#SOL17 Day 11

We may not be rich, but our grandchildren are priceless. ~ Unknown

Ok, so I have been staring at this page on and off all day, and the only reason I am typing at all is that I am afraid that I will fall asleep and not post today, and I will be a slicer failure.

My grandson came to visit tonight, and he brought his mom and dad.  Parker is a talker.  From the time he gets up until he goes to bed he is talking.  If he is not telling the closest adult something very important, he is playing and making up stories – the adventures of his Duplo people, or his latest favorite stuffed animal.  He has quite the imagination for a three-year-old and a vocabulary to go with it.  He never ceases to amaze me.

I love watching him play and interact with whoever will listen, but the best part of the evening was when we snuggled on the couch. You just can’t get those moments back.

 

#SOL17 Day 10

Give without remembering, Take without forgetting. ~Elizabeth Bibesco

Friday. It seemed so far away. I had so much to get finished, and I wasn’t sure I would be successful. Now here it is, and I am happy to say that I have cleared my desk, and came home with no “must do’s” on my list.

I am thankful this week is over, but I am thankful for so many things this week.

• Grades closed today, and all my grading is finished
•  My colleagues have taken such good care of me while I am tethered to this walker – running off my papers, taking my class to and from lunch, anything I need.
• My husband has been picking up all the slack at home since I am virtually useless.
• Speaking of my husband – have I said how thankful I am that he is so happy in his new job?
• Dinner with my brother, sister-in-law, and their family was such a treat.
• Seeing my mom so happy in her assisted living community.
• My checkbook balanced!

TGIF! I will spend the weekend appreciating each and every moment that I get to enjoy outside of school, so that I will be ready to face the week on Monday.

 

 #SOL17 Day 9

“In the best classrooms, grades are only one of many types of feedback provided to students.” ~Douglas B. Reeves

It is the end of the trimester; grades close tomorrow.  I have been a grading machine for the past week.  Just when I thought I was all caught up, I realized that I was missing a few grades for a couple of students.  Ughh!!

First, there is the student who was absent for a week and is in the process of making up missed tests.  OK, she only has one more to take tomorrow.

Next, there are the students who missed a test; took it when they returned to school, and the test is nowhere to be found! Grrr….lucky I recorded the grades on the grading sheet….still can’t find the tests.

Lastly, is the one that got away.  I worked my way through 46 multi-genre projects only to find that number 47 was missing – never turned on February 23rd with the rest of the papers.  But did he say he hadn’t turned it in?!? No, that would make it too easy for me.  I KNOW I told the class that if they weren’t putting their project in the pile they should see me.  So much for following directions.

All I have left to do tomorrow is grade three late tests and complete personal & social growth, and effort & study skills – oh and all the skill checks in ELA.  I am going to try and go in early (if the snow doesn’t slow me down) and work.  I will work through lunch and after school if I have too, but I am NOT going to be grading at home this weekend!  I want a weekend off!

 

 #SOL17 Day8

Weather is a great metaphor for life — sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and there’s nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella or choose to dance in the rain! ~Terri Guillemets,

The weather has me all mixed up. Meteorology speaking it is winter, and spring is right around the corner, but somebody better tell the weather that!

One day the temperature reaches 60 degrees then dips to 30 the next morning. I don’t know how to dress. Will a sweater be too hot? Maybe I should dress in layers. Clothes are everywhere in my bedroom because I am afraid to put away the winter clothes, but I am starting to pull out some cooler weather wear. The comforter goes on, the comforter comes off, the socks go on the socks come off. It is the dance that goes on all night long.

Is it going to rain or maybe snow? My knees and hands can tell you so. I don’t have to watch the nightly news to know that I need to break out the anti-inflammatories. The next day my sinuses and dizzy feeling in my head let me know that the barometric pressure is on the move. I carry a virtual medicine cabinet everyday so that I am prepared for whatever Mother Nature has in store for me.

I can’t wait for the weather to make up its mind. Let it be Spring already. Then I can pack up my winter clothes and break out the allergy meds!

#SOL17

When you release your expectations, you are free to enjoy things for what they are instead of what you think they should be. ~Mandy Hale

I have been using the walker for just about two weeks now, and will be using it until at least March 17th. I have learned a lot about myself over these last couple of weeks.

Having to use this walker makes everything more of a challenge. I try my best to think ahead and know what I want and what I need to get before I go into another room. I have learned that before now I must have gone up and down my hallway from my bedroom to the bathroom at least ten times a morning. Now I try to make that trip just twice – once to get into the shower and once to hang up my robe, brush my teeth, and spray my hair.

Having to use the walker makes simple tasks like bringing the mail in from outside or retrieving the newspaper much more difficult. Getting breakfast, making lunch, packing up my school bag all take so much more time.

I have learned that even though I often put off doing household chores, now that I can’t do some of them I am frustrated. Who would have thought that I would miss dusting or vacuuming?

It has only been five weeks since I first felt the pain of my pelvic fracture. From everything I have read it takes at least six weeks to three months to heal from this type of fracture, but waiting is so difficult. I have learned that I am impatient, and I think that I should be feeling better than I am feeling. Instead of taking one day at a time, I am fretting about whether or not I will be able to be pain free by March 17th. If I’m not I will have to stay on the walker.

This experience is opening my eyes to the difficulty that people with disabilities face each and every day. While this is definitely hard for me, and I have the right to any feelings that I am having right now, I can at least see a light at the end of the tunnel unlike those who have no chance of leaving their walkers behind.

I do my best to be upbeat when colleagues inquire about how it is going, but I need to be upbeat with myself. This challenge is slowing me down, making me stop doing some things, and I need to learn how to embrace the moment and let go of what I can’t control. I need to stop expecting and just experience.

#SOL17 Day 6

Sometimes I get to the point of frustration, that I just fall silent. ~ Unknown.

I love technology when it works. Tonight after dinner I got myself all set up at the dining room table with my new laptop. For some reason I could not get on the Internet. I was having a little trouble last night before I finally got my piece posted and chalked the problem up to the Internet itself.

Unfortunately, tonight I still couldn’t get my laptop to cooperate. Now I am frustrated not only because I can’t figure out why the circle just keeps spinning and spinning but not allowing me to get online, but I now have to write my post on my iPad.

While I love my iPad, there are just some things that are best left to the computer, and my daily post is one of them. Is that silly? Maybe, but that’s how I roll.

Well I can’t say that I have writer’s block, I just am too frustrated to have coherent thoughts find their way from my brain to the page.

Tomorrow is a new day!

 

 

#SOL17 Day 5

Pocrastination is like a credit card. It’s a lot of fun until you get the bill. ~ Christopher Parker

Today I have been playing “The Grading Game.”

Game pieces: 48 argument essays in Google Classroom, one set of reading comprehension assessments, and a few miscellaneous assignments that were turned in late due to absences.

Rules: I must meet a certain benchmark before I can turn my attention to something else.

How to Play: 1. Grade at least five essays before I can check my Facebook page.
2. Grade another six essays before I can eat lunch.
3. Grade another seven essays before I can watch an episode of Say Yes to the
Dress
4. Grade the last five from Periods 1 & 2 and I can write my Slice of Life

So here I am. I have successfully graded one section of essays. I only have 25 essays to go along with the reading assessments and floaters. How come it always comes to this? Why can’t I keep on top of my grading so that it doesn’t pile up at the end of the trimester. You would think I would have learned a thing or two in my thirty years of teaching.

Well actually I have. No matter what, or when, or how, the grading will get completed before grades are due. I don’t assign anything that needs to be graded during the last week of the trimester, thus I have until this coming Friday to finish up what doesn’t get completed today.

So, I must get back to grading and coaxing myself into getting it finished! I would still like to check my Twitter account and read for pleasure. How many papers do you think I will have to finish before I am free to do those things?

#SOL17

 

Life goes on…whether you  choose to move on and take a chance on the unknown, or stay behind, locked in the past, and thinking of what could have been. ~ Unknown

Tomorrow my beautiful daughter-in-law turns 30. I remember a conversation we had about a month ago . Krysten couldn’t believe she was turning 30.  How could that be?  Afterall, she can remember her dad’s surprise 30th birthday party like it was yesterday! I reassured her that your 30s were the best, and I believe that I was being sincere at the time.

I loved my thirties. I got married young (21) and had kids right away.  So by the time I hit thirty my kids were in both in school at least part time.  I went back to teaching after a three year hiatus, and we moved to our current home. These things brought new adventures and new friends that I still treasure.  I had a resurgence in my spiritual life and grew as a person by leaps and bounds.

I loved my forties.  I continued to grow both personally and professionally.  This decade saw me become a NWP Fellow which was a life-changing event.  This is the decade that I began to trust myself more.  My kids were in high school, and life became a series of marching band competitions, first boyfriends/girlfriends, laughter and tears, driver’s licenses and prom,  SAT scores and selecting colleges.  How could my children have grown into these fabulous young adults ready to embark on their own journeys?  Where had the time gone?

I love my fifties.  Now, today I say that a bit sarcastically, since this decade has seen my body age – two arthritic knees that need replacing among a laundry list of other annoying ailments.  Yet, looking back, I would not want to go back to another time.  This decade broadened our family with the addition of a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law both of whom I love not just because of who they are, but because who my son and daughter are with them.  Their love has made me a Nona – a grandmom.  I thought I loved my own children, but that pales in comparison to how much I love my three grandchildren!

These are the best days of your life.  All of them.  Whichever ones you are experiencing at the moment. But they can only be the best days if you believe they are.  I have learned many lessons in my lifetime and continue to learn through the ups and downs of life that come my way. If you are not thankful for each and every day and the lessons that it brings, then you will continue to wait for “tomorrow” or “the next best thing” and miss the miracle that is today.

Happy Saturday!

Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. It is the place where you become yourself. ~Pico Iyer.

Is one’s homeland the country where s/he was born or the country where s/he was raised?  Does it matter?  That was the question my colleague posed to her class. To me they are one in the same since I was born and raised in the United States.

If I think back to my grandparents who were immigrants I would have to say in some/many ways they may have longed for their “homeland” the country of their births – Poland and Italy.

My grandmom Ferrante probably was the clearest on what her feelings were on homeland.  She came from Italy and met my grandfather when she was just 15.  They married when she was 17 ½ , had nine children, and built successful businesses – an ice business, then coal, and finally an oil delivery company.  My grandfather often returned to Italy to “show off” his good fortune or fruits of his hard labor to his family and friends “back home”. He wanted to retire and go back and live in Italy permanently. Grandmom, however, had a much different idea.  She told him, “You made your money here. You will spend your money here.” She was not going back and leaving her nine children and ever growing gaggle of grandchildren.  She was home.

What do you think?  What is your homeland?

                      #SOL17