For the first time today my voice was shrill as I walked my second class back to my room from the library. I had already removed talking students and consolidated them as a first warning, but they would not let up. Eventually I told a student he had a D-Hall. It’s the first negative consequence…

My friends! My loves! My strangers! The planning has begun, the program is back. Welcome to the Second Annual Dear Successful Stranger project. This week I had a number of my new students and a parent ask me about the pen-pal program. They cannot wait to get started! Improvements from last year: After a number of…

When I came home from my run tonight I was poised at the kitchen counter, spreading peanut butter and jelly on a tiny tortilla for dinner, when I dropped my phone. This is a pretty usual occurrence, at minimum four times a day. When I did this I almost giggled– the Spiderman App is available…

There is a difference between reading about laughter and doing it. I am a practical person. I thrive in structure, am honest and blunt to a fault, fill my life with lists and calendars. When we looked at a handout in our last grad seminar, one that had one column for “Manager” and another for…

Today my car battery died after I finished a lazy afternoon run in 93 degree heat. I jumped it and drove the 25 minutes home. Died again. Recruited my TFA best brother friend JL to leave the football office and jump me. Got halfway into the street from my gravel driveway. Died again. I flipped into…

I walk into my building from the fifth grade door, a heavy block of metal in the center of a windowless brick wall. Standing opposite the cafeteria and a good walk past fourth grade, past the gym, past the playground and a basketball court with one hoop and no net, sometimes feeling like a small…

There have been pretty dramatic shifts in my universe in the past two weeks. I know that the last three years have been a culmination up to this point, and now I sit, split. Half of me so totally aware of my surroundings, waiting, finding and shaping everything in front of me into a gorgeous…

Verb Move out of or away from something and come into view. Become apparent, important, or prominent: “Philadelphia has emerged as the favorite”; “a world of emerging economic giants” There is such a gorgeous connotation to the word. We think of butterflies, we think of the transition from darkness to light, we think of the…

Keeping my head up. There are many update to be had, particularly about: Recent required three day professional development about common core The first official LEAD 21 Walton Leader Scholar seminar last weekend (AKA re-introduction to grad school) The major game-changers that have happened for my job Instructions to get involved in the revamped, revised,…

I’m getting fat. I’ve picked up a few awful habits in past months and lately have spent a lot of time dedicated to thinking of why I haven’t taken care of myself. Why I’m not on fire. Why these are statements, now, and not raging exclamations, or questions, at least. I’m disappointed in myself. My…