Thursday, August 17, 2017

So Long Lazy Days!

Today is my last true day of summer. Nothing on the docket that truly needs to be accomplished, no deadlines in the classroom, just one last lazy day. The school year is such a crush of activity: sports, clubs, projects, grading, books to be read, meetings to attend. At the start of summer, I was simply exhausted and committed myself to a summer of reconnecting with the important people and places in my life.

I didn't teach a single class. It was a little odd. I didn't go to any district events. It was very quiet.

I set time every morning to sit on my front porch. My flowers lived all summer long (instead of dying two weeks after Mother's Day). Each day started off slowly and finally I felt my blood pressure start to slow and the stress of the year slip away.

Midsummer I took a two week class in Baltimore. Normally I don't travel alone for such a long amount of time, but it fit right in with my theme for the season: reconnecting. I miss travelling and I love new places. Baltimore was a great adventure of learning and spending time with one of my favorite people. As a special perk, we took a quick tour of DC without our typical 54 friends. I can't wait to bring them back this October!
For most of August, I powered through my summer reading list determined to put a dent in my TBR list of simply amazing books. Time well spent.

One of my favorite evenings was my daughter's sixteenth birthday. She just happened to be born in the middle of the Perseid meteor shower. Every year we wake up in the middle of the night to watch the meteors. Most years it is just the two of us as the boys don't have a whole lot of interest in stargazing. This year, to my great delight the whole family, dogs included, spent a little time reclining in the yard checking out the meteors.


So as I head back to the classroom, I don't really have anything exciting to share about my summer. But it was full of magical, lazy days.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Don't Blink:It's May

This school year has literally passed in the blink of an eye. It feels like just yesterday we began our fall novels and fell in love with some truly broken characters in Orbiting Jupiter and explored the perils of war with Pax. This week we are starting our end of year novels and I'm worried we may not finish. The end of the year brings a plethora of meetings, celebrations, walk-a-thons, special schedules, assemblies and very few focused teaching days. May is a joyful, albeit chaotic culmination of all our learning.


This May is particularly sweet for me as I have the incredible honor of becoming a Golden Apple Fellow. So in addition to all of the end of the year projects we pull together each year, we have some preparation as a class to complete for the Golden Apple Gala. There are class pictures to be taken for the Foundation to share, there were speeches to write, and scripts to craft. Incredibly, a few of my students will be able join me at the gala which will be televised. To prepare, we had to write scripts for students to present. We certainly don't believe in first drafts and done in this classroom, so we had to work through our first round of writing a script. What a fun day helping my amazing students write scripts on what they love about our classroom! Thanks Golden Apple for this super assignment!



May 20 is the gala, May 31st my youngest son will graduate, and June 2nd is our last day celebrating our learning together. So much happy in one month! The time is so short and I will select our learning targets with great care as our moments are fleeting. When we made our brainstorm of favorite moments in May, I was thrilled that my students acknowledged that we save the best novels for the end of the year. My picks are strong ones and I know many of my students will completely fall in love with these outstanding books. Hopefully they will be so engaged that it tips off a summer that becomes rich in reading.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Golden Dreams

This weekend was a pretty exciting one for me. I attended the Golden Apple Celebration of Excellence in Teaching. How do you get a ticket for this super fun event, you may be wondering? Well some tremendously awesome and anonymous person nominated me for this honor.....and a few essays, interviews, and applications later, here I am in the finals. This event was just so special to me for many reasons.

Way back in the stone ages when I began teaching, I had the most amazing mentor teacher. I taught second grade and Mrs. Phyllis LoPiccolo was my next door neighbor teacher for third grade. Like all new teachers I struggled with management, and grading, and planning, and well, everything-that first year is a hard one. Mrs. LoPiccolo helped me in all my brand new baby teacher struggles and she also inspired me to try to be amazing every single day. Mrs. LoPiccolo still is one of the world's greatest teachers in my book and she was also a Golden Apple Fellow. From that first year, I wanted to be just like her and this Golden Apple is one small indicator that I am following in her absolutely amazing footsteps.



Fast forward to today and I have learned a few things about running a classroom and creating some educational magic after 15 years in the hot seat. I live with two teenagers who are not easily impressed or interested in my professional goals or accomplishments. So when I came home and told my family about this Golden Apple opportunity, it was met with mild interest to say the least. As I advanced to the finals, the teen interest grew mildly, but not substantially. The morning of the celebration, they were excited for a fancy breakfast. As they listened to the speakers (who were so inspirational) and they heard about the other nominees' accomplishments, and they enjoyed a very delightful breakfast; my children started to see that this wasn't just a typical school event. I heard a small whispered comment,

Mom, you are really awesome. Really.

Fellow moms, you know how rare it is to hear any positive feedback from your teens. For those three seconds, my heart grew a little bit bigger. It's nice to be appreciated folks. Tell your parents the nice parts too, not just the complaints about how hard it is to be a teen.


Friday, March 3, 2017

#OPKind

Spending all day with students really does showcase a wide variety of behaviors. Sometimes the middle school mind doesn't always jump straight to the most kind response. But lately, we have been working on growing  a positive school climate and I really think it is making a big difference. Our art students did a bang up job creating some beautiful, bold statements about how we should treat each other. Our behavioral goals this quarter are focused on respecting one another, which really boils down to just being kind to each other.

I decided to make a list of the little kindnesses that my school community has shown me in the past few weeks.  It really is a fast growing list.....


  • Coffee from a friend for institute day
  • Support from my team on various student concerns
  • Candy that just showed up on my desk with a super sweet card (can you tell I love food?)
  • The Rocky Theme Song in the car from my favorite carpooling buddy
  • Applause from my class after a string of meetings kept me out of classes
  • Help moving all the supplies for scenery club
  • And more help moving all the supplies back when scenery was over
  • And then again the next day when we met for the second time in one week

After all these little kindnesses shown my way, it is certainly time to pay it forward! Looks like I've got some work to do.


Friday, February 10, 2017

Thoughts on Love

Today my students began writing about who they love and what they love, to celebrate Valentine's Day a little early. So in the spirit of embracing my inner author, here is what I love too!

My family is the center of my universe and the end all be all of my love. I have two teenagers that have redefined love in my life. I never imagined feeling love like a mother's love. There is the joyful love when they are just being wonderful or they accomplish their goals. Then there is that quiet heartbreak when you realize that they are growing up so fast before your eyes and the magical moments that make up a childhood are just flying by. Another love I never anticipated is that crushing love when your child makes a mistake and has to learn life's lessons, which just can be so painful.

My husband is pretty amazing and another fountain of love in my life. He is wacky, unexpected, and so much more calm than I can ever be. He is supportive, kind and the best partner for parenting. Mark also has the craziest sense of humor which I truly appreciate.

I can't write about love and leave out my puppies. Chip and Leilani are the sunshine in my day. I love that they follow me everywhere and I especially love that my tiny chihuahua snuggles up on my lap. They are my favorite furballs of love!

Valentine's Day is sometimes called just another Hallmark Holiday around our house. But I think taking a little time to cherish the people you care about is an excellent way to spend a day.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

First Steps

We have officially been blogging for one week. I know I am biased, but I am very impressed by the writing of my students so far. They have boldly shared some of their accomplishments, hopes, dreams, as well as the standard favorite foods, hobbies, and video games. I am thrilled that some of them wrote about topics that are dear to their hearts and they seem excited at the prospect of developing a readership and honing their writing skills.

On a personal note, I have also spent more than a few minutes this week thinking about my first steps in writing that novel. Ideas are flitting about in my head and this blog is fanning those flames. Maybe my first step is just this, writing one tiny baby paragraph at a time until eventually they will string together in that big dream of a novel.

I hope you will read it one day!



Tuesday, January 10, 2017

About Me

Hi! Thanks for visiting Write On!

I am a middle school reading teacher/interventionist for grades 6, 7, and 8 this year. I have taught just about every grade over the past 20 years and have settled very nicely into my favorite grade band of middle school. This blog is my baby step into publishing as I've been dreaming of getting my first book out there and this step one.  I'm taking this journey with 30 or so of my closest writing friends that I hang out with throughout my workday.

Enjoy our musings and thanks for the comments!