Category: Uncategorized
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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In 2003, there was a study that showed “hugging for 20 seconds noticeably reduces blood pressure, heart rate, and stress” (source). This is what Joliette told me one day our first year at Samara. We hugged each other and our students often that year. We were founding the first 4th grade, and I’d go on…
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Soria, qué linda eres Con tus fiestas San Juaneras Con tu sinfín de haceres Y tus bonitas mujeres Que iluminan la verbena It was summer, and I was in my Spanish boyfriend at the time’s pueblo, Soria. I’d been living in Madrid for a year by then, and had visited Soria once before, but I’d…
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Today we’re taking the 5th graders to the Kennedy Space Center for an overnight trip. About 4 hours north on a charter bus with a stop on the way to stretch our legs and have a snack, check in by 3:30, explore the space center all afternoon and evening, lights out by 10:30, wake up…
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Yesterday, after I left early for a doctors appointment, J and E (who were sitting out during PE because of injuries) found a stray tennis ball, drew a face on it, and named it Benington. “They told the other kids that he was a new student,” Kim explained this morning. “And it was the perfect…
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My first two years of teaching, I worked at a public school in Washington Heights. Most days I packed a lunch, but when I was feeling lazy or had run out of groceries, I’d pick up pupusas from La Cabaña Salvadoreña just down the block. Two chicken and cheese pupusas for just $2 each, stacked…
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Almost every morning, without fail, I text with Ariel on WhatsApp as I get ready for my day. She lives 7 hours ahead in Tel Aviv, and has since fall 2019. We lived together for one singular, amazing year in an apartment in Washington Heights, which helped us add to the list of descriptors we…
