This morning my Keurig decided to break. I have a single-serve Keurig that I have to fill with a cup of water each time I use. Only half a cup came out. I knew there had to be water trapped inside, but I wasn’t able to open it to see. So I turned it upside down over the trash can, and super-concentrated coffee went everywhere. Including the legs of my chinos. I knew they’d dry fast based on the kind of material they’re made out of, and my previous experiences getting them wet taught me I could try to wash the coffee out of my pants in the bathroom, and they’d probably be dry by class time.
I sat down and checked Blackboard. I started my doctoral program yesterday, and we are introducing ourselves to each other in both of my classes. I also wanted to see if my professor had answered my question. She had.
Then I thought to check my plan book to see what my AP Lit classes had on the docket for today, and I realized with horror that I’d made a big mistake. I had actually finished a project with them a day earlier than I had anticipated when I created my plans. I didn’t have anything for my students to do.
I knew I wouldn’t have time to create a meaningful lesson out of whole cloth, and I couldn’t move ahead because I had given my students until tomorrow or Thursday (depending on which class they are in) to finish Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. It wouldn’t be fair to tell them they had to create seminar questions today when they might not be quite finished reading.
The project my students had just completed was to learn how to use a literary analysis tool (one was TPCASTT) and teach it to their peers in a presentation in which they also share their analysis of a literary work using the tool. In past years, I’ve been frustrated that the tools have been introduced early in the year and haven’t gained any traction. The students thought they were useful, but later on, they simply didn’t return to them when they were analyzing literature. We fall back on habits and methods that we know. We forget.
I thought fast. What if my AP Lit students worked in groups to choose a poem in one of my new collection of books by (mostly) living poets, chose a literary tool they learned last week (not one they themselves presented), analyzed a poem, and shared their findings with the class?
I tossed my poetry books in a box and made my way across campus. It was just starting to rain. I was glad I had remembered my umbrella so the books would stay dry.
All went well in my first class. After you’ve taught for a while, you come up with some handy go-to techniques you can use to stretch a lesson.
As I made my way back across campus slowly and carefully in a torrential downpour that was the remains of Hurricane Florence, I tried to keep the books dry and succeeded in making my pant legs wet all over again—the puddles were unavoidable—and arrived back at my office about ten minutes late for my “office hour” ( really half-hour). Thankfully, no one was waiting for help. I dried off my shoes with a paper towel from the bathroom and prepared to do the lesson again in my second class.
What started out as a mistake turned out to be serendipity. The students dove into the poems and presented thoughtful analyses. They considered which tool to use thoughtfully, thinking about what their chosen poems included in terms of diction, literary devices, imagery, symbols, and other elements. It was brilliant. And I think it may have helped me along the path to achieving my goal of convincing students to use these tools to analyze literature.
Thank you to #TeachLivingPoets, and thank you to generous AP teachers everywhere who share their ideas. In spite of me, I had some great classes today.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
This week is our Winter Carnival Week, which is much like spirit week in some other schools. Each day has a different theme, and we can “dress down” as long as we are adhering to the theme. Today’s theme was “Duo Day.”
This morning, I walked into our History/Social Science Department office to pick up a few items, and I noted that two of the history teachers were wearing gray sweaters, just like me. “Oh, I see you got the gray sweater memo,” I said, and one of my colleagues replied, “I wish we would have planned to be duos today so I could have dressed down.”
Cathy and Dana
It’s bizarre how when you work with people for a while, you start dressing like them. A few months ago, my colleague Cathy and I showed up to work dressed alike nearly head to toe. Except for our shoes, we were identical.
Years ago, I had a colleague who had the same denim dress and a similar green flowered skirt, and we invariably wound up wearing our “twin” outfits on the same day.
Why is it that this happens?It never seems to be planned, or at least it’s not in my case. What psychological impulses or weird twists of fate cause us to reach for the same outfits as our colleagues on the same day?
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
My kitchen is a maker space. If you have been reading my blog for a while or know me in person, you might know I make soap. I haven’t made it as often over the last year—mostly just for my family and me. One of the beautiful things about making something like soap yourself is that you can control everything that goes into it. I also make lotion, and if you knew how cheap and easy it is to make, you’d never buy expensive lotion at the store again.
Over the last six months or so, my new favorite thing to make is bread. I have long been intimidated by baking bread because I have zero skills coaxing recipes that need special attention. I can’t do kneading or rolling things out (don’t ask me about my attempts at pie crust). I ran into a great no-knead recipe, and I was sold. I’ve been baking bread ever since, and nothing beats homemade bread. The picture above is my flour mixture and oats for an oatmeal maple bread that happens to be my favorite one to bake… and eat.
So why am I writing about this on my education blog?
I’m on winter break, which means I have time to bake Christmas cookies and bread and whatever else strikes my fancy. Teaching is such an exhausting profession. When I come home from work, most of the time all I want to do is read. I try not to bring work home. And honestly, I try not to give a lot of pointless homework. Preparation for class in the form of reading and writing is pretty much the extent. Occasionally, students study for quizzes in my class. Over the two weeks that they are on vacation, I have asked them to read what they choose. I have explicitly told them not to work on revising their essays. The only work I want them to do for me is to read… and to read what they want to read. Maybe they’ll make a few things, too, with the time they have. I hope they do.
My friend Jared says in his Statement of Teaching Philosophy that if you “ask [his] sophomores ‘How many of you are painters?’ there might be a few hands raised in a class.” On the other hand, he adds, if you ask young children the same question “a swarm of hands would shoot into the air proudly and enthusiastically.” So what gives? As Jared asks, “What happens between Kindergarten and 10th grade? Where do all the painters go?”
We all need an artistic outlet. I never felt like a very confident artist. I have been a pretty good musician (though very out of practice). For the past five years or so making soap and then learning to bake have been artistic outlets for me. With all the buzz in education about maker spaces, one thing we seem to forget is that elementary school classrooms are tremendous maker spaces, or at least mine was. We need to figure out how to give students the time and the space to continue to be creative. My answer to Jared’s question is that over time, we devalue creative projects in school. I know English teachers, for example, who think I waste time with creative writing in my classes. I don’t care what they think because I feel in my gut that they are wrong.
A good case in point: my last AP Lit class right before winter break. I didn’t have high hopes. They meet at the very end of the day. Some of the students likely wouldn’t be there or would leave early as the dorms closed at 5:00. We would wrap up our short unit on Love and Relationships after a great discussion about “Brokeback Mountain” the previous day. But I pulled out a great lesson idea from writer Jason Reynolds from NCTE 2016. I gave students Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138 and asked them to rewrite it in the idiom of their choice. To sweeten the deal, I brought them homemade gingerbread using Emily Dickinson’s own recipe. Wishing I had Jason Reynolds’s mentor text from that session, I plunged ahead anyway. I wrote with the students (I chose 1980’s Valley Girl slang). One student asked, “Is it okay if I cuss in my poem?” I grimaced and said, “Sure.” Another student asked, “Is it okay if I curse a lot?” Why not? In for a penny…
With around 20 minutes left, the students said it was time for everyone to share. We had poems in the voices of a robot, a pirate, a resident of Southie, and a more modern take. Honestly, I knew they understood it perfectly when I overheard one student reading the first line to another: “When bae swears that she ain’t lying…”
I asked the students what they got out of the exercise, and one student said, “I understood the poem a lot better because I had to in order to rewrite it.” No, she wasn’t a paid shill, I promise.
The students were still in the room at 3:30 at the end of the period. I practically had to kick them out. On Friday right before break. In senior year, no less. I couldn’t believe it. We had a lot of fun creating together that day.
I often say that we make time for the things we value. I am asked a lot how I have time to read, to bake, to make soap, to do creative activities with students when there is just so much to cover. We can’t “cover” it all, folks. Students will not learn everything we think is worth knowing in our classrooms, and that’s okay because if we stopped to think about it, we’d realize we didn’t learn everything worth knowing in a single class or even in ten classes, or maybe not even in a class at all. But if we value creativity, we need to make time to create, to allow our classrooms to be maker spaces.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Sophia interacting with students as they read (and listen) to music lyrics in groups
My school has an advisory system. We have from six to eight students whom we advise, which means looking after grades, social and emotional wellbeing, and disciplinary issues that arise as well as being part of a support system for these students.
One of my advisees loves poetry. Sophia read a collection of poetry for a summer choice read. She is involved in our literary magazine and the Poetry and Prose club, which has produced ‘zines for the Halloween and Thanksgiving holidays this year.
Sophia with the Halloween ‘Zine, photo credit Charley Mull
Sophia asked me if she could teach my 9th-grade class a poetry lesson. She confessed to me today that she was joking initially, but as she started thinking about it, she wanted to give teaching an English class a try. Keeping in mind what I learned from the Bow Tie Boys at NCTE, I agreed.
I know what you are thinking. This could go south pretty quick.
You have to have a great deal of trust in students to turn your class over to them. Sophia and I met in advisory to discuss what she would do, and she showed up to class prepared.
She started the lesson with a short reminder of how poetry connects to our schoolwide essential question: How do we honor and harness the power of our stories? She asked my students to journal for ten minutes about one of two topics:
What is your favorite song right now? Why do you like it? What are some lyrics you like?
Write about a song that takes you to a different place and time.
I thought her journal prompts were great. She called on students to share their journals, and then she led a discussion about the song “Feel it Still,” especially noting which poetic devices the students found and what they thought the song might be about.
Then she asked students to get into groups and identify a song they liked. If they were stuck, they could use the Billboard Hot 100. They combed through the song lyrics looking for literary devices.
She ended the lesson by reading Tupac Shakur’s poem “The Rose that Grew from Concrete.”
Not only did my students have fun, but they also got to apply their understanding of literary devices in a way that was authentic and offered them agency and choice.
One of the Bow Tie Boys said at NCTE (and I regret I didn’t write down his name) that teaching something is the “highest form of mastery.” He said he felt he really learns from his peers when they teach him and when he teaches them in order to study for his AP World History class.
Sophia prepared an engaging lesson. She shared with me that she was worried about filling 70 minutes of time (60 once we take out independent reading), but she did great. I had a backup lesson ready to go just in case, but I am thrilled I didn’t need it. My students seemed to enjoy the lesson, and I know that Sophia did.
Frankly, both my current 9th-grade students and Sophia learned much more about how pop music and poetry intersect than they would have with the lesson I had planned. My lesson wasn’t as interactive. Sophia herself introduced the lesson by stating she didn’t really like the way the subject was approached last year when she was in World Lit I. Ouch! But it was honest.
We should let our students teach more often than we do.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
I lost my grandmother this morning. She is one of the most important people to me in the entire world. She represents love to me because her love was absolutely unconditional, and it was something I knew I had with absolute certainty.
I never think about her without thinking about her in her sewing room. I don’t think I realized when I was a child how unique that room was, that most houses didn’t have such a room. She would spend hours back in that room, but we children were always welcome. The tiled floors were pitted and scarred by the wheels of her rolling chair. She had at least three sewing machines set up, along with an ironing board. There was a table covered with fabric. I don’t think I ever saw its surface. She had trays with stray sewing machine feet, pins, bobbins, thimbles, scissors, and stale Freedent gum.
My mom asked me what I wanted, and the only thing I can think of is something from that sewing room. And a clock that chimes obnoxiously because whenever it marks the hour, it reminds me of spending weekends with her. I used to hear that clock late into the night when she let me stay up watching Johnny Carson or Fantasy Island. I had a pallet by her bed, but she often let me cuddle next to her. The next morning, she often took me out for breakfast and let me have a Coke, which Mom would never have done.
I had a chance to visit her in July 2014 when I was going to a digital storytelling conference in Denver. I recorded many of her and my grandfather’s stories and edited them into at least two digital stories. Here is my favorite.
I wish there were some way to capture how soft her cheeks were, like velvet, and how even though her hands shook with some sort of inherited disorder, she could always thread a needle on the first try. If she made something with her hands, it was going to be better than anything you would buy in a store.
When I was in seventh grade, I got it into my head to make her a small shelving unit. I don’t know why. I had taken woodshop the previous year in school, and I thought I could handle it. I did a terrible job. First, I found wood in the garage and didn’t ask if I could use it. I never got in trouble, but who knows what that wood had been set aside for? I couldn’t cut the wood evenly with a saw, so the two edges that would be the top were uneven. I tried to sand them down, but I couldn’t, not with the sandpaper my dad had in the garage. I tried to nail the shelves to the sides, but I couldn’t. I wound up using wood glue. I used different kinds of wood for the shelves and sides. The shelves were wider than the sides. I got a good look at that shelf for the first time in about 30 years when I visited two years ago. Every shelf is crooked. It looks terrible. And yet it has hung in her living room, in pride of place, with her collectible figurines resting in peril on each shelf. I realized that shelving unit is a metaphor for me. She cried when I gave it to her for her birthday. She immediately hung it on the wall. She loved me, with my faults, with perfect love. I doubt if she ever even saw how ugly that shelving unit was, just like she dismissed my own imperfections.
I decided to go to school today, even though my heart is broken, because I thought that I could either lie in bed all day, crying, or I could come to school and keep busy. It hasn’t worked all that well. I was teaching The Odyssey this morning, and it so happened that my students were studying Book 11—the book in which Odysseus travels to the underworld and sees the shade of his mother, not realizing she had died.
Mother, why not wait for me? How I long to hold you!—
so even here, in the House of Death, we can fling
our loving arms around each other, take some joy
in the tears that numb the heart. (11.240-243)
Odysseus’s mother replies,
[T]his is just the way of mortals when we die.
Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—
the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes
once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit,
rustling, flitters away… flown like a dream. (11.249-253)
Why on this day, of all days, should this passage be the one I must discuss with a room full of ninth graders who know nothing about what I’m feeling? And yet, I also just finished King Lear, and yesterday, after I had spoken with my grandmother for the very last time and shortly before she lost consciousness, my students were conducting a Socratic seminar discussion of the play along with A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, and this line in particular stabbed me through the heart:
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life,
And thou no breath at all? (5.3.370-371)
As blessed as I am to have had my grandmother for 45 years, and I know that I am, I can’t help but feel what Lear feels: “Stay a little” (5.3.327). Would there ever have been enough time?
It’s an accident of life that I happen to be teaching these works right now. I planned the curriculum before my grandmother’s final illness took hold.
I know that death is a part of life. But I don’t know life without his remarkable, amazing woman who loved me so much. I don’t know how to talk about her in the past tense. I don’t know how to keep going without knowing she’s there, perhaps 2,000 miles away, but there.
She told me the last time I spoke to her that she would watch over me, and that she would hold me always in her heart.
And I chanced upon this poem by Emily Dickinson, one of my favorites, while I was looking for something, anything, that spoke to how I was feeling (Fr. 428).
We grow accustomed to the Dark—
When Light is put away—
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Good bye—
A Moment—We uncertain step
For newness of the night—
Then—fit our Vision to the Dark—
And meet the Road—erect—
And so of larger—Darknesses—
Those Evenings of the Brain—
When not a Moon disclose a sign—
Or Star—come out—within—
The Bravest—grope a little—
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead—
But as they learn to see—
Either the Darkness alters—
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight—
And Life steps almost straight.
Perhaps you know this poem? It leaped off the page, and it was almost like Miss Emily was offering me the one thing I really needed to read. We grow accustomed to the dark. It is not easy. We will bump into things. We will grope, trying to find our way. But eventually, life steps almost straight. The perfect word in that line is “almost.” We are never quite the same after such a loss. In the words of Albus Dumbledore, “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever” (Rowling 299). I suppose I draw comfort from the idea that Odysseus, Lear, and even Harry Potter know how I feel right now. They, too, have felt losses not too dissimilar from mine. And they recognize that such losses leave holes in our lives that cannot be filled.
I will always miss my grandmother. In a way, I have been saying goodbye to her since the last time I visited in July 2014. I had a feeling, somehow, that it might be the last time I might see her. She wasn’t ill at the time, but I had no way of knowing when or if I could make the trip back. The sun was setting. I knew the day wouldn’t be lasting much longer. And now, I’ll have to grow accustomed to the dark.
Works Cited
Dickinson, Emily. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin, Cambridge, Belknap, 2005.
Homer, The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles, New York, Penguin Books, 1997.
Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. New York, Scholastic, 1997.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Lear. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine, New York, Washington Square Press, 2005.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
I have been trying a new technique to keep myself organized this year. On September 14, on a whim, I divided my journal page for that day down the middle and wrote “Stuff I Did” on the left side and “Stuff to Do” on the right. I hadn’t done it before. In fact, I’d been using the journal mainly to meditate on the day—when I remembered to do it, which was not very often.
Something about making that list of all the things I had accomplished that day made me feel like I had been more productive. What I liked about having the “Stuff to Do” list is that it enabled me to keep things going for long-term projects or for incomplete work. I might have “grade essays” on there for a few days until they’re done, but having to keep writing it again on “Stuff to Do” makes me want to get it moved over to “Stuff I Did.”
I have played with the idea of doing a bullet journal. I’m drawn to the organization. Then again, this weird little system of mine works, so it may be self-defeating to tweak it. I find I enjoy the time I set aside to take stock of the day. Sometimes I write things down as I do them. Sometimes I wait until the end of the day. I do find I am working my way through my to-do lists more quickly, and the “Stuff to Do” list gives me a place to start the next day. I start the day’s list by looking back at the previous few days’ lists to see what needs doing and what I am going to continue to move over to today’s “Stuff to Do” list because it’s not going to happen today.
I also use the journal to take notes in meetings that are likely to involve tasks to do. For example, if I’m in a department chairs’ meeting or meeting with my Dean of Faculty, I will probably have new items to add to my “Stuff to Do” lists.
So that’s your peek into my journal. I have a separate Moleskine cahier notebook for taking notes and writing ideas.
And speaking of writing, I’m trying NaNoWriMo again this year. I didn’t do too badly for the first day. My goal was 1,667 words, and I wrote 1,793. I have a fun idea, but it was hard to write myself into the story today. I am learning that I have become a much more fluent writer over the years. When I first started participating in NaNoWriMo, meeting the word count was hard and often took hours. Now, I can generally do it fairly quickly, especially if I turn off my internal editor and let the ideas flow. I have been blogging for a long time—and I don’t blog as much as I used to—so I’m not sure why I’ve been more fluent the last few years I’ve participated. I can’t chalk it up to blogging, which is one way I’ve traditionally worked on my writing. I’m not handwriting my NaNo novel, but I am handwriting a lot of other things more often. I wonder if that’s it. I won’t complain in any case. The big task I need to put on my “Stuff to Do” list is picking up one of my previous NaNo novels and revising it so I can do something with it.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Dylan and I on the commuter rail, headed for the Red Sox game
Yesterday was Marathon Monday in Boston. Three years ago, we were all watching in shock as the Boston Marathon was the center of a terrorist attack that ended three lives and injured many more, irrevocably changing their lives. The Boston Marathon Bombing also irrevocably changed Boston. The moment was unforgettably captured by hometown hero and Red Sox DH, David “Big Papi” Ortiz.
I have never been into sports much. There was a time when I was in my late teens and early twenties when I followed tennis a bit, but even then, I didn’t follow it closely really. Sports brought back some painful memories of trying to get my body to do things I couldn’t figure out how to do. PE was always a challenge for me. I could run, and I actually had pretty good endurance. I might have made a good cross country runner. I will never know. The one year I finally decided to try out for cross country, my school declared there was no interest in a team, and we didn’t have one. I had gone to the athletics physical before the start of the year and everything. In those days, I didn’t advocate for myself much, so I let it go.
Perhaps you need to know that my history with sports is one of disappointment, frustration, and even some regret. I grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and the Broncos were everything to my classmates. John Elway was quarterback in those days. I moved to St. Louis for a short time, and I saw my first major league baseball game—Cardinals versus the Dodgers at Busch Stadium. I don’t remember much about it. Mom had obtained the tickets through work, and though none of us were baseball fans, it seemed like a fun opportunity. I got to see Fernando Valenzuela pitch. The Cardinals lost.
Though my high school had been state football champs the fall before I started going there, and though my college was a big SEC school, I never could get into football, either, and I don’t really think I will. As a member of the marching band, football was more often the cause of resentment for me than anything else, and once I was in college, my dorm was right next to the stadium. On weekends, tailgaters trashed the alley by my dorm and the whole place stank of beer. This careless disregard for my home did not do a lot to change my disposition toward sports and their fans.
I don’t think I immediately registered exactly what that moment meant when Big Papi took to the field to claim Boston back from those who would want to make us afraid. Now when I watch it, I get goosebumps. He gave that speech three years ago tomorrow. We watched it on the news. Some time after that, my husband started watching games on TV. He had been a baseball fan in his youth. Then, incredibly, the Red Sox were in the running for the pennant. And then they were in the World Series. And then they won the World Series!
My mom had become an Atlanta Braves fan after my family moved to Georgia. She used to watch their games on TV. Because of her, I knew the names of the players, and I even watched a little if it was on TV when I visited. But I couldn’t get into the Braves. There was something magic about watching the Red Sox play, though. They had heart. The players were such characters. It was that year that they all grew beards for good luck. Incredibly, I was a fan for the first time in my life.
I watched the disappointing 2014 and 2015 seasons. It didn’t matter that the Red Sox didn’t repeat. Well, I would have preferred it if they had, but it was through the adversity of those two season that I realized I really was a fan, and not just when the team was winning. I was sad to see some of my favorite players traded. That’s part of the game; I get it. It’s early days this season, but I like watching the current lineup play as well.
For Christmas, I bought my husband tickets to see the Red Sox play the Blue Jays on April 16, which also happened to be my son’s 13th birthday. We had a great time. The Sox beat the Blue Jays 4-1. Unfortunately, they lost the next two games, splitting the series 2-2. The game on Marathon Monday was particularly heartbreaking. The Sox had it in the bag as Clay Buchholz pitched a really good game. The Sox defense made five double plays. There was no reason for the Sox to have lost, but the relief pitchers gave away some runs, and the game ended with the Blue Jays winning 4-3.
If anything, going to a real Red Sox game at Fenway Park, which is just an incredible place to see, made me a bigger fan. We had a nice view from the grandstand, looking out across third plate. I was able to see David Ortiz play. Xander Bogaerts hit a homerun. My favorite player, Dustin Pedroia, hit a single. David Price pitched a great game. Koji Uehara, the hero closer of the 2013 World Series, pitched one inning. Craig Kimbrel was throwing fire in the 9th. We all had a great time at the game. It was a memory I’ll carry with me, and it was wonderful to share it with my family on my son’s birthday.
Koji Uehara pitching in the 8th inning
I can’t wait to go see another game at Fenway, but I’ll be watching from my couch tonight as the Sox begin a series with the Tampa Bay Rays.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Today is the last day of the Slice of Life March blogging challenge. I was able to write a post every single day this month. I made it!
For my last post, I’m literally just going to talk about my day. We started with a faculty meeting and English department meeting that included a great discussion of how to make integration work better between departments. My colleagues have some great ideas.
I taught three classes: my two sections of American literature and an independent study in British literature. My student in British literature had a scheduling issue, and the only way we could resolve it was to set her up in a class by herself. She read Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” over break, and we started “The Miller’s Tale” today. She was a little surprised, even though I warned her. She found some helpful videos online to help her understand the stories a little better. Her father is one of my colleagues, and we had an impromptu conference this morning when he stopped by another colleague’s office to ask a question. I share my classroom with another teacher, and when he’s teaching, I tend to camp out in my colleague’s office. Dad said she is enjoying the independent study, but she misses the interaction with other kids. That makes sense. We really do learn more from each other.
My American literature classes are starting The Great Gatsby. I book-talked The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien before we took ten minutes to read. Interesting and true story: my two international students from Vietnam both want to read this book. On the one hand, I see why. Both of them have expressed a lot of interest in books set in their home country. As veterans go, O’Brien bears no particular ill will toward the Vietnamese, so I think they will be okay reading it. Naturally, they are curious about this war that ravaged their country before they were born. I wouldn’t want to shield them from it. It’s true, it happened, and it likely directly affected their families. But I’m still thinking about it and hoping they will be okay reading it. They both seemed very eager to look at it. One bought the e-book right there in class. The other borrowed my copy. Both of them also read Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, which is set after the Fall of Saigon, when the main character Ha’s family flee to America. These two boys write most beautifully when they write about their homes. I taught both of them last year as well.
I had a quick meeting after school. I came home to a box from Stitch Fix (just keeping two items, neither of which are school clothes: a boho top and some denim capris). We drove up to Five Guys for burgers for dinner. Then we went to the thrift store, and this is my book haul.
Hidden from view in the image—Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Not a bad haul. They had a pretty good selection of books. I could easily have bought a few more.
Now I’m curled up on the couch, getting ready to go over my lesson plans for tomorrow before I go to bed. A good day. And tomorrow is Friday. 😎
Slice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Yes, I know this is a (sort of) parody account, and it’s not even a serious tweet, but I was actually nervous about something I had to do today, and believe it or not, this tweet actually helped a little.
I was reading yesterday that people actually fear the unknown more than they fear situations about which they know the outcome, even if the outcome is bad. Because I have anxiety, I am probably worse than most people. Oh, I can gin up a ton of horrific scenarios! I can tell myself rationally that things are unlikely to happen that way, but the fact is that if you put together anxiety with OCD (and my type tends towards obsessions rather than compulsions), well, let’s just say I can worry like nobody’s business.
I have really tried to get a handle on the worrying in the past. For example, I have read the Bible verse in which Jesus says not to worry, which is beautiful and worth quoting in its entirety (I’m partial to the NKJV, though I love that the New American Standard Bible calls this passage “The Cure for Anxiety”):
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Matthew 6:25-34
I totally understand the point, and rationally, I agree with it. Worrying doesn’t do me any good. But knowing worrying is harmful doesn’t help me stop worrying. And then I feel bad for having “little faith.” Something else to worry about! I worry I don’t trust enough in myself, in the goodness of others, or, if you like, in God that everything will work out.
The absolute worst thing for me is not knowing how something will work out so that I can worry about all the possible horrible outcomes until the event transpires—and it’s rarely as horrible as I imagined. In fact, I’m not even sure I can think of a single time it was as bad as I imagined. I just hate having anything hang over me long enough for my imagination to get to work on it.
And the thing that I was worried I couldn’t do, or that might go wrong, actually went fine. It went really well, in fact. Geoffrey Chaucer was right. I can totally do the thing. So can you. We should all listen to him more often.
Slice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Thanks to those of you who expressed concern about my computer issues. It’s been fixed! It appears to have been an issue with operating system, as the technician thought it might be. All of my files are okay. In fact, even the one I made the same day before my computer froze was there. My bookmarks in Firefox looked like they might be lost until I remembered that I had used Firefox Sync, so I logged in and boom! They were all back.
I do appear to be missing some applications, and I need to reinstall a few others. Plus I was on El Capitan, and the new install is Yosemite. But I’m back in business, and none the worse for wear. We have a very good Apple technician. We are so lucky! A lot of people commented that I was awfully calm about the computer issue, but the thing is, I have worked with this guy for nearly four years, and he’s amazing. I had absolute confidence he would be able to fix it. I was impressed with how fast he fixed it, though. I expected to be out a computer for a few days at least, just because of the volume of work he has to do. I guess I was lucky because it was after break, and perhaps he didn’t have a ton of computers to fix as a result.
The summer before last, I had a big issue with my computer and tried to fix it myself. I have a bit of pride, as a former tech integrator, and I do know how to fix a lot of things. However, what I wound up doing on that previous occasion was completely erasing my hard drive. I have learned my lesson, and now I take things I can’t fix to the tech office.
Today was the first day of classes after break. My AP students had read The Hours by Michael Cunningham over the break, so we discussed it just a little bit before we started viewing the film, which is a fine adaptation of the novel. Students will write a paper after we finish. My American literature students began a narrative writing assignment today using a brainstorming technique one of my colleagues likes to use with students. First, I timed the students, giving them two minutes to brainstorm as many incidents as they could think of when they had a chance to stand up for themselves or someone else and either did or did not do so. Then I asked them to pick one and gave them seven minutes to sketch out the incident. Now they are to turn the sketch into a longer narrative to be workshopped next week.
It was good to see the students again. They had good breaks. Some of them traveled. Some stayed around town. They seemed rested and happy to be back. They are also counting down the days until the end of the school year, though. I learned from them today that we have 33 school days left.
Slice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
Slice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.
