Allison's Top 10 Books of 2014

#1) Lying by Sam Harris was published in November of 2013, and since then I've purchased four copies to share. It's actually not very well written, but it earns top billing on my list because the concept of living without any form of lying was key to my 2014 year. I could not stop talking about this slim, life-changing book. Read it. Then start watching how often you might be lying without consciously thinking about it. Living lie-free is challenging--and gloriously freeing.

#2) The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld was stunning. The story of death row is told through multiple characters: inmates, the fallen priest who serves in the prison, and the social worker whose investigations offer inmates their last chances to escape the death sentence. Denfeld accomplishes what I want in literature: she turns the pain of human experience into something beautiful. She is able to show the death-row inmates in their raw evil, yet still show us their humanity. Heart-rending and up-lifting: the ultimate combination.

#3) American Pastoral by Philip Roth - This wasn't a 2014 book, but it was one of the most engaging books I read all year. My neighbors growing up were the Evans family, parents of Linda Evans, Weatherman fugitive. I didn't understand what this meant as I delivered the Des Moines Register to their Ft. Dodge doorstop in the mornings. Philip Roth showed me.

#4) Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast. Oh my. If you are my age (54), you might be facing the aging-parents phase of your life. Chast is brilliant. Please share this with people with aging parents. Brutally honest and brutally funny.

#5) Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.: A Novel by Adelle Waldman - Books that made my list are ones that I found myself recommending or buying for other people. The 20-somethings in my life verified my sense that this hilarious and biting book is a dead-on reality dose.

#6) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - Written in 2001, the book finally made it to the top of my to-read pile. I understand some people have loved this book while others found it too crazy. Put me in the former category. I was enthralled with the way the stories spun out in roiling, manic voice.

#7) Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan - I chomp through a lot of YA books, but this one has lingered with me since I read it last spring. Just a dear book. I haven't felt compelled to foist it on a lot of my high-school readers (its protagonist is in junior high), but I've recommended it to my adult friends.

#8) Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes - Now this is a YA book that I've shared with several of my students--and with good results. I had some issues with the ending (one of the pleasures of being a reader is that you get to pass judgement on endings!), but overall I found it highly readable, honest, and funny.

#9) Big Little Lies  by Liane Moriarty - Oh this was fun! A mix of dead-on hilarious parenting commentary plus a murder (?) mystery and an examination of domestic abuse in wealthy households. One of those books I couldn't put down.

#10) All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy - Dipping back to 1993 for this one. I was on a kick this year to read some of the Pulitzers I'd missed and this was one I loved. It reminded me of Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain" with is heartrending portrayal of doomed love. My Pulitzer chase also led me to The Goldfinch and Olive Kitteridge, both of which I found disappointing on several levels: the writing, the characterization, the predictability. I don't mean to end on that sour note; rather, I want to contrast those more recent Pulitzers to McCarthy's beautiful classic--a velvet look at human anguish.

What made YOUR top 10 list this year? I'd love to hear! Please share!

Ask this question on every test:

What do you know/understand about __________ now that you didn't know/understand before our unit of study? 

Last week I asked a variation of this question at the end of an assessment on my students' learning from our Journalism First-Amendment study. In a paragraph, explain how you understand an aspect of the first amendment better now than you did a week ago. Provide an example that shows your understanding. 

Here are first three responses, which were fairly representative: 

     A week ago, I'm going to be honest, I didn't know anything about the First Amendment. I have learned so much, and I just answered every single question correctly on this quiz. 
For one, I did not know that it was legal to burn a flag when in disagreeance with the government. I did not know that that was acceptable, but I do now.
     A week ago, I also didn't know that a principal of a school can't say that something can't be published, like for eye of the needle because it's protected by this Bill of Rights.
     I didn't know that teachers can actually teach about religions, they just can't lead a prayer in class. I did know this to some extent, but I didn't know all the rules that came along with Relgion in the First Amendment.
     I also didn't know that so many things were actually protected by the First Amendment, I knew that most things were, but not as many as I do now. I didn't know you could say so many hurtful things and still count that as sticking within the First Amendment. However, even though you can mean things or bad things, this doesn't meant that consequences won't follow.

I learned more about the idea of religion in a school. When I was in Washington as a little kid, we said the Pledge of Allegiance every day, so I thought it was just a part of our daily lives. Then we stopped saying it, and I never knew why. Eventually I thought that religion was banned in schools, but now I know that it isn't banned, but it just cannot be promoted by school officials. Students can still follow their beliefs, but school officials and staff cannot promote it.

I didn't know or realize why we couldn't as a class do the things we can't do. Like praying, Pledge of Allegiance, or how the teachers can'r wear clothes supporting their religion or hang it up in their classroom. I don't feel that that is promoting the religion. I feel it's showing everyone you're proud of your religion. I understand why we can't force students to say the Pledge of Allegiance. People in our school district are different religions. I just found out today of a sophomore girl who is a religion who doesn't celebrate things. That reminded me of journalism due to not being able to do say the Pledge of Allegiance. My question is though, what if all of the students wish to say a gorup prayer? Don't sports teams before games send a prayer together to pray for a win and for everyone to be safe?

I loved how the third student revealed some misunderstanding that I needed to address and also boldly asked questions about subtleties in separation of church and state. I learned more about my students' understanding--and processing of their learning--from this one question that I did from the 19 other questions on the assessment. 

The lesson? Don't forget to ask the students what they've learned. 

If not kind, at least helpful

Nov 30 Practice an act of kindness this week and blog about your experience

Was I kind this week? I think I was--or at least I was helpful, a kissin' cousin to kindness. 

I hosted Thanksgiving. 

I dreamed up party games. 

I mediated my children's arguments. 

I cleaned a pheasant. 

I offered revision suggestions on drafts of papers about water scarcity in the Southwest and the United Nations R2P. 

I helped my daughter finish her teaching portfolio. 

I bought a Christmas tree. 

I watched the movie my kids wanted to watch. 

I learned to play a rudimentary "Thunderstruck" on the accordion at a colleague's request. 

I helped my husband bandage his broken thumb and I buttoned his shirts. 

I (helpfully) finished off the Key lime pie.

The November Attitude of Gratitude blogging challenge has come to an end. I'm glad I did it, but I'm THANKFUL it's over. 

Tune in tomorrow for my December project to organize my life. Each day I will choose one spot in my life that needs attention (car, house, classroom), set my timer for 15 minutes, then post the before and after pictures. I'm hoping the act of posting the pics will help me follow through with my good intentions! I'd welcome some company if any of you would like to join me!

 

Would you rather be smart or nice?

Nov 29 We all know someone who inspires us to be better. Share that person.

Years ago during a "Would you rather..." activity, I was asked if I'd rather be known as nice or smart. 

Hands down, my answer was smart. In fact I remember thinking it was a lame question. Why would anyone choose "nice" over "smart"? 

But my partner in the activity said NICE. I was stunned. I remember the moment distinctly--the room I was in, my position at the table--because it challenged my world view. Maybe "smart" wasn't the end-all-be-all I'd been raised to think it was. Just maybe being right was not the (only) gold ring. 

This memory came back to me as I read tonight's prompt. The people I am most inspired by these days are those who are nice. I think of Bev, a co-worker who retired last year. Bev was consistently kind in her comments about students and faculty. We taught at opposite ends of the building in vastly different content areas, yet she inspired me to be a better person, to rein in my cynicism, keep my snark in check.  

My daughter has a bumper sticker on her car proclaiming that well-behaved women rarely make history. I appreciate the message. I don't like to see women trapped by niceness, afraid to speak their minds or formulate opinions. But when I stack up my own regrettable moments, a theme emerges: Why did I choose to be unkind? For a moment of proving myself right? For winning a laugh? For a flash of superiority? Sheesh. Grow up already. 

Wait. That paragraph makes it sound like I'm a mean person. I don't think I'm mean. I'm just not as consistently kind as I want to be. I'd like for people to think of me as nice. (And smart.) 

Water Under the Bridge

Nov 28 Talk about one opportunity that you are grateful in hindsight for having passed you by.

After two years of teaching and the birth of my first child, I had the opportunity to reduce my teaching to half-time. This seemed like an ideal combination of teaching and mothering. The spring before my second child was born, my half-time position was eliminated. I stayed home for a year and finished my master's before job searching again. I interviewed in Atlantic for a full-time position, but then pulled my application to accept a part-time opening in Audubon.  

Atlantic was the bigger school. The position would have utilized my speech background. It would have been intense, demanding, consuming. Looking back, I realize my decision to opt for the part-time position was central to my life's focus for the next 15 years. 

After a single year at Audubon (and expecting baby #3), I resigned to stay home with my little ones. Over the next dozen years, I kept a finger in education by teaching occasional classes at the community college and giving book talks at the local library. I managed (poorly) the book-keeping side of my husband's young trucking company. (I was the kind of secretary who wrote load-out numbers in the backs of books I was reading. Not a highly recommended method of record-keeping.) And I raised my kids.

Staying home meant I missed the professional trajectory I may have followed if I'd continued teaching full time. Instead I meandered a path of free-lance writing, learned a ton about writing for publication, and these two important lessons: 1) Seeing your name in print is not as thrilling as that precious moment when the words come together in a satisfying way; and 2) The best part about writing is its requirement to live attentively.

I believe that there are multiple ways to live full and satisfying lives. I don't feel so much that I made THE right choice as that I made A right choice.

A sample from my days writing for BH&G

Snow Day

Nov 27 If you could bottle up the perfect day, what would it look like?

From out of the sky drops a day with no obligations, no commitments, no have-tos, no lists: snow day. Living in the country, we are isolated until the plows come through. As long as I have electricity, snow days are the best.  

One of my daughters went to Coe College where each spring they have Flunk Day, when the student-body president calls off classes and the whole campus cuts loose for a sixteen-hour party, complete with carnival games and free beer. Students may speculate, but until 6 a.m. on the day itself, Flunk Day is kept secret. The key feature of the day is its surprise factor.

I don't need the Tilt-a-Whirl and Budweiser, but unplanned permission to drop everything is my idea of a perfect day.

This is my 10,000th Tweet

This is my 10,000th tweet.
I've been on Twitter since June 2009. That's

5 tweets per day...

151 tweets per month...

for 66 months.

Probably one-third of those have been re-tweets of someone else's genius, which leaves me with 6666 original-thought tweets.

According to this excellent article about succinct writing from Rands in Response, the average tweet is between 14 and 20 words. I tend toward longer tweets, so let's say I've averaged 18 words per tweet.

18 words X 6666 tweets =119,988 words

My curiosity is brimming. What else could I have written in 119,988 words?

According to CommonPlaceBook.com:

I could have written As I Lay Dying (56,695 words) twice and still had 6598 words left over to write the U.S. Constitution (4400) and O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" (2163).

Or Sense and Sensibility (119,394) with 33 18-word tweets to spare.

Simply to read my tweets aloud (let's throw the re-tweets back in for this), you'd best allow 1384.6 minutes. That's 23 hours.

If it takes me a minute to think of each tweet and post it (or read a tweet and re-tweet it), I've twittered away 10,000 minutes. (That's 166 hours and 40 minutes.)

In 166 hours I could have watched (or played in!) 52 NFL games, which average 3 hours and 12 minutes each.  According to this crazy distillation, the football is actually in play for only 11 minutes of each game--but let's save that thought for another day.

In 166 hours I could have watched all 85 episodes of Mad Men (47 minutes each) with 100 hours left over to attend the New York Philharmonic's performance of Handel's Messiah (2 hours 30 min.) 40 times.

I could have watched 555 18-minute TED talks.
I could have run 909 11-minute miles.
I could have prepared this Creamy Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole 181 times.

This is not to say I regret my tweeting. I've connected with hundreds of interesting people (I follow 1601; 1019 follow me), and I am daily directed to blogs and articles that expanded my thinking.

But it is best to remember from time to time that all of life is choices.  I could have driven from New York to L.A round-trip twice.

I could have crocheted 12 baby blankets.
I could have ridden Secretariat around the Kentucky Derby course 5000 times.
I could have had Shrek makeup applied 111 times.

Wow. Maybe that's what I should have done.

Letting Go

Nov 25 What would you like to let go of?

I think I'm pretty good at letting go. I have pogo-stick cheerfulness and a very short memory. These are the traits of a happy woman; they keep me facing forward and winking at disaster. 

But lately I've been carrying something that I need to unload: my age. 

Until just recently, I've loved each of my ages. I didn't even blink when I turned thirty. I laughed straight through forty.

At forty-five I was diagnosed with breast cancer, which made me nothing but grateful for the next half-dozen years.

Then suddenly I was fifty-five. My house emptied out, my babies turned twenty, my school offered me early retirement, and the skin on the back of my hands got all loose and oh, so soft--grandma skin. My waist thickened. I couldn't jump up on the tailgate of the pickup without unpleasant grunting.

I don't want to resent my age. I want to continue embracing each year, learning, leaning forward. But to do that, I must let go of my dismay with aging. I'm lucky to be surrounded by teen-age students, from whom I learn the latest slang and the new technology. Furthermore, I get to dress up like a super hero during Homecoming week and like the Grinch during Winter Spirit Week. How could anyone really grow old under such circumstances?

Dreams for the future

Nov 24 What are your dreams for education in the future?

I think I need a night off. I've spent the past hour waiting for, watching, and processing the Ferguson grand jury's decision to not indite Wilson. I'm weak, stunned. I'm very sad and discouraged about our country's racial divides and inequality of justice. 

I'll try again tomorrow. 

#AHSpositive, Part II

Nov 23 How did your Attitude of Gratitude work out - tell us about it.

On Nov. 9 the #TeachThought challenge asked us to plan a way to express an Attitude of Gratitude in our schools. I said I would tweet out #AHSpositive comments. Let's see how I did: 

Not good.

AHS J-Lab is actually me (the Twitter account used to notify my editors), so it looks like I posted positives three times. That is a 77% rate of failure, or--in the name of positivity--a 23% success rate.

As an exercise in reflection, what happened? First, I wasn't very committed. I was already nine days into a blogging month (which is a big commitment for me), and signing on for another layer of gratitude felt...secondary. Additionally, I've been using a loner phone, so I didn't have phone access to my Twitter account. Poor me. 

I can do better than that. But I need to adjust for the pitfalls that sank my first attempt. 

#1) Up my commitment.

I have eight days left in November. I will post TWO #AHSpositive tweets each day. This gives me 16 chances to redeem myself. 

#2) Link my #AHSpositive tweet to my blogging.
I have found success in the method of establishing new habits by linking them to old habits. In this case, I'm not forgetting to blog each day, so I will LINK my #AHSpositives to my blogging habit. 

There. Wish me luck.   

Tradition

What are your family traditions you are most grateful for?

When I married my farmer in 1984, I decided I should host Thanksgiving. After all, we were bringing in the sheaves; it called for rejoicing. 

This will be my thirtieth year of Thanksgiving on the farm. Two of my daughters, Eloise and Palmer, rolled in last night from New York and Cedar Rapids, respectively. Sons Harrison and Stuart will come Wednesday evening from Grinnell, as will my oldest daughter Brigham from Des Moines. My son Max in the Cook Islands will not be with us. 

When I opened this blog topic this evening, I asked the girls to answer the question. 

Eloise: 

St. Nicholas cookies

Chinese food on Christmas Eve

Thanksgiving at our house

Palmer:

Having a cleaning woman (Not sure this counts as a "tradition," but it has saved us from ourselves, and I'll never give it up.)

Mom reading "Kirsti and St. Nicholas" on St. Nicholas eve

Mom teaching us poems

Breadmen after school

I enjoyed hearing their answers, so I texted the question to my stateside children, two of whom who weighed in:

Brigham:

Dancing around the Christmas tree at our Danish family gathering

Breakfast on Trees

Running Mill to the Mermaid

St. Nicholas Day (Seems like a pre-game for Christmas, said Palmer)

Playing Fruit Basket Upset

Christmas stockings

Harrison:

Christmas presents

Daughters want me to watch "Mad Men" with them now. I will. Starting a new tradition.

Honestly...

Nov 21 List a book you are thankful to have read and how it has inspired you to be better at what you do

About a year ago I read Sam Harris's book Lying, which explores the rarity of complete honesty. Harris examines the implied I-know-what-you-can-handle-and-what-you-can't assumption behind even small lies and inspires the bravery to stop saying what you don't mean.

It's an exhilarating idea, one I've been striving towards since reading--and re-reading--the book. I was surprised to find just how often I am tempted to avert the truth, to gloss over or avoid unpleasant realities. Harris asserts that total honesty brings a new level of authenticity to living, and he's right. 

One aspect of honesty that I've embraced since reading the book is the policy of not saying something behind someone's back that I am unwilling to say to his/her face. If I want to complain about an administrator or fuss about a student, I owe that person a direct conversation. 

This approach has worked in two directions: it has prevented me from saying some things that didn't need to be said, and it has emboldened me to initiate some difficult, needed conversations. 

On the home front, I didn't realize how often I would fudge the truth, telling my husband "I'm on the way home" when I was still in the thick of helping a student, or saying "working on school stuff" to cover vague frittering on the internet. 

Since reading Harris's book, I (try to) avoid even the whitest lies. It's a challenging, freeing way to approach each day.

I have areas in my life that are not yet in truthful alignment. I struggle to balance my weekly church attendance with my vague-to-the-point-of-atheism beliefs. (I almost wrote "agnosticism," then decided I wasn't being honest.) I justify sitting in church--and on church council!--as a card-carrying doubter under the tenet that doubting is a part of a faith walk, and doubters have as much right to a pew as believers. Plus my husband is a Christian and likes me at his side. 

So. Once again my blog did not end where I intended it to. Thanks for listening, in all honesty.

Sink or Swim

Nov 20 What is one life lesson that you are thankful for having learned?

I learned to swim at age 35. 

Until then, I could dogpaddle and fake a heavy-legged sidestroke, but it wasn't pretty and it wasn't fun.

The summer of my thirty-fifth year, I confessed to my doctor that I was experiencing the mother-crazies: short-tempered days and sleepless nights as I tended six children under the age 10, including 9-month-old twins. As I look back, I now think his suggestion to "get some exercise" was a patronizing response to my desperate plea. (I struggled for another ten years before a more attuned doctor helped me back to sanity.)

Although exercise wasn't the answer to what ailed me, the doc's suggestion did inspire me to learn to swim, for which I am grateful on several levels.

First, my excellent teacher broke down the complicated multi-step process of swimming into individual steps I could understand and execute. I couldn't swim, but by golly I could, with practice, 1) kick my feet 2) move my arms 3) float on the water 4) turn my head 5) take a breath and 6) repeat. With each step, I inched toward confidence. When I learned to open my eyes and swim in a straight line, I felt magical, as if I'd learned to fly.

When I returned to classroom teaching seven years later, I was again grateful for having learned to swim, as it provided a metaphor for teaching students about speaking in front of a class. Some kids take naturally to water. They "always" knew how to swim. Others, like me, had to be taught step by step. Too often we teach kids to speak by "throwing them in the pool" once or twice a year. We tell them it's time to give a speech. The naturals swim, the sinkers go under.

I then explained that I had needed a good teacher to patiently teach me the multiple steps to staying afloat (and moving forward) in water, and I would teach them the individual skills needed to "swim" through a public presentation. I would not just throw them in and watch them flail.

We practiced walking confidently to the podium. We practiced making eye contact. We practiced the expectant pause that draws in the audience's attention. We gave 3-sentence speeches (Turtles are amazing. Several types can live to be more than 100 years old. Now you know something about turtles.) until we could deliver them smoothly, with eye contact and a gesture. We wrote introductions, then bodies, then conclusions--delivering each with our increasing skill. In other words, we practiced, practiced, practiced each small skill, linking it to the others: learning to swim.

Learning a new skill as an adult is challenging, humbling, and exhilarating. I've since learned to ride a unicycle, play the accordion, and (almost) walk a slackline. This week I wrote my first "hour of code." Learning to swim at a belated age nudged me from my fixed mindset that all skills could be divided into two groups: things I could do; things I couldn't do. There is a third group: things I can learn how to do.

Eloise, a natural swimmer, and her mother, a natural sinker.

Thank-less

Nov 19 Tell someone you know how grateful you are for the work they do. Share your story here.

It's Day 19, and I think I'm all thanked out. Maybe I don't have 30 days of gratefulness in me.  

I tried to write about how grateful I am that my 85-year-old mother-in-law does my laundry, but it turned into a rant about how many Fitbits and iPods she's unintentionally sent through the extra-soak cycle. 

I thought about penning my gratitude to the UPS driver who manages to navigate our driveway almost daily without running over our ill-behaved dogs. Or expressing my gratefulness to my husband for finally fixing a ceiling light that I'd asked him to fix last July, August, September.... 

It seems that in the shadow of my gratefulness lie my shortcomings: I'm too frazzled to do my own laundry. I can't train a dog. I am a shrivel-hearted nag. 

You see, the dark side of gratefulness is its implied need. Reciprocity calls for me to repay those I lean on--or at least to say thanks.  Somehow tonight I've shrunken to a new level of small person, resenting the indebtedness that gratitude implies. 

Oh what a fuss I am! This isn't what I meant to write at all. I can't seem to find a way out of what I've written, and I can't bear to start all over. 

Tune in tomorrow to see if I have sloughed my dusty snake skin. 

My Colleagues, By the Numbers

Nov 18 What do you appreciate about your colleagues?

I'll go for 18 on the 18th:

1) One pokes her head in my room to tell me a math joke:

Q: Why did the chicken cross the mobius strip? 

A: To get to the same side. 

2) Another vacuums around my room's unwieldy sofas and never complains (to me).

3) The third uses cajoling and patience to remind me (again) to take attendance.

4) Number Four is a new teacher who's a natural in the classroom, blending warmth and control in perfect measure.

5) This man has a forgiving heart and a cheerful spirit. His darling kids as a bonus.

6) Miss Six finds tech answers like it's her job. Wait, it is. But she rocks it like no other.

7) Lucky Seven is a life-long learner and a positive role model. And he wears a tie every day.

8) Eight is a rocket-fueled dynamo. Plus her room looks like it popped off Pinterest. So stinkin' cute.

9) Number Nine truly listens. 

10) I have never, ever seen Mr. 10 in a negative mood. Our kids are so lucky he's in our school.

11) Look who decorated for Thanksgiving with colorable table cloths for the teachers' work room!

This is just like the tablecloth on our teacher tables.

12) This teacher is helping our CLT to be more reflective and responsive to each other's needs.

13) Hilarious, whip smart, and determined to make our guidance office welcoming and helpful. Thanks, 13.

14) You should all be jealous that #14 is our guidance counselor and not yours. Biggest heart ever.

15) Fifteen sits in the driver's seat of this behemoth machine known as AHS. We'd be lost without her. Plus she wins the Nicest Person award. Worldwide.

16) Sweet Sixteen's students prepare and serve Trojan Diner, my best meal of the month.

17) Who untangled my tax-exempt-certificate-online-order tangle this morning? That would be the amazing #17. 

18) I ran out of numbers before I ran out of things I appreciate about my colleagues. This was a good exercise to pause and articulate some of the positive things about the many wonderful people I work with.

Meeting Billy Collins

Nov 17 -
Meeting Billy Collins 

Me: Hello [I know you don't know me, but I know you because I've read your poems and therefore my buggy eyes are going to leap off my face and attack you! I will also pant and drool a little bit.]

BC: You must be from Iowa [You are pathetic.]

Me: Yes! [I am so lame that I can only talk in monosyllables! But I can waggle my head!]

BC: I could tell. [You. Are. Pathetic. And I am weary.]

--Signs book


Me: Thank you. [There! I did it! Two consecutive syllables!]

BC: Next? [They don't pay me enough.]

Me: Graaaggbble [Exit, gnawing my fist.]

My Fantasy Faculty League

Nov 16 What is the most powerful aspect of being a connected educator? What are you grateful for?

Jenny Paulsen's entry on day 14 of this #TeachThought blogging month is a golden example of why I'm grateful to be a connected educator: I get to choose my colleagues! Jenny's post made me wish she was a teacher across the hall. Of course she's not. She's in Cedar Falls.

And Brittany Jungck is in Waterloo.  Kimberly Witt is in Milford. Missy Hauptsteen is in Clarion. Yet these November blogging partners are essentially hand-picked co-workers. They are my Fantasy Faculty League, plucked from teams across the state, selected for their willingness to share their hearts and foibles and high-fives and frustrations every day for a month.

I have more hand-picked virtual colleagues on the ICTE Facebook Group, where we ask each other questions and share resources and connect for conferences and EngCamps and Billy Collins poetry readings. 

Wider still is my flight of Twitter colleagues, 1586 thinkers and doers who sprinkle my days with quips and links that broaden my mind.

And because these folks are online, they don't hog more than their share of the donuts in the teachers' lounge or rag about students I love.  I can quietly un-follow them if they get too crabby.

According to Mapquest, it would take me 9 hours and 57 minutes in current traffic to drive by and wave to Jenny, Britt, Missy and Kimberly.

Sonnet to Google Forms

Nov 15 What tech tools are you most grateful for? Why? How have they changed what you do?

Sonnet to Google Forms

Oh, Google, did you make the forms for me?

You read my heart; sent forms from up above!

You knew I needed instant ways to see

My students' learning (or the lack thereof).

Now every week--or sometimes more than that--

I use a form to read my students' minds.

A form invites: an on-line welcome mat!

More friendly than a quiz, more fun, more kind.

The students open up; no fear or shame.

They talk of struggles, what they're striving for.

Assessment in its truest, honest frame--

No grading, just a sharing, nothing more.

Dear Google Forms, you've changed my scope, my reach-- 

You've helped me see the hearts of kids I teach.

Shortcuts to more effective teaching

Nov 14 5 things you are grateful to have learned in your teaching career

My hope is that you might take a shortcut through the years it has taken me to learn the following lessons:

1) Post the day's plan. Maybe the rest of you figured this out before I did, but the realization made a huge impact on my confidence. I post the day's bullets on the back board where I (and students) can see it. It reminds me where I've been and where I'm going. Brilliant.
2) On that bullet list, I mark at least one activity with a star. This indicates that the activity will involve talking, interaction and movement. I promise my students that there will be at least one star on each day's agenda.
3) Go deep, not broad. My students spend most of their days going broad: gathering vague, wide information. My room invites them to go deep. This is a lesson I have to keep re-learning. It is better to learn one concept for life than to remember 20 lessons for one week. I mean that.
4) Like the kids. The #1 question kids enter a room with is "Will my teacher like me?" My answer is yes. I am paid to fake it 'til I make it. This isn't a shortcut I learned over the years; rather, it's been a mindset that has grounded my teaching from day one. It minimizes discipline issues, it increases student motivation, and it warms the room.
5) Stay on top of the grading. I have learned that it is much better to stay current with reading/responding to student work than to put it off. (I say this even as I have last week's essays back-piled. Let's just say this is a lesson I am still learning.)

Wow. This list was spontaneous and certainly not exhaustive. It also inspires me to think of a "Do Not..." list of lessons. Maybe I'll save that for another post...

Kylie (to my right) asked that we take this picture during editing today. Not our best picture, but I'm always happy that my kids consider Room #408 a haven--and a photo op.

In Praise of Naps

Nov 13 What do you do to take time out for yourself?

I nap. I've written about this before, but it is truly the best thing I do for myself. 

My energy peaks shortly after I wake up, holds steady until about 11 a.m., then drops off precipitously in the afternoon. With the 3:19 dismissal bell, any neurons still firing go cold. I can't complete a sentence. I can't dial a phone. I can't read anything more complex than the back of a cereal box. 

So I take my nap. Note my choice of determiner. The nap is mine. 

Falling asleep while listening to an audiobook is perhaps the most delicious three minutes of my day. Two hours later--TWO HOURS!--I wake up and start my second day (two for the price of one, I tell the nonbelievers). The nap sweeps away the flotsam and jetsam and gives me a clear head for evening hours. 

I would now like to draw a picture to illustrate my day's energy cycle: 

CLICK HERE! (Hint: adjust replay speed to fast)

On Love and Death and Photographs

Nov 12 Share a photo - or photos - of things / people you are grateful for.

I thought this would be a quick blog post...just find a few snaps to show some things I'm grateful for. Instead I opened a photo folder and found myself transported back to the spring my youngest sons, then sophomores in high school, and I visited Max, my oldest son who was teaching in the Marshall Islands at the time.

Maybe my mood is impacted by the email notice I got this morning telling me that I qualified for early retirement. (Me?! But I'm too young! You must be mistaken. You say I'm dead wood? You say our school would be better off if I slip off stage left and let an ingenue take my place?) Then, a well-intentioned question from a colleague this afternoon required me to put into words if/when I might stop teaching comp.

My mortality box is a tiny velvet, silk-lined box buried deep under my piles of LIVING. Every now and again I see it flash past, but I'm usually too busy to peek inside. Today it showed up twice. Once at the suggestion of retirement, and again when I had to think about the end of teaching a class I love. When I opened the Marshall Island pictures, I was transported to the other-worldliness of a trip that is now almost four years in my past. The pictures compounded my sense of life rushing past me. Clocks ticking.

One of my college professors told me that all poetry is about love and death, life's two ultimate questions. I can't look at pictures tonight without feeling both.

Son Max with his host brother Anthony. Because we visited at the end of Max's year on Wotje, he returned to the states with us. This was taken on his last night on the island. 

The amazing going-away celebration the community threw for Max 

Harrison, Max, and a dear boy whose name I have forgotten

A wall in Max's classroom

Brothers

Harrison and Stuart in God's water

Son Max Hoegh

Children of Wotje

The Most Important Lesson

Nov 11 What is the most important ‘lesson’ you want to teach your students?

You are lovable and capable.

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Pep Assembly

Nov 10 Being grateful for humor - share a story about a time in career where humor played a part.

I like to say "bad travel makes good stories." When I find myself in Beijing, whispering "I'm going to die" while riding on the back of a motorcycle as the driver jumps the curb to scoot around slow traffic, or while watching 4-inch centipedes scurry across the ceiling as I try to fall asleep on my cardboard mat on Wotje Atoll, I remind myself I'll have stories to tell.

I practice the same mindset on bad teaching days. Reframing the experience as a story helps me process disaster into...less than disaster.

From late August:

I am the one-woman engine behind #AHSfuel, a de-feminized pep club of sorts. I get paid a whopping $900 a year, which comes to about $25 a week for hosting a Monday-morning meeting and helping kids organize the pep bus (which was cancelled this week when only 14 kids signed up), distribute Trojan tattoos (during A lunch; the assigned kids forgot during B lunch), and dream up the student-participation games for pep rallies. 

Yesterday was our first rally of the year. I spent the day praising M for her great organization of our game, which involved four kids from each grade (who then each chose four partners) for a total of 8 people per grade. This meant we had 32 participants out on the gym floor. 

Unfortunately, when L grabbed the mic, she called for "everyone we asked to be in the game" to come down. Many confused freshmen (whom I'd invited to be part of a different ball-tossing game that opened the assembly) came onto the floor and huddled around me like...confused freshmen. 

Meanwhile a dozen bossy seniors (mix of AHSfuel members and my journalism editors, who think they deserve to be front and center of everything--a mindset I've too often foolishly encouraged) started the cat-herding process of directing half the freshmen/sophomores/juniors/seniors to the north side of the gym, and the other half to the south side. 

A major argument ensued over whether we could roll up the cheerleaders' mats in the middle of where we needed to push the scooters for the game (answer, no). Students began randomly tying blindfolds on each other (blindfolds were part of the game; the random part wasn't). For some reason the scooters were in the far corner of the gym and only Ryan (WHERE'S RYAN?!) knew where they were. 

I think we only ran around like this for about five minutes, but I might be airbrushing the memory so I can forgive myself. It was a disaster. I almost grabbed the mic and said "FORGET IT. WE'LL TRY AGAIN NEXT WEEK" (read: NEVER). 

What I did was grab the mic and said "On your marks, get set..." to which the sophomores and juniors screamed "NOT YET!" I paused, reminded everyone that the winners had the honor of dousing the principal and vice principal in the ALS icebucket challenge...and tried (again) to start the race.

The scooter race itself took about 2 minutes, which gave the band exactly 30 seconds to play our 45-second fight song before the kids' dismissal. I really felt bad. Bad. As in I went to my room and sat in the dark for about 20 minutes. I didn't cry; I just tried to think about other things. I then bumped softly against the pep rally thought, then circled around it, and bumped it gently again, trying to let myself think about it and manage the churning chagrin in my belly. 

The deal is this: disorganization is the biggest gorilla on my back. I work hard to keep it from peering over my shoulder and grinning maniacally at everyone who looks at me. The pep assembly was a very public demonstration of me at my disorganized, bumbling worst. But writing about it helps me remember these things:

1) No one NO ONE cares about pep assemblies.

2) Haters gonna hate. I'm a forceful (and for the most part quite competent) presence in the school. I gave my critics something to gnaw on for a time. That's okay. 

3) "Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending." --William Shakespeare

4) I'm okay.

Teaching Humor in Pictures:

Fabulous Liz Huggins and me as Prom emcees 2014. 

Senior paint fight 2013

Maria Oltmans, Yours Truly, Liz Huggins
Shakespeare on the Green 2013

Wotje Atoll 2012

#AHSpositive

Nov 9 What is one way you could develop the Attitude of Gratitude in your classroom or school? Try it out and let us know how it went in a couple of weeks.

A dear colleague introduced the hashtag #AHSpositive a couple of years ago. Teachers and students both use it to highlight events ranging from a good test score to a state-placing athletic performance. A couple of weeks ago my journalists decided to spiff up the hall by updating the bulletin board. They printed off dozens of screen-shots of #AHSpositive tweets. 

I have seen many students pause to read the tweets. For the next two weeks, I will make it a point to contribute an #AHSpositive from my classroom. I'll report out on the 23rd.

Moments I Teach For

Nov 8 Write about a memorable moment in the classroom and how it reminded you about why you love what you do.

From Wikipedia:

In its most simple and basic form, a moment is the product of the distance to some point, raised to some power, multiplied by some physical quantity such as the force, charge, etc. at that point:

,

where  is the physical quantity such as a force applied at a point, or a point charge, or a point mass, etc.

In the classroom a Moment might look like this:

The distance from ignorance to understanding,

raised to the power of the collective, 

multiplied by some electrical charge.

In other words:

The flash of a new idea, 

experienced exponentially,

zapped with Ah-ha!  

And that's practically Haiku:

Her small voice quivered

Bud of nebulous insight.

In unison: YES!

Those are the Moments I teach for.

Teaching 2.0

Nov 7 What new learning has inspired you in your career?

In 1989, after five years of teaching, I took a 14-year break, during which I lived out my Wendy fantasy:  

"Oh, really next I think I'll have
     Gay windows all about,
     With roses peeping in, you know,
     And babies peeping out."  --J.M. Barrie

In truth, I spent untold mothering hours at the computer, writing, while my benignly neglected babies smeared the windows with their sticky faces, and weeds choked out any rose bushes.  

But at that computer I learned word-processing, and it transformed my writing process. When I 

returned to the classroom in 2003 (the year MySpace, Skype, and the iTunes store came to be), I could not imagine asking students to compose without the capabilities to move text around, cut and paste, delete and un-do.  

Tech was happening, and as a new (again) teacher, I was poised to become a scout on the frontier. With the support of a generous, visionary IT, I embraced the role with stunning naïveté. I do believe my greatest assets in learning tech have been my tolerance for unprecedented levels of confusion and the speed at which I forgive and forget my mistakes.

The experimenting mindset required to trailblaze tech filters into other aspects teaching as well. My classroom is increasingly student-centered and student-directed, which inspires a new verse to my song: 

"Oh, really next I think I'll have
     Computers all about,
     With students owning what they learn,
     And me just hanging out."

My sweet babies, ages 3-12, 1997.

Right Words

Nov 6 Share a quote or verse that has inspired you and tell us why.

From The Paris Review, Spring 1958
Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21

Interviewed by George Plimpton

The above Plimpton-Hemingway exchange is one of my favorites. It captures the essence of the writer's struggle.

I come back to this core of purpose time and again. The goal is always to get the words as close to "right" as we can.


And this reminds me of a line from "Wrist Wrestling Father," a poem by Orval Lund:

In distilling my purpose as a writing teacher, I come down to this: I want students to push toward the satisfaction of finding right words, yet to live in peace with that goal's elusiveness. 

Good Reading

Nov 5 What are your strengths? Which are you most grateful for?

As soon as I'm done with this blog post, I get to finish the last 40 pages of Falling Into Place, by Amy Zhang. After that, my bedtime book is Philip Roth's American Pastoral. On Sunday I will spend the evening at the Des Moines Public Library, attending my version of a rock concert: a Billy Collins poetry reading.

I'm a good reader. I'm not especially fast, but I read with my antennae out, feeling the vibrations of a well-crafted phrase, the tingle of an allusion, the tremor of a recurring motif. My developed ability to read richly makes me envious of those who have similarly developed appreciations for music or art or sports or finance....

And that keeps me humble. I'm not a good reader because I am brilliant, any more than I'm stupid because I can only appreciate classical music superficially.

My strengths were not--like dimples or good hair--bestowed by the fickle pot-bellied gods; rather, they are developed, nurtured skills. I was lucky to have parents who read voraciously--to themselves, to their children, to each other. My earliest memories are of stories.

I then spent years reading Seventeen Magazine and steamy fiction, and filling spiral notebooks with such poetic lines as "I hate my mother" and "Joe Ruge is so cool." I had no idea I was building the foundation of literary appreciation, but I was.

At some point I discovered that while it felt good to pour out my thoughts onto a page, it felt even better to find word combinations and rhythms to make those thoughts ripple and swirl. And the more I read, the more I sensed how writers were tugging (or failing to tug) me into their thoughts.

I can't calculate the hours I've spent at a keyboard or reading. I'm pretty sure if I'd put that time into tightrope walking, I'd be living out my circus fantasy by now. If I'd spent those hours playing the piano, I'd be past the Level 4 books I've been stuck at since eighth grade.

The upshot is this: what we do becomes who we are. The things I'm best at are things I've invested my time doing. And now, friends, I have some books waiting....