There is a certain kind of overwhelm that enters the classroom when the number of remaining school days drops below 30. Student learning skyrockets with confidence at its maximum–these should be the glory days. But at the same time, spring brings forth the “too big for your britches” behaviors that make teaching hard. Maybe it’s a defense students develop to inoculate themselves against the pain of leaving this classroom that has become oh-so-comfortable.
While Barbara over at Verselove offered an invitation to write a things to do poem, I’m not sure my poem turned out so things to do-ish. Luckily, likes moms and childbirth, teachers mostly forget the pain and remember the joys that come from teaching. As I ended today’s teaching day by having students share their 16-word poems inspired by William Carlos Williams, some of the earlier frustrations with less than stellar classroom behaviors were erased. I’m thinking maybe I should call this a Things I’ve Learned poem.
Spring is supposed to be all flowers blooming and warm temps…right? Somehow the Southern CA version of spring did not get the memo. Right now spring break is gale force winds, blowing sand, and zipping that puffer right up to the chin.
Leilya at Verselove proposed a tricube to express what speaks to you about spring. A tricube is 3 stanzas, each with three lines, and each line having 3 syllables. 3:3:3
Okay, here’s my photo illustrated version with 3 photos:
It’s Not Yet
In mild temps
it’s nuance
announcing
Hummingbirds
sip nectar
bold buds bloom
Wind whips sand
soars clouds cling
summer waits
I’m trying to invoke ideal spring conditions with my flip flops! It isn’t working!
I’ve always had a difficult relationship with shoes. I love pretty shoes, the ones with interesting straps, clever cutouts, heels that create an air of sophistication… But shoes do not love my feet. In spite of the struggle, I’ve always sought out shoes that enhance my wardrobe and are somewhat comfortable.
But something changed. I think it was the pandemic that was the instigator. Once the world closed down in March of 2020, there was no need to wear pretty shoes. In fact, most of the time, there was no need to wear shoes at all. As I taught from my kitchen table, most of the time my feet were bare. If I headed into the backyard for breath of fresh air, I slipped into my Rainbow flip flops. At that same time I also began a regular walking practice of at least 30 minutes a day, so athletic shoes were a necessity.
I found myself alternating between bare feet, flip flops, and athletic shoes throughout the day–depending on what I was doing (without much consideration to what I was wearing). And when we went back to school with students, we found ourselves spending a lot more time with our students–including supervising their playtime–and no one needs to wear cute shoes to do that! Meetings were still mostly virtual, so all anyone ever saw of you (if they even looked) what what blouse you had on and if your pandemic hair was standing on end! Again, no need to consider whether or not your shoes were fashionable or flattering.
Sometime between then and now, women began wearing white tennis shoes with their dresses, Birkenstocks made a major comeback (for both men and women), and my own footwear choices have trended to post-pandemic casual.
I can’t remember the last time I wore a heel (actually, I can. It was to a formal family wedding about two years ago) or anything other than flat sandals or athletic shoes on a regular basis.
I realized last week when I attended a conference that my idea of a professional dress shoe is a Vans checkerboard slip on! (I did opt for pants that were not jeans though!)
And just today as I wandered around the outlet mall, the Vans outlet called me in. I came out with some great green Vans lace ups (the ones called “old skool”). I think they might be my new dress shoes! I’m already wondering if they will work as “professional casual” for the meeting I’m attending next week.
Has your relationship with shoes changed since the pandemic?
Today’s #verselove prompt was to “sound off,” but honestly, on a busy Saturday after a busy week, I simply needed a space with the sound off. So I decided to riff on that idea for today’s poem.
What do you need right now? That was the question Amber over at #verselove asked today. While she suggested some fanciful supplies, I couldn’t get my current favorite pen out of my head. So today is a sort of ode to my pen.
Many days when I go to write a poem I have some idea what I will write about–often inspired by a photo I have taken or an experience I had. But today’s poem came from a different place. The #verselove prompt suggested borrowing a line for Jane Hirshfield’s poem My Life was the Size of my Life and using it to say something about yourself.
Weirdly enough, I picked the line “There were times we made bread.” I say weirdly because I am not a cook–my husband does all the cooking and baking in our family. But somehow, it spoke to me and represents for me the idea of making and nurturing–threads that do run through my life and my profession.
I’m not sure that I understand yet what I am saying in this piece, but I will let it sit a while. Maybe at some point it will speak its truth.
Some days you just need to write a list–and lucky for me, that was the prompt provided by Denise over at #verselove. It turns out that this was not my typical list, it is more like advice to myself. After all, it is April and there are 37 more school days in this school year. What that means is that things start to get a bit frantic in the world of teachers. There is all the uncertainty that comes with staffing from year to year–a third grade teacher needs to move to 4th grade. Will they hire anyone this year? Who will retire? And there’s also the drama…on the playground, in the teacher’s lounge, sometimes even in the classroom.
So here we go…
How to Maintain Sanity with 37 Days Left in School
Introduce students to amazing mentors like Amanda Gorman, Jan Goodall, Rachel Carson and more.
Take long walks–everyday–even when you don’t feel like it.
On those super stressful days, indulge in a class of red wine.
Make time for some trashy and/or light reading. Get lost in a world different from yours.
Keep learning activities light and varied. Remember, students learn and remember more when they’re having fun.
Buy yourself flowers (Trader Joe’s is a great source)–smell them, photograph them, enjoy them.
Break out the play doh! Give students challenges: make something that is food; create an animal; something with straight and curved lines… Be sure you are building too!
Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Repeat as needed.
Laugh. A lot. With your family. With your students. By yourself. In your car. In the shower. Just laugh.
Write poetry. Read poetry. For yourself and with your students. Leave a poem where someone will find it. Or better yet, post it on your blog!
Sometimes it seems like I’m always tired. Even after a full night’s sleep, I wake up feeling like I could just stay in bed all day. It seems worse since the time change, even though I purposefully gave myself some extra down time to try to make up for the “lost” hour.
A week or so ago I read an article about seven kinds of rest that all people need. Now this is really not news–I know that sleep and rest are different, and that my mind can be whirling even when my body is resting.
Here are the 7 types of rest the article outlines:
physical rest
mental rest
sensory rest
creative rest
emotional rest
social rest
spiritual rest
It’s interesting to me that physical rest can include both passive (sleeping, laying down, napping, etc.) and active rest (stretching, massage, yoga). I’m pretty good at passive rest, not so good at active rest. It is definitely the mental rest and the social rest that are challenging in my line of work as an educator. Teaching is not the kind of job that is easy to leave at the office–and it’s also not easy to just take a break during the course of the work day. I think this is an area I need to make some more conscious effort to let my brain relax–and I think it explains why so many teachers hate to make decisions when they get home from work! That social rest is another challenge. We are people facing all day long, and it’s hard to be “on” all the time. Especially those of us who are introverts at heart can find the constant social interaction exhausting.
I love the idea of creative rest–which doesn’t really sound like rest at all. Taking photos is definitely a version of creative rest for me. And I often think I should pull out my watercolor paints or some other art more often. Lucky for me I do get to paint and draw with my students, which is another creative outlet.
Photos…I take them every day. Sometimes with my iPhone, other times with my Sony mirrorless camera, but without fail, I take daily photos. That means by the end of the year I have quite a collection.
Reflecting on the year seems to be the stock practice for the new year. For me, looking back over a year’s worth of photos is the perfect way to review the year. In both 2020 and 2021, I selected a photo for each month that I considered “best” and made my decisions simply by deciding which photo was best for each month. But this year, as I looked through my photos, I found that there were months where there was no best…for complicated reasons. So instead, this year, while I tried to select a best of the month, I let the months that didn’t have a photo that resonated simply stay blank. With a ruthless elimination process, I finally came to 12 “best of” photos and one bonus photo–more to come on that.
It seems that everyone loves a sunset photo…but honestly, sometimes sunset photos can be quite boring, each one indistinguishable from the next. My sunset photos are almost always at the beach–who can resist that ball of fire sinking into the ocean? I love when I am able to catch a bird in the sunset, and the bird almost always turns out to be a seagull since they are so common. I was delighted in January to have captured this sun, just barely above the horizon with a pelican stretched out in flight above. I love that you can see not only the wings, but also the bill in its long, oversized glory.
February was a bonanza month for me. Poor planning for my week off meant that airline prices were sky high, leaving us to scramble for a drivable adventure. We ended up exploring Sequoia and King’s Canyon National Parks and then continued on to Yosemite. As a Southern Californian, snow is not a part of my repertoire. Where I live it doesn’t snow, you have to go TO the snow. While we brought clothes and coats for cold weather, it seemed too much to hope for snow (and maybe a bit too scary since we are not experienced chain users or snow drivers). But when we woke up that first morning in Yosemite, the forecast was for snow and it wasn’t long into our drive into the park when we needed to stop and put on those chains that were still in their original packaging. As the morning went on, snow fell gently around us, decorating our hats and scarves and creating a magical hush as the world around us was coated in a frosting of white. As an inexperienced snow photographer, I experienced the challenges of the white and gray, struggling to find the contrast and definition in my photos. And photos while the snow fell also meant dealing with movement usually only present in action photography. Here’s on of my favorites.
And that bonus photo I referred to earlier was channeling my inner Ansel Adams. For much of the morning, Half Dome was not visible. Thick clouds created a monochromatic gray of the sky, obscuring most of the iconic peaks. But when the sky cleared enough for sunlight to penetrate, Half Dome appeared in all its glory–and who can resist a black and white filter when talking about Half Dome and Yosemite?
Spring brought a trip to the desert and another visit to Joshua Tree National Park. A decision to try our hand at night sky photography brought us into the park as the sun was beginning to set. Joshua trees have such a distinctive shape. Unlike the simplicity of cactus, Joshua trees seem to reach a multitude of bushy arms into the sky. I love the way the sun is peeking out, almost like a jewel below the Joshua tree.
Regular walks on the beach create many opportunities to see native wildlife–especially sea birds. I often see egrets, osprey, pelicans, seagulls (of course), and the usual variety of shore birds like sandpipers and whimbrels. It’s not often that I see a heron, and definitely not up close and in flight. This one flew in close, landed and searched for food for a while and then took flight–all when I had my camera in hand! I love the curve of the neck and ruffle of the brilliant blue feathers.
I’m lucky to teach at a school with a garden–and even more fortunate to discover that we have artichokes as landscaping between classrooms. I catch myself looking for photo worthy garden moments–and who can resist the green of an artichoke in the morning sun?
I spend a day every week at our local university where I direct the writing project. To counteract the sitting that comes with office work, I frequently head out for a walk around the campus. This is a place I have known for many, many years and even so, it is constantly changing and often surprises me. This photo I took in June was one of those surprises when I discovered an area formerly used by cars had become a pedestrian zone and was now painted with brightly colored polka dots. Might it be like following the yellow brick road and walking into Oz?
Summer is tomato truck season in California. I’m lucky (or unlucky) enough to drive up highway 5 a couple times a year through the central valley to visit family in the northern part of the state. For me, one of the highlights of the summer drive is photographing tomato trucks. Sometimes it’s possible to catch a stretch of several tomato trucks in a row. This last summer you can see that I caught a few–separated by another truck. It can be challenging photographing through the car window–and avoiding having a photo marked with the bugs that inevitably end up squished on the windshield. I really love the movement in this photo, along with the mound of ripe, red tomatoes visible in the truck bed.
I love a great surfing competition and this past summer we watched the annual Oceanside, CA longboard contest. Longboard surfing is so different from a typical surfing competition. Instead of the sharp turns and quick action, you get long rides with lots of walking the board…and plenty of hang ten action if you stay aware. The other bonus of this competition is being able to watch from the Oceanside pier that allow a much more close up view of the surfers.
Some of our best beach weather comes after school has resumed. September is an amazing month for beach going in these parts. Some people surf, some people play, and some people use the beach for fishing. I love the lines in this image–the poles in front and behind, the horizontal line of waves, and the surfer off in the righthand corner.
In October, we found ourselves in Columbus, Ohio for a family wedding. Before the festivities began, we spent a bit of time exploring the city and caught the glorious reflections of the sunset over a bridge. This was one of those times that accidentally turning around presented the most amazing photographic opportunity! I do love a sherbet colored sunset.
There’s something wonderful about an artist who is able to use the landscape around to bring a vision to life. Borrego Springs is well known for its large metal sculptures scattered around town. My personal favorite is this sea serpent/dragon that extends across the road into the distance. As the sun set in the west, you can see the light on the eastern mountains, creating highlights and shadows in the distance.
The Bubble Man (@ibubbledesign on Instagram) is a regular fixture at our local beach. He seems to be the pied piper of bubbles, drawing a large crowd of children every time he starts making bubbles on the beach. He loves to do bubbles at sunset, when the light creates an array of colors through the bubbles. Some days when the conditions are right, the bubbles are magnificent. And sometimes the magic happens and you get a bubble, the sunset, and a bird who flies by at just the right time.
So here is my best of 2022. Twelve favorites and a bonus in black and white. Which is your favorite? How would you select your best of 2022? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
I’m always surprised when I find ladybugs crawling around on the beach. What brings them there? The shoreline just doesn’t seem like a place they would be! But then again, seeing ladybugs always fills me with wonder. These tiny perfect things are such fun to watch and to photograph.
Thinking Through My Lens 