Tag Archives: snails

Tracing a Path: SOL25 Day 31

On this 31st day of writing and posting, I’ve found a rhythm. Somehow, even when it seems that an idea for writing will elude me, something shows up. There is something about writing every day that brings forth writing every day.

On my most stuck days I do a couple of things.

Take a walk through my camera roll to find an image that sparks something: a memory, a metaphor, a story, a connection…
Read other people’s blog posts–either from fellow slicers at Two Writing Teachers or those I follow from other sources. Reading the writing of others might offer a structure I can adapt (13 ways, things worth sharing). I might remember a way to offer myself a lifeline when feeling overwhelmed and under-timed (6-word stories). Or I might more generally find a topic I relate to and allows at least a trickle of ideas to flow.

But what I love best about writing every day during the month of March is writing in community. The Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge brings together writers who are challenging themselves to write, even when writing feels hard. And, they are taking the time to read and respond to the writing of others. There is a spirit of generosity in this space that pushes writing forward–at least for me. These generous writers, most of whom I do not know, take the time to read and comment on the posts I publish. In a short period of time, they feel like friends. And these friends keep me accountable to myself, helping me trace a path through my brain in search of ideas that will set my writing loose.

Last night when I went to bed, I told myself I would get up and walk in the morning while my husband was at the gym. I wanted to get my daily walk done and out of my way on this first “real” day of spring break so the rest of the day could unfold without attention to a need for exercise. When I awoke this morning, everything was wet.

What? Rain in a place where it seldom rains? I consulted my weather app (as though the wet ground were not evidence enough), sure enough, precipitation expected for the next couple of hours. Hmmm–should I walk or not? I checked outside–drizzle seemed a good word to describe this event.

The raincoat with the hood up was a good idea. The damp began to layer and droplets started to trace a path off the edge of my hood, making its way onto the toes of my shoes, and into the recesses of my brain. Everywhere I looked pathways opened. I could see sap rising and feeding the greening trees. Closed flower buds waited, ready for the sun’s light to highlight a path for the bees to follow. But it was the snails that spoke to me.

I knelt low, camera in hand, noticing the paths traced on the wet sidewalk. Tiny snails smaller than the nail on my pinkie finger, others the size of my thumb slimed their way across the walking path. Where are they going? Where did they come from? If I didn’t know better, I would think they drop from the sky in the raindrops! Their zigzagging paths unloosed a path in my writing brain, as I traced the wonder, struggle, and yes, delight in the act of writing and posting every day. Will my ideas go back into some kind of hibernation (wherever snails go when the weather is dry) if I don’t keep up my writing practice?

Lucky for me, tomorrow marks the beginning of National Poetry Month and I have gotten in the habit over the last few years of writing and posting a poem each day in April. Many in the Two Writing Teachers community also find themselves posting to Verselove at Ethical ELA. Maybe I will see you there.

Slow as Snails: SOL23 Day 14

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First graders are slow, especially when you want them to speed up. Today we were running late to get out to the line of cars picking students up after school. I was hustling along, trying not to tie up the line that sometimes snakes out of the parking lot, down the street, and then threatens to spill out onto the busy street around the corner. I turn around and I have only one student with me. The rest have stopped back inside the gate where they are crouched down, faces peering closely at the rain-wet sidewalk. Parents are peering in, probably wondering just what is holding their children up in there. But I knew. My students are nature lovers with the softest, kindest hearts and no regard for time as we adults know it. And sure enough, they were saving a slug from the potential trample of the oncoming feet of other classes.

On so many occasions, my students seem to slither forward, maybe an inch at a time. Putting away headphones and iPad–that seems to take an eternity. Zip up the backpack (if you have managed to cram the items actually into its belly instead of having them slip out in all directions), another lifetime. Put your name on your paper, along with the date…still waiting.

But head down to recess…wait, don’t run me over! Where did this speed come from? These slow-as-snail kids can go from 0-50 in no time when the word recess is associated!

Tiny Snails and Butterflies: SOLC 2019 Day 12

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Kids have a way of seeing the smallest of details in the world. While they often miss some big picture items, they never miss the puncture mark in the shared eraser, the cloud shaped like a volcano erupting, or the perfect rock that most of us would never give a second look.

We had another unexpected rainy morning today, pushing me back upstairs to change from my suede booties to my cowboy boots before heading out the door for work. By the time I was out on the blacktop for before school recess duty, the rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet and shiny. The time change has kids straggling in later than usual, giving me plenty of time for mental meanderings as I watched the few early kids play on the blacktop.

After recess duty, I spent a few minutes back in the classroom chatting with a few of my third graders, listening to their stories of the previous evening. When the bell rang, we headed out together to pick up the other students where we line up on the blacktop. We barely made it out the door when one my students noticed an incredibly tiny snail on the sidewalk in front of our classroom. Smaller than the fingernail on my pinkie, this snail was a perfect miniature model of those pesky snails often found in the garden. We all knelt low, noticing its perfect features, spiral shell, and gooey slime on the wet sidewalk. After taking a few photos, one of the students offered to carefully “save” it and move it from the sidewalk where it risked getting stepped on by the many students who would walk that hallway to a safer location on the nearby dirt. Carefully picking it up by holding the shell, the snail was relocated without incident.

Later in the day, the sun shone brightly and most students had shed their jackets to bask in the warmth of the almost spring sun. During lunch the kids had noticed that our school seemed to be in the flight path of a butterfly migration. Monarchs are familiar friends to our schoolyard where milkweed grows tall, so the kids thought the smaller butterflies they were seeing were baby monarchs. We walked out to the pollinator garden to see if we could get a closer look, but butterflies flittered by in twos or threes, staying above our heads rather than alighting on any plants. I’m pretty sure these were actually painted ladies…the same butterflies I had just seen in profusion in the desert over the weekend.

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It always surprises me that these same students who never miss a tiny snail or the beauty of butterflies migrating overhead don’t seem to notice that they are standing on a classmate’s jacket with muddy shoes or that they just jumped in front of ten other children patiently waiting for supplies for a project.

They are perfectly self-centered and exquisitely altruistic, obnoxious and incredibly kind, thoughtful and infuriatingly rude…all rolled into one. Tiny snails and butterflies remind me to look closely and find those sometimes hidden endearing qualities rather than focusing on what so often is the most obvious to notice in the classroom. And I’m lucky, those same confounding small humans are also the reason I find myself paying attention to the smallest of details, appreciating the world through the eyes of children.