As most of you know, I am a teacher. I teach a classroom of 21 third grade students in a local public school. You are probably aware of the modern importance of the scores the students achieve on district, state and national testing. Well, our school certainly has it's areas to boast about but it has a lot of improvement to be made in the subject of writing.
For me, this is great. I LOVE to write. I always have. Yes, I've had plenty of ineffective writing instruction and I've certainly had to write for punitive reasons an awful lot too (Thousands upon thousands of "I will not speak unless spoken to" lines of writing!). I received my share of bad writing grades written in red ink as well. For some reason, these things did not deter me- but I understand that for many, it does just that. In fact, I've learned this year that many of my peers would choose to read, speak, or listen a hundreds before choosing to write. So- in light of this- my school administrators and other professionals have been trying to train us to be better writers. Or at least more appreciative of it. In turn, fostering this in our students as well. Again- not a problem for me. It's stopping that I'm not comfortable with...
In our professional development meeting yesterday after school- we were asked to "write without stopping" for several minutes. We were free to write about whatever we wanted as long as we made a conscious effort to keep writing no matter what.
Obviously, it was a long Monday. A long Monday which led to this:
I title it: APPLE CRISP
No- I don't really have a riding lawn mower. In fact- I didn't even go home and mow the lawn anyway. Think my neighbor will read this blog post?!
Lesson of the day: Nobody wants to attend a professional development meeting at the end of a long Monday teaching children. I could have had a bad attitude and complained but I chose not to. I rather enjoyed the learning opportunity, did my part, and even found a small part to laugh at! Don't let your 'day' get you 'down'- Choose JOY :)
Thanks Friends & Fam!
Plz- comment and share,
Michael
