My fourth graders are experimenting around with poetry. We started out by journaling how we were feeling. I joined them in the writing (and no, I didn’t get distracted this time).
Here’s what I wrote:
The green lines are the line and stanza breaks I added when I demonstrated / modeled how to think about line breaks.
Then I demonstrated my thought process for how I might choose which words go on which line. (More on that during poetry month.)
Here’s what I came up with. I’m pretty proud of it, to be honest. Prouder still of my brave students, who joined me in this exercise without reservation or fear.
3-2-22
Today I feel strong (confident maybe) though
Confidence is Knowing, Being Sure -
A Leap.
It’s uncomfortable, All that leap-taking.
What do I know?
Where do I step, Sure of my feet? Where do I leap, hoping Feet Body Heart Land safely?
Maybe it’s because the dog hair dust bunnies have officially turned into tumbleweeds down the hallway. Maybe it’s because I could take time to clean under the couch, but let’s just not go there. Maybe it’s because I know (but would rather not tell you) what’s in my junk drawer.
All of these jobs I do around the house…they’ve got me thinking about all of the tasks I do as a teacher. Some I relish and look forward to, others I dread. So, just for fun, I present to you my very official SCAT: My School Chore Analogy Table. (Rolls up sleeves) Here goes!
House Chore
School Equivalent
Notes
Tidying up
Classroom organization
Ahhh…my preferred form of procrastination. Nothing shouts productivity more loudly than a tidy space.
Dishes
Catching up on emails
This. I have to do this every day. Every day I sift through my piles before they get too big. Every day. Several times a day. In, out. In, out. I think they multiply in there.
Laundry
Lesson planning
Because any time it isn’t done, any time it’s ignored for too long, things are just not going to end well.
Vacuuming
Responding to student writing
Yet another chore that I sometimes procrastinate, but it’s actually quite meditative. Once I get in the swing of things, time goes away and I enjoy what I do.
Cleaning the bathroom
Grading papers
There’s something to be said for the kind of chore you resist with all your might, that you put off just because you dread it, and then feel like it was never that big of a deal to begin with once you’ve done it.
How about you? What school chores or house chores are your most and least favorites? Let’s hear ’em!
Interested in learning more about the March Slice of Life Challenge, or wanting to read more great posts? Head over to the Two Writing Teachers site!
Today, despite the uproar and chaos that still envelop our world, I was able to carve out some moments of joy.
So I’ll just share those.
My first bike ride of the new season:
This becomes my way of commuting to work when the weather warms, and I cannot WAIT.
Homemade ramen (hot soup on a warm day? why not!):
The trick is the soft-boiled egg. I kinda live for those.
The feeling, when you go to the store, that there are finally more masks out in circulation than we’re going to need and maybe there’s some hope in that:
And lookie! Hand sanitizer a-go-go!
A brief shining moment in which I’m caught up on feedback to my students on their writing:
Too much student writing to handle. It’s…a good problem to have.
A walk in the forest with an all-too-eager doggo:
Think this’ll wear her out? Think again, my friends!
Making some new friends on said walk with doggo:
There were actually a half-dozen of these deer. I always find it interesting that both they and I freeze upon seeing one another.
And a random find that says it all (I love me a heart-shaped rock!):
I have a good friend who collects these. Can’t wait to pass it on.
Interested in learning more about the March Slice of Life Challenge, or wanting to read more great posts? Head over to the Two Writing Teachers site!
It was another good day. Yes, I had a lesson plan. Yes, I had objectives for the day. Yes, we pretty much did them. And my students, as always, brought so very much more to the table.
We discovered that when ideas stretch across multiple texts, we call those universal themes: -Greed stinks, gives you tunnel vision -Adults are sightless, kids can change the world (but kids BECOME grown-ups) -People fear change
Students revealed found other moments of truth: -if kids disagree with what their parents say, do, or believe, that can be scary -but it’s necessary, if we want change in the world -kids don’t really get enough credit for what they know -orphan stories let us see kids without grown-up interference -my “signature smiley” is actually made up of my initials
And? My very favorite moment of wisdom and cleverness from the day? When one banana eats another, it’s called bananabalism. If that doesn’t deserve a mic drop, I don’t know what would.
From time to time, folks ask what it’s like teaching a classroom full of gifted-talented children. What does a day in your room look like? This post, I think, says it all. Where it starts, what my intentions are, and where it goes – all of it – puts what I do in a nutshell.
Right now, I sit in my classroom surrounded by a group of fifth graders who are in the midst of their own blogging adventures. It’s a happy space, this.
Here I am…here we are…
Each week, I offer a writing challenge. Kids don’t have to accept; they can continue their own projects. But most of them give it a try, because they like stretching their writing in different directions.
This week’s challenge? To write a poem or journal entry using these sentence prompts: I know… I don’t know… I don’t want to know…
I figure I may as well join in on the fun. It’s important for my students to see me crafting alongside them sometimes.
Except. My post – and my teaching – took a detour. The rest of my writing had to be put on hold until after class. Why?
Because
Kids started talking about semicolons and what they do. So how could I resist a teaching point? Point is, I couldn’t. And then I wound up demonstrating punctuation party tricks to a kid that asked. Which worked pretty well because she’s a kid who… how can I put this?… LOVES a comma, even when it doesn’t belong, so we talked about the beauty of her writing: stark, crisp, clean. We jumped in, replacing commas with periods, cutting words like crazy, marveling at the difference.
So back to my writing it was, but it was time for read-aloud with The Little Prince. The flower was pretty and vain – just like, one student remarked, Estella from Great Expectations, so how could we NOT take the time to talk about archetypes: the witches, the stepmothers, the Prince Charmings, the comic reliefs, the stock characters of the world?
But really, back to my writing. Right after a check-in with a student whose vocabulary is encyclopedic whose writing is florid and elaborate to translate her work to simple language just like we did this week for the Pledge of Allegiance or the prologue for Canterbury Tales, because vast and elusive language is wonderful sometimes, but being clear plain simple allows for depth, connection: shows us the heart of things.
I’ve been teaching a while. Twenty-seven years, in fact. And when you’ve been teaching twenty-seven years, and you keep up with some of your former students, there’s something amazing that happens.
You get to see them grow up.
You get to see them step into their lives, into the world as adults and selves in their own right.
I think about the idea from time to time, but it really hit home for me when one of my former students, who just got her doctorate, posted the scientific article she just got published – as first author.
There’s a doctor. A teacher. An event planner. A member of a band. A painter. An interviewer of celebrities. An actor. An aspiring diplomat. A corporate officer. A photographer. A mechanical engineer. A stuntwoman.
And parents. So many of them are parents, and I get to watch, and smile, and listen to my heart crackle as I see how they are working to raise beautiful, wondrous and wonder-filled humans.
I’m good with words, but I can’t express how grateful I am that I knew all of these people when they were still little, and they were just learning about who they were and what they had to contribute to this big wide world.
And my current loveys? Where will they be in five years? In ten? In twenty?
I guess I’ll just have to keep unwrapping.
See this baby blanket? My kiddos made it for my younger son, who’s now 18. Some of them are parents now…
Here I am for year three of the March Slice of Life writing challenge.
Here I am, ready to write whatever comes my way each day. Every day.
Here I am, ready to bring myself the discipline I need to write each day. Every day.
The way I see it is this: I ask my kids to write all the time. Sometimes they feel like it, sometimes, they don’t. But they show up for me, for themselves, for the classmates – every time.
So this March, my daily writing practice is dedicated to my students, who are some of the best sports I know.
I might write some things I absolutely love.
I might write some things I’m not a great fan of.
But I’ll write, and I’ll put my work out there into the world each day.
Been thinking lately about power structures, and how they are often perceived as a zero-sum game. I’m not sure I’m convinced. So today, I let my Flair pens speak for themselves.
This post is part of the weekly Slice of Life challenge from Two Writing Teachers. Check them out!
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.”
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!
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 