Blog Features

I have the following features/series on my blog:

Living at the Core

Linked to the title of the blog, the original intent main focus - this series provides insight into aspects that have helped me to align my life to what is core over time. It is an on-going experimentation and process of refining to adjust to shifts in my life.

Walking Well: Educational Pedagogy through an Evangelization Lens

Though our roles and the people we interact with over time shift, there is always an element of needing to prioritize our relationship with God and to nurture others in doing the same. In this series, I will explore how my background in education applies to evangelization. You can read the introduction to the series here. The series is similar in concept to my previous series Ministry Through the Workshop Lens; however, it encompasses education in general, rather than just workshop teaching, and the application is to relationships in general, rather than being specific to the youth ministry context. 

Ministry Through the Workshop Lens

The area of K-12 teaching that most deeply sparked my passions was reading and writing workshop teaching. Even though I no longer teach middle school language arts, the concept of workshop teaching permeates who I am as a teacher in different contexts, including who I am and what I value as a Director of Religious Education and as a Youth Minister. This series incorporate elements of workshop teaching that have shaped me as I transfer the concepts into this new context. In the series I will share the background of the element and how it looks in the reading and/or writing workshop context and then explain how it looks in the ministry context.

One Little Word // A Word for the Liturgical Year

In 2010 after hearing some of my favorite education bloggers (Stacey and Ruth who at the time were the original bloggers at Two Writing Teachers) talk about the concept of one little word, I decided to give it a try. A couple of years in, I started taking Ali Edwards' workshops to help me to be more intentional about exploring and documenting the process. Looking back, I can see how committing to choose a word each year and then intentionally pondering it helped to lead me back toward God in a more meaningful way. Even though it took me 5-6 years to understand that my longings each year all aligned with what St. Augustine said, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee" in his book Confessions, now I realize how God's hand was in the process of recognizing what my soul longed for each year. With each word, a stronger foundation was built to support me to grow in my faith. Different posts are tagged as relating to One Little Word. In 2019, I decided to continue with the practice of selecting a word but shift it towards aligning with the liturgical year. I discontinued taking Ali Edwards' class when I switched to mapping to the liturgical year because I was no longer doing a calendar year month-to-month documentation process, but I am grateful for how taking the class for years helped me to form a habit of regularly documenting the journey and some of the ideas from the courses continue to inspire what and how I capture my words. 

My Words for the Liturgical Year:
2020: Adventure
2019: Light

My One Little Words:
2018: Home
2017: Filled
2016: Shine
2015: Core
2014: Salud
2013: Nurture
2012: Gratitude
2011: Embrace
2010: Simplicity