The New Year 2021

I'll be honest, it was hard today. Hard to get excited about coming back to school, hard to get up and get ready, hard to put on a smile. I called a friend who teaches the same content I do in another district and said to her "I think it's just the circumstances we are in, but I'm not sure how much more of this I can take". She assured me it is. (I hope she's right)

We are similar in our teaching styles and philosophy (she did student teach under me, so that may have something to do with it) most likely because teaching is a 2nd career for us and we entered it after having kids and work and life experiences. These past 10 months in education are not what any of us signed up for, but yet here we are, pushing through and doing our best to put a smile on our face for every kid that walks through our door, because we know it's hard for them too.

I am hopeful that soon things will go back to as close to what we can call normal as possible. I hope to not wear a mask all day. I hope to have all my kids in my classroom at the same time. I strive for the ability to come up with a new idea I heard on the radio in the morning on the way to work, and work it into a lesson and discussion in class that day. I hope for a lot of things, but I do not want Hope to be my word for the year (I'm still thinking on what that should be). 

So here's to all of you who made it through the first teaching day of 2021. Hope you are all ending the day with a smile. Thanks Sandy for the chat today, I really needed it! And here's to a great second half of the year, and that everything you hope for comes through. 

Being Present for Me

***I started this blog post the week of workshops, 3 weeks ago, and then got wrapped up in school and masks and cleaning and safety and all the things this school year has brought with it, and didn't follow my own advice, Being Present for Me, and I am feeling the effects. Teacher, take your own advice, correct??*** 

It's a new school year, my 25th year in education, but it feels nothing like normal, and I knew it wouldn't. What was I thinking it would be like? I tried not to even think about it because it was literally changing day by day. So how to you get yourself geared up for a year like this? That is the million dollar question, and I truly wish I had the answer, but I don't think there is just one.

For me, the past few weeks, my last weeks of summer, I chose to shut the door on school and school related topics (including COVID whenever possible) and just breath in and out and enjoy being present in the moment and do things for me. I finished a few quilts, spent lots of time with my dogs, saw my daughters and granddaughters, and connected with friends. 

In my traveling, I started back listening to podcasts. I stepped away from these during the pandemic, staying at home, because I primarily listen while driving to and from school, and any distance driving. So of course what do I go to first, Innovator's Mindset w/ George Couros. For those that know me, George Couros is my go to for positivity and innovation (hence the name of the podcast and his book The Innovator's Mindset.) While I had taken a break for several months, George did not (well, not as long a break as me), so I had a lot to choose from.

I found several new people to follow on Twitter through his episodes (Evan Whitehead, Allyson Apsey, Dwight Carter, Weston Kieschnick) and know my list will grow as I play catch up. Now I could have said I was absent from listening, that I was not engaged, I was "on a break", and all actually are true......

via GIPHY

......but I was not gone. I was present. I was present in my home, for Cory, for my dogs. I was present for my kids and grandkids, and actually connected with them more, and it was more genuine. I was present with friends, connected with friends in different ways, and more often. 

But most importantly I was present for myself. I consciously kept my health and fitness goals in front of me, (literally, I worked where I workout so I saw the workout posters and checklists multiple times a day). Was I perfect, no!! I had days of ice cream and popcorn meals, but overall I was able to be more prepared in meal preparation and able to take the time to make better meal choices. 

Being present for my Cory, Tinker, Kona and my family meant I was spending time for them, not just running from task to task and waving hello and we passed each other. I had better, deeper conversations and connections with my kids, I was relaxed and could sit and truly listened. 

What was probably the most important for me was connecting with my friends. I've reached a stage in my life when my kids are no longer at home (so my friend group of parents of my kids' classmates, sadly, has diminished to just a few) and I moved to a new school district recently (same experience, former work friends have diminished to just a few as well) so my connection with friends during this time, particularly during summer when I had so many restrictions, became about those people that are friends outside of other environments. I had almost forgotten the importance of those girlfriends you can be yourself with, that are friends regardless of anything, not for some status or attention it brings. Thank you to you all for reminding me. 

As I did all these things, I didn't consider what it was doing FOR me, I was just living in the moment, some days just going through the motions. And to come back around to The Innovator's Mindset podcast, I was listening one day as I was driving to my middle daughter's home to see my granddaughters, and Being In and Appreciating the Present Moment came up. Now why is it when we do things, we don't think much of the value, but when we hear someone else say it, particularly someone we admire and respect. it's validation for doing the right thing? 

So What Happened

...So.....Here I am again......I committed myself to writing in my blog, more for myself than anyone, for the month of January, thanks to a little prompting from A.J. Juliani and his challenge to the world (well maybe not the world, but anyone who follows him) to do a 30 day blogging challenge.

Now I could come back on here and give you every excuse in the book why I didn't follow through on the guidelines I set for myself. They are nothing spectacular, nothing new, nothing shocking that when you read them you would say "Oh my gosh, how does that woman even get through the day, she's lucky she can even get a shower taken!" They are excused, pure and simple, and they are mine and I own them. Bottom line, I didn't do what I set out to do with this blog.

So where do I go from here? Do I just give up and never come back? Do I dive in and write double blogs to make up for the ones I didn't write? Nope and Nope. I'm not perfect, never pretended to be, would never want to be, the hiccups in life can be fun! No, I think I'll just keep coming back here, I'll set a new goal for myself, and only for me, and work to stay on track.

I will tell you though, we had 4 SNOW DAYS last week. (so I had no excuse not to write!) Happy February everyone!

The End / The Beginning

It's the end of the quarter. That means the last day of classes with these students. I feel like we have finally gotten into a "groove", know what I mean? And now, POOF they are all done, gone and onto the next quarter class. 

I teach in a school that have block scheduling. While there certainly are times that it's nice to have an 80-90 minute class period, I do not like that my classes are only one quarter long. The longevity of developing a relationship with a student is not there. I do my best to make an impact in the 42-45 days we have together, but it does not always happen, I must confess.


But as we all know, an ending is only sad if you let it be, because each new beginning started with an ending of something else. So I'll come to school tomorrow, I'll take down my walls, put up new things, finish grades and prepare for 4 new groups of students to come through my door on Monday. 3 new classes to teach, to engage students in the content of my area, to start scaffolding relationships with these students (that I will have for 47 days in Quarter 3). 

It's at the end of a course that I really look at what we accomplished, what I would like to have and what I want to change for the next time. Of course that next time will be a year away, so I have to be sure to make good notes. I start my summer work notes at this time, what can I do then to improve the classes. 

I'd love to hear from other teachers how they reflect after a course is over, and their process for improving it. 

It was a Good Day

In education we know there are no two days the same. Honestly that's what's most enjoyable about it for me. Yesterday I got to take a group of BPA students to their regional competition. This is the first year that my school has had a BPA organization, so for these 19 students to take a chance on a new organization says a lot about their character.

BPA stands for Business Professionals of America. It is a student organization across the US and Puerto Rico (Check out the national website) intended for students interested in business careers. They get to compete individually and/or in teams in topics such as Accounting, Business Law, Website Design, Parliamentary Procedure,etc. We had 19 students complete in 6 individual and 3 team competitions (wonderful considering they had never done this before), and 16 qualified for state competition March 7-9. OUTSTANDING!

To say I am proud of these kids would be an understatement. I cannot take credit for their hard work and dedication, all I did was provide an opportunity and gave guidance, they had to do all the hard work. Check out our BEA BPA web site for more photos an updates. 

So to say yesterday was different than any other day would be correct, not had a day like this before. Yesterday was a good day.

It's a New Week....

It's Monday. It's a New Week. Things appear to be brighter on a Monday, regardless of what the weather is like outside. I have learned through the years that whether the sun is out or not has a huge affect on my outlook for the day. (And today is not looking so hot!)

But I have 9 days of this quarter left, 8 with seniors, and we have things to accomplish. Web Design has a Photoshop Unit to wrap up and a final Website to create (good thing we are on a block schedule). Accounting has a simulation to complete (we'll be working right up to the end on this one) and IT/Game design has, well you guessed it, a game to design and prepare for their classmates to play.

I love PBL work. I love that students use the skills they've learned to create something real, or use their knowledge to analyze real problems. What I don't love is how a group of otherwise capable students suddenly look at you as if you had lobsters crawling out of your ears and you were asking them to hike across the Grand Canyon on an invisible bridge. 

Schools mostly have consisted of students learning and regurgitating information, following step by step instructions to complete a task, or following a rubric. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with any of these methods (they all have their time and place) it has created a contentment to follow a path created by someone else, instead of forging ahead in their own direction. Employers today want the employee that will create and collaborate without being told to, the employee that can think for themselves, can find the solution before the problem exists. PBL lends itself to that, if you allow the student the freedom. This is where they start to freak out.

Right away they all want to know about the grade, what am I looking for, what do they HAVE to do. Whoa, back up there, when did this project become about me? This is your class, your project. Don't you want some say so in it?  Why are you so ready to hand the power over to me? Now I've done class created rubrics, giving the students some say in their grade, but again it's coming back to a grade. I get it, there is a bigger monster called GPA that affects so many things beyond my little class, but how can I get my students to see that the work they are doing is far beyond what a grade on a transcript says they did? 

This is not new, I realize this. And I don't know what the answer is, but I'd love to hear what you all think. 

Starting Again

It seems like people are always making resolutions, vowing to do better, eat better, exercise more, write more, whatever it is. And of course this time of year is "the time" to start over.

But really, what does it matter when you start the change to do / be something different? What matters more is if you're still doing those things you changed a month from now, 6 months, a year. The change is only a true change if it becomes part of who you are, your daily routine.

And so I begin again, writing on this blog. I have several blogs, one for school, one for personal, one for me as my journal, maybe that's my problem, too many. For now, I'm going to concentrate on my school one. When I was working on getting my master's degree many years ago, journaling/reflecting was part of most of what we did. I enjoyed it, it helped to decompress lessons I'd tried, struggles in the classroom, embrace the triumphs. Wish I would have kept up with it then, but everyone knows how that goes with one thing or another.

I will find the time to do this for myself. I will make time to do this for my students.