Author: Amy Crehore

In Miami, when it rains, it pours. And when it pours, it thunders. And lightnings. (Is lightnings a verb?) And when it’s raining and pouring and there’s thunder and lightning, you can almost always see sunny skies somewhere in the horizon.

Today it started to thunder at the end of rehearsal. We were debriefing what went well — the mics were not nearly as chaotic as we’d anticipated, the students who’d forgotten some of their lines yesterday had clearly practiced, and the dance is getting better except for a few who are going in the wrong direction — and what we still needed to work on — having all props and set pieces ready to go before each skit starts, making sure the mics are away from our faces so that we don’t sound like Darth Vader — when the girls squealed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” E said. “That lightning was just SO long.”

As we packed up and headed to dismissal, I looked at the impending gray clouds and thought, “I hope it doesn’t rain on our walk home.”

Twenty minutes later, during a make-up parent-teacher conference with R, the thunder got louder, and the rain was just starting.

“I love this weather,” she said. “No soccer today!”

“I love this weather too,” I agreed, “but at home in cozy PJs, not here in the school!”

As our conference ended, the sun was coming out to the west.

“Oh man,” R said. “But whatever — no soccer!”

“Miami is so weird,” Kim said. (We’re both New York transplants.)

We walked home together in the rain, both of our umbrellas blowing in the wind, getting wet in spite of their coverage, giggling and speed-walking. After we parted ways, a car splashed water on my jeans. Great.

Once I got home, I kicked off my Dr Martens and peeled off the wet jeans. The view from my balcony showed the rain stopping and a God-like sun shining through the clouds, as P often says.

There’s a lesson here, I suppose. Something corny about how every storm is followed by the sun. How through all the tough of this year, I’ve found so much happiness too.

Or maybe it’s just that Miami rain is weird and you’re bound to get wet, no matter what.

This afternoon we met in our Reggio learning communities for the second time. It wasn’t the original plan for today’s Tuesday PD, but we took the opportunity anyway. Our small group followed Irene upstairs to her third grade classroom, I brought some dark chocolate, and we sat down around her table, eager to hear about her class’s mindfulness project.

I hadn’t been sure if I’d make it through the whole day, let alone the afternoon PD. In the morning I had felt a bit feverish — it took me forever to get out of bed, and I was just on time to work after speed-walking the 10 minutes in the sticky Miami humidity — but as the day progressed, I started feeling better and better. When rehearsal went well, I stuck around for dismissal, and after dismissal, I told Kim, “I think I’ll just stay. I’d rather use my PTO time for when I really need it.” And I’m so glad that I did.

Irene started to share about the project, how it began, how it had evolved.

“We were really scared to get this class,” she said. Both of the second grade classes last year had been a handful behaviorally, to say the least. But there has been such a noticeable shift this year, and the children will tell you it’s because of mindfulness.

When Irene first started doing mindfulness at our school, she kept it just within her classroom. This is the first year that it’s evolved into something bigger. The students, after reflecting on how much of an impact mindfulness would have made on them if they’d started in kindergarten, decided to “spread the mindfulness” — to take it outside of the classroom and into the rest of the school. They started with Kinder B, and then first grade requested a visit.

“We recorded them when they visited first grade,” Irene shared, pulling up a voice memo on her phone. “It’s like 20 minutes, so I can skip ahead.”

“We have the time,” I said, looking at the clock.

“Yeah, we’ve got nowhere to be,” Christian agreed.

So we began to listen.

***

When I went to Reggio Emilia in November, I finally understood the value of documentation: recording the children’s conversations, looking closely at the work they produce, and observing them throughout their activities. It’s how we as teachers learn about the learning process. How do kids learn? Watch and listen to them.

In Reggio, all of the municipal schools are tiny. The staff meets regularly to interpret, observe, and analyze the documentation so they can learn how kids learn. As such a big school, our study group determined that we couldn’t make this happen with our entire staff, but we could create and organize spaces where this nourishing and collaborative professional learning could happen.

This is how our learning communities were born: small groups with one representative from each grade, plus one or two enrichment program teachers. My learning community has representatives from kinder, first, second, third, fifth, and physical education.

***

“Mindfulness is being in the right here, right now,” one student stated.

“When a thought comes into your head, like, ‘oh, I wonder what I’m going to have for lunch,’ just put it in a back folder in your mind, and close it, so you can focus on what’s happening now,” another said.

“You can play with the pop-it, but pay attention,” a third told one of the first graders. (We laughed at this one.)

Every bit of me that had thought about leaving early today was so grateful to the part of me that decided to stay. Because listening to this conversation between the third graders and the first graders was magical.

They get it. They understand why it’s so important to be mindful in our loud, loud world. They recognize how they’ve grown. And they like it!

Today I left work inspired. Not only to re-incorporate mindfulness into our fifth grade class (because we were doing it, and then we dropped the ball, and they really need it), but also to re-incorporate it into my own life. After publishing this post and writing my three comments, I plan to have a mindful evening: a hot bath with a good book, a tasty dinner as I watch the sunset, and an early night’s sleep with some deep breathing.

Thank you, Irene. And thank you, Third Grade B.

This evening after my pilates class, per my instructor’s recommendation, I pull out my foam roller and decide to find a video to guide me through rolling out my annoyingly tight hips. Once I find one, I lay out my yoga mat, grab my foam roller, and settle in.

I’d like you to locate the upper outer hip, and we’re going to go just underneath there.

I roll onto my hip and take a sharp inhale. Breathe in, breathe out. The pain is all-encompassing.

Once you feel the tightness, go ahead and stay there. Take some deep breaths.

We hold onto so much in our bodies. Releasing emotion releases physical tightness, and releasing tightness in our physical body releases emotions you may not know you were holding onto.

We’re going to hold for 30 seconds. Just imagine that muscle releasing.

A friend going through a breakup told me the other day that after going to a yoga class with so many twists, she came home and could not stop crying. It was as though all the stretching and twisting finally allowed her (or perhaps, forced her) to let go.

Go ahead and roll onto the side of the leg and again, roll until you find a spot that’s the tightest. Take some deep breaths and we’re going to hold this for 30 seconds.

My body tenses as I find another tight spot.

Imagine releasing.

I breathe in and out. I think about today. The successful morning lessons. The humid air at recess. The small spoonful of dulce de leche from D’s dad’s presentation on Argentina. The meetings I had that left me wondering about my future. The children dancing and talking nonstop in the afternoon during our show rehearsal. My headache after dismissal. The deep breaths I took for each move during pilates.

We’re now going to get the inner thigh, or adductor.

Roll over. Find another tight spot. Tense up. Breathe.

Just stay there. Keep breathing.

I’m reminded of a podcast episode I listened to this summer about seeking closure after a breakup. How she recommended surrendering to the emotional waves that would wash over you, letting yourself cry. Facing it. Because if you don’t, she warned, it will show up later, in a different way.

Congratulations. You’ve completed all four exercises to release tight hips and glutes.

I’m going to need to do that more often.

This August I moved into my own apartment: a studio on the 28th floor of a building in Brickell, just a 10-minute walk from school.

This studio has become my little slice of paradise: it’s spacious and bright, with a surprising amount of storage and a big west-facing balcony that gives me a view of the sunset every evening.

I’ve never lived on my own before now. Never been able to just do whatever I want, whenever I want, because it’s all mine. But now, I can.

I put every piece of this place together myself. My mom helped stay over for furniture deliveries on moving day, while I drove back and forth from Ikea to a teacher couple’s to pick up some chairs and a dresser and to my old place to get all the last things, sweating profusely and forgetting to eat. Gianna helped me put together my bed frame and design and hang the gallery wall.

Everything is exactly where and how I want it to be. And when I come home to my apartment at the end of a long day, I look at it with pride and breathe a sigh of relief. It’s a reminder to me that endings make room for new beginnings. That I can do just about anything on my own, with a little help from my community.

What a difference a year can make.

That’s what’s going through my mind right now as I write my first slice of the month. Just how much has changed since March 1, 2023: where I lived, who I was with, how I felt about my work and my life and myself.

This year I chose growth. I chose me. I chose to shed what didn’t serve me and make room for what could. It didn’t seem possible until I said the words, and then suddenly it was.

It was one of the hardest years of my life and yet it was also a year filled with immense joy and gratitude.

While I may not have maintained my blogging, I did journal a ton, nurturing my self-reflective nature that is a gift and can also be a great burden.

So here it goes. A little slice of my life today: stopping mid-walk to sit at a picnic table by the bay, watching walkers and runners and dogs pass me by, listening to music on my headphones, feeling the cool breeze against my arms. A peaceful end to a long week of teaching and a long day of parent teacher conferences. I may not love Miami, but I do love these afternoons and my solo walks.