MCC Friday Reflections

We are very excited to announce the re-opening of our store.  We closed several months ago due to the fact that our youngest daughter, who has been diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 2 developed RSV and pneumonia.  She was admitted to the hospital for a week and returned home with many medical machines to help keep her healthy.  We have been spending our time since her hospital release learning how to best use these machines as well as developing a new daily routine for our family.   Ella Sabine Casten Born:  June 10, 2010 Diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 2:  August 12, 2011 As of late, we have also taken a good close look at what we wanted to do with Mama Bracelets.  We love our business.  We decided to keep going with it and renewed our LLC for another year.  We also looked at what our customers were purchasing since we opened and adjusted our product line accordingly.   ...

Dear Parents & Students, I usually write separate letters for my parents and students.  This year, however, I chose to write one.  This decision was born out of the fact that I have never felt so much gracious consideration in my entire life as I have this past year.  This came not only from the adults surrounding me but also from the kids I taught...each and every one of them. When I began this year I was a wreck.  I found myself hard pressed to focus on what I was doing.  Thoughts of my family, SMA, and everything surrounding us consumed me.  Sleepless nights came one after the other.  Faraway thoughts of my entire life kept creeping into my daily routines.  Fighting tears as I watched children run and play took much of my strength. September proved to be the hardest month I have ever experienced as a teacher...and it was personal. Each day that I headed to work I wondered how I would make it through the day.  I wondered...

Ella Sabine Casten Born:  June 10, 2010 Diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 2:  August 12, 2011 Dear Colleagues, My  11 th year teaching in District 205 winds down and I find myself thinking about the many people, seen and unseen, that have reached out to my family in one way or another over the past nine months. My name is Michael Casten.   I teach 4 th Grade at Lincoln School.  My daughter, Ella, was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Type 2,  just days before our students started this past school year.  Prior to walking into Lincoln only a handful of people knew of Ella’s condition.  Word spread quickly as people began wondering what they might do in order to show their concern and care. SMA is a progressive, degenerative, terminal disease that has a prevalence rate of every 1 in 6000 live births being affected.  One in 40 people are carriers of the recessive gene responsible for this devast...

Ella's Corner: "ELLAwareness" T-Shirts...Act Fast!!! : We are very excited that we will be ordering "ELLAwareness for SMA" t-shirts for the upcoming FSMA Walk and Roll on June 10th!! Thanks to ...

I stood on the Lincoln playground watching the kids play their games.  Voices rang through the air, shouting of childhood pleasures in the fun that was surrounding them.  Often there is more than one class out on the playground and the kids delight in the games that allow so many to join.   On this particular day Mrs. Barker's Kindergarten Class was out while my class was.  They were busy jumping rope, hanging on the bars, sliding down the slides, and running in all sorts of directions.  Their faces told the familiar story of playtime in the warm sun. I continued my walking around the playground until I noticed that Mrs. Barker held her hand up high in the air as she walked toward me.  I stopped, now positioned in the middle of the playground and watched. My mind settled on the scene that unfolded.  The little kids of Lincoln gathered around Mrs. Barker.  She began walking away from the school and her class followed like ducklings. ...

It's been a while since I have sat down on a Friday and written one of my Friday Reflections; the days have collided with each other, pushing one week after another past me. It's been a while since I have looked back on the week and thought about what has happened in the classroom; the lines of learning and life blending together in an orchestrated dance. It's been a while since I pondered what the rest of the year holds for us; the future is so much closer these days.  I wish our days would stop colliding into the weeks. The pulse of the classroom is racing as if we've just completed a 5-minute mile.  The subject areas are intertwining with one another as they offer each other their place within the mosaic of thought we call education.  We quickly transition from one activity to another yet we hold on to everything we have learned thus far.  Incorporating the lessons of yesterday to help make sense out of the lessons today...to prepare for the lessons o...

Ella's Corner: A Year Ago (by Lindsay) : A year ago. A year ago Ella was 10 months old. It was the first time that we started thinking, "something isn't quite right". ...