Skip to main content

Summer Manifesto

Tomorrow at noon I will be officially on summer vacation. To say that I am excited to be on break would be an understatement. (See here for an end-of-year reflection where I try to come to terms with my feelings surrounding this very challenging school year.) At the same time, the end of the school year is always bittersweet. There is the mental and physical exhaustion that comes with having spent an average of 180 days of the year with students and adults in a very closed environment that often breeds the worst and the best in all of us. Then, there is the anticipation of renewal as we look forward to the summer months full of days without having to be regulated by an alarm clock. Yet, the truth is that many of us may still get up at the crack of dawn to attend to graduate work, personal and/or professional writing, or just to steal a few minutes of peace before everyone else in the house wakes up; this is not much different from what happens in my house during the school year.

The summer is always over way too quickly for my taste. It seems that September rolls around before I've had a chance to get into a routine that feels comfortable. I end up with a pile of books I intended to read, still unread. I have appointments that I planned to make that end up getting pushed to the fall. My "to do" list of projects barely has a scratch on it.

So, my new goal this summer is to take one day at a time and to try to enjoy that moment to the fullest. I will have some projects to work on but I won't bathe myself in disappointment when I find that I couldn't finish all ten projects and that, of the 20 books I had lined up, I only read two or three. Instead, I pledge to take each day as it comes and to do as much as I am able without getting frustrated, disappointed, or anxious. I'll remind myself that, ultimately, I am on vacation, a well-deserved one at that, and I will carve out some time each day so that I don't forget this simple fact.

So, there you have it. My summer manifesto, of sorts. What's yours?

Posted to The Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Reading Strategies Book - Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension

The strategy lessons highlighted in Chapter 12, Supporting Students’ Conversations – Speaking, Listening, and Deepening Comprehension, in The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo are critical to students’ engagement and comprehension, as well as their ability to write literary essays, or even book reviews, summaries and reflective pieces about books. If students aren’t able to talk about books in a way that is invigorating and joyful, they will be less likely to develop an interest in growing ideas for writing about books. In her introduction to this chapter, Jennifer Serravallo, reminds us that when conversations go well, children are inspired by what they read and are motivated to keep reading. However, when conversations fall flat, then kids get bored and tune out. How do we avoid this situation and teach kids to  have  focused conversations about books?  The answer is easy: teach kids  strategies to help them develop effective conversa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are we listening?

A child sits alone with a ripped worksheet packet on his desk. He appears to be singing or subvocalizing something though no one hears him. Or, perhaps they're ignoring him. The teacher stands at the front of the room teaching on the SmartBoard. The children follow along in their worksheets. Except the child sitting alone. He is in his own world. No one engages him and he engages no one. My heart aches for this child. He is physically and emotionally removed from the class. I ask him why his paper is ripped. (It's not an accidental rip.) He says he did that on a different day. When he had been frustrated about the work. He tells me that he sometimes sits by himself because the work is too hard for him. He later tells me that he sits by himself because the teacher thinks he talks too much during the lesson.  He says he does that because he wants to find out about the "lives of the other children". My first impulse is to rescue him from the wrongheade...
10 comments
Read more

A Slice of Life Story: Wishin' and Hopin', A Christmas Story by Wally Lamb

I normally only write about teaching related issues on this blog.  But, I've decided to make some changes in the New Year.  One change I am making is to start posting book reviews, or posts prompted by books I'm reading, that are in some way connected to teaching, learning, schooling, or education in general.  I aim to broaden the scope of my blog so that I don't find myself frantically searching for a topic to post about every week; this has stopped me from posting on a regular basis.  The purpose of making this change isn't to proliferate my blog with trivial posts, but rather to allow myself a broader scope from which to ruminate about learning in the broadest sense of the word. Wally Lamb's Wishin' and Hopin', A Christmas Story  is a great read and not just at Christmas time.  Lamb was able to take a one-time fictitious event - the 1964 Christmas play production by the students at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School - and build a story around it tha...
10 comments
Read more