Hello, everyone.

Danny sent me this picture yesterday morning, and he said, in the text (yes, Danny texts...I know….crazy), he said, “You know what today is?”.  The answer, every day is, today is another day.  We’ve had that mantra almost daily for years. Well, mostly since 2011, when he survived.


A special hello to my students. We started spring break at 4:30 last Thursday. .  I hope you’ve been able to feel like this week has been a break for you. I have loved all of the posts on the Padlet we pushed out. How heartwarming to see so many of you with pets!  How wonderful to see so many of your faces. Your faces. I miss them all. I miss the smiles, the frowns, even the eye-rolls. I miss the laughter. I just miss you all so much.  

I have decided to make my blogs shorter and more frequent. My main goal will be about sharing gratitude. Gratitude is a way for me to focus on positives, and it’s about living in the moment.  It’s about now, not yesterday, not tomorrow. It’s part of our 7 mindset curriculum, but it’s been a huge part of my life for so long.  



I have tons of gratitude right now. I have lots of thoughts, but I’m going to start simple. A kitten found us, somehow climbing a tree on our 20 acre property, which is surrounded by 20, 40, 100 acre properties. We have no idea where she came from.  But she was in our tree, and she let us know she was there. We thought we’d keep her safe and find a home for her.

Well, we did. She is with us, and she has insinuated herself into all of our hearts. As I write this, she and our three year old cat are playing. 

As we all hunker in, I hope we’re all taking care of ourselves. I hope we’re finding ways to connect to others. I hope we’re finding the inspiration of boredom. For me, boredom has always inspired my creativity. That can be cooking, day-dreaming, solving problems, or creating something you never thought you’d create.  

For spring break, I’m actually considering going back to sketching.  I had private lessons years ago to learn how to sketch the 19th century clothes I was envisioning for my characters in my novel.  

But I also want to continue with my young adult novel I’m writing. I’d like my students to give me feedback.

But, I’m also just relaxing, soaking it in, planning creative meals.  Planning for teaching. I’m also connecting with my family and friends, via texting and video conferencing.

Goals: write two blogs a week. Work on my young adult fiction novel. Be well in all ways. 

Gratitude: our cats, Danny pushing me and comforting me, my students sharing themselves on the Padlet.  Our community.

​

The longer I teach, the more I realize how much I have to step back with my teacher voice. Teacher voice uses words like “fix, correct, right, wrong, I’d like you to,  …”

I have feedback conferences for daily work, feedback conferences for writing, and grading conferences. My students choose their writing and reading, and when I conference with them about their writing, I have learned to have super long wait time when I ask them what they want help with.

I don’t start with what I see needs feedback, I start with what they see. I want them to identify what their goal is and how I can help. The more they get used to this, the more they own their work, the more they own their writing.  Sometimes I give them examples of how they can show not tell, or how they can build scene setting, or I ask them about their choices. I usually ask if I’ve given them “enough” to think about. More and more, I feel like I’m giving very little direction, and they’re getting a lot from the conference.

I don’t think I spend more than 5-7 minutes per conference. I don’t read much of their work. I don’t have to. I simply need to read enough to “suspect” what their purpose is. 

It’s because it’s on them to think about what they need. They must use metacognition to analyze their work. I’m meeting them where they are, and we discuss how they can move forward.

The biggest impact of this type of conferencing is that they feel as though we’re both writers talking about writing. As we continue to conference about their writing, it doesn’t feel like I’m telling them how to “fix” writing but giving them things to employ and to think about to make their writing what they envision.  

I also always make sure they know that they can take any and all of my feedback or leave it. I stress that they are the writers, and that if my feedback doesn’t resonate, then they can simply move on. It’s rare that they don’t accept my feedback because it’s given as me in the audience role, asking questions, not slashing through words, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs.

Each and every writing conference is very different, and often I have to shift my thinking to help a student differently. For instance, today, I conferenced with a highly gifted writer, who writes in that process I call magic. She just writes scenes as they come to her, often not knowing what or where she is going with it.  I don’t ask her to figure that out. I just ask questions, and I talk about what she might need to do to come back to a scene to flesh it out once she has her plan. 

I conferenced with another writer today who is excited about their story, but this is new for them, this passion. They came to middle school hating to write, but now they love it. The difference is simple: they, in my ela class, get to choose what they write. I start class with a daily inquiry question, but their daily writing, they choose. 

I end each conference asking how helpful the feedback and discussion was for them. I ask them to articulate what impacted them.  Here are some recent answers:

• Very helpful. I see how much more I need to put in this scene to show not tell.
  
• So helpful. I get that I need to know my character better.
  
• So helpful because I realize I can revise this part a lot and have fun with it.
  
• Mostly helpful. I know what I should do, but I know I need to go back to play with my writing more.
  

And they believe they are writers. They are. A writer writes. That’s it.

My voice is the voice of an experienced mentor who enjoys exploring ideas, writing techniques, and mostly, honoring their writing voices.

Up next: how we get distracted by technology, even when it’s for good not evil.

Wondering how other teachers run their writing conferences in a workshop model.  

Goal: Write that “up next” blog by next week.
Gratitude: learning from my students and having them inspire my own writing.

​

So, today is February 11th.

It’s a beautiful day. It’s a new day.  We’re lucky we have this new day.

February 11th, 2011 was a different day. It was the day I was told my husband would not survive. 

For over two months, this was a message repeated by nurses, doctors, even from the look on our custodian’s face.


It’s a day we celebrate as the first day of the rest of our lives.

But it’s not all celebration. We have so many emotions. For me, the feelings, the intense trauma resurfaces, and I get a bit melancholy. I get into a state of remembering. The memory is almost embedded in my DNA. I feel it to my bones, the shock, the survival mode, the fear, which I pushed down to be able to cope and live in hope.

So it is a day of remembrance. For Danny and I, we feel the periphery of all these emotions for a few weeks leading up to this date. We feel the gratitude, the appreciation, and the humility of our good fortune.
​


But every year since 2011, I have let myself feel again, all the things I probably didn’t really let myself feel when Danny was fighting for his life.  

Mr. Cribby was then (and is now) a beloved teacher. I had to message in the Caringbridge blog the daily ins and outs of his battle in a way that was an amelioration x100 of what was really happening to him. His students, mine, the community, were all praying for him, thinking of him, hoping.

Hoping.

And I needed to honor their hope.  

When I re-read the blogs that I wrote to keep our community updated, I cannot fathom how I made his daily dire circumstances sound as if there was any hope.

I don’t know what begat what, in all of this, in his miraculous recovery. Did his daily abiding love and care for his students leverage more love?  Did my framing of his condition give hope, which led to positivity? Did the love that was pouring in, in forms of prayer, thought, and intention, change his circumstances to provide more hope?  Did our friends and family, their constant care of us, uplift us?  Did his sheer strength and will pull him through?   Did all of it come together in a synergistic blast of love that healed?  

All of these questions don’t really matter. I know this.

He survived. Love matters. We are blessed. 

What happened to him led to the most beautiful event that provides support to others, every year.  And, Mr. Cribby won’t like this. But he’s a hero. He’s a hero to all. And today, selfishly, my hero.

Goal: we get to help the Happy Smackah continue to thrive to help others.
Gratitude: this day. Every day. And our friends, who are our family, and our family, who surrounded us with all we needed so all of the energy could be for Danny to fight, and for me to have courage and purpose.



​

I’m so far behind in this blog. I’ve written twelve blogs since last April and have published none of them.  Here are the reasons why:

• Fear
  
• Things got too personal
  
• I didn’t like how I wrote and lost steam on revising
  
• I lost focus on what I wanted to say
  
• Fear
  
• Things got too personal
  

There are a lot of other reasons, but those are the main reasons. I’m going to do a quick verbal mash-up of what has been going on with my twelve (or more blogs):

    Caveat: I’m okay, really:)
    I’ve been thinking about teaching in ways that are the same as they’ve always been and also so different, and I can’t explain it without a few years off to study this (fear); I have had lots of family and friend stuff going on (things too personal); I wrote about pedagogy, ideas, student choice and voice, and it sounded preachy and pedantic (fear); I wrote about how I am good with thinking differently because I have an online PLN that supports my thinking (along with my teaching cohort) (fear); I wrote about how much less work it is to personalize learning with technology and feared teacher response (fear). More stuff happened to friends and loved ones and has activated that go-to response  and has exhausted me and makes me think I can’t quite take anything else (fear and too personal).

    There you have it: the subject of all my blogs that were layered under the context of really good things.  Here is the mash-up of all the good stuff I left behind:

    Caveat: I’m hoping this shows I really am okay:)

    Student choice allows students to have an authentic entry into learning; students’ voices are heard from the smallest items to the largest class-changing procedures; students can safely fail; students love learning and own it; students move me to learn, think, grow, every day.  What that last sentence just said x30.

    I’m more excited than ever to be a teacher. This school year, two weeks in, has been rough on me personally. I’ve been sick, busy with taking care of others, making sure I take care of myself, and...well, lots of other things. But being back to school has been the balm my soul has needed. My 8th graders are:

• Charming
  
• Funny
  
• Compassionate
  
• Filled with curiosity
  
• Surprising
  
• Hard working
  
• Not-So-Hardworking
  
• Silly
  
• Soulfull
  
• Themselves.
  

So, here. I braved this fear and am publishing this.  I needed to just reach out and write a blog. I will ask my students to hold me accountable for weekly blogs. And these 8th graders will do it.

And I ask my students to remind me, when I forget, to remember their lives, all that they have in their lives. All the good.  All the challenges. All that they fear. How it holds them back. And how we can move forward. How I can help them.


Gratitude: my students and my community of learners at school and online. And, Danny. And Emily.

Goal: put aside more fear so that my blogs reach more heartstrings.

P.S: to my 8th graders: Ms. Millikan described this blog as one big mindset.  What do you think?


​

I’ve confessed this in the public arena, but here I go again. I wasn’t a great student.  Neither was my husband.

We got it figured out once we moved to Colorado, took classes, established residency, and put ourselves through CU.

But back when we were in Junior High and High school, we were not engaged. We both have natural curiosity and loved to learn. We both love to read. Reading is pretty much all I did for as long as I can remember. When I was in Junior High I think I read 3-5 books a week.  Probably more.

We both took different paths to becoming teachers. Danny wanted to be a veterinarian, so he studied science. I wanted to be a psychologist, so I studied psychology. Danny realized (after volunteering at a veterinarian’s) that he didn’t like the human side of veterinary practice, mostly the irresponsible pet owners. But he realized he loved studying science. I realized I loved learning about psychology, but it wasn’t my passion.

So, I switched to English literature, my real passion. It was a passion I ignored when I was told I wasn’t a good reader and writer.

Danny switched to biological science.

Then, I realized that the best “job” for an English Lit major was to be an English teacher.  

I had never thought about being a teacher, but I remembered so many of my high school friends telling me I’d be a good teacher.  I had always laughed at that because I wasn’t even a good student.

So, I explored it. I went to a middle school in Boulder to visit a few classrooms. The day I went, there was an all-school assembly, and the entire middle school was raucously walking to the gym. The presentation was engaging, and I laughed and was intrigued along with the students.  When I met up with the first teacher, she asked me how I was doing, coming into the school on such a crazy day. I lit up and said I loved it. I loved the energy. She nodded and told me I must be meant to be a middle school teacher.

At another school, I observed a special education teacher who was phenomenal. When we met one on one, she asked me what I most looked forward to in teaching. I immediately responded with “getting to know the students and helping them find their voices.”  She told me I was a teacher already and would be great. She told me most people answered that with “setting up my classroom”. That shocked me. But it made me realize I was on the right path. I loved the crazy energy of middle schoolers, and apparently I had the right attitude.

As I was moving my educational path toward teaching, Danny realized he wanted to teach. My energy and excitement was a part of his thought process, but he realized something way before I did.  He realized that he wanted to teach because he wasn’t a happy student.

Danny wanted to be the teacher who cared about students’ ideas, and he wanted to be a part of a collective curiosity that explored, learned, and grew.

One of my administrators once told me there were two “types” of teachers: those who were good students and those who were not. More labels.  

Well, with regard to that label, we were the not.  And it has made all the difference.

In my last blog I said I’d tackle labels. Well, here they are:

• Lazy
• That kid
• That kid that’s like that other kid
• Doesn’t care
• Won’t try
• Does everything but what they need to do
• All they care about is…
• They’ll never change
• All they want to do is...

I could go on. I wonder sometimes what labels teachers had for me, and for Danny. I’m guessing I was labelled as lazy and only wanting to read.  

Lazy is a label.  It’s easy. But it’s a label. And it’s not right to call anyone lazy. I sometimes say I’m lazy when I spend Saturday morning on the couch watching old movies, but it’s just something I need. I don’t let students say they’re lazy. What they are is disinterested.  We all have wildly different interests and passions. I have a student who called himself lazy, but he’s putting together a proposal for a huge online gaming competition. He’s not lazy. He’s selective.

Labels help. They categorize, so we can shorthand a conversation. But, they don’t belong in our human avocation in teaching. We must find the gold in the student. We must keep trying to help them find the gold.  We must be relentless in this.

I see myself sometimes understanding one student’s lack of follow-through and then not understanding another’s, and it jars me how easy it is to judge, to label.  I have this one student whom I get on so much, and then I wonder why I get on this student but not another? After all these years, I have so much to learn and so many places to grow.  



So, I am on a mission to not label and to help others to not label.  Serendipitously, Danny just came by to tell me a story about a student and about a quote he’d wanted to share with her. This is not a direct quote. It is the idea:

“Your life is your own path and no one can have the same one.”

Because we are all on different paths, we should seek to understand, not judge. Not label.

I’m curious to know how other educators frame their thinking with students who don’t fit a “norm.”

Goal: Keep working on empathy.
Gratitude: That I wasn’t that good student. That Danny wasn’t that good student. That we really try to understand all of our students.  That we get to be teachers.

Gratitude 4.0: Logan Rosebrock, a student who designed my new Happy Blogah banner. All he wanted was for me to post a new blog post and credit the banner.  I need to do more for him. And...a shout out to all the amazing banners that students submitted.

Next Up: Lots of ideas, but I’m in Happy Smackah and track season, so I’m busy and not being as reflective as I should be.  I’m thinking that I want to blog about how amazing my students are. I cannot even begin to express how authentic their work is.

​

Months ago, I was asked to write a guest blog for a group of educational bloggers devoted to increasing the opportunity for authentic learning  by going gradeless. This group of educators, TG2Chat, explores the possiblities of putting learning and authenticity at the front of the classroom by eliminating grades. These teachers, the moderaters and creators of the group, and their hundreds of followers who are connected by this shared passion have pushed my work and thinking, but they’ve also given me an “at last” feeling of connection.  It isn’t about grades. It’s about learning. It’s about leveraging critical thinking over compliance. It’s about putting inquiry at the center, not the game of grades.

Yes, I still grade and give grades, but there has been a huge shift away from a number of grades into more feedback. Lots more feedback. And this is at the center of the TG2 group, finding ways to have students focus on learning and growing and not playing the grades game.

I’ve expressed before how using the writer’s workshop model has been an otherwise solo adventure. When my former student became my teaching partner, fully bought into the ideology of student choice and voice, pushed me into the greater realm of efficient work flow with technolgy, our classrooms exploded with even more possiblity.  All of this work made me seek more connections. I started blogging with no purpose other than to spit out my thoughts as they were churning. Then, I pushed out my blog onto social media platforms. My Twitter connections grew, and I got involved in amazing conversations, chats, blog-sharing, and ultra-learning.  

And I got connected, thanks to a local teacher, ironically, to the TG2chat folks. We connect via a private Facebook group, a public Twitter group, and a private Twitter chat.  How lucky I am to be a part of all these great minds and hearts. I’m learning, and I’ll say this, as selfish as it sounds: It’s comforting to have my thinking and ideology validated.

So, this blog I wrote for this group was a huge learning experience for me. I got pushed in all ways from thinking to using Wordpress and learning all kinds of new-to-me terms with technology and social media.  This old dog keeps learning.

Here is the blog I wrote for TG2Chat.  In keeping with the conventions of their blog platform, I left out my goals and gratitude.

Here goes:

Goals: Keep up this learning pace.
Gratitude: That I get to keep learning.  Oh, and also, that our new kitten is so sweet, and the cats are all settling into a mutual respect with hints of more fun to come.

​

We had back to school night last week, and it’s exciting to talk about the start of the school year with our amazing community. I usually start my language arts spheel with what I hope is a calming tonic to their ears.

Students’ reading practices can change in middle school.  For many, students keep reading as they always have. Many of them though, back off a bit. Even the passionate readers.

It’s all a function of topic, reading level, hormones, lack of sitting still long enough, etc.

My mantra is that parents should keep modeling a reading lifestyle, reading to each other, talking about books,  and avoiding too much pressure or any, about reading.  They will come out of this.  That’s what I promise.  Every time I promise this I worry a bit about the few who may not.  But those are other conversations and interventions.

More than the slow down for many in reading, parents worry about how often their student re-reads books, especially “lower level” books.

Here is where I get enervated and absolutely confident.  Re-reading is what writers do.  

I’m going to repeat this.  Re-reading is what writers do.  I know this as a writer, but also from patterns over time as a teacher.  I will be frank, though,  about where my absolute confidence comes from.  Stephen King writes about this in his book on Writing, “On Writing”. One of his biggest premises is how writers grow through in-depth study of worlds crafted by others. When students want to keep living in these most-often fictional worlds, they are creating a sense of how they want the world to be in the worlds that they live in within their imaginations.  

I’m a writer, and I re-read far more than I pick up new books. To push myself, I read new books and poems, but I mostly revert to the worlds that make sense to me in their style, flourish, feeling.

I’m currently listening to James Herriots’ All Creatures Great and Small Books on Audible. I have a 20+ minute drive to and from work, and I love listening to books as I drive.  So, I’m listening to these books (I’m on the third in the series), and I own the entire set in paperback (maybe my DH will buy me a nice hardback set one of these days). I’ve read them all no fewer than five times each.  The first one, I have read over fifteen times. I have also binge-watched the BBC series a few times.  I love this world. It’s about history, England, animals, and amazing characters.

But just today, I realized, as I finished the second book, as James Herriot is headed off to serve in the Royal Air Force during WW1, ten minutes from school, tears running down my cheeks, why I love these books so much. I thought it was the stories of animals, history, charming real-life characters, and the portrait of the rugged Yorkshire landscape. But today, at the end of the book, as he is describing his gratitude for living as he does, I realized that what I love about his books is his lens on gratitude.  He’s a storyteller, brilliant, amusing, hilarious, heart-warming and heart-wrenching.  But all of his stories have the theme of his gratitude.  Even when he is trudging through a blizzard after no sleep, and no idea where he is, he appreciates life.  Even after yet another crusty farmer disrespects his work and aggravates the situation, he has gratitude.  Even when the lonely old widower has to have his long-time companion, his dog, put down, he has gratitude for being a part of this.  

He appreciates life. All of life.  His self-deprecation, eye for raw beauty, and his  wry wit are all a part of the appreciation he has for everything.

When I started blogging when Danny was hospitalized in 2011, I created a theme of gratitude.

I did not know it then, but I had learned that in many ways, through my family, through friends, through Danny.  And I learned it as my soul learns, through stories. Through narratives that are more real than life.

It is why I love those books by James Herriot.  

It is why I am blogging about teaching. I have deep gratitude for every moment I learn from others, from my students who gift me with their hearts, minds, and souls.  

I wish I could express myself as James Herriot does, but I’m grateful that I can keep working at honing that craft.  

I have gratitude for re-learning through rereading. I appreciate how much I understand because I have lived in so many lives outside my own through the gift of others. It’s why I know students who love to read will always love to read if things stay positive, and if they have choice about what they read, and how often they re-read, even if those stories, those ideas are maybe “lower”.  A story is a story, and reading is reading. We’ll all keep reading if we enjoy it.

Goal: Keep writing and sharing and learning. Keep these lessons in my heart. Keep learning and growing with my students.

Gratitude: Oh, everything. The deer eating our garden tonight, munching and looking at us with complete innocence. Our cats who silly up our lives. My family and Danny’s family. Our friends and colleagues. This night sky that is slow to darken tonight. The fresh dill I bought at the farm stand tonight.

​