Blue-Sky Teaching

I used to live only 5 minutes away from where I taught.  It was great - easy commute, run home if I forgot something, let the puppy out that year we decided that was a good idea. Now I drive 20-25 minutes each way to my new school.  It was an hard at first, then it became ok, and now I wouldn't trade it for anything.  The key to loving my commute:  books!  My school and local library both have large collections of  audiobooks.  I plug my iPad into the audio outlet, and I'm ready.  I've also learned not just any book will do. The first book I listened to was Goldfinch  by Donna Tart.  I listened in the car and also read the print book at home, a method that works well for me for fiction.  I did the same with Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken .  I love listening to the books being read, but also need to see the print - words and names on the page.  That first year was filled with rich literature and autobiographies that tran...

Is it motivation or manipulation? There's an old adage you've probably heard more than a few times before: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." I hear it more often than I'd like in my professional life.  As a teacher who works with struggling readers, it would be easy to call my kids unmotivated learners, to blame them for not wanting to learn, and write off the bad days as "not my fault."   Luckily, I don't believe any of those ideas. This morning,  I was in a meeting where another teacher was looking for validation from others about her decision to add incentives to independent reading.  She began with, "I know I shouldn't do it, but..."  She went on to say that independent reading just isn't working for her kids, and she needs to do this.  "I just need to meet them where they are," she said.  In my head I thought, "And why is this where they are?" This approach to motiva...

Five am is early.  Five am in dark, cold  January is very early.  After fighting with my schedule since August trying to make my gym membership work, I decided to let it go.  If I am going to work out, it has to be in the morning.  Evenings are my only kid-time, and that won't last forever. I gave myself some serious pep talks, set my clothes on the trunk at the end of my bed, made sure the alarm clock (across the room) was ready, and went to bed at 9pm.  To be fair, all I had to do was go downstairs to the garage where my treadmill is.  I did not have to go outside on a frosty morning run, like I used to do in my pre-kids days.  I did not have to drive to the gym to attend a class.  I just had to walk down to the garage. The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, eyes bleary with sleep.  I dutifully got dressed, met the dogs in the kitchen, and out we went to the garage.  I let them out the door, climbed on my treadmill and...

As a teacher and a mom, dealing with students all day and my own kids at night, I can easily be overwhelmed.  Some days feel like I motivate everyone else - cheer them on, pick them up, encourage and argue that they can do something.  This can be draining. One of the most helpful phrases that I try to keep in mind is "What you focus on, you get more of."  I first read this in Becky Bailey's book, Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline .  To be honest, I picked this book up in a moment of desperation.  My then three year old son, who had been with me in foster care since he was almost two, had a lot of challenging behaviors, and this title seemed to summon me with incredible force.  I wanted to have someone tell me how to make him stop screaming when he was angry, how to use words when frustrated, and how to not get so wild and crazy out of control when he was having fun.  I just wanted someone to fix HIM.  This seemed to be just the book. But w...

Friday night has arrived:  artichoke and spinach pizza from our own local Shakespeare's Pizza, one Henry cat cuddled in my lap, and I just finished Jennifer E. Smith's lovely book, the Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight .:  happy, sweet, romantic and full of life lessons about love of all kinds.  My head is swimming with kids I'll recommend it to. This week was our first week back at school after two weeks off for Winter Break.   I was ready, gung-ho really, to get started, getting kids back in books, getting all my new students settled into a routine, and trying out my learning from Kylene Beers' and Bob Probst's new book Reading Nonfiction:  Notice and Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies .  Parts worked really well. If I didn't mention before, I teach a high school reading class, filled with a mix of 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders.  It's required for students who struggle with reading and are doing poorly in other classes, espec...

Friday night is my favorite time of the week.  It is consciously slow, simple and quiet.  We have pizza for dinner (in fact, when we got a coupon for $10 Tuesday special, my youngest daughter said,"Who eats pizza on a Tuesday?"), and we veg out with movies, books, journaling, or some blog reading.  It's OK if I wander around from link to link, just read a few chapters, or on rare occasions, binge watch one of Shonda Rhimes' creations.  It's Friday night and I relish the freedom.  Even our dogs know the routine. I guess before I go on, I should introduce myself and describe what this blog is about.  My name is Lynn, and I have three entertaining children (12, 11 and almost 10) who I was able to adopt six years ago, although they've been with me since 2005. We love animals and have several of our own, plus we foster kittens for a local rescue we adore, called Second Chance .  Outside the home, I work in a high school, where I teach reading classes and ...