Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers (Even though I’m a day late…)
What I’ll miss wearing a mask to school
Smiling. It’s my biggest coaching move.
The smile changes, but it always means something.
To teachers, I smile to say,
“Good morning.”
“I’ll see you soon!”
“Can I help?”
“I know.”
“I get it.”
“You got this.”
“It’s hard, but we can do hard things.”
“I’m here.”
I smile to say,
“These kids! They’re amazing!”
I smile to say,
“These kids! Can you believe it?”
I smile to say,
“I know you’re not ready now, but maybe one day soon, we can collaborate.”
“I promise I’m nice.”
I smile to say,
“Look! Another meeting!”
I smile to say,
“Wow. This day!”
I smile to say,
“It’s okay.”
“We’re in this together.”
Smiling. It’s my biggest coaching move.
The smile changes, but it always means something.
To students, I smile to say,
“Good morning.”
“I saw you trip, but it’s okay.”
“Are you ready for math?”
“Oops, you dropped your breakfast!”
“That’s a beautiful headband.”
I smile to say,
“I know you just got in trouble, but your day is going to get better.”
"Your joke was funny even if nobody heard it."
I smile to say,
“These teachers! They’re amazing! How lucky are you?”
I smile to say,
“These teachers! Can you believe us, asking you to do this crazy stuff?”
I smile to say,
“Give it a try!”
“Put the pencil to the paper, you’re going to write!”
“Keep reading.”
“Do you mind if I interrupt your reading to chat a bit?”
“I promise I’m nice.”
“You’ve got this.”
“It’s hard, but we can do hard things.”
"I'm here."
I smile to say,
“Wow. This day!”
I smile to say,
“It’s okay.”
“We’re in this together.”
I’ll still smile.
I can’t help it, even under a mask.
But it won’t matter.
Nobody will see it.
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Pets, Slice of Life加速网络加速软件
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers
Up and bark and run and down. Repeat.
My dog won’t stop with the crazy barking tonight. I mean, the other dogs up the street won’t stop either, I think they started it. But it doesn’t matter. Every time someone walks by, or a bird lands too close, or someone is walking their dog on our street, or he thinks maybe a chipmunk is under the bush, Finnegan jumps off of his chair to leap into the yard and bark.
“He’s on a lead!” I yell. Mostly because I accidentally bought a clear lead. And invisible leads don’t instill much confidence in passerbys.
Maybe the dogs up the street are a bad influence.
Maybe I’m a bad dog mom.
Maybe he’s tired. He started with a new trainer today, and he had to learn new rules.
I’m sure there’s meaning here because now that I’ve written it all out he has jumped back on his chair, given me a few weighty sighs, looked at me with droopy puppy dog eyes and he might, just might be falling asleep.
I love my deck. I mean the actual deck needs to be redone or maybe demolished and rebuilt. But I still love my deck.
I come out here to work, to write, to read, to meditate, to play games with the kids, to be distracted.
I like to look up at the trees where I can’t see the houses behind them and imagine I live deep in the forest. A cabin, or a treehouse, but clean. No bugs.
Maybe it’s my childhood full of reading Berenstain Bears and Richard Scary that makes me think I might be able to fashion a house out of a big tree, with neat labels on everything.
In reality, even my deck umbrella has a huge spider web from corner to corner. So I’m thinking that a whole cabin in the woods would probably give me more spider issues than I really want.
I’m not as outdoorsy as I wish I were, but I do love, you know, being outdoors.
It’s quieter here, kinda. Unless you start to pay attention to the birds. Their tweeting is melodic until it gets repetitive. There’s also the mower in the next street over. Or is it a leaf blower? I don’t know. It becomes white noise until it stops and starts and stops and starts again. When there is finally a moment of no mower, no tweeting, no cars driving by, the dog usually starts barking.
Later that day I saw her again on my walk. I turned Finn away before he could see her, and we walked the other way. But she followed me for a bit as if she had something to tell me. I’m not sure if that was a sign or a visit or just a random deer. (Again, my childhood of reading animal stories may have something to do with my thinking that the animals have messages for me.) I am on the lookout for signs from Mardi, but I think she might only send rabbits and rainbows, which doesn’t even make sense. I can see her laughing, eyebrows curled at the very thought. Rabbits and rainbows?
So I sat and closed my eyes and meditated a bit into quietness. When I opened my eyes and looked at my yard, there was a rabbit. I said, “Ha. Funny Mardi” out loud. The bunny hopped away into the woods, and I got up to make dinner for the kids.
“Call the vet right now.” “I think he’s having a seizure.”
We try to calm the children. We say, “Let’s just finish our dinner and watch him. He probably just got stung or something.”
We try to sit and finish dinner, but the children are preoccupied with Finn’s preoccupation. He’s really sniffing the edge of the deck, and his tail is curled under.
“He’s scared!” the kids yell.
“There’s probably a bear under the deck!” they say and the freaking out begins again.
Everyone is convinced that there is a bear hiding under our deck. They refuse to calm down until we check.
Mr. Thought asks, “If it is a bear, will I be able to outrun it back up the steps?”
“I was about to give up my search when I saw the most …”
H comes back out, “What was there? Was it a bear?”
Mr. Thought begins again in a slow calm voice. “Everything is okay.”
There’s something about the way he says it though, that makes us all feel like maybe he did see a mama bear hiding in the corner under the deck.
“I was about to give up my search when I saw the most beautiful nest of baby birds!”
I can’t wait for the next time we think there’s a bear close by. Third time’s the charm, maybe?
That was last night. The birds are learning to fly today. It’s nice, but I mean I feel like we just met them and now they are all grown up.
Blank Page Published: A Slice of writing
pandemic, Slice of Lifeonathought
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers
Blank page, typed and then deleted. Type, delete, type delete. I’ve done this before.
A few things I almost wrote about, but then erased…
I deserve an adulting award for ordering mulch today I’m failing as a mother, #screentime Sitting in the sun begs the question, is it summer yet? I miss a lot of people and things right now. I think I have a cold. It better be just a cold. Filled out my mail-in ballot today. Hope I followed all the rules. There were a lot of rules. I will send it when my stamps come. It’s so odd to order stamps to be mailed. Voting makes me feel like I need to pay more attention to the news. The news makes me feel like I need to go back to bed. Under the covers. This Groundhog’s Day life is devoid of usable slices. Boring, but also too raw. Man it’s hard to have a friend dying during a pandemic.
I told myself to write on Tuesdays, though. Keep up the habit, build it up Remember that I love to write.
Remember that I love to write. Remember that I love to write. Remember that I love to write.
I still don’t know if I’ll hit select all – Delete, or “Publish.”
The Teacher Across The Hall
Reflections on teaching, Slice of Lifeonathought
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers
Have you ever had a teacher across the hall like Mardi?
One of the last years we taught together, Mardi had a planning period right while I taught Social Studies. It was right after lunch if I am remembering correctly.
At some point, I noticed a pattern. My kids would be settling down, I’d be passing something out, or I might even be starting my lesson. That’s when I’d notice Mardi. She’d be walking around my room, holding a post-it with kids’ names on it, kids with late math work. She’d walk around, telling those kids that they needed to finish that work at the end of the day instead of going to their last choice period. Sometimes she wasn’t quite as quiet, interrupting the start of my lesson, telling kids in no uncertain terms that they would need to get the work to her.
What I wouldn’t give to teach across the hall from Mardi again.
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pandemic, poetry, Reflections on coaching, Reflections on teaching, Slice of Life, Uncategorizedonathought
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers
I’m not saying that it’s quite as easy to find the joy each day, remotely.
Even before pandemic times
Before The Quarantine, There were days.
Days when
meetings overtook
people were mean
things got canceled
I didn’t see a child,
(other than my own and they were grumpy that day, for sure)
There’s a reason I have a wine glass that says
#coachingainteasy
On those days,
Before pandemic times
Before Quarantine I sometimes had to look for joy
And maybe I learned that looking for joy
is how you find it
Now it’s pandemic times The Quarantine
Now I have to look for joy
It doesn’t pop up on its own and wave its hands in the air as often as normal
(“normal?”)
But it’s still important.
Because I’ve learned that looking for joy
is how you find it
Even if you are looking into your computer screen at little boxes
reading emails instead of faces
walking down your steps instead of around a school
Some people have reminded me that I don’t have to keep finding joy
posting videos, sharing every day
“It’s a pandemic!”
“Cut yourself some slack!”
“You don’t owe videos to anyone!”
But I do.
I owe it to myself
I owe it to myself to keep looking for joy
My desktop sticky notes urge me to write
even though I’m a little
too edgy to write
免费网络加速 Reflect What you focus on grows
I went to a mindfulness zoom a week or two ago
(Mindfulness. Zoom. Seems ironic, but maybe for 2024 it’s just iconic)
I guess a half-hour session wasn’t sufficient
to make me mindful enough
Good mindfulness reminders though.
He told us,
“You are being held.”
“Anxiety is anticipatory fear.”
“You have thousands of thoughts a day… and that’s no problem.”
So I wrote myself more sticky notes for my desktop
Pen on the page. Reflect What you focus on grows 电脑如何加速网络 Anxiety is anticipatory fear No problem
There’s another sticky too
I wrote it down when my
acupuncturist told me to get out of my head
She said,
“You are not more powerful than God.”
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#sol20 March 31 A Slice, The Last Slice
pandemic, poetry, Slice of Lifeonathought
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers March Slice a Day Challenge! I’m slicing every day this month. Thanks for stopping by.
I don’t know what to write about.
Which means I should probably try a 6-word slice:
Slicing is hard.
Which means I should probably try a little rhyme:
Writerly life during pandemic strife means my first-hand account is paramount
Pandemic life as coach, mother, wife 加速网络加速软件 my brain – full of a mess
Sit every day to write
before sinking into bed at night
means choosing my chair again
staring at the screen with disdain
But living the slicer life
during the pandemic strife
means a writing and sharing opportunity
a connection, a community
It’s the last Slice of Life this March.
Which means I should probably make this short and sweet:
See you next Tuesday, I hope!
#sol20 March 30 A Slice of Siblings
Family, pandemic, Slice of Lifeonathought
Part of Slice of Life by Two Writing Teachers March Slice a Day Challenge! I’m slicing every day this month. Thanks for stopping by.
The teenagers have started a 30 Day health challenge. They woke up early, on their own. Well, the 13-year old did, and then he woke up his sister. She doesn’t like alarm clocks, so for once she actually asked him to wake her up.
When I walked down to get my coffee, the yoga mat was already set up, the hand weights were out, and the oatmeal was started on the stove.
He was chopping up the apple when his sister walked in the kitchen, eyes wide at all the preparation.
“Wow!” She said as her brother started chopping the apple.
“I can’t promise I’m going to do all of this every day,” H said.
L started to nod, taking in all of the prep work, “I know.”
“I mean,” he continued, “these are the last of the strawberries.”
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A Slice of what I’ll miss
A Slice from the Porch (with a Pooch!)
Distractions from my Deck
A slice of another mystery
Blank Page Published: A Slice of writing
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Please note that these are my ideas, views and opinions. I work with so many spectacular teachers, counselors, administrators, students, families... and amazingly enough we don't always agree! The opinions I express here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. They also don't necessarily reflect the opinions I'll have in the future. Like the sticker I had up in my room as a teenager: "If you can't change your mind, are you sure you still have one?" - Unknown.
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Crawling Out of the Classroom
In everything that my students and I do together, we strive to find ways to use reading and writing to make the world outside of our classroom a better place for all of us to be