies to her Poppa, I cannot get enough of Kelle Hampton.

Christmas has passed, but her book Bloom, Finding Beauty in the Unexpected would make a terrific Easter gift. Especially if you gave up amazing writing for Lent. This book would be a perfect way to break that fast.

Speaking of her amazing writing, no one can pepper a sentence with “Dude” or replace the g in an -ing word with an apostrophe like Kelle Hampton can. It makes me feel like she’s sittin’ right here talkin’ to me.

Ha! As if I could be so lucky!

Very few people in this world are inspirational like Kelle Hampton. Her words and ideas can change the world. The whole fucking world. Oops, her dad hates it when she swears. Isn’t that adorbs?

When she was pregnant, she thought she was having a second perfect baby girl. The thing is, God chooses the most specialest people in the world and gives them babies with designer genes (GET IT?! It’s a pun! God, she’s funny too! All of that and FUNNY). You really ought to read her book to get the full amazing summary, but just let me tell you that when Kelle’s daughter Nella was born with Down syndrome, she loved her anyway.

I know, right?!

I mean, not right away. She’s not Jesus.

But once she cobbled together a blog about it and realized she could rock out Down syndrome like no one ever had before, she decided to embrace it like it was ugly tile. The popularity of her one viral post says it all. People know good writing. Look at the popularity of “Heaven is for Real.”

If you’ve never heard of Kelle Hampton, sister, you must not hesitate another moment. Slide your smooth slippery fingers over your Samsung keyboard and spell out The Small Things. It’s a place wherefore babies are slung on hips. Laundry is ignored in favor of popsicle pictures of exotic almond-eyes and bent pinkie sunsets. Tiny turtles tempt tots’ toes. Kelle always accentuates alliteration.

As a working woman with two young children, nothing thrills me more than a stay-at-home Mommy Blogger who declares spring break a “lazy week.” She positively promotes play instead of work, which I totally could never do, nor could anyone I know, but just knowing that she is rocking it out at home, taking pictures of her kids and posting them on the internet instead of working, makes me feel like absolutely anything is possible, even over-loaded run-on sentences.

Like me, Kelle Hampton idolizes Emerson, who went to the beach because he wanted to live deliberately. To suck the marrow out of life while buying as many craft supplies, home decor items, cute outfits, shoes, barrettes, Washi tape rolls, and camera doodads as possible. Her ability to zero in on exactly what Whitman meant by “Spartan-like” when he wrote Charlotte’s Web will make you rethink your own version of putting to rout all that is not life. Or something.

I’m sorry for going on and on. Something about this beautiful first day of April inspires me. It’s like my love of all things Kelle has turned me into a marrow sucking machine.

I never promote other bloggers, but to quote Kelle’s website motto, “4 Pay it Ward.”

 

Posted in Pure side-splitting comedy | Tagged , | 40 Comments

Sent Mail

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Mrs Odie

I hate email.

I wonder if teachers despised telephones when they first became ubiquitous. I once sent email sporadically to save paper for inter-office memoranda. Though the expression “Didn’t you get the memo?” is alive and well, the memo itself is dead and buried. Email wasn’t even a verb back then.

I admit, there were a few times in college (mostly grad school) where I sent a cleverly worded email instead of an assignment. Ten years later, what I know for sure is that I never fooled anyone.

Teachers know we’re lying. And I say “we” because I’m guilty. Email is second only to the text message for the nonconfrontational procrastinator’s exit strategy. I don’t even check my email the night before a major assignment is due. You would be stunned how many people’s grandmas pass away. If you’re a grandma, you might want to acquire a copy of your teenage grandchildren’s school syllabi and find out when the midterm is.

Because, lady, your days are numbered.

I wish I could avoid my email after progress reports go out. I will have at least 15-20 emails from parents who want meetings with me about why their children are in danger of failing. It used to be that I regularly communicated with the parents of my students. It was called a progress report. Today, the progress report is the prelude to the email. The same way that the “due date” for an assignment has become the day when students check in to see when the real due date is.

Because surely, when I wrote “due date,” what I meant was “turn it in whenever you feel like it.”

Communication is so easy these days; it takes a minute or two to fire off an email to your child’s teacher. What doesn’t register for parents is how many other parents are doing the same thing. I have nearly 200 students. Luckily, most of them are passing, or I would never be able to leave my desk.

I refuse to check email from home. There will probably come a time when I won’t be able to get away with that, but I already use my family time to grade papers and plan lessons. How much are we supposed to allow our work lives to encroach on our home lives?

“Mommy, can you play with me or are you working?” my oldest asked me last night. All I ever hear from mothers of older children is “Treasure this time! It goes by so fast!” I know. When I blinked, my spring break was over and my in-box was full.

Oprah once said that teachers should be available via cell phone until late in the evening to help students. Rhetorically, it’s a great strategy. If I say, “But I don’t want to be available to my students during my family time,” then I sound like I don’t care about my students. While she and the other millionaires are fixing education though, I wish they’d consider teachers people. Or replace us with robots and get it over with.

We see ourselves as the most successful students, and therefore experts at what students should do. After all, the student became the master! Others see us as failures. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.

Those who can’t teach, blog.

 

Posted in Teaching, Work Related | Tagged , , | 20 Comments