Slice of Life - A Busy Weekend

The Sokolowski family and Sue

I’ve been looking ahead to this weekend on the calendar since the start of school - a four-day weekend for my kids, three days for me. I was sure I’d end Columbus Day weekend relaxed and recharged. Like many times in life, things didn’t turn out quite as I planned.

When I had visions of days in pajamas reading dancing around in my head, I forgot a few important things. Namely…

·      A presentation to give on Friday followed by a day of meetings.

·      Babysitting my niece from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon.

·      A quick day trip to Chicago to see my uncle and aunt who were in town for the week.

This is not to say that anything on my list wasn’t looked forward to – it was an amazing weekend. I am returning to school, however, exhausted and ready to return to a normal schedule.

So today’s slice, out of mind-numbing exhaustion, will be a slice of photos. We spent the day at The Field Museum in Chicago. If you are in Chicago, the museum campus is a fabulous place. While we only had two hours to explore, both Luke and Liam had fun learning about natural history. If I can help to foster a love of learning in these two, I will feel like I’ve done my job pretty well. We’re on our way.

 

Watching the 3D movie about Sue

In the great hall of the Museum

Becoming a scientist 

The city I love - the lake I love - and a food truck

I have no explanation for Luke's face or Liam's pose.

Finally, I wrote in slice a few weeks ago about a young man, Kyle, in our community who had passed away. A photographer happened to be in town that weekend and snapped some photos of the tractors that lined the road to the cemetery. (Kyle was a farmer.) Please check out the link and story below. This explains eloquently why I love my community and will always have a spot in my heart for farmers. 

Breathtaking Tribute to a Fallen Farmer from Modern Farmer

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Two Writing Teachers

Celebrating the National Day on Writing

My first years of teaching were about survival. Any professional development I attended was something recommended by someone within my district. It was only around year eight that I even heard of IRA and went to my first conference – it was in Chicago. While there I spoke to many attendees and heard over and over again of the organization NCTE. Upon arriving home I did my research on NCTE and imagine my surprise to find that they were based in Urbana, Illinois – only thirty miles down the road from me.

Since that time I’ve made up for the years I have lost. I have read professional development books and attended conferences as much as humanly possible. I have always had a desire to grow as a teacher -  the NCTE organization, the conference they run, and the colleagues I’ve met as a result have all contributed to my growth.

One of the things I love about NCTE is their focus on writing, which often gets so much less attention when compared to reading. For the last five years they have celebrated the National Day on Writing in October. This year’s theme is write2connect. (Read more about it HERE.)

How will you celebrate the National Day on Writing? Here’s a few suggestions:

Join Penny Kittle and myself on October 20^th at 8pm EST on Twitter to participate in a Twitter chat using the hashtag #NCTEChat. It will be a fast paced hour with great discussion centered around writing.

Tweet out on October 21^st using the hashtag #write2connect sharing the ways you use writing to foster connections.

Write a blog post about how you use your own writing to connect – whether it is connecting your own life to your classroom, yourself to your students, or another way entirely. Please stop back here to Read, Write, Reflect next Monday and leave your link in the comments and we can all share our ideas.

Have a terrific week! I can’t wait to talk writing with you all soon.

Let's Celebrate

Ruth Ayres is starting a weekly celebration on her blog. On Saturdays she invites you to share something, or things, from your week that you could celebrate. I love this idea. I love that I will be looking my entire week for the positive. The positive moments, celebrations, events, etc. This has been my focus this year, to dwell on the positive and not the negative. So thanks, Ruth, for making this a weekly event.

I know I have am embarrassment of riches that I could pick from – but I am going to just choose one item to celebrate. My time is short – two young children are anxiously awaiting some pancakes to be made.

Yesterday I had the chance to present to a group of teachers in my district. Public speaking is tough for me. Anytime I have any rush of emotions whatsoever, I always get a red face. I’m not necessarily embarrassed, just excited, but it is still tough. My voice used to quaver and my heart would race. I was please to find that I didn’t have that reaction this time, just excitement. (And a red face, but we’ll go with that.)

I spoke about the different ways I use technology in the classroom. The reason I want to celebrate this is not that what I do is earth shattering – or even that I made it through a presentation without having a panic attack. What I want to celebrate is two separate events.

First, I have to celebrate the audience. If you’ve spoken to a group before you know that you get feedback from them without a word even being said. Their body language, eyes, faces, and more say so much. Teachers are notorious for being a hard group to speak to. Yesterdays group was wonderful. Smiles, laughs, eye contact, and more – I can’t say how much I appreciated it. I’ve always said it is harder for me to present in my own district than to strangers, but that group I had yesterday rocked. If any of them are reading – thanks so much! You made me day start off on the right foot – and my weekend too.

Second, as I spoke about what I have been doing with my students this year I came to an important realization – we’ve done a lot. I think the nature of teaching is that we never feel caught up, never feel like we've done enough. I always feel like I have failed – that I haven’t had enough explicit lessons on comprehension. I haven’t conferenced enough. I haven’t had enough time for them to write. I haven’t had enough time for them to read. Standing in front of a group and sharing my class, I had to pause. Holy crap. We’ve gotten Twitter off and running, ditto to Kidblog and a Classroom blog. We’ve had a whole unit on monitoring comprehension through think alouds. We’ve had five writing mini-units. The list goes on.

Yesterday was a great reminder to me that I look for the positive in life, in my students, in everyone else. However, I don’t tend to look for the positive in myself. I am my own worst critic. So I think part of my celebrations need to be recognizing that sometimes, I’m a bit hard on myself and I need to let that go.

If you’d like to see the slides I made for my district presentation you can find them HERE.

Thanks, Ruth, for starting this great new weekend writing idea. Have a great weekend everyone! 

Slice of Life - Reflecting on Farm School

Farm School today

This weekend brought some unexpected chance for reflection. I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships I have with students, the classroom environment we live and breathe in. Mine is not unique, but also not always typical. I began to push myself to reflect on those things that are non-negotiable, or my friend Donalyn calls them her “core beliefs.” There are ones I hold up for academics, but the way I treat my students, the way my classroom runs and “feels” – those come from some core beliefs too. This weekend, as strange as it sounds, I remembered where I came from.

I mentioned in a post from Sunday that I had a chance to attend a wedding on

My mom on the left, Kris holding me on the right.

Saturday. When I was there, I ran into my preschool teacher, Kris. She was, as always, unfailingly kind, generous, and attentive. It has been thirty-five years since I was her student, yet she remembers so much. We talked about the recent experience I gave my class last year on her property. (Previous post HERE) She said how much she’d love to hear what my students were writing and I gave her a standing invitation to come to my classroom. Talking to Kris brought so much of my preschool experience back.

In my memory, my time at Kris’s preschool was magical. Called Farm School, it took place on a real farm on the edge of our town. I remember animals in the yard, sitting in a circle for lessons, washing our dishes, playing, friends, and more. I also remember feeling loved, cared for, and the notion that my teachers believed in me. I clearly remember feeling at home sitting on a beautiful porch with windows that looked out over fields as far as you could see and creating. I was encouraged, taught, and cherished. We all were.

As a teacher when I look back at that time, I realize

My grandma (middle) visiting the school.

that what I can transfer to my classroom, I have. I try hard to make my students know that I love them, that I believe in them. I think without that, you won’t get anywhere and your students certainly won’t. I’ve tried to make our classroom feel like home – where it is our classroom, not mine. I try and turn over as much of the daily responsibilities of running our room to my students as possible. All of these things stem back to this school experience that shaped so much of who I am.

My granddad (left) visiting.

Chris and I have joked many times about what would happen if we ever won the lottery. (We’d have to actually play it first.) He laughs and says that he knows I’d never stop teaching and he’s right, I wouldn’t. But having a school like my Farm School would be a dream. I love that place. I wish my own children could have gone there. For a period of my life, it was my second home. I hope one day my students can say the same for their time in fifth grade.  Everyone deserves some memories like the ones that I treasure. Thank you Kris, and her sister Melinda, for my years on the farm.

Slice of Life is sponsored every Tuesday by Two Writing Teachers