Happiness is...

photo by Instagram

Big Chocolate Chip Cookies! ...watching these 4 oz monsters melt into a giant cookie pie in the oven and then eating the gooey insides right off the cooling rack.

photo from My Baking Addiction

Nectarine Galette! ...making my own crust and not having it fall apart everywhere. Deliciously fresh summer stone fruits. Serving dessert to my family and friends on my favorite platter from Grandma's house.

photo by Bryan Matthews

Pinterest dessert boards - where I found these delicious recipes!

Writing with power! - Final reflections

After listening to my young writers share their work with each other on our final day together, a whirlwind of pride and elation surrounded me. After they left, I sat down to reflect on what had made the week so successful. For one, I had been blessed with an overwhelmingly sweet bunch of kids. But thinking more deeply--were there certain strategies I had used that I could be conscious to repeat in the future? As I contemplated, two ideas came to mind.

Creating Community
In one of our first morning discussions, I shared my hopes for their participation as writing community members. Setting the tone at the start provided the structure the kids were unknowingly looking for. Will my teacher be nice? Will other kids laugh at my work? Here were my four agreements:

1. Always do YOUR best. Don't worry about Other People's Best.
(following this was a conversation about comparing ourselves to others, learning styles, and self-acceptance)

2. Always be positive and encouraging to others and yourself.
(we can't forget ourselves in this one!)

3. Be brave. Dare yourself to try something new.
(this one ended up being the most important for many kids.)

4. Listen actively with your ears and your heart.
(My teaching partner, Megan, talks to her kids about "listening with your heart." You know the kid who's so quiet when they share that no one can hear a thing, and then the audience gets restless and the teacher gets frustrated? Listening with your heart means you give your kindest attention even if you have no idea what's being said. One day that person will be brave enough to speak up!)

The second strategy that came to mind was a personal reminder lesson:

Meet People at Their Level.

This is a motto I use for maintaining peace in my life. It comes from a Buddhist belief that we are all one. The angry woman at the supermarket is a part of me. The gleeful child skipping on the beach is a part of me. If we are to connect and support humankind, we must always approach each other with compassion, no matter what emotion is being portrayed at that moment. Using empathy to understand someone's current state allows us to bring each other back in to balance. While this idea has the potential for many, many pages of reflection, I'll keep it simple for now. Each child came in to our writing camp with their talents and their fears, preconceived notions and fueling excitement. As I sat down for a one-on-one conference, wrote comments in their notebooks, or invited them to share in front of them group, I took the briefest of moments to silently check in. Did Jon just need more time before finding the courage to speak? Was Mariya ready for a more in-depth critique to push her writing further? When Michael admitted to the group that he believed his mother would tell him his work wasn't good enough, was he asking for help? Did he have another motive for not wanting to take his work home?

I don't always have the answers to all the questions, but taking that moment to listen puts me on the right track. And if I continue with questions rather than statements (How do you feel about that? What could you say in that moment? Is there something you wish I would help you with?) I'm bound to find the missing key. I love connecting with people in this way, quietly and unassumingly. I love the opportunity to move someone from one frame of mind to another. It's probably one of the reasons I became a teacher. And I love when people do this for me--show me ways to see things in a new light and help me realize the limits I put on myself.

So let us go out into the world with listening hearts and the reminder to be gentle with ourselves, too! Does a successful moment of connection and communication come to mind for you? How do you meet people at their level?

Writing with power! - part 2

I sent out a questionnaire to my future writers a few weeks before camp. One of the questions I asked was, "What do you love about writing and/or what do you find challenging about writing?" Jack was the first to respond. I had already received a frantic message from his mother, who was worried that her boy was going to make trouble for me. His answer to the question..."I don't like anything about writing. It is challenging because I can't come up with any good ideas and I think it is just really boring. I feel like celebrating when I don't have to do any big writing assignments. P.S. I am in Spanish immersion so I have written mostly in Spanish but I would prefer to write in English."

Game on.

In that moment, I made him my personal project. Across town, this red-haired, freckle smitten, soon-to-be fifth grader was also hoping to be challenged. He secretly longed to be a confident writer but was absolutely not going to say so. Doesn't his voice just ring out in that response?

After some fun, first day games, I asked the kids to write down their hopes and dreams for the week. What did they most want to accomplish? Surprisingly, one of Jack's goals was "to have a better attitude toward writing." The door was open! During writing choice, he started a piece about the first goal he scored in lacrosse, his current passion.  A classmate of his, Jenny, shared his trapezoid table, and the two set to work between light conversation. Partway through his first paragraph he came and asked for help with the /h/ sound in 'behind', and my empathy grew. Something so simple for my first graders proved challenging for this kid who did his primary learning in Spanish. 'J' or 'H'? No wonder writing was as pleasant as picking snails out of a manure pile. Instead of just giving him the answer (and stopping Jenny before she gave it away) I helped him link his knowledge to other words to find the sound. With less reservation he asked, "How do you spell took?" I replied, "How do you spell book?" Instant connection.

The next day his mom emailed me to say thanks. Whatever I was doing was working because she found Jack in his room later that afternoon writing in a journal. A first! It brought tears to my eyes to read her kind words. Throughout the week, Jack persevered with his lacrosse project. One day he even stayed in during break time to work (of course there really was "nothing to do outside"), and I promised not to tell. On the last day, he sat with me while we read his piece aloud for editing--adding commas, tightening up run-on sentences, removing unneeded details--the nitty gritty that makes writing tedious. But he stuck with it and had to be coerced into stopping. He wanted to make his piece the best that it could be because it was his story. Working in a high expectation, low-pressure environment allowed him to make mistakes, ask for help, and go for it! His rewards were seeing his words fill up those pages and hearing his story come to life as he read it aloud for the group.

I had the pleasure of watching this happen sixteen times, each in its own way. Some kids were already passionate writers when they began, and some still had stage fright when it came time to share, yet by the end of the week they had become a truly supportive community of writers.

Tomorrow--Part 3, What THEY Taught ME

Note: 'squak' = squeak and 'whosh' = whoosh! (after our morning nature walk)

Writing with power! - part 1

Two weeks ago, 16 young writers and I launched ourselves into an exploration of Powerful Writing at Nueva Summer, a camp with the motto “Imagine Create Explore.” I love those words! I believe kids should be doing that all year long. At the very least (fault "No Child Left Behind" evilness and other political nonsense), they should spend summertime fueling their curiousities with PLAY. While a request to include some skills work trickled my way, I realized that none of my teaching would matter in the end if the kids didn't have fun. I’d love to share some of the highlights with you from the week. (Of course for privacy reasons all names have been changed.)

Morning Pages
On the second day (our first day was spent deliciously cultivating Ideas), I introduced what I called “Pages” based on Julia Cameron’s practice found in The Artist’s Way. I had read that Aimee Buckner (Notebook Know-How) also does this with her fourth graders, so I felt justified in bringing the challenge to younger people. For these 3rd – 5th graders, I asked them to put pencil to paper to fill one notebook page with stream of consciousness ramblings. I told them that “I do not know what to write. This is boring. My hand hurts...” was just as valid as “The pig jumped in the oatmeal. Mrs. Pig. Boing. Woah!” They were eager to try it. And while their hands did hurt by the end (good time for a lesson on proper pencil grip!) they were impressed that they had just written over 100 words in 15 minutes. Sloane, who loved to write but had a strong internal critic, was thrilled with the opportunity to get her silly, crazy thoughts down on paper with strict instruction not to judge. Jon, who only wrote single letters across his first page, independently asked if he could try it again later with words. We were getting somewhere.

I love this practice. I do my best to stick to the regimen of my adult version, 3 notebook pages by hand daily. I look at it as the garbage pickup for my brain. All the silly worries and lists of things to do and strange feelings are downloaded onto the page, leaving me free to move on with other writing and the rest of my day. When you commit to this practice over weeks and months, interesting insights begin to appear. New ideas you didn’t know were hiding behind some subconscious brick wall, waiting to be invited out for tea, suddenly clamor for air.

Writing Choice
I fully believe in letting kids having freedom of topic choice. I did ask them to try some strategies from our mini-lessons, but after about 10 minutes they were free to either continue that work, or move on to their other ideas. Sophia, a third grader who had attended many camps in the past elsewhere, declared that this was her favorite simply because she was allowed to write what she wanted. After kids learn how to generate their own ideas, there's really no stopping them.

Seriously—how else are we going to convince kids that writing is a pleasurable activity unless we let them do what inspires them?

Tomorrow...Part 2: Jack

Making a commitment

It's not yet 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday. This is probably my favorite time of the week. The summer light is illuminating the neighborhood with a hazy, periwinkle sheen. Birds have awakened and are in the middle of their morning sonatina. The dog and the boy sleep peacefully in bed, where I would like to be, if not for all the non-stop excitement that ricochets in my head. I pinned an image on Pinterest that says it all:

Know that feeling? I think many people experience this in the wee hours of the night. For me, it's the early morning.

In these waking hours, lying in bed hoping to return to sleep, I come up with my most inspiring and energetic ideas. I'm often moved to leap out of bed and begin some new project in earnest, fueled by an inner force. It feels incredible! And then...

...it's time for breakfast. Need to start the laundry. Let's go on an errand. Oh yeah, remember that other house project you've been meaning to get to? The desire to write and create is not lost but the energy has been redirected. And here is where I feel, in all my usual calm, groundedness, I experience my version of ADHD. When I return to free time, I've been distracted by another of my many interests. Between blogging, creative writing, cooking, singing, playing steel drums, gardening, photography, reading, movie watching, social networking, yoga, dancing, hiking, traveling, writing with kids, singing with kids, baking, not to mention spending quality time with my love and my family, hanging out with friends, dog walking, and keeping house. Oh yes, and my time-consuming, passion-inducing career in education!

I'm thoroughly exhausted just reading the list.

And somehow I think I can fit all this into the span of each week. Clearly, some realism could be brought to the table. Especially as one sits with a sprained ankle and crutches nearby.

Do you wrestle with crazymaking such as this?

So, I'm going to do it. It's time, and I stand here (sitting, ankle elevated!) before you to say, I'm going to write a post each morning until the end of the month. No matter what. It might be totally uninteresting or crap or any of the other things the inner censor wants to call it but I'm all right with that. Characters need to be given a space to speak before we can know and understand them. Finding that voice is step numéro uno in the vein of creation. I'm going to take advantage of my summer freedom and use it to uphold this commitment to myself.

Who will Six Giraffes be at the end? And after that?
Well, we shall see!

Summer Time

The school year has ended and my injured foot is beginning to mend. My days are now wide open and waiting to be filled with relaxation, rejuvenation, and creativity. I've been thinking about my friend (at the Dew Drop Inn) Diane's penchant for scheduling, realizing that I, too, work most productively with a routine of sorts. This requires making a commitment to myself: I actually do want time for writing and time to pursue my hobbies more deeply. My lifestyle as a teacher affords me this gift each summer, so why let procrastination and self-doubt hold it hostage?

My first big project is to develop a week-long, half-day curriculum for a writing camp for 3rd to 5th graders, which will take place next week at Nueva Summer. I have been eating up writing books left and right, such as Ralph Fletcher's Pyrotechnics on the Page and Aimee Buckner's Notebook Know-How, books that don't pertain as much to my usual first grade clientele. I've been envisioning a writing space for these young people to spend time playing word games, creating writer's notebooks with tools, and just put words on the page. We will take advantage of the beautiful coastal oak woodlands exploring nature with our senses, and we'll end each day with a good solid chunk of writing time. This project has ignited my passion for teaching and writing all over again, and it is inspiring me to Dream Big. I love dreaming, don't you?

So here's to celebrating the fruits of a well-planned day. Let's make things happen!

Crutches: a humbling experience

Last weekend while letting my dog out into the backyard, standing perpendicular on our steep back porch steps, I lost my footing and fell onto the deck. After hauling myself inside and realizing a trip to Emergency was in order, I received the verdict: sprained foot with a small bone chip. Crutches for at least a week with a follow-up in the Podiatry department.

This has definitely been a big learning experience. Here are some of the things that have come up for me:

Crutches are not fun. I always envied kids who had them. Not just for the attention, they also looked like a fun challenge. Now I know that crutches are only fun when you borrow your friend’s pair for five minutes. The toughest part is not being able to carry things. No, the toughest part is feeling like the rest of my body is broken after a day of trying to get around.

I have even more respect for people who are permanently disabled or chronically ill. After three days I started to feel depressed, against my typical nature. It’s frustrating not to be able to take care of the things I normally do and to feel hurt all day long. I have a greater insight into why people with serious conditions suffer emotionally as well as physically. And I’m only here for a brief moment in time. Beans.

After spending a week in Hawaii, I was looking for a way to become even more fit and toned but I'm not a huge fan of the gym. I like exercise that has a purpose, like running with the dog or dancing or gardening. Still one has to put in time to get a sleek, firm body like the gym rats. How about something like propelling yourself with just your arms all day long and standing on one leg for periods of time?

The wise words of my good friend continue to ring in my ear:

Be careful what you wish for. And BE SPECIFIC.

Yesterday, my sweet and I took a trip to Home Depot for supplies for my new garden bed (post forthcoming!) A woman in a soft cast encouraged me to remain in my cozy seat on the bags of soil amendment, noting that some people with flatbed carts had a tendency to ram into her without cause or care. Another woman in a wheelchair rolled by and smiled, making jokes about how my guy should be carrying me everywhere. Even though I noticed her making friends with everyone else in the garden department, I somehow felt seen and understood, as well as having the ability to see and understand. I was grateful for the care from these strangers as much as the love of my friends and family over the past week.

To quote The Phantom Tollbooth (our current classroom read aloud) “The way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.” I suppose I no longer see the world from the same Point of View. And I am much the better for it.

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