Author: Andrea

Join us in the Slice of Life story challenge. Every day for the month of March, bloggers all over the globe are writing their slices and sharing them on the Two Writing Teachers blog.

I have worked hard to slice each day in March. I am loving the posts that I have done so far. I am enjoying the work I am doing to improve. I made it a priority to write every day. And then, this week I got sick. I was perfectly healthy on Monday. Then Tuesday morning, I woke up with a cough and congestion. By Tuesday afternoon, I was hacking up a lung. Wednesday and Thursday it was all I could do to be able to stay at school all day. And last night, I didn’t write. I was unable to write. I am sick.

The doctor gave me some medicine today. I will take it and I will hope to be able to sleep with the cough syrup helping me sleep. I hope to write a better slice tomorrow. Here’s hoping my lungs decide to recover soon and I will be able to finish out the challenge strong.

Join us in the Slice of Life story challenge. Every day for the month of March, bloggers all over the globe are writing their slices and sharing them on the Two Writing Teachers blog.

The Monopoly board came out and we started to talk. My grandma and I spent entire weekends playing this game and talking. When it was time to go to bed, we would leave the board out on the dining room table and come back to it the next morning. Neither of us were cutthroat players, the end result didn’t really matter. The talks were the reason for our games. I let her in on my hearts desires and my biggest heartaches from the weeks since I had been there before. She listened without judgement and gave me a safe place. Her advice always made me reflect and helped me navigate all kinds of twists and turns.

We each had our favorite properties. She always wanted the yellows and I always tried for the greens. We both celebrated when one of us landed on Park Place or Boardwalk, even if that meant that one of us was going to win soon.

I don’t recall who usually won. I don’t even know if we ever actually finished these marathon games. What I do know is that anytime I see the Monopoly board I think about my Grandma and miss those talks.

Join us in the Slice of Life story challenge. Every day for the month of March, bloggers all over the globe are writing their slices and sharing them on the Two Writing Teachers blog.

The last few weeks have been a little crazy in my classroom. The nicer weather, the approaching Spring Break, and some crazy schedules and different activities have really messed with our routines. I also have a class composition at this point of the school year of almost exactly 2 boys to 1 girl. This makes our class noisy and active and boisterous.

In the last weeks, this has meant that I have had to dig deep for the extra well of patience that I seem to be able to find when I need it. I have had to send students back to their desks to put heads down and calm their bodies and minds before we continued with the lessons. I have had to lecture about being safe and making sure that people are not getting hurt in our classroom when they are supposed to be working on math activities. I have had to send everyone back to their desks to work instead of being able to choose their spots.

We even had a problem solving class meeting about their behavior. Students were honest and reflective in the meeting, but soon went back to their wayward ways.

But the biggest mistake I made in the last week was to skip our sharing in the morning meeting. I told students that we were not sharing because I could not trust that they would be respectful listeners when their classmates were sharing (which was absolutely true). I could not even get through one sentence without being interrupted and that let me know that they would not do the listening that was needed. But we all missed the chance to share. I was asked multiple times by multiple kids when we were going to get to share again. I unfairly put us on a punishment that didn’t fit. I silenced their voices instead of giving them a chance and letting them prove that they could listen, at least to a few students at a time.

Then, yesterday, we started out crazy again. So, I talked to students and reminded them of our class norms. I took the time to talk to them about why I am worried about our behaviors. We talked about how it is my job to make sure they learn as much as they can and how their behaviors have lately stood in the way of that happening. I told them about how we are already 2/3 of the way through our school year and we have so much more work to do so that they can reach their best level by the end of the year. I told them that we only had 180 days together so we had to make it count. One of my students replied, “Wait, it’s only 180 days of school? But I thought it was more because it’s like 10 months.” I think this number clicked with this particular student.

Then, we shared. Students were more ready to listen and did their utmost to make sure they were being respectful of one another. Almost everyone shared. We usually have at least a few who pass when we go around the circle, but this time only one passed. We had long stories to share because we had pent up details from last week. But, the energy shifted and I realized that I had inadvertently changed our climate when I stopped the conversation.

This morning I made sure that we got right back to our routine of a morning meeting complete with a sharing circle. We reminded each other about our class norms. We remembered that we are all in this together and our behavior affects the learning of everyone in the room. And we proceeded to have a wonderful day full of learning.

How very important that community is to all of us in our classroom. I am so glad I listened to the voices of my students clamoring for their chances to share. They reminded me that it is in the craziness that we really need to take time to build our communities and listen to our stories.

Join us in the Slice of Life story challenge. Every day for the month of March, bloggers all over the globe are writing their slices and sharing them on the Two Writing Teachers blog.

My muse abandoned me today.

She has been working overtime

giving me ideas and powerful words.

She must’ve finally thought

that she deserved a vacation.

But why must she take a break

in the middle of my month of slicing?

I hope she will be back tomorrow.

I hope she isn’t sick or hasn’t up and quit.

Maybe she is just focusing on report cards

Like I should be.

Join us in the Slice of Life story challenge. Every day for the month of March, bloggers all over the globe are writing their slices and sharing them on the Two Writing Teachers blog.

On Friday, my professional development was thought-provoking and gave me a lot of food for thought. Part of the morning was about Trauma-Sensitive Care in schools. This portion of the morning gave me a lot to think about and made me reflect quite heavily on the trauma that I experienced as a child and teenager. Hearing the information about how certain things might trigger a child even if they are in no apparent danger, really brought me back to my late teen years and even the early years of my marriage in which we navigated some muddy waters because things in our home would trigger my trauma brain.

Then, later in the morning, we were treated to this Ted Talk as part of our training about Educator Effectiveness in Wisconsin. We were delving deeper into the Professional Responsibilities domain of the Danielson framework and in the training we were to reflect on how this message might relate to how we advocate for our students. I thought this message really went hand in hand with the trauma care piece of the morning. If you haven’t seen the Ted Talk “The Danger of Silence” go watch it now. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Some great things to think about here, right? I think what struck me the most about this piece was the way this teacher asks his students to “Tell Your Truth.” I love the spoken word poem and I love the way he focuses on the silences and times when he should have spoken up. Don’t we all have times in which we should have spoken up, but we didn’t?

This training, both pieces of it, struck a chord in me. I have been hemming and hawing and turning some ideas over and over again in my brain. I have some truths to tell. They have been buried in me and have been clamoring to get out since early last fall. But I struggle with the truths. How much of this stuff is not mine to tell? What if telling my truth hurts someone? It is possible that this could be the case.

The biggest truths that I have to tell have to do with forgiveness for wrongdoing that never was acknowledged as such by the person who did it. My truth deals with trauma that changed the way I reacted to other people. It changed me into someone who avoids conflict. It gave me a part of my brain that had a panic reaction with certain triggers. It traumatized me. And, the truth is that it is still something that I have inside of me. I thought I had moved on from it. I have healed myself, I have become confident again. I had even let go, I thought. Until I started to meditate this year. Some of the guided meditations I did brought up the resentment that I thought I had done away with. So now, I am thinking about forgiveness. How do you forgive someone for something that affected you so much? Is it too late to forgive them if they have already passed on? And if you stay silent, how dangerous is it really if it only affects you?