Tag: learning

HopeWords Conference 2024

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

When you own your own tutoring business, you have to research and pay for professional development for yourself. HopeWords has been a writing conference that is an easy place to say yes to every year. It’s located in the beautiful state of West Virginia which is actually a reasonable driving distance from us in Chattanooga, Tennessee. All the speakers sit out among the audience and eat at the same tiny restaurants as everyone else. Everyone just chats like it’s the most normal thing to do with strangers who write from all over the U.S.

This is my third year and I want to emphasize that one of the blessings of HopeWords is that they are making space for all ages at the conference. My oldest daughter, age 14, came this year and last year and Travis (the host), the other attendees, and the authors have welcomed, embraced, and challenged her. In her everyday life she is used to people mispronouncing and misspelling her biblical name. Many of the conference attendees when they met her said, “What a beautiful name” because they understood its biblical significance. Daniel Nayeri, the keynote speaker, signed her book and when I said offhandedly that she has 3 other sisters with Bible place names he said enthusiastically, “Ooh. Tell me all of them!” as we proceeded to have a short and lively conversation. The next day when he came in the restaurant where we were eating he boisterously (and so jolly-like!), pointed at all of us saying he knew us and we just laughed and waved right back at him going back to our conversation, like it was not odd to give a friendly wave to a Newbery award winner at dinner.

Our college friend, Amanda Opelt, sings and writes and was invited to welcome guests back into the afternoon sessions with her guitar. She asked our daughter a week before the conference if she would be willing to sing the high harmony with her on an Appalachian tune covered by the Wailin’ Jennys. When our daughter joined her on stage she introduced her as her friend, not my “college friends’ daughter” but a young woman worthy of her identity and relationship in her own right. Amanda even paid for appetizers at the local restaurant saying she owed her a portion of her honorarium.

Photographs by Cheryl Eichman

At the “after party” on Saturday we sat at a table with the men responsible for a lot of the revitalization projects going on in Bluefield, West Virginia. We had a riveting discussion on community development practices for 30 minutes. The undertone was about not giving up hope in hard places. My daughter said later it was a fascinating conversation and not at all what she thought we’d end up talking about with so many writers around!

It’s the little things like that that remind me why HopeWords is special. There is a deep respect for children and young adults within this Christian community of writers and community movers and shakers. The attendees treated my daughter like an adult. The speakers did the same in their speeches and in how they are truly the same humble people on and off the stage. Anyone involved with HopeWords welcomes and invites all into a life of writing, creativity, community, and curiosity. As an educator, I cannot think of a better mission for a conference.

This year I noticed there were many more young people than had come in the past and I hope the number of teens keeps rising as this conference continues to flourish. Our youngest daughter is in Kindergarten and she says she has “poem words” in her mind. She illustrates stories about pirates, animals, and princesses constantly. Maybe some day she will want to come, too?


Until next year,

Rachel

For the Love of Handwriting

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

Can you picture in your mind the handwriting of someone close to you?

I can see my dad’s tiny angular script for lists and labeling. I can see my mom’s crisp, legible rounded letters almost connected like cursive (very much like her organized self). I can see my husband’s almost-shorthand with quick letters that make sense to him because he has to take so many notes for work and classes. I can see my own teacher-informed style written on whiteboards and handmade cards with equal parts legibility and could-be-a-font.

I started down this line of thinking because of a piece of paper my youngest daughter brought home form her Kindergarten co-op. I saw her name written at the top by her teacher, who by God’s eternal goodness, happens to be one of my college roommates. Seeing her script at the top of the paper was sort of like the cherry on top as I was already excited about her knowing my daughter as a learner in the classroom.

My roommate was an incredible elementary education major and hearing about all the passion, fun, and child-centered respect she brings to the kids in her class each week reminded me of all the notes we passed back in forth in education classes before the days of cheap personal laptops and WiFi being strong enough to carry the load. I still have shoeboxes of notes and memorabilia in my closet from each year of college, filled with the handwriting of all my friends from those 4 years.

Perhaps what I am encouraging all of us to do is to welcome being surprised by the little joys in life, like handwriting. When the people we love are no more we will hang on to many memories of how their life intersected with ours and one of the most unsuspecting things is through something that is uniquely them — their words scrawled on a piece of paper.

A Year of Experiments In YouTube Gardening

Posted on by Rachel Lonas

One thing that hobby gardeners don’t like to talk about is the cost. Sometimes it truly feels like your efforts outweigh your yield. That was us for so many years that we just stopped gardening all together when our kids were little. I really regret that I didn’t know to pursue some easier, realistic, cost effective projects during those years.

Now, our kids are little older and able to help and it’s been such a joy to start back up being a little wiser and lot cheaper. For instance, today our third daughter ate the first sugar snap pea out of the plants that our fourth daughter sowed along the chain link fence in our backyard thanks to some internet research. We probably have a 90% germination rate and the crop is about to roll in. It cost us around $2 for the pea packet. And maybe a $1 worth of water. The compost we mixed in was from the bin in the backyard.

The sugar snap peas success got me thinking, “What else could we do cheaply with “ingredients” we already have or are cheap to obtain?” Enter hugelkultur pots. Our college friends from Pennsylvania showed us their raised beds when we were visiting a few years ago and they had an incredible yield! We were wondering if the internet or their Amish neighbors showed them the wisdom of permaculture. Either way, we took the idea to heart and when we built our raised bed in the front, we put in the rotting log pieces from a dead tree we had cut down a few years ago. Following that we put in homemade compost, then soil.

So, since we already knew how to do that with a bed, watching videos on growing potatoes in pots showed me that I could take a similar approach. I had a leftover 10 gallon pot from when my mother in law had brought a hydrangea down one year. I had been using it to store compost, but I used so much of the contents it felt time to repurpose it. See the pictures below: rotting wood, compost, soil, potatoes, more soil, and hardwood mulch. The total outlay was probably $5 between the potting soil and mulch because I already had the rotting wood, compost, and sprouting potatoes. Also, I can use the filled pot again and again after the potatoes are done.

I have NO idea if this potato crop will turn out, but “gardening within your means” is a new challenge I have been pursuing. At the farm for the program we have done all direct sowing and aside from a metal trellis I can keep using year after year and a little bit of mulch for a path, no purchased additives of any kind. It’s literally soil and manure that was already there, watering, and some seed purchasing. I actually considered using cardboard for paths instead of mulch, but was afraid they’d blow away while we’re not there and I hear it kills the soil life underneath, so if I choose to do any, I will try some thin metal anchors to help me use that cheaper method next year.

If you’re looking for a YouTube Gardening channel that is relaxing and helpful, I recommend Huw Richards. He focuses on things like “planting from your pantry” or how to consider many options you have on hand for free compost. His passion for gardening is evident in how he has learned so much from being faithful to do the work and experiment. And he’s Welsh, so a fantastic accent and idyllic scenery as a bonus.