During college, I had a summer stint as a preschool teacher. I loved it. The small school was run by some sweet older women, and it took me some time before I understood their salient intentionality. During our preschool day, we had structured time and a good deal of planned unstructured time. During structured time,…
This is a tough time of year for me. The dates carry a lot of loss. They carry gratitude and joy and love for those who cannot meet me for coffee. And the dates carry losses that can feel weighty and hard to see through. But, along with the stuff of life, we teachers must…
We can easily forget that kids are kids, that kids are people. Our minds see lessons that must be planned and tests that must be graded instead of humans. Well, kids are kids, and, at our best, we are kids too. And, for kids, for us, there is nothing like 10 minutes of fresh air…
I’ll never forget my first elementary homeroom after getting my master’s degree, teaching fourth grade, worrying the walls of the classroom might not be inspiring enough. It was March, and I spent so much of the school year trying to keep up with my teaching, and the walls had seen little change, little attention. So,…
It’s one of those times of year when it becomes glaringly apparent that we all need a little fresh air, a solid dose of sunshine, and for everyone to have some space. It’s one of those times of year when you have pushed your drained self to write a pretty solid lesson. Then, you walk…
At my house, we call them “Get-Through-It Days”, though I think a better name might be “Forgiving Days”. A Forgiving Day is a day when we just don’t have our all to bring. We might be tired, distracted, sad, scattered. On Forgiving Days, we forgive ourselves first. It’s okay that we are presenting work and…
I was listening to an interview with Suleika Juoaud, best selling author and journalist- and wife of Jon Batiste. She was asked what she does on the middle days, the ones between the “exclamation points of life”. Suleika Juoaud is a force of immense and insanely varied talent, from musician to author to journalist to…
Take yourself back to that feeling of finding a seat in the school cafeteria. I remember walking out, holding my tray, looking up and looking down at the same time- really hoping I’d have a place to sit- someone who wanted to sit next to me or at least allow me to sit peacefully. It’s…
I tell my students that whispering is one of the secrets we learn in teaching school. It is such a beautiful thing. I am not a proponent of a silent classroom. But there are times when you need quiet to give a direction or redirect and return to focus. When the class needs quieting or…
I found the idea of creating classroom rules a conundrum. Knowing that kids are so attached to the concepts of fairness and boundaries, how can we possibly create a comprehensive list? Through many years in the classroom, I never found a reason for more than one rule: Be respectful, of yourself, of your class, of…