A School Included This Teen’s Service Dog In The Yearbook And It’s The Purest Thing

when i was younger i had a really bad fear of danny devito when i was going to sleep so my older brother gave me a watch that he set to like 8 hours ahead so that it was always daytime on the watch when i was asleep and he told me it would confuse danny devito and he would think it was daytime and get scared of the sun and leave me alon

WHO UP

get some rest

there’s a myth that teachers work seven hours a day, nine months a year. there’s this joke: name three reasons to become a teacher - june, july, august. 

if you’re worth your salt, you know better. you know the day usually is at least nine hours long, if not twelve (thanks, staff meeting that ran late again), you know that you spend your summers locked in small rooms learning and re-learning the smallest tactic that might help your students; endlessly on Pintrest because oh my gosh, isn’t that just the best idea for a sensory table. or a new name board. or this would really help them understand the activity; yes it’s going to cost me but gosh, isn’t it lovely. you know that being a teacher also sometimes means being a parent, kind of, and being a jailer, kind of, and being a hardass, kind of, and being the kindest person in their life. you know sometimes your role is “you gave me the hope i needed to keep studying” and sometimes it’s “you showed me i needed to work harder.”  being a teacher is watching the entire series of my little pony just because it’s what’s cool with the kids and you think you could make a curriculum from it and it’s also deliberately pretending you don’t understand cultural references just because it makes kids squirm. it’s giving “a little extra” all the time, every day, a little extra points for that one student who needs it, a little extra hug, a little extra thought, and time, and emotional labor, and heart, and heart, and heart.

the interesting thing about being both a student and teacher at certain points in my life means that i came face-to-face with the idea i was going to lay down my life for a student before i’d even hit 21. at 19, taking lessons on how to distract a shooter should-it-ever-occur; a cop looked me in the face. “are you ready?” he asked. “will you die for them?” he had a gun on his hip. i hadn’t even met my class yet.

sometimes, i don’t match perfectly with my students. i mean, you always like them, a little, even if they drive you nuts, but some kids just won’t click with you. it’s kind of a hard thing to learn; you assume it’s because of you, and your failure to become some movie-star teacher who touches the life of every bill and sally. but the truth is, kids got stuff going on at home and in their bodies and in their friends and they don’t always have time or energy to be patient and listen or whatever you need from them. but you try, you know. and then you’re asked. hey, this kid that won’t listen, that hits other kids, that uses slurs. you’ll die for him, right? you’ll give up that big beautiful future you got, that family that loves you, that home and that slice of cake. you’ll give up that summer cruise you’ve saved up for since july and your brother’s wedding. for this kid? 

i do have, like. a gauge about things. sometimes, and i mean this truly and deeply, i am simply not paid enough for certain nonsense. no, no, who cares i’m not paid enough for crayons or markers or books or literally half the supplies i have in my classroom (i’ll find a way, in my budget, to provide, always, every time, no matter what it takes out of my mouth). usually it’s inter-community drama or parents who are somehow standing in the way of their student’s education or administration yet again slashing an important lesson/curriculum/whatever-they-get-their-hands-on. i’m not paid enough for a lot of things, but i still do them. i’m not paid enough to make your children extra food or be sure they get their vitamins. i’m certainly not paid enough to die for them.

often the argument “just bring a gun” comes up. how silly to anyone who has worked with children. there’s safety risks, huge safety risks, and then there’s anything in a classroom. if you think something is safe, it is not. kids will find a way to hurt themselves on nothing but an empty floor if you give them the time. i wonder if this what they tell police officers who were shot in the line of duty - well, it sucks but you should have had some type of superhuman reflex and simply not been shot. after all, you had a gun. this personal gun somehow cancels out the bigger automatic gun. two wrongs make a right. my personal gun would somehow empower me in such a way that i could not only predict the movements of a shooter but also have the aim, calm, and consideration to shoot him before he shot me. my teaching degree did not come with a CIA training course. i have bad vision. i know, faithfully, in the pit of my stomach, where the tiny terrors are that, should i even have a gun, i would not shoot it. i wonder, always. what would that look like. the police don’t know who is the hero when they break down doors. and, should i die in that classroom, my death will have a whisper: don’t politicize it. let it, the others say, remain meaningless.

sometimes a cop will look at you and ask, are you ready? are you willing? are you comfortable knowing that this humble job, this often-thankless, often-joyful job: it has a policy expecting you to face a man armed to the teeth. and die for each child in that classroom, even the child who drives you nuts, even when you aren’t paid enough, even when you’re giving up your family and your love, even when people will blame you for not having a gun. and you know, somehow, the minute you step into a classroom. you know the minute you see them. it rings in your chest like a second heartbeat: yes, yes, yes, i would gladly do it, i would die twice if i was allowed to do it, if i could save one, if i could save any, yes, of course, unhesitatingly. because you love them, even when you hate your job, and you love them in a way that means you know would stretch out your body at 19 years old and give it up, because, somehow, you understand “protect and serve” in the core of your bones, in the grit of you, that these children are yours, are an extension of your twelve-hour days and hungry belly and endless working, and that the love you have will make that choice effortless, easy, a promise you make even if nobody ever asks for it.

okay. 

three days ago, my second graders came in from the cold when i got the first question. a tug on my sleeve. “miss raquel?” her eyes are dry. she’s just thinking. “when a shooter comes, are we ready?”

and i realized: we’re asking them to die, too.

Fun Random Facts About the LOTR Soundtrack

Most composers spend just 10-12ish weeks working on a film’s music. John Williams spent around 14 weeks on each Star Wars movie, 40ish weeks total for the whole OT……but composing the LOTR trilogy’s soundtrack took four years

The vocals you hear in the soundtrack are usually in one of Tolkien’s languages (esp. Elvish). The English translations of the lyrics are all poems, or quotes from the book, or occasionally even quotes from other parts of the films that are relevant to the scene

When there were no finished scenes for him to score, Howard Shore would develop musical themes inspired by the scripts or passages from the book. That’s how he got all Middle-Earth locations have their own unique sound: he was able to compose drafts of “what Gondor would sound like” and “what Lorien would sound like” long before any scenes in those places were filmed

Shore has said his favorite parts to score were always the little heartfelt moments between Frodo and Sam

Shore wrote over 100 unique leitmotifs/musical themes to represent specific people, places, and things in Middle Earth (over 160 if you count The Hobbit)

The ones we all talk about are the Fellowship theme, the main Shire Theme, and the themes for places like Gondor, Mordor, Rohan, and Rivendell…but a lot of the more subtle ones get overlooked and underappreciated

Like Aragorn’s theme. It’s a lot less “obvious” than the others because, like Aragorn himself, it adapts to take on the color of whatever place Aragorn is in: it’s played on dramatic broody stringed instruments in Bree, on horns in  battle scenes, softly on the flute with Arwen in Rivendell….

Eowyn has not just one but three different leitmotifs to represent her

Gollum and Smeagol both have their own leitmotifs! Whose theme music is playing in the scene can often tell you whether the Gollum or Smeagol side is “winning” at the moment

The melody for Gollum’s Song in the end credits of the The Two Towers is the Smeagol and Gollum themes smushed together (it’s Symbolic)

And then there’s the really obscure ones. Like there’s a melody that plays at Boromir’s death that shows up again in ROTK in scenes that foreshadow a major death or loss

Wikipedia actually has a list of these leitmotifs, click this link and scroll down to check it out if you’re bored

Shore wanted the theme music to grow alongside the characters– so that as the characters changed, their theme music would change with them.  

You can hear that most clearly in the Shire theme. Like the hobbits, it goes through A Lot 

Like compare the childish lil penny whistle theme you hear in Concerning Hobbits/the beginning of FOTR with (throws a dart at random Beautiful Tragic Hobbit Character Development scene because there WAY TOO MANY to choose from) the scene when Pippin finds Merry on the battlefield, where you hear a kind of shattered and broken but more mature version of that same theme in the background 

I could write you a book on how much I love the way the Shire theme grows across the course of these films 

Unlike the hero’s themes, which constantly change and grow, the villain’s themes (The One Ring theme, the Isengard theme, etc) remain basically the same from the very beginning of FOTR to the end of ROTK. Shore said this was an intentional choice: to emphasize that evil is static, while good is capable of change

Shore has said that between all the music that made into the movies and the music that didn’t, he composed enough for “a month of continuous listening”……..where can I sign up

after dying god informs you that hell is a myth, and “everyone sins, its ok”. instead the dead are sorted into six “houses of heaven” based on the sins they chose.

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HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. GLOWING F*CKING JEWELLERY!!!

Remember when you were a kid and you had those LED light-up shoes from Walmart, those plastic stars you’d stick on your ceiling that glowed in the dark, or playing glow-in-the-dark bowling in a white t-shirt? Well this jewellery will give you the same feeling, while maintaining some level of being an adult and looking beautiful in the process. While we can’t divulge how they glow, we can tell you that no fireflies were harmed in the process of making our glowing jewellery. 

Browse our entire line of glowing jewellery HERE

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UBS is a lifestyle retailer dedicated to inspiring customers through a unique combination of product and creativity with no bullsh*t pricing. We all know the retailer that our company is based off of, but we were tired of overspending at their store, so we came up with the solution.

Karen | The Head Bullshitter

I think he found one. (via specksgoor)

Days seem like weeks to me. Days are weeks. Loving Vincent (2017) dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman

Greek Mythology in 5 Words

Unfortunately, Zeus was feeling horny.

Sam is really inspired by Sharon’s speech