I’ve worked with our head custodian for over 25 years. We have traded sports stories, enjoying a rivalry. Mike is a straight up Broncos fan, a straight up Colorado sports fan, but he’s a straight up honest guy about sports. 

He gives credit where credit is due.

He likes me even though I’m a Pats fan.

He understands to the deepest level how exciting it was when the Red Sox won the world series...finally, in 2004.

Our lives have intersected daily  for years, and these interactions have been casual, polite, and filled with the mutual respect of co-workers.

Fast forward to 2010, when Dan joined the staff at Westview. Dan and Mike hit the ground running with understanding and sports rivalry camaraderie and a deep mutual respect and that male bonding of ribbing. The Monday morning quarterbacks.

Over the years, Dan and Mike hit it off more and more, and I got that fallout of favor, so that our relationship, between Mike and me, grew.  

Once, only once, Mike and I had a tiff. I’d not communicated with him and his custodial staff about my upcoming drama event. I put them in a hard situation. He called me on it. But I was stressed out about the whole thing, and when he barked at me, I cried.  Not in front of him, but later, when I was feeling so overwhelmed and sad that I’d made other’s work more difficult.

That next day, Mike walks in my room with a Patriot’s football and an apology.

How hard that must have been for him to buy a Patriots football!  And I was the one who was mostly in the wrong.  That gruff guy showed his compassion to me, and that football is a deep treasure.

When we went into quarantine, Dan and I did not return to Westview until we came back to school in August. Mike watered our plants (and we have a lot of plants!), and he took care of Dan’s fish tank.

We were back here for a month before I realized something small that Mike did, that I hadn’t noticed. And when I say it was small. I mean. It was gigantic. A small thing that meant so much to me.

I was in a space where I came in to teach online and then left.  I planned at home, did most of my work at home at night. I didn’t pay attention to my classroom space.

Mike’s daughter works at King Soopers, and she shared with Mike, who shared with me, that his daughter has seen the best of humanity and the worst of it, working in retail.

We talked about how we have to focus on the best of humanity, and the small gifts, the gifts of nature and of humanity.

So, here is my story of the best of humanity. 

When I finally paid attention to my  space to get it ready for students, I saw something so beautiful.

Before quarantine in March, I’d put a few plant cuttings in a cup to have them root, so I could re-pot them.  Just last week, I looked down at a corner, buried behind my dish rack, and those cuttings were still there, in that cup.

The cup was filled with water.  

The cuttings had new growth.

Mike had watered my cuttings. And he hadn’t just watered them for the five months we were gone.

He’d watered them while I was in my myopic space, ignoring my classroom, focusing only on my online teaching.  

Mike had to be at school from March on. Had to be there with no students, no teachers. Administration and their boss (I mean secretary) was there, but no life in the classrooms or the hallways. He saw papers in classrooms turning yellow and folding up at the edges.

But he kept everything alive.

Mike, your work, especially down to caring for my cuttings, is the best of humanity.  

Thank you.
  






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I have written a few blogs that I haven’t published. I have also written that sentence about a kazillion times.  I have hyperbole on the brain because we just finished reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis.  The narrator, Kenny, uses hyperbole about a million times.  Sorry.

One of the reasons I haven’t wanted to publish my blog is that there are so many feelings, thoughts, ideas, and I can’t seem to bring them into a theme. And, frankly, they just were either too personal, or too much about the “me” in this teacher -student equation.

I wanted to end the year with at least one more blog.  By year, I mean, school year, and that just made tears jump into my eyes (I think I stole that from Kenny’s voice in the Watsons.)  

I’m super lucky that students are very used to working with an online spiral for me; we call it “The Fireworks” document. Our routine is that they do all their inquiry responses and reflections in that document, and we use the comment feature for feedback.  It is such a treasure to have that routine in place because we can really talk about ideas, characters, thoughts, reflections in a way we’re all used to.  

I’ve been reflecting a lot over the past few years about how my one-to-one conferencing has opened up to have so much more authentic dialogue. The bottom line is that we talk as mutual learners and thinkers. I ask them what they would like feedback on. Most of the time, they have ideas, but sometimes, they want to know what I think. I’ve set up routines and practices so that we don’t usually sit and look at work and say, “oh, good job”. Well, we never do that.  So, it’s safe for them to know I’m not going to say that.  

The more I pulled away from leading conferences, the more I realized that they owned their work. For instance, a student might tell me they’re stuck in their writing. I ask them what they want to do about it. They shrug. I shrug.  Then, after some wait time, I ask them if they want to put it aside for a bit and try something else, or if they want ideas on how to get unstuck. It’s often 50/50 here.  

I know a lot of people want to “finish” things, and that is a valuable goal, but not in learning writing. Most writers start many projects and put them aside until something clicks. That’s the process. So, I honor that with students’ writing.  Finishing something is actually frowned upon. Who finishes quality writing in a week or two, or three?  And, I’m talking about their passion  choice writing, which, for most of them are novels, short stories, and screenplays.  Even Stephen King cranks out a book then puts it in a drawer (I picture the bottom right drawer of his desk. I wonder if that is just my own fancy or if I read that), for a year. He socks it away for a year.  So, we honor the process. All of writing leads to more writing, which leads to better writing.

But, here I am, once again, off course. One of my verbally gifted students, whose voice in her writing resounds like a coyote atop a canyon (I know, I really need to work on my figurative language), wrote something in her fireworks doc, and she asked me if it was swearing. She used the word heck.  I told her it was not swearing the way she used it, but that it was a really clear reference. I thought at first, that I wanted to tell her she just should have written hell.  I didn’t.  But, if we were sitting side by side in the classroom, we could have talked about the pros and cons of word choice. She has sophisticated instincts, so I know I could have that conversation safely. I believe she would likely still not use “hell”, but the conversation itself would be one of writer to writer.

I’m glad I didn’t write that to her because though she is a bright, wise, gifted, student, she is also twelve. Or eleven. And she doesn’t like swearing. I applaud her for that.  But without sitting beside her, I knew I needed to be direct and matter of fact, but I needed my written feedback to be “safer.”  

So, here is what she said about her feelings about swearing when I assured her that she didn’t curse: “I just really don’t like cursing…”

Here was my written response: “It has its place when characterizing characters, but, yes, I agree, it is harsh sounding, and it is often very derogatory.”  

Her reply to my feedback: “Quite True.”

I guess all of this is what my blog theme is:

1. I really miss the ability to sit next to my students.  Nothing can take the place of not just looking at the person, but adjusting tone, body language, reading each other to make certain any message is heard and felt not just with accuracy, but with humanity.
2. I really appreciate that I have been able to build the community of trust to relate with my students writer to writer, thinker to thinker

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Gratitude: all of the above, learning with my students, connecting with students as writer to writer, learner to learner, human to human.

Goal: Continue to develop this feedback cycle within the constraints of not sitting side by side.  

I have a P.S (or two):

• The student I referenced above worked with me on revisions of this.
• That student helped me with some much better figurative language, but I figured I should stick with my own because I like to show myself as a learner, and I am definitely a learner when it comes to crafting effective figurative language!
• That student gave me so much insightful feedback, and it was a true “loop” of feedback. We both got “off course” with our discussion. We discussed other writing ideas, techniques, and navigating our own moral compasses.  

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.

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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.

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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.
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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.



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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?


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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.

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