Love in LoCo

I have a confession to make.  Before starting my role as an area representative with Loudoun FCA, I didn’t really care for middle schoolers that much.  They’re kind of moody, crazy energetic, a bit annoying, and sometimes smelly.  But over the past year, I’ve also learned that they’re hilarious and passionate and make for some amazing FCA huddle leaders!  Brambleton Middle is a brand new school in Loudoun this year.  We have four girls serving as huddle leaders there right now, three seventh graders and one eighth grader. Most of these girls were somewhat reluctant leaders at first.  They’re a bit timid but really wanted their school to have a huddle, so they stepped up.  At our first huddle of the school year, back in September, we had seven kids including the four leaders.  But the numbers have been growing steadily each week as one or two more kids invite friends and at yesterday’s huddle, we had eighteen students gathering for a snack of b...

I know my last blog was on the pressures facing our students to be perfect, but I’m going to continue on this soapbox again today.  Like many industries, trends and new initiatives come and go in the education sector.  During my fourth year of teaching, the idea of “mastery” became king.  We were “encouraged” to allow students to take retakes on quizzes and tests if they didn’t perform well the first time around in an attempt to give them another chance to master the material.  In theory, this sounds great.  Especially in a subject like math, where content builds on itself, why wouldn’t we want the students to master these skills before moving on to the next topic?  In practicality, though, it meant that students typically didn’t study the first time around because they knew they had another shot.  While there were sometimes extenuating circumstances where these retakes were beneficial for students, such as family emergencies or illness, the major...

Perfection: It’s impossible for us mere mortals to achieve, but oh how much energy and effort we waste trying to achieve it!  Read any local paper and you can see the signs of it.  Kids across this county face the challenge every day to have perfect grades, perfect games/races/matches on the fields and courts of competition, and perfect social circles.  And, if the pressures at school aren’t enough, when they go home at night, they’re expected to have perfectly funny Tweets, perfectly interesting Snapchat stories, and the perfect amount of likes on their Instagram posts.  They must also make sure to keep that ratio of followers on Twitter/Instagram to those they follow in check.  Because if you follow more people than follow you back, it’s super uncool.  Seriously!  Who made up these rules?!  And middle and high school kids these days subscribe to these ridiculously arbitrary standards like it’s normal!  Not only that, but far too many o...