A day of (slight) rest.

After the maelstrom surrounding my first day of observation subsided, I went to school eager to knock out some homework; but as it turned out, all the work that I did in preparation for my observation lesson plan was the homework for the week.

Needless to say, I was relieved.

So, during the morning testing (through which I sit in a desk while hall-monitoring), I got to work on some grading and planning for the rest of the week. Most days, sitting in a drafty high school hallway for two and half or three hours is not my cup of tea. However, after a weekend of less than the daily recommended dose of sleep, a day trip to Atlanta for recording, and a couple of days trying to figure out (with limited success) the finer points of KTIP lesson planning, sitting was grand.

In the afternoon, I was in the classroom again. During 5th period, Mrs. Manning's plans to continue with the dramatic reading of The Crucible were thrown off by several students being absent. Several students adamantly expressed their desire to continue with the story. I've been with the class almost as long as they have been working through the play, and their minds and emotions are piqued by the story; they are emotionally and intellectually invested in the characters and the narrative. Although Mrs. Manning stops occasionally to clarify or ask students to recall previous events, she basically lets the text speak for itself.

According to Charlotte Mason, people (including children and teenagers) tend to connect with truth when it is presented in a literary manner. She maintains that God has designed the human mind to digest knowledge in the same way he made the stomach to digest food. Just as it disastrous to a person's physical well-being to eat fastfood every day, it is disastrous to the heart, soul, and mind to "eat" a steady diet of intellectual fastfood. In contrast, it is vital to nourish children and students with what Mason calls "Living Books," stories that pull you in with rich language, truth, and even controversy. It is a healthy diet of living books that is so desperately needed by students who have cell phones for fingers and XBoxes for eyes.

Living books feed living souls and breathe whispers of what it means to be human in a fallen world. And that's what I saw again today. The students hungered -- they wanted more of what they know to be a good thing -- and I know it may take time (years, even) for the seeds of truth to grow within them and bear fruit. In this class, at least, they are being nourished.