Celebrate This Week Archives - Page 3 of 8

Celebrate This Week 6/4

celebrate-image

It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.

The weeks go by so fast towards the end of the school year. The days turn sunny and warm, and life could be speeding past and passing me by, if I didn’t stop to appreciate moments in my every day life. The practice of celebrating each week has shifted my mindset and made me into a more positive person overall.

It’s not that I wasn’t positive before…I just was surrounded by negativity and sometimes gave in to the temptation to wallow in the complaining. I still have a lot of negative people around me a lot of the time, although I have removed myself from some of the most toxic negativity by avoiding certain people as much as possible. The practice of stopping to celebrate has given me back the appreciation of the incredibly complex and awesome job that I do each day. Lately we have been overwhelmed with more paperwork, more testing, more demands on our time and more mandates for the way we should be teaching. Many of my colleagues are being weighed down with that load and forgetting the beauty of the career that we have all chosen. I am grateful to this community for giving me a practice of celebration that helps me to be aware of when I am loving my job. Here are some of the best celebrations from last week:

We went on our big field trip to Madison. This is an hour and a half drive to visit our State Capitol among other things. The students are always very excited to go on such a big trip. We took a double-decker coach bus and it was a beautiful day. We went to the Wisconsin Historical Museum first. Then we had a guided tour at the Capitol building. Finally, we toured Camp Randall stadium, where the Wisconsin Badgers play football. Our trip was successful and I love that these kiddos will have some great memories of this day.

We are making a memory book of our fourth grade year. I had the students brainstorm all the things that they remember being special in their fourth grade year. We came up with a list that was two pages long. They included things like morning meeting and all the different read aloud titles. They remembered so many things that we have done together. I love that they have enjoyed so much about their fourth grade year!

I am also celebrating the fact that the nice weather has brought days that are perfect for visiting the Beer Garden in the park that is a few blocks away. I love the community and neighborhood in which I live. There are so many kids and dogs and people just enjoying the company of friends while also enjoying the weather and the park. It is so nice to have something like this within walking distance.

Lastly, I am celebrating finding out that I got the position at my school building for summer school. Although this means not attending the conferences that I attended last year, it is a needed boost to our income and I will also be able to organize some of my classroom closets over the summer. The summer school schedule is a nice one, we are there from 7:30-11:30 Monday through Friday. I am hoping to convince the building engineer at my school to let me stay later some days to work on organizing things. It is not a guarantee in our district that you will get summer school positions, so I am happy that I have this one.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrate This Week 5/21

celebrate-image

I can’t believe how incredibly busy my life got so quickly. I had a lot of bright spots in the last few weeks, but didn’t make the time to do my Saturday posts because my weekends have been crazy! And, how is it May 21st already?!?!

Lately, I have been reflecting about the school year a lot. I still have a few weeks of school left, but we are definitely in that final crunch of the year. The past month flew by on a cloud of testing, testing, and more testing for my fourth grade kiddos. The state testing window overlaps with our third Star testing window for our district so we go straight into more testing when we finish with the State test. Our routines are so thrown off by all of this. So, today I am celebrating the fact that, for the most part, we are finished with testing.

I am also celebrating the group of students I have in this class. The end of the school year is looming and I am not exactly ready to send these kiddos on. This is a rambunctious, energetic, kind, and ready-to-learn group of students. We have a wonderful community and I love going to school every day because I love the place that we have created together. So, today I am celebrating community and creating an environment for learning.

This week, we had volunteers come in from Joy Global to do the Junior Achievement curriculum with our students. This is always a really nice day. The students enjoy the games and activities in the Junior Achievement curriculum and the volunteers have a fun day and get a chance to experience what teachers do all day every day. The volunteers that came into my classroom were awesome and my students had an excellent experience.

Last, but certainly not least, I am celebrating the power of story. This group of students loves read aloud time. We have read so many great books this year. We have cried together, had belly laughs together, and just loved characters and stories together. So, a couple weeks ago, I decided that I needed to share Harry Potter with this group. I introduced the book by telling the kids that this is one of my all-time favorites and that even if they saw the movies they really didn’t experience it yet. We are about halfway through and our read aloud time is magic. They are loving the book, as I knew they would. What is great is that there are some kids who have not seen the movies. The audible reactions to things that are happening is priceless. The protests when I stop reading tell me that this was the right choice of books to share for our last few weeks.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrate This Week 4/23

celebrate-image

This was another busy week! I love the way this habit of celebration has really made me take a look at things in a much more positive way. I could have been stressed out about my schedule being so full of extra things, but instead I have learned to celebrate it.

At school, we are in the midst of our state testing. This test…it is really challenging for many of my students. We are doing our best and I am trying hard to help the students stay positive, but we are facing down another many hours of tests and it is difficult. What I have to celebrate is that I found a way to help the students be a little less anxious. I brought my bottle of lavender oil around the classroom and let each student who wanted to smell it have a whiff. Many of the students said it helped calm them right down. I am glad for that.

On Monday, I got a new student. I am celebrating the fact that she is a sweet girl and gets along with my other students so far. I love the kiddos in my classroom. They are very accepting and I think this new student feels welcomed. I am also celebrating the opportunity I have to help this student to make some progress. It is a short amount of time, but we will work intensely to help her improve in reading.

We had a really cool program this Wednesday. My colleague arranged for a friend of hers to bring his K-9 unit dog and talk to the students about the jobs that they do. It was so awesome!

Today, I am going to a workshop that sounds really awesome. We will do some Yoga, learn about nutrition and stress management, and there is going to be a lesson about adding healthy things to your coffee. That will be interesting. I am excited to spend the morning with a friend and to practice some self-care.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrate This Week 4/16

celebrate-image

This week felt really busy and hectic, but I was so happy for all the moments that popped up throughout the week to celebrate.

In my classroom, we are practicing mindfulness on a daily basis. I love how quiet and peaceful the room gets when we are meditating. I really think this practice is helping my students to focus on their learning. I definitely see the improvement in some of my most fidgety students. They are controlling their bodies better. I love that I am able to share this practice that is so simple but so powerful with my kiddos.

On Tuesday, we went to see the First Stage Children’s Theater production of Ella Enchanted. In class, we have been studying Cinderella stories and comparing and contrasting to find the pattern that makes them Cinderella stories. I did not think these kids would get so excited to learn about these stories. (I have twice as many boys as I do girls in my class) We are loving the stories and doing an excellent job of analyzing them. My whole class loved the play and came out of the theater discussing what was different about this story (without being prompted). I love our reading community this year.

Wednesday, I hosted an essential oils class at my home. First of all, I want to celebrate a clean house. I don’t think my house has been this clean for a while. I love that about inviting people in. Second, I have a lot more people in my life that are interested in oils than I would’ve thought. That is awesome because I am loving what the doTERRA oils are doing for me and I want to share the benefits with my friends and family. It was a nice class and I enjoyed my time with some great ladies.

Thursday, I took a half-day. Because I have MS, it is routine to do a MRI to make sure that the medicine I take is working to keep more lesions from forming. I had to do this procedure on Thursday afternoon. I HATE getting into this machine. I always need to have anxiety meds to do it. I almost didn’t have enough meds to do it. However, the technician was super patient with me and put on soothing music and gave me a lavender aromatherapy patch. I powered through and calmed my body down from the panic. It is done. I won’t have to do it again until next year. And now I know a few more tricks that I will remember for the next time. Primarily, the lavender….DUH! I am using oils at home, why didn’t I think to put some on at home? And I will ask for a different anxiety medication with a stronger dose. But, it is over and I did it so I am celebrating!

Thursday night, my husband went to a concert. One of his all-time favorite guitarists was on tour and came to Milwaukee. Since I was going to be looped up on meds, we didn’t get a ticket for me. That was okay. He loved the concert and had a great time. I got a few hours to read and write and work on some things. I had a great time too.

This week, I started a free online course called Beginning Writers Workshop. I am excited to work through the assignments in this class and jumpstart some of the fiction writing that I want to do. I love that our public library has subscribed to these courses. There is a whole catalog of things that library patrons can sign up to take. So cool!

Last, but certainly not least, I had a wonderful Friday at school. We looked at false apology poems in Writing and it was fun to see their creative ideas for what they could write. And as always, our board game time was a fabulous time of cooperation and having fun together.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrate This Week 4/10

celebrate-image

This week I had a fabulous week at school. It was one of those weeks that just seems to click and we were busy learning. I wrote about our First Day Back from Spring Break on Tuesday for my Slice of Life post.

We just had so many little moments to celebrate:

Our Cinderella unit started this week. Many of my boys groaned when they saw the cover of the first picture book I was going to read them. Then, I talked to them about how we were going to compare the stories from around the world to find the pattern in Cinderella stories. They were a little more convinced. Then, on Tuesday, I read them the Grimm version of Cinderella. Now, they are completely hooked on our unit. It was so fun comparing the different picture books we read this week.
I worked a lot more mindfulness and meditation into our schedule this week. It has helped many students to calm themselves down so they can be more engaged in learning.
I started new literature groups. It was fun to hear students that were excited about the new books I had picked out for their group.
Our math times this week were very smooth as well. The transitions into our work time were smooth and everyone got right to work. That was really nice and it was great to see kids having fun with math.
Google docs are the new craze in my class. They figured out that they could share docs with each other and now there are multiple collaborative stories being written. Every single day this week I had students asking to come in for recess so they could write. Amazing.

Then, I also had a few things outside of school to celebrate:

I went to a 6am workout class this week. I had not tried it yet because I was worried about getting to work on time. I was able to get to work fine and I will be going more often in the morning. This is great because it helps me to bring a workout into days in which I have other commitments after school.
My husband’s birthday is today. We had a nice day celebrating with a lunch date, some frozen yogurt, and some shopping yesterday.
I found a pair of Dansko clogs on clearance at DSW shoe store. I got them for $30!!!

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrating Celebration and Mindfulness (SOLSC26)

celebrate-image slice

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 am sick today and have been since Tuesday. It is so hard to remain in the realm of positivity when you feel miserable, but that is exactly the reason that I celebrate today. Before I joined this community of celebration, I used to allow myself to dwell in the space of negativity. I have learned through my weekly reflections to look for and find the moments to celebrate and in so doing, I have found a way to place myself squarely in the realm of positive thought. So this week I am first celebrating celebration. The practice has helped me get through this week and enjoy life even when I feel crappy.

I started a series of free meditations for weight loss that Oprah and Deepak Chopra have come together to provide for people. I really love the centering thoughts and the reflections that they are providing each day. Find out more and register for this 21-day experience on the Chopra Center Meditation website.

On Wednesday, we had another author visit at my school. I am so happy that I connected with the local independent bookstore that works hard to sponsor author events throughout our city. What is awesome is that this bookseller is so excited about creating readers that he allows my school to participate even though he knows that we will not create the same volume of book sales as many of the suburban schools will. I have been lucky over the last few years to host many amazing authors. This time, we welcomed Peter Lerangis to our school. I had heard of the Seven Wonders series but had not read any of them. I am halfway through the first book at this point and am loving the series. Peter Lerangis had an engaging and fun presentation and it was so fun to hear the auditorium full of child laughter at his antics and his funny pictures. He spoke to the audience about The 39 Clues series as well, because he has written some of the books in the series. Three of my students are now reading Book 1 of The 39 Clues. I love the power that authors have to turn kids on to reading!

Yesterday started my Spring Break. I am so excited to have a week off and be able to work on writing and reading with a more leisurely pace. I started the vacation with a trip to my doctor for this bronchitis and I have a routine MRI scheduled for next Tuesday as part of my care for MS, but it is nice to be able to do some of these medical things without writing sub plans or working around my work schedule.

Tonight, I am looking forward to spending time with my Mom. She found out about a concert that some people are having in their house. It starts with a potluck and then a semi-private guitar concert. It sounds like an interesting time and I am looking forward to it. We also are spending Easter Sunday with my mom. We had gotten away from really spending this holiday with family in the last few years and I am glad we are coming back to it this year. I am looking forward to brunch with family and a church service and maybe even some coloring of eggs. I think we will probably also FaceTime with my sister and her husband and our nieces. That will be special as well.

Here are my posts from this week:

Creating Readers to Create Kindness–my blog manifesto

Silence, Trauma, and Forgiveness

Where is the Muse?

The Importance of Community

Monopoly

The Best Laid Plans

What are you celebrating this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrating Writing (SOLSC19)

slice celebrate-image

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.

This is the third time I have participated in the Slice of Life Challenge. I like participating each year because I get to read and discover a lot of new blogs and I get to challenge myself to write every day. It is a struggle some days to figure out a topic and get the writing in. In previous years, I have had some really short and sort of pathetic blog posts during the month of March. This year, however, my writing muscles are flexing and I have been able to come up with good topics and am struggling to pick which one to write about. What’s more, some of the writing just flowed out of me. That has never happened to me before. So today I am celebrating feeling like a legitimate writer. If you missed them, here are my posts from this week:

We are Readers (SOLSC14)

That Kid (SOLSC15)

Blog Wonderings (SOLSC16)

Keep Calm and Carry on? (SOLSC17)

That Day (SOLSC18)

I also am celebrating challenging myself. I signed up to try to do a 7-day Blog Like a Pro challenge which is hosted by Jeff Goins. I am ridiculously far behind in my work towards that challenge but I appreciate the assignments and will probably be working through them. My blog wonderings post was some brainstorming about a manifesto. I think I know the focus for that writing, now I just have to get it to sound right. I had not planned on participating in this challenge and had a hard time finding the time to do all of the work. It seems to be a good process for the people who are keeping up and posting in the Facebook group so I will work to catch up this weekend.

I am also working on the appearance of my blog. I had some fun with Canva this week. I had forgotten how awesome that website is for creating content.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Signature

Celebrating Words of Encouragement (SOLSC5)

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.

Last June, I started going to barre classes at Barre Co. Bay View. At the time, I was out of shape. I had let myself have too much time off from exercise and I was at the heaviest weight I had ever been. I struggled through the class and went back for all 5 classes included in my Groupon. Then, I went back for more. All through the summer, I made it a habit to get to the gym for barre class. I continued to suffer through the class, modifying as I went along. Barre classes are full body workout classes that challenge your core. The thigh sets are killer and the teachers say that shaking is good because that shows you are changing your body. Seriously, shaking…

This Fall, I enrolled in the monthly unlimited package. Then, I realized that I could also get some reimbursement from the Healthy Contributions program that my employer is enrolled in. So for many months now I have been making sure to get to the gym at least 12 times in a month. The classes are challenging for everyone in them. Some days are better than others.

Yesterday, I was in class next to the owner of the gym. She had a baby in December and has not been at the gym as often as she was before. I haven’t really worked out with her since the last time she taught a class in November. Yesterday, I also had a chest cold and was having a hard time breathing. I had to stop at one point to get my inhaler and use it. I was beating myself up in my head and feeling like a loser.

And then, the owner of the gym turned to me and said, “Andrea, you are doing so amazing. You inspire me.” I was really surprised. I had been having this inner dialogue of failure and here she was telling me how great I was. Then, I thought about it some more. From her perspective, someone who had not seen me in a few months, I was so much more in shape and able to do so much more than I had before. It was so nice to take a moment and think about what I am able to accomplish now that I was not able to do as well a few months ago. It’s like when you are losing weight and you don’t necessarily see it as well as someone else who has not seen you in a while and suddenly sees you 15 pounds lighter. Somehow, that outside validation suddenly brings into focus the good results that you couldn’t see before.

The words of encouragement gave me a renewed motivation to continue to do my best. They helped me to recognize my accomplishments and stop the inner critic. This didn’t cost the other person anything, but meant a whole lot to me. It is a nice reminder to me that I have many people in my life that might benefit from some encouragement and kind words from me. Time to get out and pay it forward!

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate This Week: Routines 2/27

This week I am celebrating routines and rituals in my life.

First, for the last six weeks, I have been doing a challenge. I discovered this challenge on Facebook when one of my friends shared that she had just finished. I quickly investigated and found out that this was exactly the kind of thing I was looking for to challenge myself to change my eating habits and be healthier. The Whole Life Challenge is an 8-week challenge in which you strive to do 7 daily habits: eat well, meet your sleep goal, exercise at least 10 minutes, stretch for 10 minutes, drink enough water, do a lifestyle practice, and reflect each night. The challenge lets you choose your level of nutrition so that you can decide how strict you want to be with your eating. The most difficult level is pretty much the Whole30 nutrition. I am doing the Kickstart level, which is basically cutting out bread/pasta and cheese and sugar. What is nice about this challenge is that there is an online game in which you earn points–you can eat that thing that is not compliant, but you lose a point for eating it. I love that this challenge is not expecting perfection, but is making me think twice about whether I really want the treat. It has been really surprising to me how I really don’t miss cheese that much. I have discovered some great and flavorful recipes. I feel good about being healthier and forming some good habits to take care of myself. A bonus benefit has been some weight loss that I have experienced.

In my classroom, I have been working on tweaking our math routines. The other day, I came across an article that mentioned the two sisters and their Daily 3 for math. I had not ever heard of this. I knew all about the Daily 5 for literacy instruction, but did not know about the math procedures. This really resonated with me with the kind of math instruction I want to be doing. So, I jumped in this week with both feet. We had math choices and we had mini-lessons in between. My students loved it. There are a lot of things we will need to fix next week. There are some things that I thought would transfer from the work we have done in literacy that I now know need to be practiced for math time. But, overall, I was happy with what we did this week. I will be working to tighten our routines and find activities that will work well with the idea of having work times and choosing Math by Myself, Math with Someone, and Math Writing. I love the way this makes my math classroom much more of a workshop classroom and frees me up to really work with my struggling mathematicians and provide the best support for each student. I like the way this structure also makes me really streamline the time I have with the whole group.

The last celebration I have to share this week is the routine of independent reading in my classroom. My students are reading for stretches of 50 minutes to an hour. Yesterday, I stopped them after about 30 minutes of reading, because we had spent some of our reading time reflecting and writing goals. At the time when I stopped the reading, there was an audible protest from some students, even though they knew that board game time was next. I love that we have been able to create this sacred reading space that students look forward to each day.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate This Week 2/20 The Power of a Good Book

This week I am celebrating the power of a good book.

For the last several weeks, I have been making my way through the first Unit of Study in the 4th grade Units of Study for Teaching Reading. I went to see Lucy Calkins speak this fall, and I jumped in with both feet to the first unit. I have been busy working through the unit but also trying to bring it into the workshop routines I had already established. Like any time a teacher tries something for the first time, it has been slightly rocky for me, but I love the language and the ideas in the minilessons and I will continue to work with the Units of Study this year with the goal of starting with them from the beginning of the school year next year and getting a better start. The best thing about this unit is that The Tiger Rising is the read aloud and the book that all the lessons are centered around. We have spent a lot of time analyzing Rob and Sistine and the way the author describes them and the decisions that they make.

Yesterday, we were four chapters away from the end of the book. My students begged me to finish the book. So, I scrapped the minilesson for the day and we read. We read intensely. The atmosphere in the classroom was focused and silent. Anyone who has read The Tiger Rising will know that some intense things happen in those last few chapters…I won’t spoil it here. Suffice it to say, I started crying while reading the chapters. My students were crying too. We had an intense moment of shared vulnerability while reading a particularly emotional scene. And then, a few students who were uncomfortable with this, started trying to make fun of those students who were crying. I was able to take this moment and make it into a lesson about the power of literature to make us feel. I talked about the way that Rob’s feelings about missing his mother made me think about how I felt when my father died when I was young. I talked about how it was amazing that books have the power to help you bring out some things that you might have locked away in a suitcase the way Rob did. As we finished reading the book, the class got quiet again and soaked up the mood of the story. If someone had come into my classroom at that moment, they would have seen a handful of students with red-rimmed eyes and all students silently listening with rapt attention.

We are not finished with the unit yet. We will be analyzing some of what happens in the book to see if we can find some themes and the evidence to back them up. But these students will remember the afternoon that Ms. Payan and some of their classmates were choked up and touched by a powerful story. I cherish these moments and celebrate sharing the power of literature in our lives.