Learning Curve

Yesterday afternoon my highly coveted smart phone arrived at my house via UPS.  Of course, I was at school, and then I had to drive down to the Loop for a meeting.  By the time I got home last night it was 9, and I just couldn't wait to activate it and start playing.

By the time I got off the phone with the customer care person, it was almost 1l.  I quickly discovered that although I'm pretty tech savvy, there were just things I couldn't figure out (like um... how to make a call?). 

I know that as I have time to sit and play with my phone and poke around, I'll get the hang of how the phone works, but until then, I guess I'll let my 6 year old have a crack at it.  I'm sure she'll figure it out in five minutes.

Cheesy

Some nights I make the perfect dinner to suit the weather and mood of the day.  Today was one of those days.  It was a cold, gray, rainy day in the Chicago area, and all day I felt tired and lethargic.  All I wanted to do was go home and take a nap; I certainly wasn't interested in cooking an elaborate dinner!

I thought about what I had in my freezer or pantry that I could whip up while my oldest was at dance class, and I remembered a bag of frozen ravioli.  Mmmmm..... ravioli!  Know what makes ravioli taste even better?  Baking it in the oven with cheese on top.  There's something about the red sauce, the pasta, and that bubbly cheese that is immensely satisfying.  It's warm and comforting and that kind of stick-to-your-ribs meal that makes a cold, icky day a little less icky.

Ouch!

Today my six-year-old daughter wiped out on her bike.  It was the first fall of the season, and her first serious fall since she started riding a two wheeler late last summer.

I was getting dinner ready and my husband was watching her from the front window when she fell.  I heard him go running through the front door and my older daughter yell.  By the time I got myself to the door, he was bringing Abby in.  The first thing I noticed was all the blood.

As a mom, I know I have to appear calm and collected when one of my girls is injured, but inside, I panicked.  Holy cow!  There was blood on her face and blood on her knees.  From the first glance, I couldn't tell where the blood on her face was coming from.  I do remember thinking, "Thank goodness she hasn't lost any teeth yet.  If one is knocked loose, another will just come in!"  Does that make me an unfeeling mom?

Turns out she was fine, just a scraped knee and chin and a fat lip.  We'll make her get back on that bike before the week is out, and hopefully she'll escape unscarred, both physically and emotionally.

Abby with scraped chin and fat lip.  Thankfully no stitches needed!

Fun

Over the course of the past few days, I've had more fun than I've had in a really long time.  The last half of 2010 was an incredibly stressful, sad time for me and the family on my dad's side.  It seemed that things kept happening, tragedies stacking up, and I never felt fully recovered from any of it.

Then I traveled to Springfield with colleagues to a conference, and we spent much of the 3 days together laughing.  It felt so good to just BE, to not think about all of the stresses that seem to take over my life. 

Last night I went with my husband to a local bar to see a friend's band play.  It was the first time we'd been out together in a while, and we had some time to talk and reconnect before the band started.  It was a nice way to celebrate my return home and just hang out and hear some music.  I sang, I clapped, I danced, I had a beer (or two), and again, just enjoyed the night.  No worries, no thinking about deadlines, nothing.

Sometimes I wonder if I keep myself from having fun by being the designated worrier for planet Earth.  I need to remember that FUN is FUNdamental!

Giving Back

This weekend I did two presentations at the Illinois Reading Council Conference.  One of them was on making documentary films in place of a research paper, and the other was on integrating the reading/writing workshop through genre studies.  While I've attended the IRC conference many times over the past seventeen years, this is the first time I've ever presented there.  I never really thought I had anything amazing to share that other teachers didn't already know.

However, my thinking about what I have to share with other teachers has changed since I began doing PD for my school district and since I began working with the Illinois Writing Project.  I've come to realize, that in my eighteen years in the classroom I've learned quite a bit through trial and error and through long hours of reading, thinking, and analyzing what works for me and my students.

Today I felt honored to give back to my profession, to provide teachers with something to think about the way countless others have done for me in the past.  Presenting at conferences isn't about stroking my ego, but rather helping a colleague on their own journey of learning.  Of course, just because I'm helping others does not mean my own journey is over!

I love twitter!

I have been using Twitter about two years, but it's really been in about the past year or so that it's grown to be one of my biggest sources of professional development.  I've discovered YA authors who will answer questions posed in tweets, leaders in my field who tweet their latest thinking, and friends to bounce ideas off of and to share the ups and downs of life with.

With Teri at NCTE

Last November, I went to NCTE in Orlando.  I was sitting in a meeting room eating a snack, waiting for the first session to begin when I heard an enthusiastic "Mindi!"  Turns out it was Teri Lesesne, aka @ProfessorNana on twitter, and when I asked her how she knew it was me, she said, "You look just like your twitter picture!"  I ended up spending most of my weekend with various people I knew from my interactions with them on Twitter, and that helped make my conference experience even better.

Yesterday, I got to spend the entire day with Donalyn Miller (The BookWhisperer!  find her on twitter as @donalynbooks) at the Illinois Reading Council Conference.  As we sat over dinner with another twitter friend (@katsok) and four of my colleagues, we talked about books and teaching and family and books and travel and food and books and wine.... well, you get the picture.  I thought about how even though I've met Donalyn in person just twice in my life, in some ways I knew her better than the people I work with every day.

Twitter is terrific!

Wednesday's Slice a Day Late

Yesterday, four colleagues and I drove from Northbrook, Illinois, to Springfield.  We're here for the Illinois Reading Council Conference, one of the highlights of my professional year.  As we drove through the flatness of the Illinois countryside, there was much talk and laughter in the van, and very little talk of school.

I'm so happy that I'm not attending this conference alone this year, as I have in years past.  I am a social person, and I find that in order to fully process information, I need to talk about what I've seen and heard.  After a day full of sessions, I like to talk to those who have traveled with me, dissecting bits and pieces of the various presentations, figuring out what will work for me in my classroom and what won't.  Those debriefing times are among my favorites.

Yet, how many times do I forget to offer my students that same opportunity to talk and debrief their own learning?