He Leadeth Me

I seriously can't get enough of this hymn!!! Here's the background from cyberhymnal.org:

As a young man who re­cent­ly had been grad­u­at­ed from Brown Un­i­ver­si­ty and New­ton The­o­lo­gic­al In­sti­tu­tion, I was sup­ply­ing for a cou­ple of Sun­days the pul­pit of the First Bap­tist Church in Phil­a­del­phia [Penn­syl­van­ia]. At the mid-week ser­vice, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the peo­ple an ex­po­si­tion of the Twen­ty-third Psalm, which I had giv­en be­fore on three or four oc­ca­sions, but this time I did not get fur­ther than the words “He Lead­eth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had ne­ver done be­fore, and I saw them in a sig­ni­fi­cance and won­drous beau­ty of which I had ne­ver dreamed.

It was the dark­est hour of the Ci­vil War. I did not re­fer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may sub­con­sciou­sly have led me to real­ize that God’s lead­er­ship is the one sig­nif­i­cant fact in hu­man ex­per­i­ence, that it makes no dif­fer­ence how we are led, or whi­ther we are led, so long as we are sure God is lead­ing us.

At the close of the meet­ing a few of us in the par­lor of my host, good Dea­con Watt­son, kept on talk­ing about the thought which I had em­pha­sized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had in­tend­ed to speak, I pen­ciled the hymn, talk­ing and writ­ing at the same time, then hand­ed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watch­man and Re­flect­or, a pa­per pub­lished in Bos­ton, where it was first print­ed. I did not know un­til 1865 that my hymn had been set to mu­sic by Will­iam B. Brad­bu­ry. I went to Ro­ches­ter [New York] to preach as a can­di­date be­fore the Se­cond Bap­tist Church. Go­ing in­to their cha­pel on ar­riv­al in the ci­ty, I picked up a hymn­al to see what they were sing­ing, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Lead­eth Me.”


words:

He leadeth me, O blessèd thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, over troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,
Nor ever murmur nor repine;
Content, whatever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

Refrain

And when my task on earth is done,
When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won,
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
Since God through Jordan leadeth me.

I like Christmas songs*

*with the exception of Christmas songs.

People think it's strange that I like Christmas music - love it, in fact. I've finally realized why. Most people associate Christmas music with songs like this:

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
I don't think Santa Claus will mind, do you?
He won't have to use our dirty chimney flue
Just bring him through the front door,
that's the easy thing to do"

Rant:

Songs like this are annoying to me. They grate on my nerves. I know that they're amusing, nostalgic tributes to a quaint American tradition. That's one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is that America has trivialized Advent until nothing about it resembles what Christmas actually stands for. So these are songs that are really annoying in themselves, but they also represent the materialistic travesty that Christmas has become. So twice as annoying.

The Christmas songs that I do love are quite different. They speak of the haunting majesty of Advent, of the shadow of the cross hanging over the lonely stable. Plus the words are poetry in themselves. I mean, people don't speak like this anymore:

"Shepherds why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be, which inspire your heav'nly song?"

This is what I mean when I say I like Christmas songs.

seriously.

I can't decide which I'm amazed by more -- Charles Wesley's hymns or just Christmas carols in general.

"Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Son of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris'n with healing in His wings"

seriously.

overwhelmed - in a good way, I think

Well, this week is Thanksgiving break, and I get a whole glorious week off of school. Yet somehow my emotions never quite match my situation. I should be ecstatic, but I've just been feeling kind of blah. Not important.

Anyway, I have spent a LOT of time on facebook today, befriending my fellow ∆ 2011 CMs! It's overwhelming and amazing to meet so many awesome people that I'm going to be sharing the next two years of my life with. I've met a few people that have turned out to be friends-of-friends that I didn't even know about!

My task tonight is to learn how to do long division with polynomials. Wish me luck!

emotional roller coaster much?

Since getting into TFA, I've been on quite the emotional roller-coaster.



I got the email, and I was so relieved that I came as close as I ever have to hyperventilating. I was sitting on the floor in a hallway in the Humanities Building, and I sunk down against the wall and almost started crying

The relief gave way to shock and disbelief. This still hasn't worn off, but there's been some sub-categories of emotions since then.

Once I found out about all of the tests I have to take and the math I have to learn, my relief gave way to abject panic. I have to learn calculus, which I haven't even studied, and I haven't thought about math in YEARS.

The panic sort of wore of and I realized that I can study, so I ordered a test prep book and bought a graphing calculator, one of the last things on EARTH I thought I'd ever spend $120 on.

While waiting for my test prep book to arrive (hopefully it will tomorrow), my mood has become restless anxiety. I want to start preparing as much as I can, but there's really nothing helpful I can/should do right now. I'm not moving for seven months, and it'd be pointless to do a lot of the things I want to do.

And the dumb TFA blogging website won't let me create a blog, which I've been dying to do since like May. Maybe it's God telling me to CALM DOWN.

I'm bored at the moment, and yet I still don't want to go to work in an hour. And I'll probably be all cranky at work and want to leave.

Blech.

applying to Teach For America?

on my way to my final interview!!!

The application for TFA is no laughing matter – it’s a months-long process, with lots of anxiety and impatience. But it’s well worth it.

My tips for you:

Before the application:

-read the website, and make sure you’re on board with what TFA stands for
-work on a draft of your resume. Try to keep it one page, talking about your leadership experiences, academic achievements, and extracurriculars. They have sample resumes posted on TFA’s website – I just followed the format of that one.
-work on a draft of your letter of intent. It’s supposed to be under 500 words. I wrote several (8) drafts before I found one that was half decent.
-make sure you have your SAT scores and grades handy; you’ll need them

Written application:

-have other people read your resume & letter of intent
-be consistent throughout the whole application – you’ll be asked about it during all stages of the application process
-check and double-check everything you write, just in case

Phone interview:
-RELAX; my interviewer was SUPER nice, and it felt like a conversation more than an interview
-be ready to talk about every item you’ve listed on your resume
-have responses in mind for the standard job interview questions about yourself – strengths & weaknesses, etc.
-if they don’t call you at your appointed time, don’t freak out – just email admissions and they’ll take care of it. This happened to me twice!
-have a big window of time open before and after your interview, so you’re not flustered
-have a thought-out question to ask at the end, if you want.

final interview:

**order your transcripts early! If you don’t, you’ll only have about 2 weeks to get them in, which could be nerve-wracking**

* make sure you force yourself to eat beforehand, even if you feel too nervous to eat! The nerves will eventually wear of, and it’ll be hard to think when you’re starving!

Lesson plan:
Make sure you:
-can do your setup in one minute, including writing your name, the grade level, the subject, and the objective of the lesson. I had to practice this several times before I could write fast enough.
-TIME YOURSELF. It seems obvious, but it’s really important. Now matter how awesome your lesson is, it makes you look really bad if you go over time. 5 minutes goes by fast – try to make sure you can get through your lesson plan in 4 ½, just to be safe. They’re really strict on time – 5 minutes isn’t just an approximate estimate.
-make sure everything in the lesson is age-appropriate and realistically feasible in the classroom setting
-have a very specific, measurable objective
-be familiar with what they’re looking for in a lesson plan (I highly recommend reading teaching as leadership)
-practice your lesson plan in front of other people – they’ll spot things that you won’t
-get comfortable with your props, and make sure they work. -Don’t rely too much on technology.
-practice it over and over and over again. I did at least 3x a day in the weeks leading up to my interview, and each time I did it, I grew more and more comfortable.

Group problem-solving activity: Don’t freak out too much if you don’t say a lot – just make sure you get a few good points in, and tie in the articles if you can.

Written activity: take your time and answer carefully.

Personal interview: be ready to answer the standard job interview questions, and be ready to talk about everything on your resume. Don’t be surprised if they ask about the same things that your phone interviewer asked for. Make sure you frame your answers in a way that shows that you have the 7 qualities that they look for in a candidate – that’s what they’re looking for out of you during the whole interview. What helped me also was having some ideas of specific things I wanted to do in my classroom.

What I did to prepare (besides what TFA explicitly told me to do):

-read Teaching as Leadership (and the articles, obviously)
-arranged to miss class on the day of my interview (it was ALL DAY)
-ordered and uploaded my transcripts
-submitted my placement preferences
-read through the state standards for first grade and decided on something to teach on (you can pick any grade. It just looks really good if you have an objective that’s specifically aligned to the state standards)
-researched age-appropriate vocabulary/activities
-re-read TFA’s mission, etc. on the website
-wrote a page on how I embodied each of the qualities they’re looking for:
-critical thinking skills
-leadership & achievement
-ability to influence and motivate others
-perseverance in the face of challenges
-organizational ability
-respect for students and families in low-income communities
-desire to work relentlessly in pursuit of TFA’s mission
(I made up an acronym, LAPCROW, so that I could remember/keep them in mind)
-made sure I had specific examples from my recent past of each quality


Obviously you don’t have to do all this – I’m just listing things that helped me in my application process.

and it was all worth it

10,000,000 bread baskets made

1,598 deposit envelopes methodically stuffed with 10 bills

60 paychecks from Mimi’s Café

194 nights at home with my cats, plugging away at homework

34 dinners out with minimal food ordered

2 approximate per-day visits to mint.com

324 bus rides

6 missed bus rides

4 months of TFA-obsessing

1 invitation