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: teaching

  • Thank You For Your Service

    “Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.”

    I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo 9 years ago, and I remember being pretty moved by it. I liked the idea of dumping all of my clothes from every season onto my bed, going through them one by one, and asking if they sparked joy. I never accomplished her entire method, especially when I lived with others, but have gone back to her wisdom time and again whenever I get the buzz to do a deep cleaning.

    It was a couple weeks ago at my acupuncture appointment that my doctor recommended I use the KonMari method to say goodbye to teaching. She could sense the anxiety bubbling under my veins as she felt for my pulse.

    “Just as you thank an object for its service, for what it taught you, you can do the same for your job,” she said, then turned slightly as she acted out how she would do it. “Thank the classroom, thank the building, thank the people, your colleagues and the cleaning staff, thank everything for all that it taught you, for getting you here, to this moment.”

    As I drifted off into that deep, restive acupuncture sleep, I started thinking about all of the thank yous I would give. On my way home, I stopped at Target and purchased a pack of 24 thank you cards. Every day since then, I have written a few cards, working my way through a list I made on my phone’s notes app.

    For this slice, I went back to my copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and found Marie Kondo’s reasoning behind this gratitude-before-discarding thing: “The process of assessing how you feel about the things you own, identifying those that have fulfilled their purpose, expressing your gratitude, and bidding them farewell, is really about examining your inner self, a rite of passage to a new life.”

    As I read these quotes, I felt a warming in my chest. How much has it felt lately like I am shedding that which doesn’t serve me anymore? And how true is it that every time I have shed that which does not serve me, in spite of the fear that it may induce, I have ended up receiving so much more than I could have imagined?

    She continues: “To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose… Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you have forgotten its existence? If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them. Help them leave that deserted isle to which you have exiled them. Let them go, with gratitude.”

    Staying in or keeping ahold of something — a relationship, a job, a place — that no longer serves you is not fair to you or them. It holds both of you back. I am so grateful to KLA and 5th grade and the families for everything they have brought me, and I also know it’s important that I step away now, so that the next teacher who will best serve that role can step in.

    But it’s hard, and that’s where the act of truly considering the role each thing has played in your life comes in: “When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You’ll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life, in order.”

    I am tidying my life, I suppose, with this transition. That’s the metaphor for it. Making space for a new career that brings me joy.

    One final quote: “It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure. This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them. The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”

    Which reminds me of the other wisdom I received a few months ago: Don’t ask “what next?” But rather “what now?”

    I can’t wait to find out.

  • On Faith

    A few weeks ago, before the conclave that would select the successor to Pope Francis, Patrick and I went on a pope film spree. 

    First, we watched Conclave. Next, The Two Popes. And finally, at Patrick’s brother’s suggestion, A Man of His Word, the documentary about Pope Francis. Each of the films kept me thinking, and inspired deep conversations about faith. 

    I grew up agnostic. My mom is a reformed Jew, and my dad was raised Episcopalian, but neither of my parents are religious, and so they didn’t raise us to be. They simply raised us on the golden rule: “Treat others the way you wish to be treated.”

    That said, I’m no atheist — I’ve always felt that there was something greater. I nerd out about astrology, I’m into human design, and I have been finding myself more and more surrendering to faith when faced with the unknown. 

    In Conclave, Cardinal Lawrence greets his fellow cardinals with a speech:

    “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.”

    I looked at Patrick, my arms covered in goosebumps. Cardinal Lawrence was right — if everything was already known, why would anyone even need faith, need religion?

    I am less than 4 weeks away from leaving teaching, without a solid idea of what is next for me. The future is unknown. And fear lingers at every turn of thought, giving its unwanted opinions with “what if”s that leave me reeling. 

    But fear is a liar. I’ve been here before. I’ve listened to fear and let it keep me trapped in a situation that did not serve me, and when I finally got out, what did I learn? That everything I feared would happen, didn’t. 

    In fact, only good came my way. What was meant for me found me, because I turned away from fear, out of love for myself, and kept faith that everything would be okay. (Having the best support system here in Miami didn’t hurt, either.)

    As I move forward into the unknown yet again, I am reminding myself to keep faith. And if there is a god, well, Pope Francis did say, “God’s love is the same for each and every person. No matter what your religion, even for an atheist, it’s the same love.” So, maybe there really is a higher power watching over me and my loved ones. Maybe that higher power is simply unconditional love. We can never know with any certainty. 

    But it’s that unknown, that uncertainty, that mystery of life, that inspires any faith at all. And for all the unexpected people and experiences life has granted me, I am only ever grateful and full of love. 

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  • One More Month

    One more month until I take my final look around a ready-for-summer-kind-of-clean classroom.

    Four more weeks until I gather my books to bring home.

    Three weeks and one day until I say goodbye to our students, wishing them the best of luck in middle school.

    Two weeks and three days until our fifth graders graduate. We’ve got to get cracking on their speech.

    One week and one day before our school’s celebration of learning, the evening where we’ll be presenting our findings after the 21-day digital detox. I’m about halfway through editing the video.

    Three more days until report card grades and comments are due. Grades are mostly in. Comments? 🙃

    One more hour until we head to the car and drive to work.

    Each day has been a trudge lately.

    Some glimmers, but mostly a trudge.

    I find myself watching the clock until 3:10 when I can take them downstairs for dismissal. Checking the calendar to see how many more days.

    I wish it were different, but this is my reality lately:

    One foot in.

    One foot out.

    Impatiently waiting one more month until both feet can be together, and take me somewhere new.

  • The Last Time

    There’s something bubbling beneath every day lately at work. A thread weaving between the seams, a whispered undercurrent.

    “This might be the last time you…” it says.

    I try to shake it off — it jars me.

    But it’s a persistent little f***er.

    “This might be your last chapter book read aloud,” it whispers to me as I put post-its to mark each day in Refugee.

    “This might be your last field trip,” it sings as I send the confirmation email to Bowlero.

    “This might be the last time you hear that,” it taunts me when I read a Valentine’s card from a student that ends with “I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

    “F off,” I will it to leave in my mind.

    But I know it will linger. Because the truth is, many of these moments will be the last.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is, just because I made the choice to leave the classroom, doesn’t mean it’s easy.

    I’m reminded of Vicky’s slice as I think: Why does choosing myself sometimes feel like I’m breaking my heart?

  • A Lesson in Abandoning Books

    “Your hold at the Miami Public Library is ready to borrow,” my Libby notification popped up, with a small photo of Onyx Storm.

    Yesssss! I whisper screamed, then remembered I was only 35% through Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo. I love Acevedo’s YA, and I was very excited to start her first novel for adults. But I hadn’t been feeling too thrilled about reading it lately. It’s not that I didn’t like the book, but there are a lot of characters and jumping back and forth through time, so I was always a bit confused as I read. The worst part: I never wanted to go back to it, and I was always having to reorient.

    I’ll have to just dedicate more time to reading this week so I can finish it and be able to start Onyx Storm, I thought, and then I caught myself.

    Why?

    Why would I force myself to dedicate more time to a book that I’m not enjoying? Isn’t The Storygraph’s motto “Because life’s too short for a book you’re not in the mood for”? Didn’t I teach a lesson about abandoning books earlier in the year?

    What were the guidelines we came up with together?

    • Choose wisely (read the blurb; do you know the author?; do you think you’ll be interested?). — Okay, I did this.
    • Give the book a real try, at least 80 pages. — Check.
    • Read it every day for at least 3 days to see if you get in the flow. — I tried! I’ve been reading every day for over a week!
    • If you still aren’t into it, you can abandon it, but you have to journal a quick reason why. — You don’t need to tell me twice! That’s a slice!

    I’m no better or worse if I finish or don’t finish this book, I reminded myself. But I’ll be a whole lot happier if I just give myself permission to abandon it and crack open the third book in a fantasy series that I know I’ll enjoy.

    The next day, at school, we introduced the Engagement Continuum to our students during morning meeting. As we had them self-assess for math, investigations, and read aloud, I realized something.

    “Your temperature check has me thinking,” I said out loud. “Do we need to abandon our read aloud?”

    Their eyes widened in that did-she-really-just-say-that way that my students tend to do when I say something out of their scope of things-teachers-say.

    I shared with them my own personal debacle with Family Lore over the weekend.

    “Here’s what I’m noticing: Many of you are disengaging, some of you are interested, but the energy is low. We’ve already read about 100 pages. And honestly, it’s not very fun for Ms. Kim and I to read to you, because we can tell you’re checked out!” I looked around at the nodding heads. “So… what do you say?”

    It was an emphatic yes.

    “Wait,” M said. “Can we still read one of the ones from our list?”

    I laughed and initially responded with playful sarcasm. Then I told them we’d be starting Refugee. Cue the cheers.

    And that’s how I abandoned two books this week, replacing them with ones I know I’ll love.

  • Bilateral Beach

    For someone who has lived in the Sunshine State for almost 4 years, I don’t go to the beach nearly as much as one might expect. Nor to the pool, even though each of the three buildings I’ve lived in since moving here has one.

    But every other Saturday since late October, I’ve been driving the 45-60 minutes up to Hollywood Beach to see an EMDR therapist in her tiny house whose street leads to the beach. Whether before or after my sessions, I make sure to come sit and look out at the rolling waves, feel the salty air lick my face, and stick my feet in the sand.

    The hottest day can feel bearable when you’re at the beach, the respite of the cool water just steps away. Likewise, I enjoyed coming out here on cooler mornings this “winter” in a light sweater, hugging my knees close.

    EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – therapy works through bilateral stimulation, alternating beats or taps or a side-by-side visual. It helps people process traumatic memories, and it’s been far more effective for me than regular talk/cognitive behavioral therapy. I came here the first time amidst nonstop panic attacks, unable to eat or hold food down. Now, 4 months later, I have found a place of calm within me that hadn’t existed before. Or, perhaps it existed, but was buried beneath so much.

    I sit here, staring at the water, its blue and turquoise hues, and recognize my growth. I have only gratitude.

    There are big changes coming soon. I will leave the classroom after this year and see what’s next. There is fear, and excitement, and unease, and impatience.

    But like so many other transformative moments of my life, I will trust my gut, ride the wave, and come out the other side. I’ll step out onto a different shore, ready to greet what awaits me.

  • A Friday Slice

    “Are you going to do the Slice of Life Challenge this year?” Ana asked me this morning as we passed each other in the halls. “Male and Angie are gonna do it, and Gi too.”

    “I don’t know…” I skirted. This year’s intention to slice every Tuesday started out strong and then waned in the fall as I dealt with some personal health issues. If I couldn’t commit to doing it weekly, how could I do it daily?

    *

    Later, when we met in my room, she mentioned it again.

    “I just sent an email to the second grade team. Darlyn is in!”

    “Maybe…” I smiled. We returned to the writing plans. I shared something funny a student had said about me moving the teacher’s desk.

    “That’s a slice!” Ana exclaimed.

    “Should I just write it and schedule it for March 1st?”

    “YES!”

    *

    At 3pm, while I was waiting to meet with Male, Ale left Ana’s office and Ana shouted, “Ale’s gonna slice, too!”

    “Okay, okay,” I laughed. With this many new slicers from our little school community, surely I could get motivated enough to slice again each day for the month of March. It was tough last year, but it was also fun and satisfying, connecting me not only with other slicers but with friends and family (hi, Mom!). Plus, I have a little time capsule now that captured a joyous month in my life when, among other things, I was falling in love.

    So, here it is. Today’s slice. Never mind that it’s a Friday:

    *

    This morning when I entered the classroom at 7:48am, I had visions of the documentation that would start to emerge on the bookshelves as I cleared them. But something wasn’t right. The table by the window always got in the way, and the chairs were all different sizes. There was all this dead space near the teacher table, too, and the math materials were blocked off and inaccessible to the students.

    So, I did what I always do when I realize the layout of the classroom doesn’t align with how we’re using it — I started rearranging.

    First order of business: moving some of the writing charts. Next? Swapping the teacher table with the long one at the window.

    The first students arrived at 8 to find me and all of our tables and chairs scattered.

    “Good morning!” I shouted.

    “Um, hi? What’s going on?” Two of the girls asked.

    “I’m rearranging the furniture. Help me!”

    “Okay!” They agreed. These two are always up to help with anything.

    “Is this table going to stay on the rug?” The other girl asked, skeptical.

    “No, no,” I assured her. “It’s just there while we get the rest sorted.”

    Then two of the boys arrived.

    “Happy birthday!” I said to one of them who turned eleven today. “Help us move these smaller chairs to the other room and grab all the big ones to bring in here?”

    They set off on their task as a few more students arrived.

    “We’re rearranging everything!” One of the first girls explained.

    “Why?” A student yawned.

    “I don’t know! For a change?”

    “Because Ms. Amy was doing it when we came in!”

    “But Ms. Amy, it’s so sunny over there! You’re going to fry like a grilled cheese!”

    “I liked it better before.”

    “Yeah, what about all the other teacher stuff that’s still over there? It’s so far away from your desk now!”

    Once everything was moved, and we were mostly satisfied with their placements, we gathered for Morning Meeting.

    I explained to the fifth graders that I got the rearranging “itch” from my dad. When I was growing up, he always moved around the furniture in our combined living room/kitchen/dining room. I’d wake up and come out to see things in different places. It would be a bit of a shock to the system, and then I’d get accustomed to it. Ever since, I have constantly rearranged my dorm rooms and apartments to whatever felt right. And I always found that rearranging gave me a refreshed feeling, a sense of starting anew.

    I’ve found that with classrooms, even the same one, once you see how the students of that year are using the space, it often becomes clear how best to arrange the furniture. (And it’s apparently good for their brains to have that change!) Sometimes you only need to rearrange once. Sometimes more! (Like last year, which one of our students hated, but Kim loved.)

    A half hour later, as we were teaching math, Sol came in and widened her eyes. She walked over to the desk.

    “I rearranged!” I said.

    “I see that,” she laughed. “Are you trying to slow cook us?” She asked as she shaded her eyes from the sun beaming in through the window.

    “Seriously, Ms. Amy,” M said. “Yesterday, this was you: ‘Oh my god, the window is so hot, we need to move things away from the window.’ This is you today: ‘I think I’ll put my desk by the window. Yeah, good idea…’”

    He’s not wrong, but I’ll give it a chance. I think it will work.

  • When Ralph Comes to Visit

    “Are you ready?” Betsy asked me in the morning as we readied the theater. It was thirty minutes before the second performance of our class’s theatrical adaptation of Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher, and today, not only were the students’ parents coming, but so was Ralph, himself!

    “Ready! And nervous!” I spat out. We still needed the videographer to come to check the new prop placement, and he wasn’t replying to my texts.

    “Tranquila,” Betsy said. “Enjoy this!”

    And despite a little tech hiccup right before we let parents in, I did.

    I managed the changing of the digital backdrops and the sound effects, preparing to give cues if students needed, but mostly, I just enjoyed the show. Ralph and Ana sat to my right, and I kept warming at his audible reactions:

    “Wow, she’s good.”

    “Huh!”

    “That’s pretty clever.”

    When E as Mr. Peacock introduced him, and he stepped up to take his line (the line he wrote), the audience applauded loudly. Ralph! Here! A storyteller that inspires!

    The rest of the day was a whirlwind of professional learning sessions with him, organized by Ana. My brain buzzed with ideas, my pen moving rapidly to catch all of the wonderful things he had to say.

    One has stuck with me all afternoon into evening.

    Ralph says, many students think revision is to fix a piece of writing that’s broken. He sees revision as a way to honor a piece that’s good, a piece that means something to you.

    Flying Solo meant something to us. We went through more than seven revisions of the adapted script, honing it each time, whittling away, adding, molding, sculpting a dynamic play that could truly capture the magic we felt with the first read. And I think we honored that original magic today.

    I’m exhausted, and ready (in a way) to get back to our regular schedule without rehearsals. But mostly, I’m grateful.

    Thank you, Ralph. Thank you for writing this book and all the others. Thank you for giving us permission to adapt it into a play. And thank you for coming to see it, for meeting our students. The smiles on their faces meant so much.

  • Planning, Projecting, Pacing

    I have a rare gift of a late-start morning, thanks to a doctor’s appointment, so I figured I’d take the time I still have before I head over there to write my slice.

    We’re coming off of a long weekend, and I happily spent some time on Saturday planning this week and next’s reading lessons and pacing out unit 2 (nonfiction). The lessons were the first that I’ve planned independent of Ana — huge step! Wow! — and I felt confident finally in how I was writing them. I used all the tools that I’ve acquired thanks to her:

    • The recipe for the perfect teaching point (the what + the how)
    • The TC learning progression for narrative reading (which I’m kicking myself for not using until now)
    • Rubric creation for the final assessment
    • Our pacing and planning guide with titles of each session

    And once I was done with that, I took a look at the next unit, even though I had many other things to do, because I’m geeking out over teaching it.

    To give some background, our school has not had a consistent reading curriculum since I started teaching there, so this year I’m planning out all new units using our power standards and other curricular resources (Shifting the Balance, Jennifer Serravallo, TC units of study) so that they reflect a) what our students need and b) are more digestible for them. This means that much of what I’ll be (and have been) teaching them asks them to raise the level of their reading and interpreting to a point they’ve never been asked before. Which is really hard. But I know they’re capable.

    For the nonfiction reading unit, I’m keeping in mind the fact that Adam Fachler highlighted during the Thinking Maps Training of Trainers course I took with him so many years ago: you can’t learn new skills AND new content at the same time. It’s one or the other. So, I’m choosing new skills. Rather than requiring students to read about topics they don’t know much about, I’ll have them choose a topic they “sort of” know about (as Ana said, lol), or really: a topic they know well, but can still learn more about. The goal of the unit will be clear from the get-go: to prepare for a “knowledge fair” where they’ll teach younger students about the topics they’ve researched.

    The skills I’ll be focusing on this unit are:

    • Note-taking to capture, organize, and synthesize information, using text structure to guide
    • Summarizing by identifying main idea and important supporting details
    • Writing about reading to teach others

    I’m hopeful that this nonfiction unit goes better than nonfiction units I’ve tried in the past. If the projecting and pacing stage is any indication, it’s already going well.

  • The Magic Happening

    I missed my slice last week, and it’s already 9:28pm, but Ana sent me a text saying she wants to show up even if it’s just for four lines, so I figured I could do that too!

    The last couple weeks have felt nonstop, more so than in years past, and in spite of us having a fairly easy class behaviorally. When my nervous system gets disregulated due to outside factors, I often feel like I won’t be able to get it all done and just want to crawl into a hole and stay there for a while.

    Our head of schools gave me the advice of being present and focusing on the magic happening right in my classroom, so that’s what I’m going to try to do for this slice—think of four magic things that are happening.

    Here goes:

    1. A morning meeting activity: sentence types. A BrainPop image of the two presidential candidates. Students turning and talking and sharing smart and serious and funny sentences.
    2. All four committees of our Flying Solo play adaptation, fully engaged and working in tandem towards our November show. Their wonderful ideas. Quieter students speaking up.
    3. The way a few of our students take such care of our space—keeping stock of supplies, making labels for everything, organizing the pillows, color-coding the library shelves, folding the table rags, knowing who has what job when, following *most* of our routines.
    4. A reading conference with a student, starting her book together and helping her monitor and clarify, then watching as she made an un-prompted inference, and with guidance, found text evidence to support it. 🥹