Slice of Life - A Trip To The Bookstore

Today I found myself standing where I am often most at home, the bookstore. It isn’t as easy as driving downtown to get to a bookstore when you live surrounded by cornfields. No, you must get in said car, drive twenty-five miles, visit Barnes & Noble because there are no independent stores remotely close by, peruse the shelves, stop at Starbucks, and drive twenty-five miles home.

That being said, I love it.

There is something comfortable about a bookstore. There is possibility all around me. Books just waiting to be opened, stories to be told. I think my heart rate slows down when I’m there, my breathing is deeper, I’m more at ease than anywhere else. It’s quiet, but not too quiet, and I feel at peace.

When I head to the bookstore, I almost always head straight to the back, the children’s department. There I greet L.B.B.[1] and head to the left where the picture books reside. While I’d love to purchase every new picture book, two items must hold me back. One, I already spend a small fortune on my classroom each year. One must be choosy. Two, we are at a one in, one out point in my classroom. The room is encircled by bookshelves. There is simply no more room for new books. Apparently 3263 is the magic number, no more, no less.

And so, the first thirty minutes or so of my visit finds me reading as many picture books as I can. As I read, I think whether this book is a must purchase for my classroom. Can I think of a mini-lesson I would use it for? Is it something that fifth graders need before heading to middle school? Today I read ten picture books and ended up deciding to purchase Courage. Not sure what book will have to come out to make room.

After spending time in the picture books, I move to the right and the world of middle grade novels. I shake my head at some clearly YA books that have been placed here. I can only assume that the folks working at Barnes & Noble don’t read all of the books they shelve. I briefly consider reshelving them for the employees when my attention is diverted – a woman and a young girl struggling to find a match.

I begin eavesdropping and pick up a few facts. They are not related, the young girl is getting ready for third grade and her mom is the woman’s friend. They pick up a few books, but the young girl despairs. The books look too hard for her. She whispers, “I’m just not good at reading…” and I swoop in.

I ask if I can make a suggestion and the woman looks at me like I’m a bit crazy. I explain that I teach reading to fifth graders and love books. She then gives me the hopeful glance of someone reaching for a life preserver. I look at the little girl and ask, “Have you ever read a graphic novel?” She shakes her head. With my heart lifted, I say, “Come and meet my friend, Babymouse,” and I stride across the room.

We stand at the shelves containing Babymouse for only about five minutes. I quickly describe the backstory and point out a few features of the book, like the reasons for the pink background. The girl opens up Queen of the World and reads the first three pages. Glancing up, she smiles and says, “Hey, this is good. And I can read it!” Tears spring in my eyes and I wish her well. The woman thanks me and they begin pulling several volumes off the shelf to buy.

I return to the middle grade novels area with a smile on my face. Grabbing the new book in Jon Scieszka’s Frank Einstein series, I head to the register. After purchasing both it and Courage[2], I head to my car.

Almost on autopilot, I find myself in the Starbucks drive through. I realize I’m smiling, thinking of the girl meeting Babymouse for the first time, the new students who will experience these two books currently residing on my front seat, of the fifth graders I will get to match with books this year. I miss that over the summer.  Bookstores. Libraries. They are simply the best. Walk into the door and the whole world awaits. What a wonderful way to spend a morning.

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[1] Thanks to Travis Jonker for making me love this character with a crazy name from the comment section of THIS post, it is well worth the read.

[2] Sigh, another book needs to leave. This is never ending.

Slice of Life is sponsored on Tuesdays by Two Writing Teachers.

Slice of Life – Reflecting on 2014

Slice of Life is sponsored on Tuesdays by Two Writing Teachers.

It’s that time of year again, time to look back and look ahead. 2014 was a good year. A year where we had some sadness, but also a whole lot to celebrate. I am more certain than ever that time speeds up as you get older, because 2014 seemed to fly! This just makes me all the more aware of the time passing and the desire to hold tight and appreciate it while I can.

I try not to make “resolutions” each year, mainly because as I near the end of my 40^th year, I know I don’t keep them. Instead, each year I pick my word, my one little word, and focus on that for the next year. It isn’t something I consciously do each day, but it pops up in my mind throughout the year. For 2012 and 2013 I had the word be. Just be. Last year the word was balance. Both words have helped me – to be more comfortable in my own skin, to search for balance when it was gone. I’ve thought a lot about what to pick for this year’s word.

Grace

There is a lot I would like to accomplish this year, a lot I would like to change, but it begins here, with grace.

If you would also like to select a word for your year, please join in! If you need inspiration, here’s a list of words that were selected in 2013 on Ali Edwards’ blog.

Word List

Slice of Life - Mondays

Slice of Life is sponsored on Tuesdays by Two Writing Teachers.

Last Monday was a true Monday. I felt like I was dragging my students – and myself – through the day. I questioned whether they had internalized any of our practices from the first twelve weeks of school.  I braced myself for another Monday today. A Monday after a full moon last week, after being out of the classroom for a day and a half for a sick kiddo, and before a cold weather front moves in? It was bound to be bad… and yet, it was awesome.

There were moments, of course. Moments where kids rushed in to tell me what rule they had broken when our guest teacher (substitute) was in last week. Moments where they told me they hadn’t read or written over the weekend. Moments where they shared with me a disagreement they had on the playground before school. I sat there, as these moments washed over me in the first five minutes of our school day, and began to despair. And then, I realized something big.They rushed in to admit they had done something wrong, to own up to their mistake. They were honest about their homework not getting done, had not made any excuses, but told me so I could deduct a point. They told me about the problem on the playground so they could discuss how they handled it and get advice on what to do next time. Those moments show a lot of growth since that first day, just twelve weeks ago. With that, my Monday began.

It moved on with the introduction of our Mock Caldecott unit. We are doing this unit in corroboration with Margie Myers-Culver’s students in Michigan. This will be our third year in a row, and it is a unit I look forward to all year long. Margie is awesome to work with. You’ve got to love a friend when you both look at your list of twenty, know there are some books you wanted to include, and say, “Let’s just make it 25.” Awesome!

Here’s the twenty-five books we selected:

Created with Padlet

Today we read our first book from the unit, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole. We’ve already shared this title this year, so today we were able to read it critically. This is a crowd favorite in all three of my classes. After sharing the book, the kids added their reactions to a class Padlet so they could see what their classmate’s opinions were. This was the first time I have used Padlet for the whole group at once. Oh my! Twenty-seven kids typing away at the iPads at once? It was a bit crazy.

Created with Padlet

You might notice when reading some of their reactions that they’ve been influenced by Travis Jonker’s theories as to what happened at the end of the book. The kids loved reading Travis’s post (HERE) and now want to meet him just as much as they want to meet Klassen and Barnett!

Mondays. Some days they make me want to curl up and sleep for another week. Other days they give me a chance to reflect on growth and make me want to teach until I am seventy. Grateful today for one of the latter.

Slice of Life - Public Speaking

Today in reading class we refamiliarized ourselves with the non-fiction portion of our classroom library. No matter how often I book talk amazing non-fiction books, my students continue to gravitate towards fiction. And I understand that, but I don’t want them to miss out. There are so many truly amazing non-fiction books; we just have to keep discovering them.

So today we began by grabbing a basket for each table and diving in. Teams explored each basket, flipping through books, and selecting just one per table to share with the class. A spokesperson from each table came to the front of the room, placed their book under the document camera, and shared with the class why they thought it was a book worth noticing. Students around the room recorded titles on their To Read list at the back of their notebooks, and the next person would come up. No big deal, right?

Wrong.

In each class I had students – brave students, brilliant students – tell me they were afraid to come forward. That it was scary to talk to the class. These weren’t necessarily my shy reserved kids, but students from all groups. I think if I was another teacher, I wouldn’t get it. There was no pressure – hop up, give a quick blurb, sit back down. But I get it. Just as being a reader and writer gives me a different perspective on how to teach reading and writing, being a person with anxiety about public speaking helps me see these kids.

Talking to one of the boys about speaking to a crowd, he confided that it terrified him. I looked him in the eyes and said, “It terrifies me too, and I’m doing it again tonight.”

I think he thought I was nuts. Well, let’s be honest, they all think I’m a bit crazy on a regular basis.

Tonight I was asked to come speak to the PTO about the referendum on the ballot for our school district this November. A friend chided me on this engagement, said I’m volunteering for too much. Trust me when I say I was not volunteering to speak in public, I dread it that much. But I keep doing it. I already know I am speaking again at NCTE in November, just forty-five days away, not that I’m counting. So I shared with this fabulous kid that information, my speaking engagement this evening, the one coming up, and said I knew he could do it.

He looked at me with complete confusion and said, “Why would you do that to yourself? And you hate to fly; you will have to fly in November? Why?”

I smiled and shared my secret. I refuse to let anxiety hold me back, to keep me from doing things I want, or need, to do. I refuse to let it rule my life. I will speak in public, fly in planes, even though I’m terrified. Each time I do, it is just a little bit easier.

Isn’t this all part of building relationships with our kids at the start of the year? Letting them see through the armor we wear as teachers. Letting them know we have fears and flaws. When we show them that we are human, they begin to let us in.

I can’t wait to see my students tomorrow. To let them know I did it and it was great. That my audience was, as always, so kind and caring. They didn’t mind my red cheeks as I spoke, or that my voice shook a bit. I will tell my students that the audience’s kind eyes and nodding heads helped me as I spoke so they can remember to do that for their classmates, and then we will move on and find some more amazing non-fiction books. There are so many to discover on this journey together. What a year it will be.

Slice of Life is sponsored on Tuesdays by Two Writing Teachers.