Success from failure, character test

Success from failure: A message that classroom teachers have been sending for years and years and years. Glad to see it being given attention in print.

Ooo I love this artist!

Traci Bunkers and I must have come from the same pod. Artist Profile: Traci Bunkers

Lydia Velarde Makes a Sketchbook

or two...



or ten.....

I love looking at them.

Past Tense

Past Tense
This one hits home for me as I ruminate on retiring from teaching. Here's a small excerpt. There's more.

"I teach.
I taught.
I will teach.

Not any more. As of today I lost two of those verb tenses. I'm down to I taught. School started yesterday and I'm not there. I am retired.

For the first time in twenty-three years, I did not carefully lay out my "back to school" outfit the night before. I did not double check the alarm clock--worried that I wouldn't get up on time. I did not have a knot in the pit of my stomach like an actor on opening night...."

Play in Joanne's

 

I was amused by this scene left in the aisle of Joanne's today. Someone had fun!

"It was a teacher who changed the direction of my life..."

Newly retired from classroom teaching, I still feel a desire to stay connected to the complicated issues of public education and gifted education. This Op-Ed article from today's New York Times is worth noting for those friends and family of mine who continue to teach and to  those of us who will always be teachers no matter what else we do.

 

Elementary teachers return from summer break to days of classroom preparation for their young students. The important job of planning lessons around the curriculum is only one of their catalogue of tasks. Other tasks are much more mundane but necessary. Unloading tubs and boxes from June pack-up or moving classrooms, as pictured, can take many hours. One way I can help is to be available to my former elementary school colleagues for humdrum tasks to make copies, affix labels, sort books, whatever else I can do to help get ready for a new school year. So I will be available to them in their preparation time. I can't count the times that, as I slogged through all the physical but necessary tasks that delayed me from the important planning, I wished for a personal "gopher" or private secretary. I vowed I would try to serve in this capacity once I could.