#SOL16 Day 19

You’ve probably all seen the video of the Broadway sensation Hamilton’s  creator rapping with Obama in the rose garden. If you haven’t, you are in for a treat!

#SOL16 Day 17

At least once a month I host a Teachers Write group for my school district. The inspiration came from Kate Messner’s Teacher’s Write an online “community of teachers and librarians who believe that people teaching writing should walk the walk.” Over the past two years we’ve had a small but dedicated core of teachers who join me over at our local Barnes and Noble to walk the talk.

We are usually pretty spent at the end of a teaching day and the hit of caffeine from the café is a prerequisite to composing! Each month we have different projects or pieces we are engaged in and it is always interesting to see what captivates each of us enough to put it to paper.

It’s no surprise this month I’m working on my Slice of Life blog post. One of us is working on a fictional thriller.  One of us is composing a letter to persuade administration for more access to technology. One of us is talking!  She is stuck for ideas, and as we suggest several she waves them off.

“Hey write about how you listen to  Eva* (her young daughter) read her stories to you over and over!”

“Haaa! I can’t I’ll sound like a horrible mother!”

She shares another ’embarrassingly honest’ mommy story with us.

“Write about that!”

“I can’t write that down!”

I share with her the idea of a “Truth Quotient” in writing that I read in Carrie Gelson’s #SOL16  Carrie wrote, “Sometimes we write around what we should not share. We leave hints that likely, only we, ourselves could figure out. Other times, we nudge things a little closer to actually being exposed. But, because we are so very precise in what we do and don’t say, we are still playing it safe.” I suggest my friend could write with the truth quotient turned way down!

The conversations we have each month, eerily mimic the experiences and struggles our own writers have in class.  We give ourselves permission to talk them out, seek inspiration,  and even decline advice from others. This is all part of the walk of writing.  It helps us to remember that our young writers need to take these walks from time to time as well.  We certainly aren’t 100% nose to the grindstone during our writing sessions. That’s not how it works!

We try to make our writing time together enjoyable. That is what the best writing workshops strive for as well; creating a community of writers who lift one another up. The more walks I take as a writer, the more I can appreciate and anticipate the needs of our writers.

I know every member of this slicing community is taking a walk each day.  Let’s invite more of our friends and colleagues to come along for a walk. We just never know where it might lead.

*not her real name

#SOL16 Day 16

As I’ve already mentioned, I work at 5 schools in 5 days.  There are certainly pros and cons to that set up, but one of the consequences that concerns me is the adage “out of sight, out of mind.” In a few of my buildings I don’t have an established space-only a corner of the teachers’ room or a  table in a student services room.  In those buildings where I do have a space, I share it with other itinerants.  So for the 4 days I am not around, the only physical evidence of my existence is the desk and materials I leave behind.

Today I snapped a picture as I packed up and wondered what my impressions would be if this were my co-workers’ desk.  What interests her?  What is she working on?  What does she value?  Is she always this cluttered? Does she ever change her calendar? What does this space say about her?

There’s a lot of talk about our carbon footprints, but this year I’ve thought a lot about my coaching footprint.  When I’m out of sight, are my teaching ideas out of mind? Does the spirit of my collaboration live on?  What do I leave behind at the end of each day that could  buttress the teaching and learning in my buildings? What words or deeds did I offer another that might offer lasting sustenance?

Are the traces of my existence meaningful?

It’s hard to know. We plant our seed and let it grow.

#SOL16 Day 15

I work in five buildings in five days. I often wonder how much of an impact I can make when I feel stretched so thin. Today I got a hint.  I was working at the middle school, sitting at my “Dilbert” (cubicle) and working on a presentation for Friday’s workshop. An ed tech approached me and asked, “One of our students, Talia*, wanted to see you. Is this a good time?”

I knew Talia since she was in elementary school.  She is one of those kids that you just want to take home with you. Her life was hard. She was quiet to the point of being withdrawn and would never speak up in class. During her 5th grade year I partnered with her teacher to work on a poetry unit.  It was there that Talia would quietly pass me her poems.  They were dark, and raw, and heartfelt.  I knew I couldn’t offer her quick praise, she needed to hear some specifics for it to be meaningful.

“You are really trying to capture a mood here.  Your choice of words makes me feel despair at first but there is a sense of hope in this last line.”

She looked down at her paper. “Is it any good?”

I held her paper to my heart. “It’s more than good.  It’s so YOU.  Your voice is all through this piece. Do you want to give it a title?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Well, one of my very favorite poets never gave her poems titles. She didn’t feel comfortable sharing her poetry with others either.  You remind me a lot of Emily Dickinson.”

Through the rest of the unit, Talia shared each poem with me.  I’d point out a technique I thought was strong and try to offer a lift to expand her craft.  “I want you to think about your line breaks in this next poem.  Poets are intentional with how they want to structure their poems…”  The next day she would show me.  “I want them to notice this idea so I put this word all by itself…”

The following year Talia shared with me the novel she was writing.  Her fan fiction version of a Twilight-type story was gripping, and at times a bit mature. I worried at times about the events in her life that were clearly influencing her writing.  The summer she left elementary school I sent her a book of Emily Dickinson poems and a writers notebook. At various times I also sent postcards to encourage her writing.  She wasn’t the most skilled writer I’ve worked with, but she was one of the few in which I believed writing could change her life. I wanted to encourage her to continue to work out problems/plots,  explore feelings, and find a creative outlet for her hopes and fears.

Now it is a few years later and Talia walks over to my desk.  “I wanted you to have this.” She hands me a paper titled Tear the Veil.  “I wrote this for my science teacher. We were supposed to research a mammal.  She thought it was pretty funny.”  I started reading the piece. It was a biography of her favorite band.  She had researched the band members and concluded with why they were so important to her life, in helping her to get through some tough times.

“Get it?  They’re humans, they’re mammals!”

Oh I got it, and I’m so glad her science teacher did, too. “Talia, you’re a riot! So does your teacher know if you understand mammals?”

“Yeah. And I told her I would research them!  I want you to have this copy. I thought you’d like it.”

I did. We talked a bit about how middle school was going.  Not great. Not terrible.  She talked about her anxiety and an upcoming doctors appointment her mom hopes will help. She talked about friend troubles that she hopes are better now.  She told me she is still writing.

I walked her back to her class. “You can share your writing with me anytime, Talia.”

“Okay.”  she smiled.

And That, my friends, is a teachers’ fringe benefit.

*(Talia is not her real name)

#SOL16 Day 14

Sometimes our slices are a little messy. Yesterday’s definitely fit that bill. It was a dance competition weekend for my daughter. On this Sunday she was competing in three different dances spread across the entire day. My husband rarely had the opportunity to see her because he was usually schlepping hockey gear to some frosty ice arena or driving to soccer pitches with our son. (I honestly don’t know how single parents do it!) On this day, however, we made transportation arrangements for our son so my husband and I could both attend one of my daughter’s last dance events in her senior year.

Just before one of her afternoon dances, our son calls. “Murphy (our dog) ate a bag of dark chocolate! I’ve got to get to my soccer game, what should I do?”

Ugh! I had a million questions, “What bag of dark chocolate? How much was in it? Did he eat it all? What’s he doing now? Did any of the other animals eat any?” to which my son worriedly replied “I don’t know, but my ride is here!”

I told him to put the dogs in the crate and as soon as he got home he’d need to let them out. I texted a friend who came right over to  check on them. She reported that Murphy was fine and he did ‘his business’ as usual. What a sense of relief!

We watched my daughter take the stage, holding hands, my cheeks slightly damp…my heart beaming with pride. Afterward my husband and I drive to a spot nearby to grab a bite to eat and enjoy some of the lovely weather before returning to the auditorium. Again my son calls.

“There’s puke all over the house! It’s all over the counters, in the tub, and all over the living room! I put the dogs out and tried to clean it up, but Murphy keeps puking and so do the cats! This is too stressful! I covered it up with paper towels and my friend is going to be here in like 30 seconds to pick me up!”

Sense of relief replaced with panic. We can’t leave. My daughter is about to dance again and then we have to wait for the awards ceremony. Where is my clone? I hand the phone to my husband because I can’t believe my son is ready to walk out on that situation. He’ll talk some sense into him.

“Yeah…ok…what time?…Ok…put the dogs in the crate…we’ll be home around 10:00…we’ll pick you up on our way home.”

WHAT? He’s leaving our dogs? Our cats? Our home? Ok, I gave him the phone to handle it, so I have no right to second guess him. We stay and watch our daughter dance her solo and then she frantically works on homework until the awards ceremony.

Flash forward to 10:15. We walk in the door and there are the piles of paper towels my son told us about. We lift them up and there are black stains the size of  basketballs in three different places in the living room. There is my Murphy covered in black puke in his crate. But wait, there are bonus splatters of black vomitus in other carpeted rooms of the house. The good news is it wasn’t dark chocolate. The bad news is it was black candy making melts.

We assess the disaster area. “Quick, Google ‘how to get food dye out of carpet’!”

1. Clean up any kind of stain in your carpet as soon as you notice it. …
2. Gently blot any excess spill with a paper towel. …
3. Wet a dry stain with a little cool water. …
4. Make a solution of one tablespoon white vinegar, one tablespoon liquid hand dishwashing detergent and two cups  of warm water.

I’m guessing 6 hours later is not “as soon as you notice it”. Covering the mess with paper towels is not the same as blotting. Seriously…NO vinegar in the whole house on a Sunday night after the stores have closed!? Quick…more Google searches.

Soak for 15 minutes in mixture of 1 quart lukewarm water, one-half teaspoon liquid hand dishwashing detergent and one tablespoon ammonia.

Does Windex count as ammonia? It does tonight. By midnight we are exhausted. The black diminished to varying shades of grey. We trudge to bed, not at all hopeful that we’ll awake to a miracle ablution. But our pets are ok.  My husband is my rock! My daughter is a beautiful dancer.      My son…he’s toast!