I’m writing every day of March for the Slice of Life Challenge at Two Writing Teachers

In the first book I ever read, Ernie and Bert cleaned their room
I remember the pictures of the room getting tidier and tidier
a preschool Home Edit!
There was also Harold
and his purple crayon
and his imagination
all those pies
the way the moon was always in his window
Every time I go to the beach, I think about this book I had
about going to the ocean for the day
and the kids’ adventure of shells and a tidepool
Oh, and Sam!
He collected donuts and then used them to save a woman from a coffee flood
Who needs donuts? They asked
When you’ve got love?
Dooley battled that snortsnoot
once he was tall enough.
My shelf was full
I can picture the books, the stories
part of me
and I find myself hoping today
that as the pendulum swings and teachers hold on for dear life,
kids will still find themselves in the pages

When I walked into a classroom today to meet with a teacher, her kids were finishing cleaning up, heading to lunch and the lyrics to “It’s not easy being Green” were projected. Years ago I shared a bunch of different Slice of Life prompts and lessons with teachers. The prompts float around now, and I always get a kick out of seeing kids writing from them.

This one transported me back to my sixth-grade classroom. Somehow that song had come up in conversation, not so unusual in sixth-grade, actually. I decided we needed to use it as a mentor text to slice. We closely read the lyrics, and then decided what we would need to keep if we wanted to have our slices sound like Kermit.

My sixth graders wrote and wrote. They wrote beautifully. There are a lot of things that aren’t easy about being in middle school.

One of the third graders was still in the room and I asked her, “Are you doing It’s not that easy being slice of life?”

She nodded her head and said “Yea. It’s…It’s…” and I wasn’t sure if she was upset about the writing or not.

She tried to say, “Nevermind,” but I said,

“Do you like it?”

“Yea,” she told me, “It really helps to get a lot of stuff out.

I guess third graders have a lot of things that aren’t easy too.

The teacher said I had to read some of her kids’ slices of life, and showed me a few.

I had to tell her that I remember making that prompt, and she smiled.

“One of the kids said to me today when we did this, ‘I know where you got this idea from! You must have gotten this from Ms. Gabriel!’”