SoL Challenge Day #6

Today I took a personal day, my first one of the year.

I almost didn't. I felt guilty as I wrote the lesson plans on Friday, and as I locked my classroom door on the way out.

I'm glad I did though.

I woke up at 9, made coffee, and watched John Oliver.

My lunch consisted of chocolate chip muffin batter and more coffee.

After a trip to the grocery store, I sat down and went through my lesson plans, responded to student emails, and took a nap with the windows open.

Tonight I am showered, groomed, and on my way to get curry with close friends.

I feel calm, collected, and ready for tomorrow.

SoL Challenge Day #5

 On Thursday night I couldn't sleep. My thoughts were spinning, and I finally gave up and called the one person who I knew would be awake.

"Hey, Dad."

"Hey sweetheart, what's up?"

My dad is nocturnal, and is most awake around 11:00 at night. We went through our usual topics of school, church, and their plans for summer. As we neared the end of the conversation, he let out a sigh and said, "Well, dear. I think Reggie is in her last few days."

I sat up in my bed and waited for him to finish listing the new ailments my childhood dog had started to display. Difficulty lifting her head. Walking into walls. Inability to find her way out of the laundry room.

I lifted the blanket to my eyes as tears flowed freely. I got her when I was nine. My mother had given my father a nearly impossible to meet list of requirements before we went to the pet store. I'm pretty sure my dad found the only dog in the tristate area that met that list.

I picked her up and she immediately snuggled her head between my collarbone and neck.

Oof. I was smitten. How can anyone say no to that image?

My mom couldn't. We took her home and I gained a goofy and rambunctious best friend.

I went home yesterday to say goodbye to her, in case she passes before Easter.

I held her to me, kissed her head, and reminded her of how much I love her.

So much of my childhood is interwoven with memories with her, and the ache inside of my feels stretched throughout my chest.

For now though, her sweet heart is still with us, and the snuggles from this weekend have filled my heart full.

SoL Challenge Day #4

In an effort to tell more stories, today I have written a poem.


My Grandfather

It was 1998, Nebraska, and Christmas.

I’d lost a baby tooth on the drive over,
and I smiled up at you as big as I could
so you wouldn’t miss it.

You nodded and gave me a hug
that felt more like a handshake,
hands and arms tied to obligation.

I didn’t understand the hardening
that sometimes happens in men
who have seen more than they speak.

Men who don’t fit in their skin,
so they kick at the surface
when no one else is watching.

I sat close to your chair and
narrated my examination of the tooth.
Each lisped word meant for your ears.

I was seven and resilient,
wrapping my arms around a man who
didn’t love from the same place as I did.

SoL Challenge Day #3

Week one of third trimester down, and I pulled into my apartment complex and parked. With my Friday after school coffee in hand, I balanced my weekend work on my hip and opened my mailbox. A tiny blue envelope poked out from under the mountain of grocery advertisements. My mom's name was carefully printed in the upper left hand corner. I slipped it into my purse, and climbed the stairs quickly.

My mother is a fiercely intelligent and kind woman. The nature with which she approaches the world is one that I both admire and continually strive to embody myself.

She's also a teacher, and a pretty great one. Growing up, I would often find her sitting on the living room floor with individual student learning plans covering the carpet and humming the songs her preschoolers would memorize over their year together. Her excitement for her classroom is palpable. Chickens are hatched in an incubator each year. Pumpkin guts are explored. Children's stories, quite literally, come life.

Complaints rarely leave her lips, and the language she uses when she speaks of others always acknowledges that all people are trying to be better versions of themselves.

I think about her often as I am settling into my teacher self. I hear her words leave my mouth when I direct students to put their belongings away. Her tone and volume echo in my own.

My thoughts shift to her when I walk into a conversation that tears something or somebody down, rather than builds. Years of observing her tact guide me to excusing myself quietly and undetected.

I carry her heart in my own, and that's a pretty incredible card I was dealt.

Her card sits next to me now as I look forward to the weekend. She sends her love (and a Jimmy John's gift card).

I will call her soon and thank her, as always, for everything.

Slice of Life Challenge Day 2

"The witch in Hansel and Gretel was not strategic at all. Candy just builds fat. She should have managed a Planet Fitness or something and lured her meals in that way."

I stopped and turned toward the group in the back of my classroom with the look my students have become all too familiar with. One of baffled enjoyment guised in skepticism. They waited for my response, but it was the final period of the day and I didn't have a whole lot left in me. "That is a solid point. Carry on." The student smiled at me and continued creating her one-pager of growth versus fixed mindset.

Teaching four different preps is kind of brutal so far. I am in my second year of teaching, but in my first year with high schoolers in a rural school district. Each period changes, but my mindset hasn't changed its internal clock to match the pace of the bell. I'm sure this is in part because of a new schedule, and in part because I am planning and teaching new material each day.

Spring break, come quickly!

I am looking forward to rest, but mostly, I am looking forward to mastering this schedule.

I am growing more roots from which to pull energy, and that takes time.

I am looking forward to tomorrow and the conversations from the corners of my room that leave me a bit baffled and entirely content in the exhaustion.

Slice of Life Challenge Day 1

I've sat down and tried to write today three separate times.

Some days I just don't have a lot of polished language to put out into the world, but if I am going to take on this challenge, some knots will have to remain.

We started a new trimester yesterday, and while I look forward to a change of pace, there is something that has me feeling deflated.

Maybe it's the momentum I'd built vanishing overnight. Maybe it's Lent.

There's something about Lent that quiets parts of me. The fuss that stirs inside of me on a daily basis is forced to take a reprieve when I'm told, "For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Oh yeah, I'm human and fallible.

Some day I won't be here, and while it would be difficult to live in that thought, it's important to return to that thought at points. There is time to patient. There is time to be kind. There is time to love.

There is time to meditate on God's Word and the sacrifice Christ made on the cross for me.

In a period of time where I find myself flitting from moment to moment, I am grateful for the quiet and the reminder of my vocation as an educator.

So, may the quiet guide me toward patience, kindness, and love when my surroundings aren't easy.

Let my quiet navigate the loud.

A Good Day

Yesterday was a solid ten out of ten on the teacher joy scale.

Leading up the final assessments in my sophomore and senior classes, I was in a near constant ebb and flow of insecurity. Am I challenging them enough? Am I supporting them enough? The one-liners we all hear at professional development looped through my stream of consciousness as I circulated my classroom.

"Allow students to take ownership of their learning."

"Give students choice and they will be engaged."

The oversimplification of these doled out pieces of advice burden me.

One cannot simply give the class over to the students. Some days my classroom will look like a cover photo for education, but most days it is messier than that. There is a great deal of knowledge that I have to accumulate and scaffolding that I have to do in order for those ideas to materialize.

But I'll be darned, I think those two things ended up materializing.

My seniors participated in their first Socratic Seminar and absolutely blew me away. I sat in the corner taking some notes, but also relishing in the pride I felt for them.

"Hamlet is kind of like Batman. He wants to ensure that justice happens, but he ends up taking down more people than he intended along the way."

"King Claudius is sort of a tyrant. He tries to take everything down that doesn't suit his immediate desires. He's kind of like another leader that has just recently taken office in our country..."

I laughed so hard I cried, and then I read their reflections and cried some more. They loved it. They learned from their peers. They felt that their voices were important in my classroom. They felt empowered.

Those beautiful discussions would have been enough for me, but each class period today reminded me that the effort I put into my classroom isn't for naught. My sophomores presented their multi-genre research papers that they have labored over for the past month and did so with eloquence and professionalism. There were visual representations of schizophrenia. There were fictional stories that represented how the brain reacts in a person with PTSD. I was engaged and entirely impressed.

My other sophomore class filled out their mid-trimester evaluation and were refreshingly honest with me. I'm excited to improve for them. I'm overjoyed that they enjoy being in my classroom.

I'll pocket all of these moments as we start new units next week and I begin to build and scaffold the next opportunities for empowerment and learning in my classroom.