Thank you, God, for vacations

This is the first Monday of our spring break week. I have never been more grateful for a week off from the job that I love. The week before break was full of tragedy and craziness in our school community, and I am thoroughly enjoying the happy laughter and zany humor of my own children. I am hugging them a little tighter - thankful for every day that the Lord gives me to be with them. More than one death and a personal trip to the ER makes one reflect on this precious gift of life and love. I love my own kids so much, and I love the kids that I teach as well.

Success

I have successfully managed to create a wikispace that will work in my classroom. Our first challenge is to create a manual, of sorts, for incoming high school freshmen on how to be successful in high school. My ninth grade English students will create the page together. I only hope to find that all students will find stronger voices and with their voices will discover that they have something important to say.

So much for that idea

Well, as you can see, I have not posted every day, or anything close to it. I am enjoying the accumulating collection of thoughts that I can reread without losing my notebook. I'm thinking a laptop computer might make this more accessible for me. Oh, who am I kidding - two kids, a full time job, a dog, a cat, a hamster, and a husband (sorry, honey, you're not really last after the hamster on the priority list) make it pretty tough to follow through on anything for myself. Maybe if I changed the focus to a journal for my children, advice on life, etc.... I have always been able to do things for them easier than I can do anything for myself.

Good enough better than nothing

I have read that writers must put the pen to the page every day. The discipline of writing daily provides a pathway through mediocre writing toward the really good stuff that lies within the writer's mind. I guess that is the way I am looking at this blog right now. I log on almost daily. I click my blog and stare at the blank box waiting for genius to strike. After a moments have passed with no sign of my muse, or genius, or inspiration, or anything in particular to say, I log out without a new posting. I almost let today slip away without posting, but then I remembered the advice of inspirational writing instructors who remind us to write through the "pain." I decided that I would risk exposing my lack of genius and inspiration to the masses, and I would write/post as often as possible to stir up the ideas that I have hope still live in my brain. If this is just good enough, it is better than nothing.

Freezing Rain

School was cancelled today due to freezing rain. We missed our training on brain-based research. We were supposed to bring a lesson plan with us that demonstrated the ways we have been incorporating research on the brain since our last professional development. Putting that lesson down on paper was not easy for me. Yes, I plan for each day and post my plans on my teacher website, but the level of detail planning that goes in to the kind of lesson plan we all had to write for our Master's degrees is not something that experienced teachers do on a day to day basis. It is good for us to be reminded that we should know "what we want the students to learn" or what the "essential questions" addressed in each lesson are. We should consider the time spent on each activity and if it is during the peak retention time or not. We should consider each individual student's, all 70 of them, learning style and prior experience. I could go on and on. I really buy into all of the ways that this research could and should make teaching better, but I have to confess, it is also overwhelming. There are those gifted teachers who seem to manage all of it with ease, but what about those of us for whom the teaching dance is not a natural step. I want to be the best teacher that I can be; I absolutely love my job, but there is so much to do that I am constantly feeling inadequate. It's not so very different from being a parent to more than one child - someone is always getting short-changed, it feels. Add the parenting to the teaching and you have one tired, often stressed, but ultimately happy, person who just wants to do the very best she can.

Second try

It has been 12 days since my very first attempt at blogging. I am interested in bringing my high school English student's into the 21st Century by using new technology in my classroom. The problem is that I am just learning about the technology myself. It takes a great deal of time to get comfortable with new things - time I am having trouble finding. Between teaching and being a mom, I don't have a lot of "free time." In addition to lack of time, it takes a great deal of thinking about what you are willing to make public of your ideas and thoughts. Oh well, my son calls. Later.

New Frontier

This is a trial run to see if I can pull this off and learn something new. I am excited about the possibilities of sharing my thoughts and hearing the thoughts of others.