Dayenu!

Todd went to school in Jerusalem and was there for the Easter/Passover season. While there, he attended a Passover Seder hosted by a Jewish Rabbi. While we have been married it has become our family tradition to have a family Passover Seder each year. We love how it teaches our children about other's cultures and traditions. It has always been important to us to help our children understand and appreciate differences in others.

I find it amazing to think that we are participating in an event that has been celebrated for over 3000 years! What a stabilizing tradition in a very destabilizing society we live in today. During a Passover Seder there is an account and symbols to help remember Moses leading the Israelites out of the bondage of Pharoah.  There are four cups of wine drank during the Passover Seder. These cups of wine symbolize the four redemptions promised by God to the Israelites in Exodus. First, "I will bring you out of Egypt",  second, "I will deliver you from bondage" (recounting miracles such as the parting of the Red Sea),  third, "I will redeem you", and fourth, "I will take you to me for a people."

There are several interesting Mormon ties into the Passover Feast.  As part of a Passover Feast, there is a place setting made for Elijah to prophet. It has been prophesied that Elijah will return during Passover. Also as part of the ceremony, someone goes and opens the door to invite Elijah to enter and take his place at the Passover Seder.

In D&C 110, Joseph Smith records visions manifested to him and Oliver Cowdery in the temple at Kirkland, Ohio on April 3, 1836.  First the Lord Jehovah appears in glory and accepts the Kirkland temple as his house. Next Moses and Elias each appear and commit their keys and dispensations. As a side note, there is an interesting question proposed at Feast Upon the Word about this idea. The question for vs 11 is: Moses. Why did Moses have the keys for the gathering of Israel? What does that gathering have to do with his role as the prophet who led the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt, but not into the Promised Land? Continuing with D&C 110, finally Elijah returns and commits the keys of his dispensation as promised in Malachi.  What is coolest of all is that these visions occur during Passover of that year.  Elijah did return during Passover, quietly, and the Jews are not aware that their prophesy was fulfilled. That holy and symbolic ceremony that has been performed in its "orderly" manner for over 3000 years, set the precedence for its modern day fulfillment with both Moses and Elijah returning to provide the keys for the modern day gathering and sealing of God's people to him.

A funny thing happened during our Passover Seder this year. There are traditional songs that we sing each year during our Passover Seder. One is "Who Knows One". It is a song kind of like the "12 Days of Christmas" that replays important Jewish with each number ie 1 is God Our Father, in Heaven and in Earth, 2 Tablets of the Law, 3 are the Patriarchs, 4 Mothers of Israel,  5 Books of the Torah, and so on. The other song we sing is Dayenu. The word "Dayenu" means approximately, "it would have been enough for us", The song is about being grateful to God for all of the gifts he gave the Jewish people, such as taking them out of slavery, giving them the Torah and Shabbat, and had God only given one of the gifts, it would have still been enough. This is to show much greater appreciation for all of them as a whole. (from Wikipedia, Dayenu) After singing the traditional parts of the song, it is the tradition for each person to add a verse of their own gratitudes, each getting more and more specific, to the pinnacle items. Just like the traditional song ends with the ultimate thing they are grateful for, being the temple. 

In our family Todd happened to go first this year and he added:
"If God had built the Temple for us, and not given us a nice home to live in, "Dayenu" (we all say). " If he had given us a nice home to live in, and not given us good jobs as a means to provide all for our good life, "Dayenu" (we all say, and then go into the chorus of Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Dayenay, Dayaenu!)

Jonah went next:
"If God had given us good jobs as a means to provide all for our good life, and not given us our families "Dayenu" (we all say). " If he had given us our families, and not given us our friends to enjoy life with, "Dayenu" (we all say, and then go into the chorus of Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Dayenay, Dayaenu!)

Nick went next with:
"If God had given us our friends to enjoy life with, and not given us good food, "Dayenu" (we all say). " If he had given us good food, and not given us water, "Dayenu" (we all say, and then go into the chorus of Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Dayenay, Dayaenu!)

Lastly, I went to close out the ultimate of ultimates with:
"If God had given us water, and not given us our good health, "Dayenu" (we all say). " If he had given us good health, and not given us books!   At this point there was a pause and sputtering,  mumble, mumble "Books?"  The boys can't bring themselves to say books here, so I quickly try to improvise this spontaneous response of mine to make it more appealing and add, "and the internet, people sharing ideas, that's what I mean." 

Todd replies, "Your too late... You said books!" and starts up with, "Dayenu" (which we all say, and then go into the final chorus of Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Day-Day-enu, Dayenay, Dayaenu!)

And thus ends our Passover Seder for this year, and thus the title and real purpose of this post.

I am so grateful for books, the internet, and the ways that people can connect and share ideas online.  It has been spring break this week so I have had time to read a few books and catch up on some blogs that I follow and click on some links I normally would not have the time to do. I have been brought to tears four times this week.

First, I finished reading the book, "The Dirty Life On Farming, Food and Love" by Kristin Kimball. On page 257, the part, "Watching that guy's collard flutter into his basket was the moment I got married, in my heart. There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from, but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever." I bawled! This was a message to me!

Second, I read the book, "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  On page 131, in a letter from Eli (a 12 year old boy) to Juliet, "Is there an animal you'd like to have? I want to carve a present for you, but I'd like it to be something you'd favor. Would you like a mouse? I am good with mice."  I bawled!  This showed in simple elegance the incredible and simple strength of human beings reaching out to connect and bond with another human they deeply care about.  Like a cat, offering their loved owner a caught mouse. (You probably have to read this book to get this quote fully, or maybe it is just me.)

Third, I clicked and watched the link to the TED speech, "Amanda Palmer: The art of asking" (starting about 11 min and 30 seconds).  "My music career has been spent trying to encounter people the way I could on the box. Blogging and tweeting, not just about my tour dates and my new video, but about our work, our art, our fears, our hangovers, our mistakes...and we see each other. And I think when we really see each other, we really want to help each other."  I bawled!

This is why I choose to bring up books in the Dayenu Song! The power to connect and see each other. As I spend two hours on my final free day of spring break, writing and sharing these experiences of mine. I have looked to the side of my screen and am mocked when I see that I have 0 followers to my blog right now. Why am I doing this? Will anyone read this!?! I don't know. 

The power of human beings intrigues me. I love "Les Miserables". Over and over it brings out the tremendous inner resilience in humans for goodness and the ability to endure, reach out, connect and survive, to find a way to have hope when none seems possible. 

I'll close with my last bawling experience of the week, from the acknowledgment section of Mary Ann Shaffer in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society", pg 304. "I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art--be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music--enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised."

Dayenu!

To Every Thing There is a Season

Recently I have been reading a Blog Series at the Blog, Feast Upon the Word, about Opposition.  The idea that is being discussed is how it takes good and bad to be whole. As I've been following this blog series, it has gotten me thinking about some thoughts and experiences that happened to me about 15 years ago. I guess I can call it my "reverse born again" experience. My life at that time revolved closely around church and all things religious. That seemed like the good thing to do. I had come through a very discouraging year and things were getting better. I had a spiritual experience and came to understand that my heart and who I was, was precious. My value did not depend on what I did or did not accomplish, I was still precious, and so was everyone else in the world.
I also came to understand that there are good things in the world that are not "religious", and my husband was an excellent example of that. He is a a great human being. Religious experiences and faith are not gifts for him. I fell in love with him because he is so true and loyal to what he thinks and believes. I love "real" people. The good thing is that truth does not require faith, truth is truth and can stand by itself. So many times religious institutions demand faith to be a part of their religion. I found a scripture in The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) that gave me hope for people who do not fit within the "normal" scope of faithful and religious people. In D&C 88:118 it says, "And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith." Not everyone has to have faith to be a part of religion and spiritual experiences! Truth can stand up for itself because it is true, and truth doesn't require faith.
God and spiritual experiences are truth, and faith definitely enables different avenues of spiritual experiences, but the truths are not limited by faith.
These realizations led me on a search for wholeness, which became more important than searching for "good".  I like the scripture in James 1:2-3, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect, and entire, wanting nothing." Trials, opposition and using imperfections lead to "entireness" and wholeness. It is more about accepting, even embracing, who I am and using my "good and bad" to fulfill my individual part in God's big plan.
This concept of wholeness and not labeling things as good and bad became very important to me, because if something is labeled bad, then I had the tendency to avoid accepting, or even seeing the bad in me, let alone purposely using that part of me. (I struggle with the right words to use for "good" and "bad", so I apologize.)
I created a lesson to use with my children in my attempt to help them learn from what I was learning.  I titled the lesson, "Emotions-To Every Thing There is a Season.  The objective of the lesson is: God created each of us with lots of different emotions like being happy, sad, angry, excited and lots of others. All of these emotions are sometimes good and sometimes bad. God wants us to learn to use all of our emotions for righteousness. Righteousness is determined by the way the Holy Ghost directs us to use the emotions. The lesson pairs up "opposite animals" and then the children decide which animal trait is appropriate for which scenario. For example: A Playful and Silly Monkey--A Wise and Observant Owl.  Playing at the playground, which is appropriate? walking through a parking lot, which is appropriate?  Fierce Lion--Gentle Lamb. Playing with your baby sister, which is appropriate? playing soccer or someone asking you to take drugs, which is appropriate?
Click and you can get a copy of the lesson. Cut out the animal cards to use with the lesson. The lesson includes songs which are in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint Children's Songbook. Here is a link to the Children's Songbook. You can search by the number or the title.
I believe that joy and happiness are linked to our willingness to see who we are, the good, bad and ugly. We must seek truth, accept it, and then work with God, who will help us use the precious, whole, complete, true me to complete his plan, which is to help every other precious, whole, complete, true being have joy, hope and health.

Global Read Aloud Project Starts Sept 19, 2011

There is a project called the Global Read Aloud Project. They select a book and during a four-week period they are reading the same chapters, writing in wikis and blogs, connecting through Skype, and posting and sharing student work.  You can read more about their project at www.globalreadaloud.wikispaces.com . You can also follow them on twitter at #GRA11. Grades 1-3 are reading Flat Stanley and Grades 4-7 are reading Tuck Everlasting. Their current project runs from this Monday, Sept 19-Oct 14, 2011.

I’m a 5^th grade teacher in VA and I’m working to create a global classroom. Our school district has strict guidelines for technology, but I was given permission to use ePals and I can use Elluminate. I cannot generally make contact through Skype, wikis or blogs. I heard about the Global Read Aloud Project and wanted to find a way to get involved with this program. I spoke with ePals administrators and they were great to create a program that mirrors the program within the GRA blog and wiki. They are going to be monitoring the GRA wiki and blog and update activities and classroom suggestions within ePals.

If you are not familiar with ePals, it is a free service. ePals is the leading provider of safe collaborative technology for schools to connect and learn in a protected, project-based learning network. With classrooms in 200 countries and territories, ePals makes it easy to connect learners locally, nationally or internationally.

As a teacher, it is easy to open an account, setup a school profile, and add students to an account. They do require permission slips for students under 13 years old. Students are able to use student forums and create posts and comments on other students discussion threads in a variety of topics such as Arts and Entertainment, Sports, Current Events, Social Issues, Music, Technology and more. You can post in many languages and it has a translate button that will translate it into other languages. Epals also has partnerships with National Geographic and the Smithsonian, which I am still exploring.

For teachers, there are teacher forums where you can share ideas and post that you are looking for classes to connect with on any topic. There are prearranged projects you can link too. You can post your classes works like videos, pictures, or websites in the student media galleries and search through them by tags.

Once you open your ePals account, you can link to the GRA11 in project forums at:

http://www.hightechhigh.org/projects/?name=Globe%20Project&uid=352e60f6b975109c83a5d7ec2a1322f6 .

There you can download the GRA11 calendar for Tuck Everlasting.

I’m hoping to have discussions on things like student predictions, new vocabulary, etc., share student work in the student media gallery, and connect with classrooms within ePals.

Anyway, if you have limited use of open technology with wikis and blogs but still want to participate in the Global Read Aloud, check and see if ePals could work for you.

Thanks,

Michele

New Setting, NOT a New Character

My daughter is unpacked and getting settled in at VA Tech. All the adjustments are making things difficult for her. I’ve been thinking and praying of advice I can give her to help with the transition.

As I thought through the situation I realized that she was trying to figure out who she was in this new place and all these changes were causing her to feel anxious. I started thinking about how as a 5^th grade teacher I teach my students to analyze books. We look at the characters, setting, plot, etc. I saw that Bekah was trying to create a new character in her new setting, when in actuality, she already is confident about who she is. She is a daughter of God and a daughter of Todd and Michele Watkins, among other parts of her identity. She knows what her values are and what she believes.

She is actually the same character or the same person she was, and the only thing that has changed is her setting. Instead of being at home with family and friends close by for support, she is now a little further away in a new place, but she does not need to worry about trying to figure out who she is. She knows that already. She needs to focus on how this character or person, Bekah, acts and is in this new setting. She will see, hear, learn and experience many new things but she knows who she is and is confident of her values and can carry that confidence into her new setting.

The same applies to people moving or going to a new school, new grade, or any new situation. Be confident in who you are. Try the new experiences as you, and add parts that feel right, like you want them to be a part of who you are.

Life is Too Full-Make Choices by Being P.I.C.K.Y.

BE P.I.C.K.Y.

Passionate. Involved. Caring and Connected. Knowledgeable. Yin/Yang-Balanced.

Life is too full, there is too much to do and not enough time to do everything the way you want it to be done. It is a fact that you must make choices about what you will spend your time on in your life.

My slogan is to BE P.I.C.K.Y.

Choose which things stay in your life, which things get dropped, and how you allocate your time based on these values: 

Passionate—Involved—Caring and Connected—Knowledgeable—Yin/Yang-Balanced

• Do you feel passionate about this?
• If you do, get involved and make a difference.
• Be caring and then connect with people, ideals, causes and places. Use Twitter, Facebook, Social Media, Friends and find others who are also passionate about the same things.
• Gather as much information as you can to have a strong knowledge base.
• I tend to be extreme in what I get involved with, so I need the important reminder to be humble, down-to-earth, and let the Yin/Yang philosophy of balance work. Sometimes this is active and sometimes it is passive. Be sensitive to the flows of life.

Choose your life by being P.I.C.K.Y.

How I Saved $214 Buying College Textbooks Online

Well, I've been thinking of starting a blog for awhile and now my advice to share has moved me to take immediate action. My daughter Bekah is going to be a freshman at Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!). She is majoring in Physics. We went to the school bookstore website to look up the textbooks she needed.  We found that her textbooks there were going to cost $402.  We did not want to spend that much so we took the advice of several Virginia Tech students, and looked up the books online.

We started the process by doing a google search on textbook websites.  We then entered the ISBN number on the top three websites. We went through the sites and checked the condition of the book, the reliability of the site, and the shipping and return policies.  We were able to find her books at a fraction of the cost. (After the methods of buying I explain about college textbook webcodes, what they are and how to purchase books with this in mind. Scroll down if you want to go directly to the Webcode section.)

Methods for buying textbooks:

• Buying textbooks online is the option we used most often and here is where we saved the most money. As I mentioned, we copied the ISBN # at the school bookstore site, did a google search for textbooks, then pasted the ISBN number at the top three sites and made our choices from there. Before we purchased we double checked and triple checked the ISBN number to ensure it was exactly the same as the bookstore listed. Most of the companies did allow returns. All of the books we received seem to be exactly the same as the bookstore lists.
• Renting Textbooks is an option now. When you rent a book it is for a certain number of days like 90 days or 120 days. When that time is up, you no longer have access to your textbook so you need to make sure it is available through the finals of your course.  Also check to see if you will need that textbook for more than one semester. My daughter needed her Calculus book for two semesters. The book was $120 through the bookstore. We could rent it for $60 for 120 days, but it was a two semester course so renting would cost $120, which we could buy it for that cost. We ended up buying it online for $27 plus shipping. 
• E-Books downloading is also available now. We found that this is similar to renting where you are not buying the book permanently, but download the book to use for a set number of days. If you will need the book long-term, this is probably not a good option. I understand that this is usually about 50% of the new cost which we always found better prices online buying a book so we did not use this method. This option is nice because students can read the books on their ipads, kindles, bookreaders, tablets or laptops and do not need to carry around heavy textbooks.
• Used Books from the school bookstore method of course has been around awhile now and that option still exists. For my daughter, the books that were offered used through the bookstore were significantly more expensive than what we found online. The advantages of this method is that returns are easy if the student decides to drop the class, it may be highlighted, (can be a pro or a con) you can get the book right away without allowing time for shipping, if the book will be used in the future you can return the book at the end of the course and the bookstore will buy it back for a significantly less price, and there is no worry that this might not be the correct version of the book (searching by ISBN #'s eliminates this problem anyway, but there is still some anxiety that it really is the right book when you buy it anywhere else)

A few options that are common so I won't go over them in detail are:

• Buy from the college bookstore new
• Buy from local used book stores. Many universities have local used book stores that specialize in this trade.

College Textbook Webcodes
At the orientation, students mentioned that we would need to have "valid webcodes," and we weren't sure what that meant. We couldn't find much information online so I called the bookstore and after asking a lot of questions came to an understanding of college textbook webcodes.

Webcodes are a passcode included in textbooks that take you to a website related to the course. Students need to have these webcodes to turn in homework assignments. These webcodes can only be used by one student so if you buy a used textbook, the webcodes will not be valid. 

Bekah's Physics textbook included webcodes in a supplemental packet, at the bookstore the new book, including the supplemental pack, cost $217. The bookstore also sold a separate supplemental pack for $58. If we had bought the book used, then we would also need to purchase the supplemental pack for $58 so she would have the valid webcodes she needed for turning in homework. The man at the bookstore told us that supplemental packs are not always available so you need to check this. You can ask the bookstore people to check and see if any of the books you need include webcodes and if they are available to purchase separately.

In our case we actually found a new copy of the book for $69! (vs $217 at the bookstore) We were thrilled. We were anxious to see if it would really include the supplemental packet. When it came we were happy to see it did have the supplemental packet with webcodes. We hadn't noticed that it was a softcover or paperback, but that was fine with us. If it hadn't had the webcodes we could still purchase the supplemental packet from the bookstore for $58 and the cost would have been $127, still much cheaper than the bookstore.

We ended up buying her lab manual and one other small book through the bookstore and purchased the rest online and we saved $214. It took us about two hours of work on the phone with the school bookstore trying to understand the process and then searching and purchasing the books.  We received the books within 6 days of ordering.

My Dad heard a news report that said that 8% of students were buying textbooks online. I hope this information helps. Good luck!