Summer School

This week was the beginning of my teaching experience at Rigby Middle School! Since the public schools out here got out at the end of May and our semesters at BYU-Idaho don't end until July, for the second half of our semester we're teaching classes for summer school. Rigby Middle School is about 20 minutes outside of Rexburg, in a town about the same size. There are three blocks of summer school courses that last for two weeks, Mondays through Thursdays, for two hours. We're required to teach two blocks, and I didn't sign up to teach for the first block. This week was the start of Block #2 and I'm helping to teach a course on Crime Scene Investigation! Doesn't sound like a "normal" summer school course, right? That's because the summer school out here is also part of the summer "camps" that they offer for kids ages 12-14. The school teaches courses like Math and Spanish for the students who need to retake them, but it also offers fun courses for kids who just need something constructive to do during their summer break.

My Grandma Ethel, Grandpa John, Jake and I
before our wedding reception last August

We weren't given a ton of information on what kind of students we would have or how many, but we were told that this year the summer classes hadn't been advertised as well as previous years, so they weren't expecting very many students. However, I found out when I arrived on Monday that our class was one of the extremely popular ones. We had 26 kids that had signed up! I was super excited until the class started filling up...and I discovered that we had 23 boys, and 3 girls. Between the ages of 12-14. And there were five teachers, all students at BYU-Idaho, as well as our lead teacher from Rigby Middle School who isn't really supposed to get involved in the lessons or classroom management. It was definitely a challenge trying to wrangle that many kids, and helped confirm to me yet again that I'm making the right choice in teaching high school kids, not rambunctious little pre-teens!

This week I found out that my Grandma Ethel passed away. I was so sad to hear about it, but from
what I understand she had been in a lot of pain recently, so this was a blessing for her and her loved ones to finally know that she's no longer feeling that physical pain. I'm grateful for the knowledge that families are forever, and that I'll see her again one day!

Jake and I are almost completely unpacked at our new place, and are in the process of deep-cleaning our old one before we have to check out on the 30th. Cleaning is a lot of work, and it's not exactly a ton of fun when it's 100 degrees outside...ugh!

This Week's Spiritual Thought

This year has proven to be a very eventful one for Jake and I, in good ways and bad. We've been able to move into a better apartment and spend lots of time together growing and loving each other more, but I've also experienced quite a lot of loss: my Nana, my sweet dog Chloe, and now my Grandma Ethel. And it's not even July yet! Up until this year I had never lost anyone close to me, let alone three people (and animals) within the span of just a few months. It's very overwhelming and hard to deal with. However, I've been relying on prayer and scripture study even more lately as I try to find comfort. A quote that I've been reminding myself of over and over recently is this:

"If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived." -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

I know that God has a plan for me, and that trials and times of sorrow are just a part of life. Everyone will experience them in one way or another, so I am never alone, and I always have Christ that I can turn to.