Bummed

I am bummed.  This afternoon, I had a few spare minutes and I wrote a great blog post about how zombified the students and staff are this week due to state testing.  I even managed to use the word shambling, which of course HAS to describe the way zombies walk!  I went to add a picture at the bottom of the post, and poof!  the filter at my school ate my post.  I couldn't get it back because it hadn't autosaved the way it does here at home.

I hate that darn filter.  Even though the teachers have a password that can bypass it, it's still annoying, and depending on the web browser I use, the override times out.  It's annoying and inconvenient.  I get why schools, especially junior high schools would want to keep kids from looking at naughty stuff, but sometimes the filters go too far.  For example, students in my district can't search the word "music" without triggering the filter.  Even if they're doing a research project on music from different historical eras, doesn't matter.  We have to block that.  Breast cancer is another no-no search term.

So I feel a bit like the cranky "Get off my lawn" lady tonight.

But I DID learn a lesson... when writing a blog post at school, write it in Pages then copy and paste it into blogger when I get home!

Tired

After yesterday's snow day, you would think I would have gone off to school this morning refreshed and ready to tackle the world.

Oh, if only this were true.

In reality, I went to school exhausted today.  You see.. all night I dreamt I was at school working.  When I woke up this morning, I felt as if I had already put in a full day of work, meetings and all!  I hate it when I have nights like this. Usually they're reserved for the weeks before school starts or when I have a big project due.  This is not the case this week.  I don't have huge meetings to prep for this week, and because of ISAT testing, my coaching schedule is fairly light.  I'm getting smaller projects done in my room that I haven't had time to to otherwise.

Of course... things will start to get busy again in the next week or so as I present our latest testing data to the faculty and then meet with teams to identify students who should be in our third session of interventions.  Then I have to start getting things ready for our spring benchmarking....

Ok... I do have a lot on my plate.  Too bad those working dreams aren't all that productive!

An Old Friend

Today was a rare event:  we had a snow day!  In fact, I got the call at about 9:30 last night, so I didn't even have to set my alarm this morning.  It was glorious to stay up late reading, knowing that I wouldn't be shocked out of sleep at 5AM.  My girls and I could sleep in and just do whatever we wanted for this bonus day off.

I wasn't completely lazy.  I went to the grocery store before the storm kicked in to get the ingredients to make beef burgundy in the slow cooker and did several loads of laundry.  I also shoveled the driveway three different times (I'm counting this as my cardio and upper body workout for the day).

But most of the day I spent with an old friend.  Perhaps you know her.  Maeve Binchy?  Ever heard of her?

Of course, Ms. Binchy passed away in the last year or so, and I never knew her personally, but she is like an old friend to me.  Her books are warm stories of friendships, family, and love, and although they seem a bit old fashioned when compared to more modern "chick-lit," I find them to be welcoming and satisfying, much like that stew I had bubbling away in the kitchen all day.

I happen to know that I read my first Maeve Binchy book in 1995 when the movie version of Circle of Friends came out.  I'm a read-the-book-first kind of girl, and so I picked up the paperback, probably at Target, and devoured it over a weekend.  From then on I was hooked... I read my way through my public library's collection of Binchy books and then read each new one as soon as I could get it from the library.

When I heard Ms. Binchy had died, I was sad, as if one of my grandmother's friendly neighbors had passed away.  I was sad that there would be new stories of Ireland to lose myself in.  Then the email came from my library that a copy of A Week In Winter, her final book, was on hold for me.  It is turning out to be a comforting, perfect snow day read.

Books Over Lunch or Lunch Over Books? (post contains a photo of a nude painting)

I'm lucky to be a part of a book club composed of junior high and elementary school teachers who read YA books.  We've been meeting for about two years now, and we've read a great selection of books... everything from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson to Bomb:  The Race to Build (and Steal) the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin to today's selection, Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg.  We are a mixed group of English teachers, a French teacher, science teachers, a math teacher, elementary classroom teachers, and an elementary special education teacher.  We are a range of ages, marital statuses, and family sizes as well as diverse interests and hobbies.

One commonality - we all love books.

I love being part of a community that loves to read and talk about books as much as I do.  Now that I'm no longer in the classroom, I don't get to have as many thoughtful conversations about books as I used to.  This monthly meeting goes a long way in making up for those missing daily talks.  As a group we not only talk about what we thought about the various books we've read; we also talk about what kinds of readers we're eager to pass books along to.  I love it when I hear the science teachers say, "I told two girls in my X-block (homeroom) that they have to read this book, based on what I know about them as readers."  I can't say that sentence is something I would have heard a science teacher say ten years ago.

Today this group of readers gathered at a local restaurant after a day of meetings and left the worries and pressures of school behind as we had a late lunch and talked through the afternoon about the book we read and the books we want to read.  We are readers who have plans, people.

Next up:  Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral, Every Day by David Levithan, and then Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park.

Oh... I almost forgot!  This was our comic relief for the afternoon.  The painting of a nude woman hangs in the dining room of a very popular local family restaurant.  Notice the strategically placed shamrock.

Sunday

This year, as I've adjusted to my new position as a literacy coach, I'm finding that Sundays have a different rhythm.  Since 1993, Sunday afternoons and evenings have meant going over lesson plans and grading papers, spending hours at my desk in the basement or with my lapdesk on the couch while a movie played in the background.  I would fall into bed exhausted, head aching after hours of reading and commenting on student work.

Now that I'm not in the classroom, I don't have papers to grade.  I can plan my time during the week to get my work done on weekday evenings while my own children are working on their homework.  Paperwork doesn't pile up the way it used to, since I actually deal in very little paper at all.  The data from our assessments is entered into spreadsheets, so instead of reading piles of papers, I stare at a screen and sort and resort data in different ways, trying to make sense of the lessons hidden within. I have only five students in my literacy intervention, so lesson planning is for just one group, and their work is easily assessed after school each afternoon.

Sunday evenings now are still not relaxing, but they are different.  Instead, I spend them supervising last-minute homework, helping my younger daughter write her reading response, finishing the laundry  so the oldest has her gym suit for PE and making sure our calendar for the week is under control.

It still seems weird to be able to be Mom on Sundays instead of Mrs. Rench.

Saturday Morning

Saturday mornings at the Rench Ranch are typically not your lazy, lay around in your pajamas type of mornings.  Instead, I am up and out the door before 8 am.  Most weeks, it's that I'm headed off on my weekly round of grocery shopping.  Today I spent the day in a graduate class.

When I woke up at 6 this morning and shuffled out of my bedroom to put the coffee on, this is what greeted me:

It's a common picture of this particular daughter.  She has long been fascinated by technology.  First it was her LeapPad, then the Nintendo DS.  Eventually she moved on to the iPad or the laptop.  I know she is like many others of her generation, fascinated by the continuous entertainment to be found online.  Her favorite websites right now are Webkins, Moshi Monsters, and YouTube, where she watches My Little Pony videos as well as tutorials on making various kinds of cake pops and on applying crazy makeup.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing a bad job of parenting this child who instead of picking up a book to read in the quiet of the morning (which is what I would do) would rather spend an hour with Hello Kitty and The Duck Song.  It's not as if her dad and I don't model reading; we are constantly reading a wide variety of things:  the newspaper, magazines, books - both fiction and nonfiction, and yes... blogs, emails, and websites.  How am I to reconcile this child who does not feel the passion for books that I feel?

Then I remember.... she's not me.  She's her own person with her own passions and interests.  I'd get a checkmark in the parent fail column if in fact I tried to mold her into a mini-me or a replica of her big sister.  I remember to laugh with her over the crazy Lego movies she discovers or help her try to recreate a craft idea she comes across.  I remember to talk with her about her paintings and her collages and buy her endless art supplies.  I remember to sit with her on the couch and read aloud the books that SHE is interested in when she is in the mood.

I remember to cherish all the things that make her unique and embrace the amazing girl she is.

Thoughts on Slice of Life

This is the third year I'm attempting the Slice of Life month long challenge.  In each of the previous two years, I managed to write and post daily until about the middle of the month, when life seemed to get in the way.  One obstacle has been the Illinois Reading Council conference in mid-March.  Attending the conference tends to derail my blogging and commenting efforts because I get so caught up in the social aspect of the conference.  This year, I am resolved not to let that happen.

I chose to attempt the month-long challenge again this year because I know that when I am writing regularly, I am a better writer.  I went back through my blog archives earlier this week, and I was amazed that I had actually written some of those entries.  There was one in particular that stood out for me, this one, where I describe cooking with my children.  I almost cried, thinking about how much they have grown since I wrote the blog.  It's also kind of cool, though, that I have written memories of these times, not just photos in a scrapbook that don't tell a whole story.

I've also decided that I'm going to try to spread my slice stories out between two of my blogs:  this one, where I tend to write about my life and family, and Making It Work In The Middle, my sadly neglected professional blog.  I may also cross post some posts to the Illinois Writing Project blog.  We'll see.

So here it is, March 1, and already I'm off to a great start.  Tonight I'll go through the links and comment on others' posts, a task I enjoy, as it leads me to new voices to follow in my Google Reader!