When I started cleaning out our closets for our pending move, I began a trip down memory lane. We spent twenty years in one school district! For 13 of those years, I had one of our sons in elementary school due to their spacing. Elementary school was without a doubt my favorite time of schooling…
Student Life
Slice of Life: Witnessing Pre-school Fits
While going to the post office this morning, I witnessed something I wish I hadn’t. There is a childcare and pre-school across the street from our post office. It was 11:15 a.m. when I came up the street and saw the school bus stop in front of the preschool. Since it is not very nice…
Maybe the End of an Era?
Yesterday, I did something that I’ve been putting off. If you read my blog regularly, you know we’ve been cleaning out in anticipation of moving later this year. Sometimes cleaning out is easy. You look at something and think, why did I keep that piece of sh_t? Or, sometimes cleaning out is hard. We all…
Poetry Friday: Poems Borne of Experience
Ten years ago, during the summer of 2011, my eldest son participated in the National History Day contest with a friend. Let me be clear, they were in the national part of the contest. This meant that they had participated at the district level, the regional level, the state level, and were selected to go…
Slice of Life Tuesday: Dreams vs. Reality
It’s been a long time since I was an undergraduate student “in college” – forty years ago this month to be exact! The Dream But, last night I dreamt I was an undergraduate student moving into my dormitory. It was vivid. My real roommate was there with me. We were not freshman, as we knew…
Advice to Moms: Don’t be a “fixer” for your kids.
As we move into the next year, there will be more challenges. Hopefully, this will include a resumption of an in-person school year for our students. As we transition, once again, there will be challenges to overcome even though it might mean the resumption of things we consider to be “normal.” At school, it can…
Poetry Friday: Stepping Out of the Box
During the month of April, National Poetry Month, I have tried new forms of poetry in an attempt to step out of my “box.” The box includes the forms of poetry I am comfortable with as well as my usual writing habits. While I’ve continued to write everyday, I have also been exploring places to…
Pourquoi? Por Qua?
One of the most satisfying, yet challenging, writing lessons I did with my former writer’s circle group was pourquoi tales. These are stories that tell how or why something came to exist. As you might imagine they are difficult to write but fun to read. Even though my students were above benchmark third graders, writing…
Where’s my mom?
It was getting later and later. My watch told me it was now approaching five thirty! Club dismisses at 4:45 p.m.. It was early February and now dark outside. The school parking lot was empty and the outside lights were shining on the snow piles, reflecting with a glare. All but one of my garden…
Slice of Life Tuesday: Provocation & Acceleration, Part I
One of my goals for this year is to ramp up my blog readership to at least fifty visitors a day. This month, February – a short month, that goal will be hard to reach. I was on target until a few days ago when I noted a failure to reach the previously attainable number….