Lifelong Learner

Easter: Past, Present, and Future

For the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking about blogging and even started a few different blogs but time was not with me. I need my family asleep to write. This of course means that I am not asleep at normal sleeping hours. 5 AM works well, because I feel like those 5 AM people who are growing new habits and changing their lives. Yet, I think my early wake ups may just be aging. I recently…

It's time to clean up the mess...

This week was spring break, and although I didn’t have much of a break, I am appreciative of the time away from the classroom. I’ve been focusing on my own family and trying to make decisions for our future. We were going to take a quick trip to Taos for a couple of nights to stay in a groovy retro-trailer park, Hotel Luna Mystica, but instead spent the week post-covid/spring cleaning. After a…

There's so much that I can learn from my tween!

My mother texted me about an hour after I dropped my daughters off for a sleepover: “Do you know what Rosie told me?” Rose is my 10 year old daughter who like me is an oral processor. We talk a lot in my house. “She said, ‘Mary is going to be a big girl soon. I am going to start menstruating, and my mom is going to go through menopause.'” I sent three laughing emojis, gleeful that Rose was…

The University of Buddhist Memes

I am a blessed teacher. I started off the year with 29 virtual first graders. I was drowning. Luckily, about a month into the school year, our administrator restructured the hybrid and virtual classrooms, and paired me with another teacher. She’s one of those perfect compliments to my own needy personality. I immediately wanted to be friends with her when I started at my current school. She had…

Yesterday my eldest daughter went to a tween group hosted by the neighborhood episcopal church. It was the first in-person event outside of our immediate family and my parents’ house that she’s been for over a year. I’ve got to admit that I have loved being locked in with my family. There have been struggles with getting the hang of things virtually, and I was very grateful that my parents could…

Continually Dealing with Things

This week was spring break, and although I didn’t have much of a break, I am appreciative of the time away from the classroom. I’ve been focusing on my own family and trying to make decisions for our future. We were going to take a quick trip to Taos for a couple of nights to stay in a groovy retro-trailer park, Hotel Luna Mystica, but instead spent the week post-covid/spring cleaning. After a…

Teaching in a Room on Fire - How do you effectively teach a classroom full of kid and handle severe behavioral instances while maintaining equity for all?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 which secured all students with Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) was one of the most powerful acts of educational reform of my time. I had just started college when this act was passed, and I remember the excitement with which professors explained the changes and protections for our nation’s students. When you look at the…

The Impostor's Net - Let's free ourselves from not feeling like enough.

Did you know that impostor syndrome is a real thing? No, it’s not recognized in the DSM as mental illness, though it has been all over the internet for years. But, I didn’t need the internet to label it for me. My best friend and I have been talking about it for 30 years over steamy hot cups of coffee. We didn’t call it a syndrome. We did say it feels like we’re impostors, wondering if anyone…