January 2021

Having an education is an important opportunity we have in America. Thankfully for us, there are many different types of schools to fit the needs of any child or parent. Some parents decide to send their kids to a public or private school. Some prefer to homeschool. Others do school online. When I was young, I went to a little Christian preschool.

As I got a little older, I started to go to a public school kindergarten. I only made it half a semester there because of how young I was. When my parents tried to register me for school, they were told over and over again that I was too young and too small for school. This was because the deadline for school was that you had to be 6 before August 1st. I was born on July 30th so I was old enough, but just barely Nonetheless, my mom still persisted.

At that point, I could write very well (according to my mother) and was learning how to read. The school finally gave in and let me come to kindergarten. The only problem was that they put me in a class with the kids who either did not speak yet, had learning disabilities, or were from another country and needed to learn English. Everything they were trying to teach me, I already knew. When I finished my work I was told to put my head down. I remember getting in trouble for drawing, humming, and talking. This was strike one for my mom. She didn't like that they were keeping me in this lower level class. Strike two was that they were discouraging my "creative mind."

But strike three was a big one.

You see, in kindergarten, I was best friends with a girl named Airyana. But eventually, she started getting really mad at me for no apparent reason. I would come home from school with bruises all over my back because she had been throwing rocks at me during recess. My mom went to a parent-teacher conference meeting where she brought it up to the teacher. The teacher said she had not seen any of it happen. That was strike three. I was getting hurt and an adult wasn't even watching the playground.

After the three strikes, my mom pulled me out of public school and decided she was going to homeschool me herself. My mom still worked in the little Christian preschool I had attended the year before. She would bring me to work with her and I would sit in the backroom and do my school. I was working at a super-fast pace, so my mom switched me over to doing first grade books instead of kindergarten because the kindergarten books were too easy for me. When I finished the whole first grade book in just the second semester my mom decided to go a little slower. That summer, she quit her job at the preschool and started working from home as a nanny. When I started second grade, Mom made a schedule. I only did school during naptime at our home daycare.

By my third grade year, the girls my mom watched were old enough to go to school, so my mom didn’t have to be a nanny anymore. She got a job at the middle school of the public school system where I had gone to kindergarten. We decided to give the public school one more try and thankfully, the laws in Indiana were very homeschool friendly, so I was able to go into the third grade that year when my kindergarten classmates were all in second grade. This was a bunch of new people and I was younger and shorter than all of them.

At the end of my third grade year, my teacher convinced the principal to let me take a “HIgh Ability Test.” I remember it being pretty simple. When I moved on to the fourth grade again, I was put in with a whole new group of people: the high ability classes. This was the fourth grade class that did fifth grade work. I had the best teacher that year: Ms. Davis. Ms. Davis loved me so much, I was definitely her favorite. Three years ago, she got married and now her name is Mrs.Montgomery. She has a daughter who is named after me and a son named after her maiden name.

The fifth grade was the year they finally stopped grouping me with new people. This high ability class stayed together, with only a few kids missing from the year before. This is where I met all of my best friends. These were the best years of my life.

After the fifth grade, it was on to middle school. In the sixth grade, I took a seventh-grade math class and an advanced language arts class. This was the year I was a cheerleader for football season. I also played in the band as a melodic percussionist. In seventh grade, I chose the pre-algebra class (9th-grade standard) along with the advanced language arts class.

School is one crazy place but my school story is a little interesting. I’m happy to be doing so well in school and I’m always happy for the ice cream that comes along with straight A’s.

Dancing through Life Part 1

"The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word".-Mata Hari.

Every time I have someone over to spend the night or just to have dinner. We do some form of a "dance party" Whether it be after dinner in the living room with YouTube videos playing or at night with my disco ball and Spotify account. Many times there will be that one person who says the famous "I cant dance." Hearing that sentence makes me laugh. The definition of dance is "move rhythmically to music..."- Oxford Dictionaries. Dancing is moving to music that's all it is. It's not always the choreographed routine in the matching costumes. It’s whatever you make it.

Now I have been studying dance for 10 years now. Every style from Ballet to Hip-Hop since I was 2. Because of this people sometimes feel uncomfortable dancing around me. This is silly because when I'm not in class I definitely don’t follow any routines or dance-specific moves. I just dance. I think the best dancers I have ever meet are 4 and 5-year-olds They don’t care about how they look when they dance they just spin and shake their heads and have a good time. People older than they seem to care way too much about how they look or if people are watching them. Those people just need to let it go.

Just last year our studio moved to a new building because the owners of the old church decided they would rather use the space for an art gallery. We just recently moved into the old P&R building. They are building us a new building of our own so we will not have to bounce around from place to place.

A few months after my first night of dance class came recital. This first year we performed at camp Tecumseh. The theme was holidays and my group was thanksgiving and performed a dance to the song Turkey in the Straw.

This is now my 10th year of dance. Of course with a global pandemic dance has been different this year. No definite recital date. Masks during class. It’s a struggle, it really is, but we managed to work through it for our 10 anniversary of the studio. I have much much more to share about my dance experiences. This is why Dancing through life will have many other parts considering it is a very important aspect of my life.

This is now my 10th year of dance. Of course with a global pandemic dance has been different this year. No definite recital date. Masks during class. It’s a struggle, it really is, but we managed to work through it for our 10 anniversary of the studio. I have much much more to share about my dance experiences. This is why Dancing through life will have many other parts considering it is a very important aspect of my life.

New Year Hope

Today is the first day of 2021. Last year was exceptionally hard and we are all looking for some reassurance that this year will be better. We can only hope that our days of mask wearing and social distancing will end. Sadly we don't know what's to come and what will happen in the future. We can just raise our glasses (of sparkling grape juice) as a toast to a new year. We will work together to make it awesome.

Sorry to get off to such a serious start. I am Rori. I come from a giant family full of every kind of person you can imagine ‒ actually, mostly just artsy people. We have painters, singers, dancers, cake decorators and more. My family does just about everything. I have one aunt who does flowers (Vivian), one aunt who does cakes (Valerie), and a cousin who does photography (Joe). You save a lot of money on wedding planning that way.

At the beginning of 2021, like every year, I started thinking about the past year and everything that happened. Typically I laugh at everything weird that has happened, but this year was different. There was too much to laugh at that it could be overwhelming and crazy. I think we all know that 2020 wasn't the best year, Covid-19 is just one word that now makes you cringe. Pandemic, face mask, wildfires, election, cancelation, protests, murder hornets, and many, many more do the same. They all have one factor in common: fear. What if I catch Covid? What if the wrong candidate wins? What if...? We just need to trust God, and He will help us through this new year. I honestly think the worst part of 2020 was not seeing my family during the holidays.

I remember the last day of 2016. We had a big party with all our friends and family. It was loud and crazy but lots of fun. This was the same day I met some of my best friends, Micah and Malachi. I remember bringing a tub of cheese balls to the family room where they were sitting and Micah saying he couldn't eat dairy. Mali took deep handfuls of cheese balls, filling a cup to the brim. A few weeks later I met their sister Marcail. We are still best friends.

Now I lie around and think about 2020. The beginning of that year was very different. No one was thinking about wearing masks. Life was normal then. I feel that I was naïve at that point and I was too comfortable with what I had. To think I didn't know what was gonna happen in 2020! Crazy thought! If I could go back to that moment when my mom and I were eating ice cream and watching the ball drop, I would have told myself everything that would happen, and of course, to stock up on toilet paper.

So again, let's be as happy and grateful as we can be this year. Let's remember that whatever happens, we should trust God and never question His decisions. He does things for a reason and He knows more than we do. Even if the next year is as awful as the last, we must be thankful‒not upset about what we had and lost, but thankful for what we have.