Tomorrow starts the March Slice of Life Challenge on Two Writing Teachers! #sol25. I’ll be slicing every day for all of March. I hope you’ll join me.
March Eve
This blank page will visit me every day next month tomorrow and I will remember what my students feel when they stare at their blank page so blank
Today we generated ideas for next week’s poetry and one boy wrote stuff stuff stuff like he was an advertisement for a tired second-grader resistant not to writing but to directions
I wrote a terrible poem today with my class but they liked it with smiles and laughter chatter chatter chatter which just goes to show you that the writer often doesn’t know what the reader will like
In reading today, my student teacher asked How do you feel when you read? What emotions do books give you? I watched as kids wrote the words calm, happy, funny I listened to one student say That doesn’t make any sense, there are no emotions inside a book! Which just goes to show you that the reader often doesn’t know either
So tomorrow there won’t be school Saturday Saturday Saturday But I will still feel what my students feel when they stare at the blank page
This slice is part of the Slice of Life on Two Writing Teachers! #sol25. I’m slicing on as many Tuesdays as I can. I hope you’ll join me.
My therapist insists I’m not lazy But she hasn’t seen my corner cabinet
It’s been organized, I swear But the Tupperware – which is actually Chinese Food containers mostly – It just falls wherever it wants, also do you expect me to lift the smaller ones to put the larger ones underneath every time?
It’s a Lazy Susan cabinet which what the heck lazy is in it’s name I wonder what Susan’s therapist thinks about that
This morning every morning when I walked into the kitchen, I saw Lazy Susan had swung open Not only does she drop my lids into her abyss She also can’t stay closed to save her life
Or maybe I didn’t close her last night
And I wondered if my cabinet is trying to teach me something like patience or patience adjacent like perseverance determination or maybe not to keep all the Chinese Food leftover containers or maybe to stop overthinking, you’re thinking
Don’t get me started on my bottom drawer The baking drawer Where cocoa powder spilled I think a year ago Luckily, I don’t have time for baking anymore
This slice is part of the Slice of Life on Two Writing Teachers! #sol25. I’m slicing on as many Tuesdays as I can. I hope you’ll join me.
Years ago when I was a coach, a first-grade teacher told me she loved moving to first grade from the upper grades once her own kids were older.
She had an eloquent way of explaining it, and I don’t want to misquote her… but it had something to do with how primary kids still show you how they love you and need you and think you’re great.
Teenagers…well… not so much.
Living by myself with my two amazing teenagers is something.
Wow.
Thank goodness I go to school every day with 6,7 and 8 year olds who draw me pictures, want me to tell them stories, and to listen to all the parts of their day. My students more often than not think I have the right answer. They even laugh at my jokes and love my songs!
I’ll say it again, every day 19 kids laugh at my jokes, love my songs, and learn from the things I teach them.
And then I go home.
If you ever need to knock someone’s self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem down several pegs, I recommend having them become a single-mom to a few teenage boys.
Most days I’m reminded in multiple ways from a few of my most favorite people, that I’m not funny, not cool, not smart, not right, and that in fact, I’m ruining their otherwise fine day in some way.
I’d love to pivot here and tell you about the good parts to. I’d love to tell you how when we had our recent power outage those very same teenage boys helped change smoke detector batteries, find flashlights and take the dog out in the dark-no-street-lights-no-porch-lights-no-house-lights night. But, this is no place to write about the nice times.
Instead, I’ll have you imagine that power outage, and how one of the only flashlights I could find was my old headlamp. So I wore it around the house, as I tried to make sure we were doing all the things we needed to do, and taking care of all the things we needed to take care of.
“Why are you acting so crazy about this?” One teenager kept asking me.
“It’s not that deep.” I was reminded.
And my favorite…
“Why do you have that on your head? You look like a f!@#ing angler fish.”
This slice is part of the Slice of Life on Two Writing Teachers! #sol25. I’m slicing on as many Tuesdays as I can. I hope you’ll join me.
I can’t stop thinking about this comment I saw – let it go, I know but This curriculum coach I don’t even know wrote something I must be misunderstanding in a facebook group I don’t even like and like what is going on with teaching, right? She said, and I quote, “Our goal is… not asking students to write but showing them how.” and now I’d say I don’t have the words but I actually have a lot of words for cowards who don’t know what they are talking about but tell people what to do who let ships sink saying they believe in something that isn’t true who put kids last last! explaining how their misguided data is skewed
On the other hand I’m glad that the goal isn’t for students to write that would be like, so, like, hard to fit in I’ve got worksheets to cover Skills to explain calls for my kids to respond to in unison not to mention the grammar and fill in the blanks my days are packed, man just like those assessments
Don’t tell anyone that I um secretly teach kids who write poetry just when they speak they make stories with blocks, legos, and play run mini book making factories throughout the day my underground workshop is hard to fit in but it’s kinda my job to keep teaching even when cowards on Facebook spew official advice luckily it’s not really my job anymore to pretend to be nice
On a Thought 