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.

Tag: SOL24

  • 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.

  • Day 16: On Hugs

    Me and my student Aleena in a 20-second hug, November 2018.

    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 to found 5th grade with the same group. It was a busy and stressful year, and it was November, around our first parent-teacher conferences, when our energy levels were depleted and we weren’t sure we’d make it to Thanksgiving break.

    I’m thinking about hugs right now as I sit in a park in the shade, letting the breeze cool me off while I type this slice on my phone.

    On Thursday morning when we were getting ready to leave for the overnight, greeting parents and students in the lobby and waiting for the bus, I was suddenly hit with a wave of dizziness. It had happened briefly the night before, but just for a few seconds. This was lasting minutes.

    I figured it was a side effect of an antibiotic I had just started taking, that or my nerves acting up before the big trip. Either way, it freaked me out. If you were following along with me for last year’s challenge, I had a month of unexplained vertigo in March that was pretty frightening. I started to panic — had my vertigo come back? Was I experiencing one of the rare side effects of the antibiotics? Would I faint on the trip and need to be carted off to the emergency room, scarring my students for life?

    I gave Kim a hug and whispered in her ear what was happening, and she told me to take a break in the other lobby, go to the bathroom, and breathe.

    But it didn’t help.

    We loaded up the bus and I managed to keep a brave face until getting on, then I settled into my seat, letting Kim and our other two teacher chaperones take the lead. The kids were distracted with each other in the back. Good. I put on my headphones and pulled up a new mix, got my sunglasses out, and took a deep breath.

    In-two-three-four.

    Out-two-three-four-five-six.

    My fingers tingled and my brain felt too big for my skull. I would calm down enough and then picture another worst case scenario. I was hot and freezing. The bus’s AC was strong, but was it this strong? I stopped being able to tell the difference between the waves of anxiety and the dizziness.

    Kim texted me to see how I was doing and I told her I’d come to try to give her a hug soon, that that’s what I thought I needed. When I got up, she was passing snacks out in the back, and I saw N sitting solo.

    “How are you feeling?” I asked, sliding in next to her. She leaned up against me. She’d been absent on Wednesday, and earlier that morning, her mom had called and explained that she was saying she was sick because she was scared to sleep away from home. We’d encouraged her and told her we’d be there for her the whole time, that all of her friends would miss her terribly. She decided to come.

    “I’m okay,” she mumbled, snuggling up into me.

    We hugged for a long time. I could feel my anxiety melting away. I was still a bit dizzy — so there was definitely a side effect of the medication happening there — but I also felt a sense of “this is gonna be okay.”

    “You know,” I said to N, “I was really nervous about this trip too. I was dreading it actually! 16 fifth graders on an overnight?!”

    N laughed.

    “But I’m so glad we’re going, and this hug is making me feel a LOT better.”

    “Me too,” she said.

    Kim got back then and laughed.

    “Wait, you two look so cute! Let me take a picture.” She snapped it and then mouthed to me, “you do look a bit pale.”

    “I’m better though,” I said. “This hug is what I needed!”

    There’s much more to post about the trip — N actually did get sick. She spiked a fever but was a trooper with Children’s Advil and a big smile. I felt pretty awful all day on Thursday but still had a blast, and luckily have been feeling better (though tired!) since Friday morning — but that’s for a future slice. Today, I’m just grateful for hugs.

  • Day 15: A Bota Bag

    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 never seen it like this.

    In Spain, when a town has their festivals, it’s like it becomes a lawless land. Everyone is partying, everywhere. Streetlights? Who needs them. Stores? Psssshh. Food? Better fill up because you’ll be drinking from the moment you wake. Wine? Oh, tons of it.

    I was reminded of Soria’s San Juan festival last week when L’s mom came in to give a presentation on Spanish inventions. One of the first images she projected on the screen was of a bota bag, or a wineskin.

    “Who knows what this is?” María asked.

    The kids started shouting out answers.

    “A bag!”

    “A pouch?”

    “What is that?”

    “It’s a bag, yes,” María said. “It holds a liquid. Do you know which one?”

    “Water!”

    “Juice!”

    “Wine,” I said. Upon seeing the image, my mind had immediately flashed to the streets of Soria, someone pouring cold red wine into my mouth from above, wiping it from my lips and chin with the back of my hand.

    “No fair, Ms. Amy!” María laughed. She knows I lived in Madrid for 2 years.

    “Woops!” I said, making the sign of zipping my mouth shut. “Ya me callo.”

    As she clicked through the rest of the slides, my mind skipped around more moments from that weekend, like a pebble’s ripple across the water: watching townspeople chase a bull in the ring, then all of us climbing down into the arena, wearing party hats and leis; waiting on what felt like the longest line ever for bocadillos, my stomach growling; singing Soria, qué linda eres at the top of our lungs as we walked through the park at night; feeling nauseous from drinking too much, too quickly, a friendly stranger helping me throw up behind a dumpster, gifting me a bottle of water; the men in the street with the bull meat and the bota bags, giving anyone who wished a bite and a swig; wanting desperately to go back to Madrid.

    Even at 23 years old, when I liked to party, the Spanish festivals were too much for me. I remember, laugh, and get back to the presentation.

    **

    This post was inspired by Amanda Potts’ lovely post “Cheesy” about eating raclette for dinner, which takes us on a journey to her first time trying it while studying in France.

  • Day 14: Overnight

    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 at 6:30, some more morning exploration, and then back in Miami tomorrow by 4pm.

    Maybe it’s the time of year, maybe it’s the behavior lately, maybe it’s the excitement that the kids haven’t been able to contain since they found out about it a month ago, maybe it’s the responsibility of taking sixteen 10- and 11-year-olds four hours from home for a learning experience, yes, but mainly a giant sleepover, but I’ve been pretty much waiting for this trip to be behind us. The dread has been palpable. You can see it on my face and in my body language.

    “I’m a super heavy sleeper,” Z shared at dismissal. “When I’ve slept at M’s house and her phone was beeping, I didn’t wake up at ALL.”

    “Me too,” J chimed in.

    “Ms. Amy, what are you going to do with your hair? Mine looks CRAZY in the mornings,” R had shared at recess earlier.

    “I don’t think I should know about their sleep habits!” I said, exasperated, to Kim and some other coworkers on the elevator back upstairs, to some nervous laughter.

    But then last night as I packed, and this morning as I’m typing this and taking bites of my yogurt and granola, I want to readjust my perspective.

    Let’s be real.

    What are these fifth graders going to remember from their last year in elementary school?

    Not my amazing writing or math lessons. Not the way we transitioned through the halls or our morning routine.

    No. They’re going to remember what happened with their friends at recess and lunch. They’re going to remember the show they put on for their parents this past Monday. And they’re certainly going to remember this overnight field trip.

    So I’m flipping the script. I’m going to try to enjoy myself on this trip and make sure the kids get the most out of it, too. I’m there with 4 other adults (Kim, Male, Christian, and one of our students’ moms). If anything goes haywire, we’ve got it. We have food, we have a first aid kit, we’ve all packed our sleeping bags and blow up sleeping mats.

    All that’s left is to have fun.

  • Day 13: Benington

    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 example of how rumors get started, because then all of them were asking if we were actually getting a new student.”

    Sometime between yesterday and today, Benington has gained: a bed, a pillow, a blanket, and even a tiny Benington-sized book about his life. There is a poster hanging now in our classroom with a photo of him and the names of all the girls and their relationship to him (because, of course, they adopted him).

    It’s moments like these when I see most clearly how fifth graders live in the hallway between adolescence and childhood. Last week, E was talking about her crush and J was showing off TikTok dances. This week, they’ve become the adoptive parents of a tennis ball!