Working in Education through the Language Lens

As always I feel this post could go in 20 different directions.  I spent the last hour and a half emptying garbage bags from the dumpster behind my youngest son's school (with the help of his brothers) - and yes I have already showered (sorry TMI- but that smell ~ kinda sticks with you like peanut butter on the roof of a dogs mouth). Who was missing from the dumpster diving fun? - the reason for the dumpster diving. My youngest - who doesn't like talking to adults - came home hours after lunch, only to tell us then, that he had accidentally thrown his retainer away with his lunch tray. Had he told the teacher (and not his friends) - he could have gone down to the lunch room and rummaged through ONE bag of trash.                          .........and had a great day! So he calls dad first, telling him the grim news. Then he calls me (notice the order of those calls) - to which I answer "no problem, I'm on my way home to that you can go look for it".

I've seen this tree a thousand times! That's not an exaggeration. I live on the same street as this tree - about a mile or two north and either with a glance and sometimes even a nod of appreciation, I have noticed it's odd shape. I've even thought about blogging about it before - with themes like "resilience" or "determination". I've never been the passenger in traffic long enough to capture it - and from this angle it's a little difficult to see -  what's so perfectly inspiring is that the branches have continued to grow in-spite of power lines running directly above the trunk (and dead center). You could say it' kept growing "against all odds". I guess the timeliness of this story is that we just brought our 4th son home from Taiwan. Before I frame the relevance of that personal story - let me me share something my youngest said to me last week. Michael is 12, and was adopted when he was 7. He struggles