Purposeful procrastination

I could work all of my waking hours and still have more to do.  I really could.  In fact, I’ve tried that many times.  It’s not sustainable.  It’s horrible.  I’m sure all of you teachers out there can empathize.

But I don’t do that anymore.  Well, sometimes I do.  But this past week was my spring break, and throughout the week I chose to do quite the opposite.  I chose to purposely procrastinate.  There’s a big difference between purposeful procrastination and regular procrastination: purposeful procrastination doesn’t make me feel bad.  When I sit at my screen or in my classroom with the intent of getting things done but instead I dilly dally and suddenly a ridiculous amount of time has passed, I feel irritated with myself.  But that’s not the case when I tell myself, “Nope, I’m not doing any work today.  I’m going to put it off until tomorrow.”  Then, when nothing gets done I don’t feel bad at all.  I’ve lived up to the plan–the plan of not working.  The literal outcomes of purposeful procrastination and regular procrastination are exactly the same.  The emotional outcomes are so different.

So now here I am, with a day and a half left before going back to school for the end-of-the-year stretch, and I have a lot to do.  I’ll do what I can tomorrow.  Tomorrow, I’ll commit to being productive.  But until then, I’ll give myself permission to do whatever else I want with these few precious hours, and when I go to bed tonight, I will remind myself to feel just fine with being unaccomplished.

Pneumonia and a Renewed Relationship

I start every morning with a community meeting, the bulk of which involves 5 or so students sharing news from their lives.  Certain kids always tell mostly made-up goofy stories to get a good laugh from the crowd.  Some kids go on and on and leave everyone wondering what they were talking about.  Other times, a kid shares something truly important for us to know.

A couple of weeks ago, a child said, “Well, my mom is really sick.  She has this sickness called pneumonia, and that’s what my great-grandmother died of, so I’m hoping my mom isn’t going to die too.  And I’ve been writing a lot of notes about that.”

Thankfully, his mom is doing just fine.  But what a weight for this child to be carrying on his shoulders!  He of course doesn’t understand that pneumonia doesn’t mean the same for a 35 year old as it does for someone who is 80.  The class made a card for his mom that afternoon, and we were all able to check in with him about his mom during the following days.  I was so glad that he had the chance to share.

Another category of morning news is that which would make parents embarrassed.  Children don’t hold back.  We’ve heard about parents pulled over for running red lights, parents saying bad words, parents refusing to eat their vegetables, and parents sleeping in their underwear.

A few weeks ago, a student announced, “Well, my daddy actually has his own house, and I was supposed to go to his house this weekend, but I didn’t because we all stayed at my mommy’s house because my daddy and my mommy slept in the same bed because they’re trying to get back together again.”  Her parents have been divorced for years.

It’s always funny to see parents at pick-up a few hours later and to feel like I’m in on one of their secrets.  Usually, I don’t spill the beans, and what’s said at morning meeting, stays at morning meeting.

Thirty-six new stunts this week?

I went to a great early childhood literacy conference on Saturday.  As is typical of me, I got all fired up from hearing excited, passionate, and smart people speak their minds.  By the end of the day I had a lot of scattered notes and ideas.  I went home, paced the apartment in my post-conference high, and decided right then and there that I would implement thirty-six new things into my classroom this week.

Then I drifted back to the ground, and I remembered that I can’t do that.  Even superwoman doesn’t try thirty-six new stunts in one week.

But how do I prioritize?

It’s really hard.  It’s really hard to hear a lot of ideas that I know would make my classroom better, and then wait to implement them slowly.  It’s really hard because if I’m implementing the changes slowly, then things aren’t improving right away.  And of course, I want things to improve right away.  Tomorrow would be ideal.

With patience, I can implement a few new ideas one at a time throughout the rest of this year.  A few.  But for my own sanity and that of my kids, I need to respect the systems and routines that we have currently.  We all rely on them. If I want to return to the drawing board with a truly clean sheet of paper and a perfectly sharpened pencil, then I’ll have to wait until next August.  But right now, next August feels very far away.

8 weeks

It has been 8 weeks since I last blogged.  That’s a long time.  I have plenty of excuses.  Want to hear them?

School was, and always is, a whirlwind leading up to winter break.
Staff morale was quite low in December, which made me too grumpy to blog.
I didn’t want to be a grumpy blogger.
That school-related grumpiness seeped into winter break, putting me in a mood that wasn’t particularly reflective.
I didn’t want to admit to myself or to the internet world that I wasn’t super reflective over winter break and that I didn’t feel perfectly refreshed and rejuvenated upon returning to school.
I didn’t want to announce that this blog is two years old, and  that I’m still not a magical queen teacher.
I wish I were a magical queen teacher.  Then I’d definitely have plenty to blog about.

But school is back, and so am I.  And actually, the real re-start of school is better than the imagined re-start.  Winter break gave me so much time to sit and stew, and in doing so I built up my own stress.  I went back on Monday and was quickly reminded that situations are complicated, that there’s plenty to be cheerful about, and that I do have some semblance of knowledge and skills that I can relatively successfully apply to my teaching.  I slept better this week than I have in quite a while.  Things are fine.

And I’m working on making them better than fine.  I signed up for a writing class on Tuesday evenings, which I’m excited about.  I asked my administration to register me for a day-long workshop on working with students for whom English is a Second Language, which I hope they’ll agree to.  I’m reading good books for a parent-teacher book club at school and for a book club with friends.  I know that a happy me makes me a happy teacher.  That’s what being willfully zen is all about.

So, happy new year!  Cheers to a 2014 full of more consistent and less excuse-filled blogging.

Brunch

Yesterday, I went out for brunch with two colleagues.  We ordered omelets, sat down, and began to vent.  It was inevitable.  Work has been intense lately, and all of the staff have been on edge.  Distanced from school and in the safety of a cozy cafe, we shared one story after another of frustration and irritation.

Yes, we were negative.  I know I’m supposed to avoid overly negative conversations.  I know negativity doesn’t make things better.  But it happened.

And we didn’t stay negative.  Not entirely at least.  As the afternoon passed, we refilled our coffee cups and began to laugh.  Grumbly stories mixed with hilarious ones.  Complicated situations became less sticky.  We talked about sweet moments.  We praised each other for the way each of us handles work and solves problems.  We made plans to have brunch again and to include more teachers next time.

Three hours later, I left in such a good mood.  I left feeling connected to the people with whom I work.  I left with a sense of camaraderie.  I practically skipped back home.

I needed the opportunity to moan and complain.  I really did.  All three of us did.  And we needed to moan and complain with each other so that each of us knew that it wasn’t just us.  And since we didn’t stay in that negative place, our time together was well spent.

So well spent.  I look forward to next time.

P.S. Thanksgiving is so close!  Hurrah for a couple of days off!

What would you do if you were the Mayor?

Last Tuesday was Election Day, and Mayor was on the ticket here in Houston.  My students wrote about what they would do if they were Mayor.  Would our city be better off if they were in charge?

“I will paint the city rainbow.  I will make more school for kids.”

[with a broom of course]

“I would make the moon a disco ball!  I would make everyone crazy!  I would make the president crazy too!”
I wonder if the Mayor knows she has this kind of power.

His next campaign will have to clarify how.

“Make the streets smoother.  Make more lights on more baseball fields.”
I had no idea we had dark baseball fields.  What a travesty.

She’s clearly a socialist.

“If people get hurt or injured I will give them money so they can use it for the doctor.”
This student was paid by supporters of Obamacare.

Squeezable chicken

Last year, one of my students brought a jar of baby food for lunch.  It was some sort of vegetable medley, and he claimed it tasted ok.  I found it very strange at first, but then remembered that he had a 1-year-old brother, so I figured maybe somehow daycare lunch and elementary school lunch got swapped.  It’s possible.

Much more concerning to me is the quantity of baby food being intentionally given to my students.  It’s not labeled as baby food, but that’s what I am going to call food that is pureed so as to require no chewing.  And no hands.  Babies have adults to scoop the food into their mouths.  And what do you do if your child will be at school without someone to scoop that food on in?  Buy it in a squeeze pouch of course!

The first I remember of the trend was Go-Gurt.  Yogurt without the horrible, terrible, hassle of needing spoons, hand-eye coordination, and motor skills has been around for a solid decade at least.  If that was the last of the squeezeable conveniences, I wouldn’t be so bothered.  After all, what could be better for an in-the-car-in-between-soccer-and-baseball-practice snack?  But the fad has gotten out of control.  My students bring lunches filled with squeezable apple sauce, squeezable mixed berries, squeezable peanut butter, and squeezable cheese.  I haven’t seen squeezable chicken yet, but it’s probably coming.  Everything comes in pouches and requires nothing more of its consumers than a decent grip.

The result: these kids don’t know how to use utensils.  They don’t have the motor control to scoop an appropriate amount of food out of a container and get it directly to their mouth.  They don’t have the patience to accurately dig the prongs of a fork into anything.  They swallow their entire lunch in 8 minutes and then have the rest of the lunch period to be antsy, bored, or raucous.  Everyday at lunch time I think about the scenes from WALL-E in which the future is filled with blob-like people who drink unidentifiable nutrients.  If food marketed for children’s lunches is reflective of the direction in which society is moving, then WALL-E may be impressively and unfortunately exact in their depictions of tomorrow.

Yes, a lot of the squeezable food is healthy.  I love yogurt and apple sauce and cheese and I have no problem with any of those foods being eaten for anyone’s lunch.  But, children need to learn to eat slowly, calmly, and with utensils.  They need to think of lunch as a peaceful time to socialize and enjoy nourishing your body.  They need to struggle a bit to open packages, scoop, fork, and cut so that they develop necessary muscles in their hands and important culinary skills that they’ll hopefully use for the rest of their lives.  Lunch and convenience are not synonyms; let’s keep it that way.

Weekend Work

For years I’ve listened to my dad debate whether or not to go into work on the weekends.  He works such long hours already, and yet, he is often pulled back on a quiet Sunday by the desire to “catch up” or maybe “get ahead.”

I always felt like he was doing too much, working too hard.  My contribution to the debate was consistently, “Appreciate your weekend–you’ll be back at work soon enough!”  I assumed, and not incorrectly, that working on the weekend wouldn’t mean less work during the week, and therefore I decided that it was not worth it.

In recent times, my perspective has changed.  Yes, I see incredible value in taking a break, and yes, I believe in making good use of the weekends for leisure, family, and friends.  I also definitely believe in putting a limit to work and simply deciding to stop even though the to-do list is never done.

But, more and more I find myself pulled into school on quiet Sunday afternoons.  I love the productivity that comes from having the building nearly or completely to myself.  I clean up without anyone making new messes, I organize without being interrupted and losing track of what I’m doing, I walk around my room, sift through my supplies, and brainstorm ideas.  I type up plans and print everything I’ll need for the week.  I lay out exactly what we’ll use on Monday morning, and then I leave everything in my classroom before going home for a school-free Sunday night.

Does the preparation mean that I spend less time at school or working on school during the week?  Not necessarily.  There’s always more to do.  But, spending Sunday afternoon at school does drastically change the quality of my work-time throughout the following week.  I start Monday without feeling rushed, flustered or overwhelmed.  I don’t have to worry about printers or copiers not working.  I spend more time talking to kids and their parents in the mornings and after school because I’m not focused on getting the nitty-gritty ready for the next day.  I can catch up with and help coworkers because my plans are already laid out.  I can better handle inevitable last-minute changes because I have plenty prepared, and it’s easy to rearrange when necessary.  The quantity of work-time doesn’t change, but the time becomes so much more pleasant.

It’s a careful balance.  I see how working on the weekend is a slippery slope toward not setting aside enough time for everything else that enriches and makes life what it is.  But working just enough gives me the peace of mind to appreciate and enjoy the small moments each day such that I am not completely burned out and longing for the next weekend by Tuesday.

So Pops, I feel ya.  Let’s just make sure to keep each other in check so that we stay on the better side of the balance.

Curriculum Night

Last Thursday was Curriculum Night; parents were invited to come to the school sans their children at 5pm to hear from teachers about what is happening in the classrooms and why.  Powerpoints were standard, and logistics were thoroughly covered.

To add a bit of zest, of gusto, of oomph to my Curriculum Night conversation, I filmed each of my students sharing something they wanted to learn this year.  I started the evening with the parents by emphasizing that this year was about their children learning to learn and learning to love learning, that I wanted each of their children to feel curious, engaged, and empowered.  Then I showed the video.

Here’s the audio:

There were a lot of chuckles, a decent amount of “I could’ve predicted that!”s, and a lot of “What? Really? I didn’t know he was interested in that?”s.  Getting into the mind of your child was the evening’s continuing theme as I had parents try to identify their child’s “Who Am I?” riddle based on each child’s description of self.  There was a lot of misidentification: “Since when does he play soccer?”  “He thinks his family is big?!”  “I would have never found [my daughter’s] because she wrote that her skin was dark!  It’s not dark!”

A real highlight for me was talking about conflict resolution.  I hear a lot of reports back from parents that go something like this: “My son came home and said someone’s been touching his shoes,”  or “My daughter came home and said someone hit her.”  These are frustrating conversations because yes, I do my absolute best to make sure your child is happy, safe, and productive in school, but yes, conflicts arise.  On Curriculum Night, I emphasized that every parent in the room is working very hard to raise their child as someone who is kind, caring, helpful, and safe, and yet, none of our children will always behave exactly as we hoped.  I said that every child in our class will undoubtedly be on both the giving and receiving side of several conflicts throughout the year, and that I use those as opportunities to learn and grow.  I spoke about the goal being resolution, not punishment.  That even after a lot of anger and frustration, we all have to continue to live and get along in the classroom, so we all need to be able to move forward with fresh starts.  I gave some suggestions for ways that parents can empower their children to solve problems productively, and ways for parents to speak with their child about moving on after a conflict has been resolved.  I hope hope hope that all of the families in the room heard me, understood me, and will hang in their with me on this one.

We ended the night by sharing goals–this time it was the parents speaking about what they hoped their children would get out of the year.  The standard was “I want my child to be better at math, reading, and writing.”  Then there was “I want my child to be a great speller,” and “I want my child to have good handwriting.”  Those are examples of things I honestly don’t care much about, but that’s ok, they weren’t my goals.  Some other interesting ideas were, “I want my child to know when to play and when not to play, like to be able to use his on/off switch,” and “I want my child to know when not to follow the crowd and to be ok with that,” and “I want my child to be comfortable speaking with adults,” and “I want my child to love coming to school everyday.”  It’s powerful for parents to hear other parents share these goals, and I love hearing them too.

After all, we’re all on the same team here.  Team get better at lots of things, including being friends and collaborators.  Team get the most possible out of our year.

A more abstract to-do list

The kids showed up at my classroom door exactly three weeks ago.  Some ran in and started jumping, spinning, and yelping.  Some cried and clung to their mothers’ legs.  Really, both were displays of the same emotions: anxiety, uncertainty, excitement.  Most everyone was overwhelmed, and we all have our defense mechanisms that kick into effect when feeling overwhelmed.  Myself included.  I don’t necessarily yelp or cling, but I do keep an unusually close eye on my clipboard, and I drink more water than typical.
In some ways, despite all of the newness and hype, those first few days are easy.  Long and exhausting, but also easy to plan and fill.  I know that within the first few hours kids need to know where the bathroom is, where the tissue is, where the pencils are, where the paper is, what to do if they have an idea to share, what to do if they feel upset, how to find a spot to sit on the carpet, how to find a spot to sit at a table, how to line up and move through the school, how to get their lunch from the cafeteria, and how to ask for help.  They also need to the know my name and at least a couple of their classmates’ names.  And that they’re expected to be safe.  And kind.  What exactly that means comes a bit later, but they need to know that it exists as an expectation right away.

Cram all of that into a daily schedule that also includes large volumes of singing, dancing, and playing, and it quickly becomes clear that there is plenty to accomplish at the beginining of the year.  Whether or not those things have been accomplished can essentially be determined with a my favorite tool: a to-do list.  I schedule in this here, that there, and suddenly there are a lot of checked boxes, the week passes, and we’re on to the next.

But now we’re a few weeks in, and the to-do list becomes more abstract.  We’ve learned names, we’ve used the bathroom plenty of times, and we’ve settled on a set of classroom agreements that we’ll all work towards.  Everyone knows where the pencils are, and everyone can explain how we’re supposed to sit on the carpet.

Now my to-do list items are more like “help everyone learn to manipulate small numbers,” “develop strong relationships with families,” and “show students that they are all authors.” Also: “make sure everyone learns to read.”  Much harder to check off.  Much more complicated.  Much more daunting.  Also much more exciting.  The oh right I’m here to ensure a productive year of growth and learning for these children feeling has returned.  Singing silly songs and sending everyone home smiling isn’t quite enough (though it’s still critical of course!).  Now we’re ready to dig in, and hopefully the fully-packed beginning and the continuing community-building will make the road all that much smoother as we move forward.

So: L’Shanah tovah u’mtukah!  May we all have a good and sweet and productive and engaging and exciting and challenging and loving new year!  Hopefully it will include some checked boxes, even if they are a bit more abstract to start.