Soapbox: The Way I see Things

Slice of Life Tuesday: Class Guest

Valentine’s Day is a TOUGH day to be a teacher. There’s a certain…shall we say…energy to the day, similar to the morning of Halloween and just shy of the last day before winter break.

It’s a mood.

So no teacher in their right mind would schedule any sort of big-deal instruction on Valentine’s Day. Certainly not in the final minutes leading up to Valentine’s Day parties, right?

But when you’ve got a group of incredibly curious learners,
And they’ve been learning big things
About the Middle Ages*
And Beowulf
And Old English
And the chance comes
For them to interact with someone
(Ken Hope,
grandpa of a student,
middle ages enthusiast,
mover-and-shaker
on the MacArthur Grants
and all around pretty
smart and interesting guy)
Who’s studied all of it his whole
Live-long
Life,
And that someone can chat with them
On Valentine’s Day,
You jump
At the chance.

It involved some finagling. I had to work out scheduling so my students at both schools could attend the zoom. I collected student questions to guide the conversation. I had to make sure I had someone to supervise the class since cloning is not quite yet a thing. I had to make sure all of the technology did what it was supposed to do when it was supposed to do it.

The magic hour arose. Students at both schools got themselves together after a flurry of greetings, forgotten supplies, and general post-lunch-settlings-in. Our guest was introduced by his granddaughter, who just so happens to love him to pieces.

Friends, he held us spellbound for a solid HOUR. He had taken all of the student questions and expanded them into a slide show, complete with historical maps and pictures from his own travels and experiences in Europe. Students sat rapt as he opined on Medieval literature, history, arts and architecture, culture and religion. Pencils furiously scribbled notes to record all of the new learning taking place.

A reading of Beowulf, in the Old English? Yes, please!

We learned that Medieval architecture was serious business. And some of it…not so much!
Architects and artists, even back then, had a sense of humor.

This was a lesson for the books. The kids were buzzing with excitement as they left. I can’t wait for later in the week when we come back together to talk about what we’ve learned.

And who knows? Maybe one, or maybe more, of my students will decide that they, too, would like to be a Middle Ages enthusiast. Maybe one, or maybe more, of my students will realize that they, too, can choose something they love and learn about it all through their own live-long life.

A teacher can dream.

*Yes. My kids are learning about the Middle Ages. And trying their hands at Old English, and Beowulf, and Middle English, and Canterbury tales (just the Knight’s tale, friends!), and Shakespeare, and Noah Webster. All of it. Because kids deserve to wrestle with big ideas and difficult stuff. Call it another one of my “soapboxes.”

Slice of Life Tuesday: Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

This slice of life could have been about the daily wrestling match that gets fought at five a.m. between my alarm and my brain,

or about the importance of having workout buddies who look out for me, who expect so much from me, who inspire me to do better,

or about the way time. Slows. Down. with that first morning sip of chai,

or about the new phrase I developed – “joyfully irrelevant,” describing the way I feel sometimes when I’m now out of the loop and I’m just fine with that,

or it could have been about the way plans seem to get made and unmade, made and unmade,

or about seeking happiness from within the confines of an extra bonus planning time.

This slice of life might have been about the excitement of watching kids talk about things they enjoy learning,

or about the way students put effort and heart into their communications with each other,

or about the up-down-all-around ride that’s called “waiting for weekly COVID screening results,”

or about a lunch, barely chewed but still eaten between a meeting and a quick doggo check-in.

This post would have been about the thrill of kids seeing history open up wide,

or about how fun it is to talk when it’s something we’re excited about,

or about the anticipation of what’s for dinner.

No, I suppose I’ll just have to settle for a post where I tell you
I’m kind of tired,
And my brain is mushy,
And there’s nothing happening anyway,
And I’m preoccupied with too many things
to write a post today.

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Slice of Life Tuesday: Assigned Writing

Today, I shared a “grab bag” of writing ideas with my students. It’s a folder they can click on in their Schoology app in case they’re stuck for something to write on. I selected one of the topics at random to demonstrate how to set up a new document, and I figure it’s a fun one to dive into for today!

How often do you talk to yourself (and what do you say)?

Oh heavens. I talk to myself. A LOT.

The most common thing I say to myself out loud? “Okay.” As in…

Okay. (Time to get your lil’ ole self together, Lainie!)
Okay. (This is hard, but you’ve got this.)
Okay. (All right, what’s the next thing on your list?)
Okay. (This might not turn out, but let’s see what happens.)
Okay. (You’re on a roll, just…keep…moving…)

My “okay” is combination pep talk, nudging, needling and encouragement, depending on the context. Usually, when I say “okay” out loud, it’s right alongside a big sigh. Which, you can imagine, is SUPER fun for folks around me to be hearing all the time, especially my poor husband. (I promise it’s not you, honey!)

Another favorite on my self-talk-out-loud greatest hits collection? “We’ll see what happens.”

I say this out loud any time I’m about to try something new, different, or perhaps equal parts brave and foolish. Which means you’ll hear this come out of my mouth OFTEN when I’m at the gym.

As for the rest of my self-talk, much of that happens in my own head, sometimes quietly, sometimes forcefully. I’ve been working on this one a LOT, trying to replace negative or self-defeating patterns with positive and encouraging ones.

That’s a lifelong conversation.

It’s disheartening on the surface to know that the problem doesn’t just magically disappear when we become grown-ups. But for me, there is comfort in knowing that. That relieves the pressure to have it all solved or figured out. And, as a teacher, if the pressure is off of ME to have it all figured out, then I can assure my kids it’s okay that everything isn’t all figured out.

“Okay…”

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Slice of Life Tuesday: Writing “Process”

I spent a LOT of my time writing this weekend.

Between one purpose and another, I probably spent 8-10 hours with my fingers on these keys. All of it was good, and writing in that great a volume has me wondering if I should be expecting more of myself or not. That line between grace and tough love is a fine one, my friends.

It’s funny. In my early years of teaching, I spent a lot of time teaching (yes, Capital Letter) The Writing Process. I even remember the cute bulletin board I made illustrating each of the phases of the writing process as part of the life cycle of the butterfly:
from the prewriting egg…
to the drafting caterpillar…
to the editing BIGGER caterpillar…
to the revising chrysalis…
to the WOW! published butterfly.
We’d move from phase to phase, mostly in order. Every so often I’d congratulate myself for letting students march through the phases at their own pace.

Now, here’s the thing. I don’t regret being that teacher. I don’t regret sticking to the curriculum that was given to me. I won’t judge the teacher I was back then. I taught writing with joy, and that still goes a long way towards instilling love for writing. Even though I’ve learned better models in the years since, I’m grateful for what I learned about writing as an early teacher.

I’m also grateful that I’ve become a writer myself. I’m just now at the point now where I’m truly beginning to consider how much being a writer has done for me as a teacher of writing. What it’s done for my students as young writers. I’m just now at the point where I’m discovering the magic, the limitless potential of leaning into that idea.

I’ve also thought back to those days of the 5-step plan for writing, and I remember them with a smile. The process of writing, in real life, for real people, has turned out to be a lot…MESSIER than I ever gave it credit for. When my kids ask me about the best writing process, I think my response should be to tell them to develop their own, with instruction and support. (Maybe it’ll be their weekly writing challenge – hint, hint, kids!) And then, I’ll share my own approach with them. I’d like to say it’s tongue-in-cheek, but there’s much more reality to this than I might want to admit.

MY WRITING PROCESS

Prethinking
Thinking
Mentally crafting
Writing
Taking out words
Trying not to open other tabs on my desktop
Overthinking
Reworking
Taking out more words
Tweaking
Re-reading
Taking out more words
Re-tweaking
Re-over-Thinking

Letting things sit

Rereading
Re-re-tweaking
Taking out more words

LETTING THE THING GO ALREADY

Thinking about my life choices

*people of the jury, I give you…exhibit A*

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Slice of Life Tuesday: Expanding (Blowing!) Our Minds

Last week, I talked about creating space for myself as part of my One Little Word challenge for the year.

Funny how that works.

Let me explain.

Yesterday, in my third-grade class, our lesson went completely, totally, 100% around the corner and off the tracks. We were supposed to spend our time reading Greek mythology, learning about the Olympian gods and goddesses. We were supposed to be going through the stories and taking notes on what we’re learning, questions we have and what we want to share.

And then someone started a conversation about Hades.
And then I mentioned Hades’s Roman name was given to the planet Pluto, that cold, dark unknown place.
And then we started talking about the other planet names.
And then we started talking about one culture taking over another.
And then we started talking about astronomy, and planets, and discovery.
And then we started in on how knowledge has built up over thousands and thousands of years, from the ancients right on up.
And then we talked about how our knowledge – ALL of our knowledge – stands on the shoulders of those who came before us.
And then we started in on the idea, often attributed to Aristotle: “the more you know, the more you know you DON’T know.”
And we used the example of sitting, then standing, or standing on the roof, or on a mountain top, as a way to gather more sight, more perspective.
And that led us to Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s “The Most Astounding Fact.“
And that led us to Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot.“
And that led us to the revised video of the Eames’s “Powers of Ten.“

And friends, their third-grade minds have been stretched, and pulled, and blown.

Space. We discussed LITERAL space, spacetime. And together, we held the space and took the time to allow this conversation to occur.

And I regret none of it.

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Slice of Life: One Little Word 2022

Well, friends, it’s that time of year in the Slice of Life community where I reflect on where I am now, gaze ahead to the the coming year, and choose One Little Word to guide me. Last year, I started with the word gather, then slid into dissonance and landed, later on, on unfurl.

I’m glad that I gave myself the intention and grace to be flexible with my word-choosing last year, and judging how I’m feeling right now, I’m wondering if that’s how it’s going to be again this year. As a teacher, I feel my outlook and perspective depend heavily on the seasons: so much of my work and efforts are tied to what a calendar demands.

Which makes me further wonder: what is my core focus right now, and why can’t, or why shouldn’t it hold true and strong for the duration of the year? Shouldn’t my life run on certain foundational principles that never waver? I see the importance of themes that run deep, core tenets that apply no matter my situation or lot in life.

On the other hand, I know better. I know myself better, and I know life better. Yes, it’s possible to develop an amazing plan, and use that plan to guide me over time. And it’s ALSO possible that Life will lower its gaze, adjust its cap, wind up for the pitch and hurl me a big juicy curve ball. That, more than anything, is the constant I’ve come to expect.

Which still leaves me with my One Little Word. Funny, with all this talk about uncertainty, I still find myself at this time of year with a desire to look inward and downward to my roots, to rediscover and return to whatever essence of who I am and how I see myself. I’m craving certainty and grounding. It’s not the same as wanting to develop resolutions for the new year (a habit I gave up several years ago). It’s just that this time of year always threatens to detach me from my moorings. Maybe it’s the way the season pulls me from so many of my habits and routines that I start to wonder where I am in all of my choices.

At first, I thought reclaim might do. Right now, the work that I’m thinking of involves a reclamation of self. Somehow, though, it didn’t fit with my visualization of what I needed.

Restore?
Return?

And then it hit me. Maybe I’m not yet sure what I want or need. Maybe this search is going to take me some time. Maybe I require more time to figure out whichever me I’m supposed to reclaim or restore.

I need to hold space.
Space to let myself be.
Space for conflicting thoughts and emotions to duke it out as needed.
Space to ask myself what I truly want, both in smaller moments and in the long term.

So my One Little Word, at least to start this year off, will be space. Which, for me, is a lot of little words tied together like dandelions gathered at recess: space, time, quiet…all gifts that I hope to grant myself more of in the coming year.

And when my next One Little Word peeps up from the soil, I’ll pluck that one, carry it home and place it in a jar on the windowsill…

Slice of Life Tuesday: The Acknowledgement Section

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Today is the day, in our district, where we tweet thanks or acknowledgements to other teachers and colleagues in our lives.

Friends, it would be a VERY long Twitter thread for me to go into all of the many reasons I adore and admire the amazing folks I work with. My hope is that I am forthright with praise and support every day of the year, and that the people I work with know EXACTLY why I’m a card-carrying member of their fan club. And if not, it’s time for me to get on it.

Instead, I’m going to do a very Lainie thing and come at it from a different direction. For better or worse, there are all kinds of teachers in my life who have shaped me in one way or another. All of these individuals have bestowed me with gifts of one kind or another. As for those on my list for whom the gratitude seems backhanded, please know that I’m not aiming for negativity, just searching for the blessing within the experience. It has all built who I am.

Mrs. Williams. Thank you for being the first person who made me see and understand, at age six, that it was okay for us to talk about the differences between us as people.

Mrs. Newport. Thank you for helping me understand what unconditional love from a teacher felt like, and thank you for giving me hard stuff to do to wear out my brain.

Mr. Schlamb. Thank you for opening my eyes to the wonder that is metaphor. Thank you for teaching me all of the bones and systems of the human body, which I still remember to this day. Thank you for getting me, my quirks, my humor, for seeing who I was and what I could do.

Mr. Stifel. Thank you for exposing me to the wild, wonderful world of storytelling. I knew when I first saw you and others tell on stage, I wanted to do THAT when I grew up. And I am.

Ms. Magdalin. Thank you for teaching me how to diagram sentences. I mean it. It blew my mind to see and understand that language could work on a systemic level.

Ms. Stelmach. Thank you for shaking me out of my fog of underachievement, for (in so many words) telling me you liked me too much to let me keep on the self-sabotaging path I had chosen, for awakening the writer and poet within me.

Mr. Nienhaus. Thank you for opening my eyes to theorems and postulates and proofs. Just to know that mathematics was a series of knowledge built block by block gave me the understanding and footing to recognize how much I love the world of numbers and math. Also…thanks for not embarrassing me when you caught me counting all the holes in the acoustical tile, or timing the circulation of the ceiling fan. You did me a solid there.

Ms. Cannon. Thank you for the precision you demanded of my writing. It’s shaped my craft and voice, even to this very day. Thank you for your sheer exuberance over the English language. You taught me that it’s possible to bring a childlike joy to learning all our whole live-long days.

Professor Shapiro. Thank you for your dismissal of my responses in class, for the terse comments at the margins of my paper. I carry this feeling with me whenever I consider the pride and dignity of each student in my care.

Professor Baroody. Thank you for being as wild, as wacky, and as goofy and geeky as I was about mathematics. Thank you for affirming how foundational math and math instruction could be.

Ms. McCabe. Thank you for showing me how much there is to learn about a teacher from the physical space of their classroom. Thank you for showing me what a lifetime dedication to the craft of teaching looks like. Thank you for showing me that we can grow as teachers throughout the long decades of our careers.

Ms. Cromwell. Thank you for calling into question my commitment to teaching. Overcoming that doubt has fueled me for twenty-six years, and continues to instill me with the importance of what I do each and every day.

Mrs. McDonald. Thank you for being the type of leader who brings out the best in all of us. Everyone who worked in your school gave you everything they had. Not because you demanded it, but because you made us not want to settle for anything less.

Ohhhh, there are so very many more I could write. We are all an amalgam, a quilt-work of those we’ve encountered over the years.

For that, I’m grateful.

And, if you’re up for it, drop a comment with which educators YOU might be grateful for.

Slice of Life Tuesday: Antennas Up

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Today, I was walking the dog, listening to podcasts, as I always do. This time, I was listening to Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out episode with Keegan-Michael Key.

First of all. If you haven’t watched the Key & Peele sketch about the teacher draft, you are missing out. I’m going to say that now. In fact, I’m going to watch it again right now because it brings me joy.

So anyway, I was listening to Keegan-Michael Key talking about his time working on the MADtv show, and he talked about the summer hiatus. He mentioned that about two weeks out from production, he started to put his “antenna up,” as in, he would start filtering the world around him. as potential sketches or scripts.

As a teacher, my antenna is NEVER down. I am never not thinking about my students, never not thinking about how my life experiences might filter down into the classroom. Here is just a small sampling of how the life of a teacher bleeds into everything:

-I once drove around for about a year with a single shoe in the back of my car because I thought my students would enjoy taking it apart to see how it was constructed.

-Same with an old computer.

-And a blender.

-I fielded a text from a teacher about a lesson I tweeted about. She was in the airport waiting for a flight and found a resource that connected. A girl after my own heart.

-I texted a different colleague about how she could use the ESPN football summaries as part of her graphing unit.

-The books on my nightstand are littered with sticky notes and dog ears because they mark phrases or passages that I could use as mentor text.

-Whenever I’m on a trip, I cannot help but pick up maps, brochures, pamphlets and the like that might come in handy for a nonfiction lesson.

-My own offspring hear me talk about “my kids” and can no longer differentiate if I’m talking about them specifically, or the loveys in my classroom.

And you, my teacher friends? What are some of the weirdest ways that your teacher antenna stays up, that your teacher brain filters into the rest of your life?

Wednesday Thoughts: On Teacher Guilt

I can’t help myself. I feel terrible, conflicted. Guilty. Perhaps not for the reasons you might think, though.

Oh, there are ALL the reasons why teachers like me feel pushed and pulled across the emotional spectrum. Just look at the world around us. We’re crouched right at the center of societal conflict: COVID. Race. Gender. Safety. Freedom. Obligation. Add to that the twin pressures of bringing healing to our students and moving ahead in a business-as-usual fashion. Test scores, as you may know, never sleep.

Find me a teacher who is doing the job they signed up for.

Heck. Find me ANYONE who is doing the job they signed up for.

I’ll wait.

I look at my colleagues, both in my district and beyond. So much struggle and difficulty.

Which is where the guilt comes in.

Right now, I love my students.
I love my job.
I’m excited to teach.
My kids bring me energy in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.
We’re doing some cool stuff.
Sometimes, I just look at them working and interacting.
And I beam.
My heart swells, crackles. Cracks open.
These kids bring me wonder, astonishment.
Joy.

I’m eager for the day when we’re all breathing in this air once more, when all of us sigh at the end of the day – not with exhaustion and disappointment, but satisfaction, contentment. Joy.

We. All. Deserve. More. JOY.

Until then, I will use these days, these bright moments to fuel me for the times when discouragement and stress threaten to overtake me. I will hope beyond hope that my colleagues will collect moments of light, like sticky notes, to take and fashion into something beautiful, hopeful.

Joyous.

Post-script: realizing that both of my posts this week have been tied to the theme of light. Sometimes metaphor pulls our strings without us even noticing. Touche, Chanukah. Touche.

Slice of Life Tuesday: On Sunsets

This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!

Yesterday was a bingbangboom kind of a day. One of those days where I rely on to-do lists and razor-sharp logistics. Drop the dog off, take care of Chanukah packages, make it to my meeting, squeeze my plans in, teach, meet, shovel down food, teach, meet, run the errands, skip the workout, go to get the dog and…

*Empty parking lot be darned. Just look at those COLORS!*

WOW. The sky. The sky, as I was driving. I kept hoping I would make it to my destination in time to snap a picture or two or three or four. The above and below pics. They’re testaments to the power of dusk. Really, the right dose of sunlight is like a dandelion. It has the power to bloom and brighten and beautify whatever surroundings you might discover it in.

*That LIGHT. The reflection. The beauty amidst concrete and steel. Perhaps there’s a metaphor for resilience to be had somewhere here.*

Skies like this…I can’t NOT look at them.

*More sky pictures from today. I also have to confess that my camera roll is chockablock with sky pictures. Pretty please tell me I’m not alone in this.*

And clearly, there is something to be said for a late November sky, because this was a Facebook post of mine from ten years ago yesterday.

I’ll close out with one of my very favorite book excerpts of all time:

“The sky was a ragged blaze of red and pink and orange, and its double trembled on the surface of the pond like color spilled from a paintbox. The sun was dropping fast now, a soft red sliding egg yolk, and already to the east there was a darkening to purple. “

-Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting