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.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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I’ve been reading Ralph Fletcher’s Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices and thinking about the different boy writers I’ve had in my classroom over the last three years of teaching writers workshop. The ones that frustrate us because they sit there staring at a blank notebook page, or tell you “I don’t know” when you ask…
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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…
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As teachers, it’s all too easy for us to focus on the negative. Or perhaps that’s just me — after every lesson, every day, I tend to look at what I didn’t do, what I could do better, what the children still need to master. Or I go to colleagues to get advice on one thing,…
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I tell people all the time one of the most beautiful paradoxes to me is writing. And the reason why is because in order to do it one has to live in an extraordinary place of humility, in the process of making something that perhaps might be shared with the world. On the flip side,…
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I discovered this poem in my phone’s notes app while sitting in a waiting room at a doctor’s office. I revised it a bit for today’s slice. How many hours have I waited onLinesThis year2020For food, tests, to voteThat orange horror out of officeA year of practicingPatience Thinking of linesI’ve waited on beforeThe oneIn SDQ…
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Most afternoons, Gi and I walk home from school together. Underneath I-95, across the construction of a new round-about. Talking. Towards Brickell, watching the buildings rise as we get closer. Talking. Turning left and walking along the bike path under the Underline, a park beneath Miami’s metro rail. Talking. Crossing the street and rounding the…
Writing With Abandon 