There are all kinds of glory going on today! We are celebrating Easter and our risen Savior, I spent the day with my beautiful little family, I ate delicious ham and had some yummy wine, and today marks the day of completion of 31 days of slicing! So many accomplishments and so much glory to be given! I’m proud to say that I accomplished 31 continuous days of blogging and even more excited to give some glory to my handful of awesome students who successfully completed the journey with me!! Woohoo!! We did it! Many thanks and glory go to the Two Writing Teachers who had the genius idea in the first place. Here’s to a continued journey… He is risen! He is risen, indeed!! 🙂
Slice #30: Vacation
Vacation is always a struggle for me… Don’t get me wrong. I loooooove me some vacation, but I always have this inner struggle going on – especially when I’m home and not away. My mind goes through a battle of what I want to do and what I “should” be doing. There’s always work to do when I’m home – cleaning, laundry, school work… you name it! And the worker bee in me feels it all hanging over my head. Then there’s the lazy, vacation girl in me telling me to just sit on the couch and enjoy. So that’s what I’m doing right now. However, I can’t quite shake that little devil on my shoulder that’s telling me to get up and get busy! Aaaaahhhh…. vacation.
Slice #29: Good Friday
Just wanted to take a moment to reflect on this most solemn and important day… We call it good and it is for us, but it wasn’t for you. You had to listen to the very same people who you were going to suffer for mock you and spit on you. You endured their scorn… our shame… You took our place on the cross and redeemed us from a horrible fate. You were good in our stead. You knew we would continue to reject you, deny you, and even mock you… Yet you still did it. You loved us that much. You loved us enough to ignore our ignorance and selfish pride and take every sin ever committed and every sin yet to come to the cross with you. You allowed them to nail them there with you. You held out your hands for us just as you still do. Yes, it was a good Friday. And it is still good today. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for loving me that much.
Slice #28: Spring Break!!
Hallelujah!! It has begun! I think that’s pretty much all I have to say! Spring break is here at last… I do need to conclude grades and get ready for 4th quarter, but for now I’m going to just sit back and relax… I sooooo need it. May everyone be blessed by this Easter weekend as we approach the cross and CELEBRATE the resurrection.
Slice #27: Reading
I LOVE that my kids have the freedom to choose the books they want to read! It’s been one of the greatest parts of teaching – watching them develop or further feed their LOVE of reading. With the freedom to choose comes a whole lot of trust and conversation on my part. I am in constant conversation with them about their reading, and since I don’t want to limit them to reading only books that have Reading Counts quizzes, I often have to trust that they’ve read some of their books – especially when I haven’t read them myself. That all seems to be totally fine and work very well. Kids are usually genuinely honest about their reading.
However, my frustration comes with their goals and the amount of time they allocate for their reading. Many of them often read the bare minimum – which I often understand because of their insanely busy little kid extracurricular lives. But I can’t stand it when we get to the end of the quarter and during the last two or three days they’re trying to read a bunch of short books just to reach their goal or fit in a quiz. I struggle with this every year. Some classes are worse than others… I know it’s usually just a handful of kids, but even that makes me feel like somehow I’m failing them. So it’s a love and a struggle for me – I love to see them eating up books, but I struggle when they don’t pace themselves and just read at the end in order to meet requirements… Is it something I need to change, or is it just people in general and our tendency to procrastinate?!
Slice #26: Music for Learning
I’m the type of teacher who loves to have music playing in the background in my classroom. There is something so soothing about it, and it truly helps the kids to focus more. I’ve found that when there is no music, they talk more and get more distracted – almost as if they feel like they need to fill in the noise. 🙂 I play everything from classical to movie soundtracks to fun, upbeat songs with words to set the mood. Music is a big part of who I am and I love that I can incorporate that into the classroom.
Slice #25: Imagination
As I sit here thinking about what I’d like to “slice” today, I’m smiling at my four year old who is making obstacle courses for when his brothers come home. He keeps taking down, rebuilding, trying out, rebuilding, taking down, etc. It’s all centered around one of those foam pool noodles that I bought him at the grocery store on our way home. It has been a cannon, a limbo bar, a sword, a log, a telescope, a tree, a curtain rod… You name it! 🙂 It’s amazing to watch his imagination at work! It looks like it will finally come to rest as a cannon, situated between the stair railing, that will “shoot” legos at his brothers upon their arrival! Good plan, kid. Good plan.
Slice #24: Rural vs. City
We are on our way home from my son’s All Star basketball tournament in Hanford, California. They placed third! 🙂 Hanford was a quaint little rural town and reminded me a lot of where I grew up… Green fields, tractors, pick up trucks, Ma and Pa shops and restaurants, and the smell of manure filling the air. Now, as we drive along the 5 freeway, I find myself wondering which I prefer – the crowded, trafficky, smog-filled city or the small, podunk, manure-scented rural town? The answer is pretty easy for me. I love sitting in the 1920s ice cream parlor that makes its own ice cream from its own dairy, seeing neighbors wave to each other as they drive down the street, and counting the rows of alfalfa along the road. It’s my favorite. I’d take that down home feel over the crowded city any day! Someday I’m going to sit on my porch, face my rockin chair toward the west, and know that everything is just as it should be.
Slice #23: Life Skills
I’m worried about our kids. I’m seeing it more and more everyday. It’s almost as if it’s an epidemic. When I was growing up, my mom’s motto for not-so-great times was “suck it up!” You fell down during a basketball game – you didn’t lay there and start crying. You got back up, “sucked it up”, and ran it off. You didn’t do so well on an assignment or a test, you learned from it, “sucked it up”, and moved on. You had problems with friends, you talked it through, figured out how YOU were contributing to the problem, discussed how to deal with it, “sucked it up”, and moved on. Nowadays, more and more parents want to shelter their kids – never wanting them to fail or have to deal with something and just “suck it up!” Failure was once a way to measure success. Now it is forbidden and even condemned. At one time we learned from our mistakes. Now kids are sheltered and even prevented from making them. The sad truth is that we are disabling our kids and not equipping them with the coping skills necessary for life. We are creating a nation of wimps. I’m not saying we should raise a bunch of heartless kids who are encouraged to never succeed. But I am saying that if we don’t allow them to fail and learn how to deal with matters of the heart, they will never truly know what it means to succeed. So here’s to “sucking it up” and teaching our kids how to cope and live a well-rounded life!
The True Story of a Fifth Grade Teacher 