Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Category: Uncategorized

  • Day 26: Thoughts While Still Lying in Bed

    I have always been an early riser, and vacation is no different. Especially on a night like last night where the pup made noises every time someone passed the room.

    As I lay awake and wait for you to get up, my mind is wandering through the memoryscapes to sleep away camp. How on just a thin mattress in a cabin with 7 other girls, I’d sleep like a rock. The funny moments where we’d catch a cabin-mate sleep talking. The summer that Atlantis had bed bugs and all the girls had to bag up their stuff (what happened to them? Did they sleep somewhere else? Did their parents have to send them more things? I remember the cabin like this foreboding haunted thing, lying empty all session.)

    The bed here is a king and it’s a big cloud. My tuft and needle mattress at home is pretty cloud-like too. I sleep on my sides or back but never on my stomach. The dog is curled up against my right leg and you’re still asleep to my left, so I’m like the in-betweens of a sandwich.

    St. Augustine has so many random shops, but many of the same random shop: hot sauce places, steampunk stores, ice cream shops. I don’t know how someone comes down here and decides, “hey, I think I’ll open up another ice cream shop,” and manages to get by. The man playing live music at the restaurant last night had been doing Monday night sets for almost twenty years. He had long hair and played covers all night long. Something about this town reminds me of New Paltz. This college student + old hippie vibe.

    My stomach grumbles. I wonder what we’ll eat for breakfast. I’m craving waffles and bacon or French toast. Today we’ll visit the Castillo de San Marcos fort and we have dinner reservations. The rest of the day is open. I expect more wandering, more judging and questioning of the people we see, and definitely more ice cream.

  • Day 25: What to Bring on a Road Trip

    When heading out on a road trip to St. Augustine from Miami, you’ll want to make sure you have good sunglasses, even if they make you look uncool. You will also want to stop by the gas station to fill up the tank and grab mints, wet wipes, cheez doodle puffs, and salt and vinegar chips. You’ll need a good playlist, or four. 150 movie trivia questions will help you pass the time. Patience and a sense of humor for the other drivers who feel that they need to drive like they’re in a video game. A fluffy travel companion who sneaks kisses from her tethered post in the backseat. Iced water, of course! Google Maps to help you chart your course (just stay on I-95 for 200 more miles, and you’ll get there). Lots of laughter.

    And of course, a person you’ll enjoy the company of whether you’re cruising along or stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  • Day 24: Sunday To Do’s

    A Saturday of hurkle-durkl’ing means a Sunday of getting things done. And there are many things to do today! A to-do list feels a bit like a slice cop-out, but hey, I’m on day 24! I’m allowed to do a to-do list for my slice!

    SUNDAY TO DO:

    • Finish this slice & comment on two more posts
    • Go for a run
    • Do two loads of laundry (colors + whites/linens)
    • Clean the bathroom
    • Wash my hair
    • Vacuum
    • Water the plants
    • Pack for St. Augustine
    • Do some copywriting (10 posts)
    • See Gianna somewhere in between

    I think about the multitasking vs. switch-tasking vs. back-tasking SEL lesson that Kim and I have planned for when we come back, and then I think about being mindful and focusing on one task at a time. I know I can get it all done (laundry in particular is the task I can have going on in the background), but when I see it as a list in front of me, it overwhelms.

    So I start at the beginning, and check them off as I go.

  • Day 23: Hurkle-Durkl’ing

    Today was a day to hurkle-durkle.

    I don’t remember how we first came across the term — maybe in someone else’s slice? — but it’s apparently been a trend on TikTok (which I’ve been off of since December), and is an old Scottish term meaning to lie/lounge around in bed when you should be up and getting a move on.

    Every morning this last week, I wanted to hurkle-durkle. I actually did hurkle-durkle. I grabbed my iPad and did the Connections and the Wordle and had to really muster up the strength to peel myself away from the cozy sheets. It was a weekday, after all, and I needed to get ready to go to work.

    Today, though, was a day to hurkle-durkle.

    (I’d like to note that auto-correct keeps changing both of these words to hurdle and durable and other “real” words, and I keep having to delete and retype. No, computer, I actually mean hurkle-durkle, thank you very much.)

    It rained yesterday afternoon and evening, and all night long. Thunder and lightning and sheets of rain. This morning, the power even went out for a while in my building and the two across the street. It’s also the first day of spring break, so I’m pretty sure the vacation gods were telling us to hurkle-durkle away.

    There’s nothing to do. No place to be. A perfect day to just laze around in sweats and fuzzy socks, the bed half-made, my hair a mess. A perfect day for hurkle-durkl’ing.

  • Día 22: El español

    Esta mañana me levanté y leí el post de Ana.

    “Right! It’s multi-lit Friday,” pensé. Se me había olvidado.

    Leyendo sus palabras, me di cuenta de la importancia que tiene el español en mi vida. Aún cometo errores, normalmente con el uso de ser y estar o con el masculino y femenino. Pero de todos modos, sé que soy bilingüe y que el español es una parte importante de mi vida.

    Comencé a estudiar español en 6to grado, cuando tenía once años. En la escuela intermedia, solo aprendí vocabulario y cómo conjugar los verbos. Tenía miedo de hablar — cuando traté de hablar, los otros niños que hablaban español en sus casas se reirían de mí. No fue una situación cómoda ni segura para poder aprender.

    Fue igual en la secundaria. Tomé AP Spanish, pero justo pasé la clase. Creo que saqué la nota más baja de mi vida en esa clase el primer semestre.

    Cuando llegué a la universidad, había decidido estudiar en España, entonces tomé una clase con una profesora de Barcelona. Fue allí donde me sentí suficientemente segura para poder probar a hablar. Luego, un semestre en Barcelona con una mamá española, cada cena una conversación. Y, claro, mis dos años en Madrid, construyendo amistades y relaciones en español, haciendo los quehaceres (abriendo una cuenta bancaria, yendo al supermercado, etcétera) en español, me subió al nivel al que estoy ahora.

    Al volver a Nueva York, trabajé como maestra bilingüe por cinco años. Hice más amistades, ahora con gente bilingüe. Personas con quienes intercambiaba entre el español y el inglés fluidamente.

    Es así acá en Miami. Una mezcla de los dos idiomas al diario. Saludo al valet cada mañana en español, a mi conductor del Uber en español, a las chicas de la limpieza en el cole. La mayoría de mis estudiantes hablan español, y muchas veces entre ellos cambian al español con tanta facilidad, aunque enseñamos en inglés. Con mis amigas y compañeros del trabajo, es igual. Me doy cuenta de todo lo que perdería (aquí, en mi vida, mis amigas) sin el español. Ya forma parte de mi ser, parte de mi repertorio lingüístico.

    Me imagino un squiggle, haciendo el baile del Spanglish, sprinkled con risas. Ese es el sonido de Miami para mí. Ese es el ritmo de mi mente.

  • Day 21: Elavao

    “Skadoosh.”

    “Seven.”

    “Eight.”

    “Nine?”

    “Nooo, big banana!”

    I pulled my AirPods out of my ears to see what was going on. N, E, L, and Christian were playing a game. We were still an hour out of Miami thanks to Friday traffic, and I was ready to shower, eat, and get to bed early after our overnight trip to the Kennedy Space Center.

    “What are you doing?” I asked.

    “Ms. Amy, you should play!!” E said, delighted.

    “Yes, Ms. Amy should play!” Kim agreed. “Christian, tell her.”

    “It’s called Elavao,” Christian started to explain. “The game is simple. The goal is to count to eleven, or Elavao, and whoever gets Elavao gets to change a number. You can substitute a number for another number, or a word, or a sound effect, until all the numbers are substituted.”

    “So like, 6 is skadoosh, 9 is big banana,” E started listing on her fingers.

    “10 is ‘eee’!” L chimed in again, making a high-pitched noise.

    “And 1 is two,” N said.

    “So it starts, two, two?” I asked.

    She nodded.

    “Play, Ms. Amy!!” E said again.

    “Alright, I’m game!” I put my AirPods in their case and tried to remember all the numbers they’d already substituted.

    Christian began, and we continued in a circle:

    “Two.”

    “Two.”

    “Three.”

    “Four.”

    “Five.”

    “Skadoosh.”

    “Six.”

    “Seven.”

    “Eight.”

    “Big banana.”

    “Eee!”

    “Elavao!”

    We played until we finished the round, laughing at the silly replacements and how some of us, like D, were struggling to do them. With each wave of giggles, more students came from the back of the bus, asking, “What are you playing? Can I join?”

    Later, Christian let us know that it’s actually a drinking game, and whoever messes up is supposed to chug. We joked that one day, when the fifth graders are in college, they’ll come across a party where someone is playing this game, and they’ll say, “Hey, wait a second, my PE teacher taught us that when I was 11…”

    Either way, it’s a fun game we’ve added to our Closing Circle list.

  • Day 20: Reading Stations

    This week, Kim and I started reading stations.

    We’d tried TC’s 5th grade reading units with a workshop model and had little success with them. As a new school, we haven’t had a curriculum that students have followed since kindergarten, meaning there are large gaps and inconsistencies in what students are capable of doing. We were finding it hard to engage all students in the mini-lessons, whether reading happened earlier in the day or at the end of the day. We also saw a need for more consistent language study (vocabulary, spelling, grammar, conventions), but couldn’t figure out how to fit it in our day. Squeezing it in at the end of writer’s workshop was too rushed, and when we missed it, it just… wasn’t happening.

    In the fall, we both took the Shifting the Balance upper elementary course and realized that there were many other practical activities we could be doing, but that didn’t fit into our reading block as it was. When our investigation stations that we began in January were so successful, we decided to try a similar model for reading.

    There are six stations: indie reading, read with friends, write about reading, fluency practice, word study (using Structured Word Inquiry), and sentence study (using Judith Hochman’s Writing Revolution). The two language study stations are teacher-led, and the others are independent. Students go through two stations in a day (20 minutes in each), and cycle through all six after 3 days. Then it repeats.

    With February break and our theater show and the overnight, we couldn’t start the stations until this week. Today, after the second class, the students shared during Closing Circle some of the things they were enjoying about reading stations so far. Here’s what a few of our boys had to say (boys who are semi-reluctant readers!):

    “Something that I like about reading stations is that we get to do many things, we get to move from one to another. It really makes me feel like I get so many options to do super cool stuff to read. Like, I never knew that. When I hear reading, it’s just like, reading, indie reading. Now I know that there are many things to do when it comes to reading. Super cool.”

    “Something I like about reading stations is the word study and kind of like, it changed like, I saw that reading isn’t only looking at a paper and seeing the words.”

    “Something that I liked about reading is the word study and the sentence study and indie reading because I like to read by myself.”

    “Something I’m enjoying in reading stations is learning new words and the history of words.”

    We headed to dismissal feeling buoyed by their positivity. I’m so grateful to work with Kim, who’s just as enthusiastic about trying new things as I am, and I’m excited to see how reading stations go for the rest of the year!

  • Day 19: Lunches with I.

    I’m sitting at the big wooden table, planning out our morning meetings for the week after spring break, while I. picks at his food and doodles a dinosaur on a post-it.

    He first requested to have lunch in the classroom with me a month ago. He wasn’t hungry but he had a few bites. We talked a bit. He worked on his cover for the informational writing piece we were publishing.

    Since then, he’s asked to come every day.

    “Why does I. eat in the classroom?” All the other kids ask.

    His reason, if you ask him, is that all the boys talk about is Fortnite, and since I. doesn’t play Fortnite, he can’t participate in the conversation.

    “What would you prefer to talk about?” I asked him that first day.

    “Literally ANYTHING else,” he said, his eyes widening. “But whenever I try to change the topic, they end up going back to Fortnite!”

    I think it’s not just about Fortnite. I think he also prefers the quiet. A pause in the overwhelming social activity and noise of the day. The cafeteria can get pretty loud, especially with this group of 5th graders. They all talk over one another.

    “Ms. Amy, name an animal?” I. interrupts my slice writing.

    “Um…” I think. “A panda.”

    He looks off to think, then gets back to doodling.

    These are my lunch periods now. Me and I., sitting in silence or listening to soft music while we both work at something.

    I’ll get back to it.

  • Day 18: Music

    Ana’s post inspired me to think about music and its importance in my life. I’m not driving like she was, but I am sitting in the back of a Lyft on my way home from a doctor’s appointment, and I’m listening to your second mix and the songs that already wrap me up in a hug and make me feel nostalgic for this present moment, holding onto it with all my might.

    I’m lucky to have grown up not just around great music, but with a father who is a musician. My dad taught himself to play guitar when he was a kid. He never took formal lessons and only learned to read music when he was much older.

    My dad is already instilling a love of music in my nephew

    My whole childhood was soundtracked by my dad’s acoustic strumming and picking. Whether he was playing a Beatles’ song or narrating what we were doing in the kitchen (do my random made-up songs make sense yet?), music was the backdrop of my life.

    I can get into any kind of music, from folk to reggaeton, pop to rock and roll, disco to jazz. But my favorite kind of music is the kind I can sing to. I learned many instruments over the years — piano first, then clarinet, and later guitar — but never stuck with any. My voice is my instrument that never leaves me. It’s not a voice for solos or belting out ballads with key changes (though sometimes in the shower it is). But it’s a voice that can hit most notes, a voice that finds joy in singing along to melodies and harmonies.

    Some of my students think I’m weird and some think I’m amazing for singing to them on the daily (thank you, D, for being my backup singer when I’m belting out Taylor Swift). Singing when I’m stressed because they really need to get a move on so we can get to the next class on time. Singing when I’m feeling extra silly, narrating what they’re doing like my dad did with me and my sister and my mom.

    “Warning Sign” just came on and that’s how I know this slice is done: because two summers ago, Ana and I sat at the top of the Raymond James stadium and held back tears of joy and wonder and disbelief when Coldplay took the stage. I get down out of the car but the music keeps playing in my headphones.

    Pure joy!

  • Day 17: Banana Bread

    I prefer my bananas just ripe. Slightly green, no spots on the peel, just sweet enough. Not too green, not too yellow. None of that soft, mushy, grainy texture, though I don’t mind eating the bruises (thanks, Dad).

    When the banana peels start to spot, I let them sit and ripen, saving them for a weekend when I have time to bake banana bread.

    When I was a kid, my mom would use my dad’s best friend Bobby’s grandmother’s recipe:

    Mrs. Bonnet’s Mom’s Banana Bread

    • 1 cup sugar
    • 3 soft bananas – mashed
    • 1/3 cup shortening (butter) – melted
    • 1 egg, beaten
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 2 cups flour – sifted
    • 1 teaspoon baking soda
    • 1/3 cup nuts if you like

    Mix all ingredients: first the egg with the sugar and melted butter, add the bananas, then mix all the dry ingredients and add them to the wet mixture little by little. Bake at 375 in a loaf pan for 1 hour.

    That was the first banana bread I ever made on my own. It tasted like home.

    Later, after college and during the pandemic, I played around with different recipes.

    I made Liz Moody’s salted cookie dough healthy banana bread, which is delicious if you’re aiming for a grain-free alternative and don’t mind splurging on cashew butter.

    I’ve tried banana breads subbing applesauce for the third banana that I don’t have. They’re not as good.

    When my sister sent me Jennifer Fisher’s My Mom’s Da Bomb banana bread, I knew I’d found my go-to. Whether you’re making a loaf or a tray of muffins, this recipe never fails. Use mini chocolate chips or chop up a bar of your favorite dark chocolate, add nuts or don’t, it truly is “da bomb.” I usually make the muffins and freeze them, warm them up for a quick and sweet breakfast. They’re the perfect edible gift for the people I love.

    I make a batch this morning as I dance around my apartment to P’s latest mix, throwing a load of laundry in before I start mixing ingredients, and washing my hair as they bake. My apartment fills with the slightly cinnamon-y aroma, greeting me like a warm memory as I get out of the shower. I pull them out and let them cool, tempted to bite right into one. But I’ll refrain, because today I’m bringing them to a picnic for a very special birthday girl.