NerdyTeacherMom

"Move your mouth and act like you know the words! Watermelon!" Photo by Maya Lane / United Methodist Hymnal, 1989   I was "whisper-yelling" at my 13-year-old through my teeth, a technique I miraculously inherited from a mom. She had mastered the church-mom skill of setting us straight mid-song while maintaining a smile and staying on key. My daughters and I have had the opportunity to sing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" three times in the past 30 days. Three! (And we're not even midway through Black History Month.) At church, my kids are the ones just standing there during worship, looking like they're being punished -- even when the lyrics are being displayed karaoke style. Singing in public is not their thing, even though they've both been blessed with beautiful voices.  It should not have surprised me that they weren't moving their mouths when prompted to stand for "Lift Every Voice and Sing," but for some reaso

I've been working on a movie review assignment for my AP Spanish class. Each student is watching a film from their Spanish-speaking country of interest and writing a movie reviews. (I offered them the opportunity to videotape their reviews. When I told them they could be like Siskel and Ebert in Spanish, their blank stares reminded me of how freakin' old I am.) I had the idea of sharing a review of the movie "Erin Brockovich " that I wrote (in English) so long ago that I don't even remember where I lived when I wrote it. I typed my own name into Google and found several reviews I'd written in the early 2000s. Back in the day, I really wanted to write reviews. I got my feet wet with a few reviews of books, movies and restaurants. I loved getting free books and relished the idea of eating on someone else's dime. I dreamed of getting into movies and concerts without paying the hefty ticket prices and of having a free CD collection so large that I would