Every year I talk with my seniors about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the lessons that I have learned on my journey in life along the way. Last year, because of the shutdown, I had to have my senior chat via letter, because trying to have this sort of discussion over one more endless Zoom seemed like a really bad idea.
Jump forward to this year's class, and we are back in school in person, but still masked, socially distanced and trying to get our seniors through their graduation without a Covid outbreak, so careful is pretty much the word of the day every day. As a result, it felt like a letter was a good idea this year as well.
So for those parents whose seniors did not share the contents of their senior awards bag, or who didn't notice this letter tucked into the bag along with the book and award certificate, I thought I'd post the letter, too.
This class is like a group full of my own children, mostly because The Peanut has grown up with a lot of them all the way through school, starting in kindergarten. We truly are a family at Notre Dame, and I am so proud of every student in this class. Congratulations to all the kids and their parents!
The virus has taken a lot of things this year: lives, breath, incomes, time with family and friends, you name it. One of the things that I have seen very sharply is what it has done to the end of my students' senior year. It's been rough, I'm not going to lie, and my heart breaks for this year's seniors.
It s just the ones I have in class, either, it is all of them. This year, seniors all around the country will not fully get all of their lasts: last time I walk the halls with my friends, last math class, last time I slam my locker shut, last prom. They will get some closure and some form of graduation, even in the hardest hit areas of the nation, I'm sure, but it just won't be the same.
Our daughter is a junior this year, and her class is also dealing with not getting any of their firsts: first day as the seniors in the days just after graduation; first time the seniors and juniors come together to hand that over in a beautiful ceremony we do each year called Rose and Candle; first college visits. They won't get to do any of that any time soon, either.
It's just been really rough for everyone involved.
But, to put this in perspective, we are all still living and breathing. We are safe and secure with our families. We can see moving forward, and that is an enormous blessing.
I've been thinking about all of this a lot lately, because this particular senior class is one that I have been around since they were babies at St. Mary's Elementary, where The Peanut went to school from kindergarten all the way through, just across the breezeway from the high school where I currently teach. We truly are a family at St. Mary's and Notre Dame, and these kids all feel like they are my own. I have watched these students grow from little kids to young adults, seen them wear their heart on their sleeve, laugh about the little things, cry over the big things, and lift each other up year after year as we have faced some really tough issues or happy times at school.
They are amazing kids, each and every one of them.
Today, I sent them all a letter. But because it went out to school e-mail addresses, and I'm honestly not certain how many of them are still checking their school e-mail because...teenagers...I decided to post it here as well. Just in case.
Here is my letter to this year's senior class, but it essentially contains what I discuss every year with my seniors in class just before they leave me for graduation. Love these kids!
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Dear Notre Dame Class of 2020:
Each year, no seniors leave my classes without a chat about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Not just your own happiness or mine, but what your actions mean for the happiness of the world around you. Unfortunately, this year the virus has gotten in the way, so I have to impart my words of wisdom to all of you at once, and I beg your forgiveness for the impersonal nature of a mass e-mail instead of the usual heartfelt, individual discussions.
It is what it is, right?
I miss seeing your faces and smiles, hearing your stories, crying with you over the things that hurt, and celebrating your little victories along the way. So let this letter serve as cheers for your successes and prayers over your challenges.
These are things that have been important lessons I have learned — some the hard way — over the course of my life. That sounds very geezer in tone, but you’ll see what I mean as you go further down the pathway of life.
1. At the end of the day, at the very end of your life, what you have left is your integrity and your soul. Guard them closely and choose wisely in how you act and what you do.
2. No one can make you do something you know in your heart to be wrong. No one can make you do something mean or dangerous or unkind or hurtful. The only person who can make that happen is you. So when you have to choose, choose to be wise. Choose to be kind. Choose to do the right thing.
3. People will not always remember the good things that you do, but they will remember that one horrible, mean thing that made them feel afraid or sad. What people will remember about you most is how you made them feel. Choose to be kind.
4. Be the change you wish to see in the world. Gandhi was right — when you see a problem, you can come up with a great solution to it, but it is the work that you do to fix it that solves the problem. Choose to do the work.
5. 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. You may see someone being lazy or not caring while you work really hard — choose to do the work anyway. Because when you are doing the work to help yourself, to help others, to take pride in a job done well, you are choosing to show that you are a high quality person that people can depend on to do things right. That has enormous value.
6. Do your very best in everything that you do. Take pride in your work and in working hard at it. Do everything you can at 110% — go the extra mile and put in the extra effort each and every time. Very few people ever live their lives this way. They muddle through, cut corners and only do things halfway. If you strive to always do your best, it will put you way ahead. It will also give you a sense of pride in what you have accomplished.
7. Be true to who you are at your core. Be proud of who you are, but also maintain some humility. No one is better than you. But you are no better than anyone else, either. Be gracious and humble, and treat everyone like your equal, because that is the right thing to do. That Tim McGraw song about staying humble and kind gets it absolutely right.
8. You never fail until you stop trying. There will be hurdles in front of you your whole life — this virus is a big one. Most of life is picking yourself up when you stumble or fall, and finding a way to keep moving forward. Sometimes it will be in a different direction than you think, but always keep moving forward, keep working and trying, and you will find a way to make any situation — even a bad one — into a success.
9. Above all, be a Golden Rule person: do unto others at all times. If you wouldn’t want someone to say it to you, then don’t say it. If you wouldn’t want someone to treat you that way, then don’t do it. Do for others as you would wish someone would do for you. It’s a very simple thing, but it has a profoundly good impact on the world around you, on your family, your friends, and your soul. Doing good makes the world a better place, so choose to follow the Golden Rule.
Some of you are leaving for college or other schooling, some are headed out to work after you read this letter, and some aren’t quite sure what you’ll be doing but you are working on it. I am very proud of each and every one of you — you are awesome kids with great hearts who are about to go out into the world and do fantastic things. I can’t wait to see what you do with your gifts and talents going forward — it is going to be amazing!
Good luck in everything you do. Know that you have family and friends — always — back at Notre Dame High School, and that we are all cheering you on as you move forward. Wishing you many blessings, and as much laughter and joy as you can hold, and sending love and prayers your way today and in all the days that follow. Keep reading and keep reading history!
Earlier this year, one of my students asked me what they should be reading to prepare for college. I was telling my kids that one of my high school teachers (Hi, Miss Goldsworthy!) had given me a list of classic literature mixed with modern classics that were designed to make you think and ask the right kinds of questions about who we are and what we can do better.
My kids were amused that I had carried my book list back and forth to college, graduate school, law school and 3 apartment and house moves, before it got destroyed when our garage flooded when I pipe burst a few years ago. I had been making my way through the entire list of books, a lot of which were ones I read again in college lit classes -- so I was really, really grateful to have read a number of them before I went to college.
A couple of the students in that class asked me if I could remember a list of several of those books and share them. So I spent some time writing down the ones that I remembered, and then did a little google magic to find some additional lists for some more modern classics that are being recommended today.
Below find my current proposed list, although I'm open to argument on why something else ought to be included or why you think a particular book has no business being on a classics reading list at all, thank you very much. In other words, this list is a work in progress -- I'm contemplating whether I need revisions before sharing it with my kids next year, and I'd love some opinions from the readers in my audience.
So, what glorious book that you treasure did I inadvertently forget? What must be there to help shape young minds and make them ask the difficult or important questions? What do you think I should add or subtract from the list? Do tell.
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Classic Books to Read Before College
1. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. 1984 by George Orwell
3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
4. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
6. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
7. The Giver by Lois Lowry
8. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger
One of the movies I truly love is The King's Speech. The universal humanity of the film -- the quest to find your own voice, whatever the odds or obstacles -- is so compelling, and the vulnerability and determination that Colin Firth injects into his character is perfect.
All the major performances in the film are wonderfully done, and I highly recommend watching it. That is especially true if you have a stammerer or a shy, non-verbal child in your midst. Or if you know someone who was that child at some point in the past.
They get it right, down to the inaccurate assumptions and outright nastiness of the people around Bertie who have no patience for his verbal pauses.
The above YouTube shows a similar awakening for a student in England, whose teacher had seen the film and tried the method of playing music via headphone while his student was trying to speak. The results are nothing short of miraculous for the student, and the end is guaranteed to make you sniffle a little bit. Well worth watching this.
What struck me was something the teacher was saying before the boy goes down to speak in the auditorium, that he had ended up at that particular school, the one where he found the help he needed to find his voice, because he had been so severely bullied in his prior school. That out of a bad situation was this miracle made.
Serendipity often has a way of finding us when we need it to the most, doesn't it?
Today has been a big project on Kevin Henkes wonderful book, Chrysanthemum. I have wanted to do a library unit on this book for a while because it is such a wonderful read
It also presents a lot of opportunities for in class discussions for younger and older kids alike, opening a number of intriguing avenues for kids to stop and really think: about actions and consequences, about their own feelings and those of other people as well, about the incredibly clever use of language that Kevin Henkes incorporates in this book in terms of description and action, and all sorts of other interesting bits and pieces.
For my younger students, I found a wonderfully put together discussion packet on story elements and construction that we'll use. You can download it for free at Teachers Pay Teachers, and print it off to use for your own classes, too. (Don't you love the word "free"?)
I am also working on a poster-sized drawing of Chrysanthemum, which I will use to talk about Henkes' wonderfully descriptive language and about good and bad behaviors and choices of the various characters in the book.
An example of something similarly done can be found at Pencils, Glue and Tying Shoes -- loved this poster, and am doing a similar one for my classroom. But I'll be using some post-it notes that I found that are already die-cut in the shape of flowers to show "good" versus "bad" words from the story, in some form or another (still working on just how I will do this).
But for my older students, I wanted a discussion that was more in depth. Since I couldn't find exactly what I wanted anywhere online, I created my own little lesson bits and pieces. Thought they might be a useful jumping off point for others out there as well.
The movie is certainly a hoot for the younger set, but I'm talking about actual rules and regs.
After a couple of years of vacant stares and blank faces at a straight up discussion of rules for the school library, I've taken some liberties with stills from Monsters University and crafted a slide presentation on my school mini iPad themed to pix from the movie. The Librarian in the film was just too fun.
Today is the debut of the newly presented rules. We'll see if they are more enjoyable to discuss this way.
Part of me is looking forward to the giggles from the kids, and part of me is wondering if the fun of this will ruin the whole "rules" portion of the rules discussion due to said giggling.
Guess we'll see...it's always a fine line between finding a way to teach in an entertaining way and just entertaining without actually teaching, isn't it?
Putting our adorable westie to work for my library, this is my latest reading promotion idea. If nothing else, it will get the kids to ooh and ahh at the adorableness of the westie and perhaps take a peek at the books on either side of the sign.
Here's hoping!
Am planning on placing a couple of books out each week -- one for early readers, one for older ones -- on book stands that will showcase the books for the kids, along with the adorable pooch sign above. As much as possible, I want to use books that I have read, so if the kids have questions I will be able to talk from my own reading experience.
I do genuinely try to make an effort to read as many books as possible in our library so that I honestly can speak from my own reading experience with the students. I find that an authentic, personal recommendation always works better than an "I've heard it is good" variety, especially with the older kids who like to talk about the book as they are reading and find it annoying to have to catch me up.
By switching the recommended books out weekly or bi-weekly (depending on how much time I have to throw together book talks on the fly as the school year gets rolling), I am really hoping it will allow for a bit more interest from the kids about the books that are highlighted. Because it will allow me a short book talk about the books with my classes as well, we can also discuss information about genres, authors, series, and all sorts of other assorted goodies along the way.
I got the sign idea from the wonderful Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers by Steven Layne. There are so many great ideas for reading promotion in this book, and I find myself referring back to it often for another spark of inspiration in a classroom activity or to try to help a reluctant reader find some enthusiasm.
Thought this might be a fun idea for others to use, too.
Kevin Henkes, one of my favorite children's book authors, wrote a wonderful tale about a little mouse named Chrysanthemum that I absolutely love. In the book, there are great examples of teasing which open up an entire avenue of discussion with kids about how they feel when they get teased or bullied, and what behavior is and is not acceptable and why.
It is a short story, filled with lovely little pictures, and a lot of meaning built into a very simple little storyline: Chrysanthemum loves her name until the other kids start to tease her about it being different, and then she feels badly and hurt and ashamed, until her teacher tells her how wonderful it is to have a unique name...and then things get better. It is the sort of short story that makes for a wonderful start to the year, if the kids all take it to heart, because you can then refer back to it when a student is acting badly in a "remember how that made Chrysanthemum feel" sort of way.
I have been thinking about using Chrysanthemum as my beginning of the year story for my classes for that reason.
But how to use it effectively is the question, as a lead in for the classroom rules and as a larger discussion about making smarter choices in and out of school.
Lots of dusting, cleaning and straightening to do today and the whole of the week. With, perhaps, a smattering of decorating if I can get time to spruce things up with a little more color.
School begins on Friday with an Open House.
If you need me, I'll be wiping down a dusty bookshelf or twelve...
Lots more library lesson plans to do today. I have planning mostly done for the older kids for an extended unit on mythology, and completely done for the little ones who will be learning basics like ABC order and library procedures and behavior, in and around getting loads of fun story time reading from me. (Did I mention that I have dug up a pretty pink sparkly crown to wear for story time? Here's hoping it doesn't pop off my wig...)
Today's work will be to firm up the first nine weeks lesson plans for the kids in the middle. Hopefully, by the end of today, I'll have the entire first nine weeks mapped out well and ready to go.
Sometime this week, I promise to take some pictures of how I have redone my lesson plan binders and to put up a whole slew of ideas for other folks to use if they need them.
The way that I have done my planning this year allows me to easily move things around week to week if the kids need an extended lesson on a particular topic.
Am trying to make certain that we cover a lot of ground so that all of my curriculum requirements are met. But I am not willing to sacrifice comprehension for speed, so I've built in the ability to go over the same ground if I need to do so by using interchangeable notebook pages that I can move around as needed to reinforce areas where I see that the kids need that.
The awesome part of doing things this way is that I will have a complete set of lesson plans for the year by the end of this, which I can then tweak as I go in the years to come. It is a lot of work at the front end, but that is going to pay off in the best way as I move forward.
So far, I am really loving this set-up. Only time will tell in the teaching on how it works for the long haul, though.
Feeling pretty proud of myself this morning: woke up and put together a card matching game of mythological monsters from Greek myths, complete with illustrative pictures. Have been working on lesson plans all week and trying to come up with fun ways to get my students excited about this mythology unit.
I also plan to put together a Jeopardy game using a cheapie shower curtain liner, some 3x5 cards and ziploc baggies. But that may have to wait until after I have gotten my room ready for Open House next week.
Dusting, organizing and decorating my classroom have to take priority for the moment.
It is the final sprint to the start of the school year. It is going to be so great to see all the kids and get back into my normal routine after this summer of chemo. I miss what used to be normal, and it is high time I reclaimed some of that equilibrium that I used to take for granted.
In the meantime, though, I'll be putting together some more ideas for teaching my 4th, 5th and 6th graders about mythology. Thank you, Rick Riordan, for your brilliant Percy Jackson series.
If I play my teaching cards right, I'm going to have a whole lot of kids reading it this year. That would make me very happy indeed.
Radiation treatments will start for me this morning and I have the temporary tattoo markers to show for it: they use them as guides so the targeted beam hits the right spot every time. Oh yeah, I'm a rebel, I have three tattoos. (You have to squint to see them, but still...I want the street cred. I think I've earned it at this point and then some.)
Looks like I will have a series of thirty-three treatments in total, five days a week, every single week for almost seven weeks until they are completed, with weekends off to heal a little. Each treatment should last about twenty minutes.
Oh joy.
It could be a whole lot worse, so I am grateful to be here and not in hospice. Let me just say that up front. But this has been an exhausting slog and it is not done yet. How do parents of small children ever explain all of this to them as they go through treatment?
The staff at the UHC Cancer Center have been fantastic all the way through this. Am so glad that they had great facilities near our house, so that I didn't have to go far away for treatment -- that would have been incredibly rough on The Peanut and she's been through enough this summer with me as it is.
But life goes on, even if our summer has whizzed by in nothing flat and not been all that relaxing. For us, school begins again next week.
Where did the summer go, seriously??!!??
We still have school supplies to pick up and a few assorted school clothing items to snag, so somewhere today I will be taking The Peanut to shop if at all possible so we can avoid the weekend insanity of the back to school frenzy. Somehow, in the next week or so, I also have to get my classroom ready for the kids to return.
Or, at least, as ready as I can under the circumstances.
The second Percy Jackson movie will open in theaters on August 7th, just before school begins this year. For an elementary school librarian, this is an event that needs to be used well, because it presents a fantastic opportunity for capitalizing on the interest bandwagon among the 4th, 5th and 6th graders about Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series as well as the underlying mythology stories and characters that permeate the books.
Doesn't it just scream book promotion and myth teaching for the older kids?
Especially if you add in the upcoming winter Olympics, and its roots in Ancient
Greece and competition for the favor of the gods. That is some
fascinating history in its own right.
Over the last couple of weeks (as my chemo brain has allowed), I have been planning a multi-week unit to discuss Greek and Roman mythology, as well as to introduce the students to some other myths from around the world. Am trying to piece this together so that we read a myth together and then work on activities and worksheets to further deepen their understanding of the myth, as well as how it has been used over the years as a story to impact behavior or as a warning or whatever else might be an underlying theme.
What I am hoping to do is have the kids put together their own notebook as we go through this over the course of a few weeks. Each myth would have its own section for crafts, worksheets, and a copy of a story summary for each one. That way, at the end of the entire process, they would have their own book of mythology that they built themselves.
There is so much new vocabulary in a lot of these stories, words that we pull from the original Greek and Roman myths that are used every day -- that alone is worth teaching all of this, I think.
In putting all of this together, I have found some wonderful resources:
-- Literature Pockets, Greek and Roman Myths, Grades 4-6: for the Medusa craft and the Apollo poem and sun wheel craft alone, this is so worth it. But it also has some great vocabulary worksheets and story summaries that I'll be using as well.
Apologies to the couple of readers who e-mailed that they were worried about no posts last weekend. Meant to set up some posts before we left and then life got away from me entirely -- didn't mean to cause alarm, everything is just fine (or fine as it can be given that there are still residual chemo side effects, but at least I can taste my morning coffee again -- woo hoo!).
We got away for a desperately needed mini-vacay last weekend. Nothing huge, but some seriously needed time to blow off the stink of chemo for a few days of living away from the Big C(ancer) treatment-o-rama. It has been overwhelming, exhausting, and too much like boot camp in terms of breaking me down without the adjacent building me back up phase for too many weeks in a row, and I needed a break. We all did.
You need to pause every once in a while and allow yourself to exhale. Never in my whole life have those words been more true than right now.
Saddling up this morning for the next rung in the treatment ladder: radiation oncology.
Today I find out how many weeks of daily radiation I'll be dealing with and when it begins. Have to figure out scheduling and how to juggle The Peanut's schedule along with mine for the weeks that I'll be doing this -- so many things to try to track all at once, with a brain that is so foggy it is incredibly charitable to call it a brain at all.
Spent some time this morning trying to figure out how to make our meals even more healthfully packed with fruits and veggies. Variety, variety, variety, so we are eating a rainbow of healthy antioxidants and assorted bits of fiber and vitamins. Planning some yummy baked chicken thighs for dinner this evening, along with a healthy salad and some veggies of some sort.
If I get time this afternoon, I'll post my chicken thigh recipe -- The Peanut gobbles it up and pronounces it "dee-lish" every time I make it. That's a major victory, given how infrequently little miss picky pants will eat something new.
There is lots of lesson planning and tidying up the house in my future today.
Cleaning first, then a good long stretch of getting lessons plans together for the start of the school year.
Seems like you are never really done in terms of planning. There is always a tweak or a refinement to throw into the mix somewhere, to make something more fun or give it more clarity somehow. I like being able to bring some creativity to bear on a fairly dry topic to make it come alive for the kids.
It's that time of year again: the library lesson planning has begun anew, and I am knee deep in plotting our path through the upcoming school year. A lot of the planning is already done from the last two years -- two years already! -- but there are tweaks and improvements that I want to make before school begins next month.
For example, I've decided to put all of my planning into four individual notebooks, divided by nine weeks sessions.
Each notebook will contain all the lesson plans for the nine weeks grading period, and be segmented by grade level work: Pre-K through 1st grade have one section; 2nd and 3rd grade have another; and then 4th, 5th and 6th grade together have the last segment. In this way, I can plan story times for the little ones, beginning activities for the middle learners, and more difficult skills development and use activities for the older ones.
A new book I am considering: Kevin Henkes wonderful Chrysanthemum, for its lessons on manners, respect for others and the impact of bullying. The story may end up coming later in the year, but it is such an adorable way to get an important discussion going. Am trying to figure out how to work it in at the beginning instead of waiting until later. We'll see.
Last year, near the beginning of the year, I did a lesson on taking care of your books by talking with the kids about why animals should not check out library books. It was a fun way to talk about what to do -- and what NOT to do -- with your books from the library: no drinks, no tearing pages, no leaving it open to crack the spine, etc., but told from the perspective of porcupines, dogs, cats, and messy rhinos.
The little kids especially loved it, and spent weeks afterward telling me stories about animals that they kept away from their books. It was too cute, and it helped get my point across in a giggly way. We don't have much of a budget for our little library, so taking good care of our books is really important.
I recently stumbled across this talk by Sir Ken Robinson on The Centered School Library blog, and was really intrigued by a lot of what he is saying.
Especially the part on how if no two children are alike, even in the same family, how can we expect all children to learn in the same proscribed manner in today's rigid educational structure? Every person that I know who had been a teacher before the "No Child Left Behind" restrictions went into place has told me that the difference between what they did before and what they did after was this:
-- before the rules, they were allowed to teach to their entire class, in all the ways each individual child needed to be taught and to make sure they learned the material, and were able to get creative in how they worked out different means of teaching the same information so that children who were missing it one way might pick it up via another method; the emphasis was on real understanding and not just memorization and then moving on to the next topic.
-- after the rules were implemented, they spent their days droning on about various test questions and how to answer them, having little to no time for creative writing, reading out loud, or any of the stimulating moments of intellectual spark that their kids had previously enjoyed -- for most of these teachers, the consensus was that the joy of learning had gone out of the classroom entirely; and fear of losing funding replaced opening children to the world of possibilities that learning something new can give them.
I find that so sad, for so many reasons. That joy of learning carries through to adulthood if a kernel of it is placed just right with a child who needed just that spark.
Without it, how do you encourage a child to ask more questions, think critically and demand proof or, even more important, imagine a better way through the world for themselves and everyone around them?
Yesterday, I put my Library Mouse lesson plan into action. This was all based on our reading the book Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk in our last week's library classes during their story time. This week, my kindergarten, first and second grade classes all got to write their very own book.
When they entered the library, they were greeted by the display above and we all read the note from Library Mouse together and talked about what they got to do that day. As you can imagine, there was a lot of excitement.
Then I called each child up one by one to pick up their book and little pencil and they got to take a look at the mirror inside -- just like Library Mouse did for the children in his library in the book.
Here is what it looked like when it was opened a bit:
Over the weekend, we went to Pittsburgh for my birthday and had a lot of fun. While we were there we went to see Mary Poppins -- which was wonderful -- and did a lot of other fun stuff as well.
One of the things we did was to visit Ikea, which is fast becoming one of my favorite places to find fun stuff for the school library. And boy did a find some awesome treasures this trip!
Last week, I read Library Mouse to my kindergarten, first and second graders. It was, as always, an absolutely enchanting read for everyone. The kids adore the story, and love to think about a tiny little mouse being an author because that translates so well to them being an author, too.
After I read the story to one class, I caught a little boy peering around the baseboards trying to find the library mouse hole in our own library. Too cute!
My idea for this week's lesson plan was to make some one-page books for the kids, so that they, too, could write a book and illustrate it just like Library Mouse. You can find some easy directions to make a one-page book here. I'll be making more than 60 of them over the next couple of days.
