our esSAy

Who strive – you don’t know how the others strive

To paint a little thing like that, you smeared

Carelessly passing with your robes afloat-

Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,

(I know his name, no matter) – so much less!

Well, less is more, Lucrezia.”

Robert Browning, “Andrea Del Sartolead” (1855)

Last month in what was my best/worst move ever, I poured out my soul in this very WordPress blog site. I told a sordid story about a PD-Day-gone-wrong (and also right) that simultaneously elicited many head nods from fellow admin (“yup- that’s happened to me”) and many shocks of horror from faculty friends (“WHAT?! Admin have FEELINGS?!”). I jest about the shock that admin have feelings part. I think it was more a surprise that admin so internalized anything as silly as the success of a PD day. Plus, anyone who has known me for two seconds to any degree of familiarity knows I have feelings. So many feelings. Like take it down a notch, Julie.

Seriously, though. There was an outpouring of love, advice, affirmation, etc. from all sorts of directions. Some came from people I expected; like, I knew we were buds. Other sources felt more like an unexpected encounter with a sprinkler system on an afternoon July walk in Mississippi. Surprising . . . but oh-so refreshing. I want everyone to know I am okay. I am not on the edge of my rope. I am grateful in so many ways for the job I am currently in. None of us feel these ways 24/7, but I feel grateful that I feel these ways the majority of my waking-working hours.

So in this October theme of Hamster Wheel, I am writing the day after 10/11/22 (our October PD Day). I feel compelled to remark on yesterday’s very differently-constructed set of events, in part thanks to the horrors evoked from Workshop Week. I feel compelled to say that the number of positive remarks we’ve had about the day have reminded me of the age-old adage that I’ve never quite been able to internalize, the one my mom will text me from time to time, the thing my husband said to me when I mentioned five years ago it was time to have a fourth kid, the thing my eldest child reminds me when I beg her to pass me another handful of candy corn and honey roasted peanuts:

Less is more.

Sidenote: I know all of these people that love me are right, and yet I feel the strong urge to debate that very cliche I just typed. Sometimes more candy corn is more. Sometimes more opportunities are more. Sometimes more work results in more for the stakeholders you are working for. So if I’m being honest I am not entirely cured of this mythology. I am in a sort of denial stage, dotted with moments of acceptance.

Anywho, this PD Day we committed to less: less structured hours spent together in activities and meetings. We did this because of feedback from so many of you about how all you need is TIME. We did this because the timing of these days is just somehow never good. There is always a looming report card deadline or meet the teacher day. But then, we also committed to more. More choice in the form of PLC’s that you joined. More choice in whether you wanted to grab some coffee and breakfast while working on grading or join a group at the fair. We committed to designing a greater diversity of groups of folks meeting for different purposes. I got to learn about the daily rhythm for an instructional assistant! (link here) Coaches spent time together exploring how and why athletes have changed, for better and for worse. The day wasn’t perfect. There were moments that were clunky. The acoustics in the gym are terrible. I know I felt rushed from thing to thing. But still. The general consensus was far less vitriol and far more gratitude. I’ll take it.

So the moral of the story is that somehow if we get off the old hamster wheel, somewhere in the middle of the less and the more, we can find the Goldilocks “just right.” Of course, that’s a super problematic story in like 15 different ways. But that’s for another blog.

This post was authored by Hollie Marjanovic

Overheard from English teacher—“Correct this assignment because no capitalization has been used, I won’t grade until this has been done!”

Overheard from Math teacher –“Come see me after school because we need to review this homework before your test.”

Overheard from another Math teacher – “Come see me during your study hall twice per week because we need to work on homework and do further sample problems for more practice.“

Overheard from two Science teachers – “See me before or after school for extra help and practice; there will be a reassessment if you complete these activities.”

Overheard from Spanish teacher–“See me at break so that we can discuss this last activity and review it together.”

Overheard from History teacher–“You haven’t finished this, come back to see me and let’s make sure it gets done!”

Overheard from a math teacher – “I’ll come sit in your study hall today, and if anyone has questions, I’ll be there to help answer.”

Overheard from many teachers – “Let’s clean out your backpack; let’s put some dividers into this binder; let’s look at your planner.”

Copied on emails from EVERY US Faculty member –  “You are very capable. Please see me for additional help; please go to Writing Lab; please go to Math lab; please go see Mrs. M….”

This daily communication with so many of our students is vital to their success.  I know it isn’t fun, it’s not the reason we get into teaching, it means less time spent creating lessons,  and feels like a never ending hamster wheel ride.  However, THANK YOU!  It does pay off!  Eventually they begin to do the things and you are helping them approach and not avoid.  Bravo, my people!  

Sometimes the stars align.  Sometimes, the very same week you decide on a theme of “Hamster Wheel” for the October blog blast, you receive an invite from you daughter’s (the pet crazy one, ok they are all pet crazy) third grade teacher to sign up for a slot on a google doc to watch the hamster for the weekend.  It was then that I knew it . . . this blog theme was fate. It was destined.  It had to be.

I, by the way, have a tenuous relationship with hamsters. My first main memory from hamster- nurturing was  that I named my pet hamster “Emily” because she was my best friend in kindergarten but then weeks after I got the hamster the human version of Emily stopped inviting me to play with her because she became one of the popular kids. Ouch.  Also, are there really popular cliques in kindergarten?  My second main memory: My mom picked her up and she bit her finger so hard that blood immediately spurted out.  My mom taught me a new bad word that day.  I was both fascinated and disgusted.  By both the blood and the language.  I also still to this day, 35 years later, have a poem hanging on my childhood bedroom door that my dad wrote for me that features Emily:

Julie likes yellow, Julie likes red,

Julie looks pretty, with bows on her head,

We all love Julie, oh yes we do,

So on your birthday, Happy bday to you!

(And to Emily too.)

I would have included a picture of the poem but it is so yellow and faded that it is nearly illegible.  That is how old I am. 

 Anyway, those are my three hamster party stories.

So the theme is hamster wheel which pretty self-explanatorily evokes feelings of being busy, wondering if it is all, in the end, hopeless.  I mean, a hamster wheel involves a cage, aerobic activity with no end in sight, and is a pretty solitary endeavor.  Pretty depressing theme, huh?

That’s what I thought before I pet-sat a hamster with my kid for a weekend and became a hamster expert.

Guess what.  When a hamster is scared, in a new environment, threatened, exhausted, overwhelmed, etc., it does not take to the hamster wheel. I have NO idea why, but Marshmallow the adorable hamster of Carla Kelly didn’t feel totally secure for the first 12-24 hours with us.

I feel like it’s important to pause here to mention that Millie the dog did not even come CLOSE to try to eat Marshmallow the hamster. The entire weekend. Not even ONCE.  However, she did have a distributing tendency to come near us and sit/beg the every time we got the hamster out, the way she does every morning when Alianna eats her warmed up croissant and shares approximately 50% of the pieces with her (“one for you, one for me” style).  So I did kinda worry for Marshy, as we came to affectionately call her. Millie also learned how to walk on two legs this weekend b/c she discovered she could get eye level with Marshy (whose cage was on the bar) when she did so.  

To be fair, they DID have a blast together when Marshy was flying across the floor in her ball-thing.  Those are new.  Or new since the 35 years ago I had a hamster.  I didn’t get a picture because I was belly laughing so hard each time he got in it, but here’s the idea:

Anyway, and here’s my big hamster behavior psychology revelation: Marshy ONLY got on the hamster wheel when she got comfortable with us, which was mostly Monday morning at around 5:30 AM when I got up to do yoga.  I wish this picture was a video.  I promise he was super-sprinty.  Like impressively so.  He’s such a good boy.  The goodest.

Also, he didn’t keep going at a consistent pace like I expected.  There was no slow and steady wins the race.  There were spurts of ridiculous speed and then spurts of complete calm.

The wheel was super squeaky by the way.  Like super, super squeaky.  Like everyone in the house knew when Marshy was on that thing. 

So here are things I know related to hamsters and hamster wheels that I think can inform how you process every blog this month:

• If you are so busy and needed that you feel like you are on a hamster wheel, it means you are also part of a thriving, loving, safe community.  Because if you weren’t you wouldn’t have the purpose or the psychological safety to starting running on that thing in the first place. 
• Aerobic exercise is vital for survival.  
• Taking breaks from that exercise is also vital for survival.  And the breaks don’t have to be hours.  Taking short rests while on the wheel and then going at it again .. . totally meaningful.
• Everyone can hear the whine of the squeaky wheel as we run. And it is annoying.  Super annoying.  Just an FYI.
• Sometimes when we run on a thing we THINK is a hamster wheel it’s ACTUALLY that clear ball thing that moves us to new places.  Surprise! We did make progress!
• We need a safe den/tube/fort of soft things on the bottom of the cage as well.  For all of those times we don’t feel hamster-wheel-ready.
• Sometimes the big, scary, Millie sized fury-monsters peering up at us through the cage actually think we are friends.  They have no idea how intimidating they are.

So all of you who feel like you are on a hamster wheel, I’m sorry.  And you’re welcome.  And you’re lucky.   

Thanks for the lessons, Marshy.

This post was contributed by Kim Sewell

When Julie announced there was an overwhelming connection for the next blog topic ‘hamster wheel’ among my colleagues, I immediately felt anxious. Just the term ‘hamster wheel’ had me imagining moving as fast as I can, but not really getting anywhere. Kind of like the nightmare where you are being chased and you freeze because you can’t move your feet and you crumple into a ball until the monster overtakes you (or maybe that’s just me.) I could not think of a more exhausting image to think about and then write about. 

I’ve thought about this image from the viewpoint of a mom (cook meals, wash dishes, do laundry, grocery shop, clean house, repeat) and from the viewpoint of a teacher (get new class, set routines and expectations, meet parents, teach curriculum, assess, go on field trips, have class parties, get seasonal breaks, have May Day, out for summer, repeat). As a mom and a teacher, I put new demands on myself and others are put on me. As we know, time is finite—no more no less—but that doesn’t stop us from adding more work, more goals, more life into that time. I was going down a real cynical, cyclical path thinking about this topic. Hamster wheels suck… I could not find a positive side to this wheel!

Then I thought about children…my own, the ones that are in my care, the ones I encounter out in the world. The older I get, the more I realize children have the best outlook and most of the answers in life. Up until the age of 5 or 6, children love singing the same songs (wheels on the bus, twinkle twinkle), eating the same food (goldfish and fruit snacks), wearing the same clothes(even when they get too small) and sleeping with the same luvy (yes, the one you have to go back to get when they have left it somewhere, because there is NO substitution, even for one night). Children thrive on consistency and routine. They thrive on the hamster wheel. To them it’s all about the journey, not the destination. It’s the process, not the product. Sometimes they are barely moving the wheel, sometimes they are at a steady pace, and sometime they are going ninety miles an hour, but they are going at their own pace and enjoying the wheel. It’s secure and safe. We usually do our best work in those conditions. From now on I will try to look at the inevitable hamster wheel in life through the eyes of a four-year-old, smile, eat my goldfish, and remember that it’s about the journey. 😉

This post was contributed by Buck Cooper.

Asked to think about the connection between teachers’ work and hamster wheels, my mind went to tangential things–wheels and circles and cycles and songs about all of these. Thus, for this month I give you my attempt to maximize the blog post as medium with my top 5 songs about circular wheel type things and those songs’ helpful ways for thinking about my own teaching practice. Do note that this list is going to skew old, mainly because I mostly listen to old music and because (yes, I’ll say it) I’m old.

5. Journey’s Wheel in the Sky: This is clearly a song about teaching in November/December/January, when the shine has worn off of the year, when plans are being wrecked by lots of sick children, sick teachers, extracurricular travel obligations and early planned family vacations, but as all teachers know, time marches on. (The wheel in the sky keeps on turning; I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow.) It’s that time of year when teachers are tired and many of us get to work before the sun comes up or is just coming up and never leave until it’s been down for a good long while (I’ve been trying to make it home; got to make it before too long. I can’t take this very much longer. I’m stranded in the sleet and rain.) Clearly, Steve Perry had a teacher in his life or taught at some point.

4. Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game: This is earnestly one of the most beautiful songs about children, wonder, growing up and the passage of time. I’d put this one alongside another of Joni’s songs, Both Sides Now, as songs that say something meaningful about how growing up changes the ways in which we see the world around us.

3. Billy Preston’s Will it Go Round in Circles There’s one verse here that speaks to me as a teacher–”I’ve got a dance, I ain’t got no steps, y’all. I’m gonna let the music move me around.” I don’t think the work of teaching is fundamentally improvisational, but I do think the ability to let the music move you around instead of being stuck on the steps of teaching children is an invaluable skill to have. And by that I mean that you have to be responsive in the moment–another apt metaphor is that you need to know the shape of the container that you want to fill with learning opportunities–the guard rails—the contours. 

2. Harry Chapin’s All My Life’s a Circle This is such a lovely song, and this particular version has the added bonus of being from an episode of Solid Gold, which was an early 80s Saturday night family TV viewing staple in my home. I love a lot of things about teaching, but I especially love knowing and being able to anticipate the rhythm of an 8th grade academic year–starting with the awkward few weeks where we teachers and students don’t really know each other and are figuring things out, moving to the period of boundary pushing that really persists from late first quarter until graduation—the slide into the holidays where everyone is a little tired and a little anxious about the season—staring down the long barrel of the January to spring break run, which is also maybe the best period of teaching and learning of the year and then the final 4th quarter sprint where the weather gets beautiful, the behavior gets a little nuts and everyone’s getting impatient for the end of the year where we all realize that we’ve loved each other this year and will miss one another in the years to come. Then, you spend a summer resting, reading and maybe making some extra cash, rinse and repeat. 

1. John Lennon’s Watching the Wheels There are a lot of thoughts that people have when you take yourself seriously as a teacher. I think for a lot of people it’s a liminal profession–the thing you’ll do until you find something else to do like law school or medical school or herding yaks. And I can tell you the moment that I decided that teaching children was the thing I wanted to do–about 12 years after I graduated college, when I had taught middle school for five years and undergraduates for more than that. It was such a relief to tell myself that teaching children would be enough for a career for me. This song, though it speaks to John Lennon’s move from the Beatles and pursuing big fame, also speaks to being fully committed to this work of teaching, and thinking of it as a profession worthy of pursuing on its own merits. (People say I’m crazy, doing what I’m doing. Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin.)

I realize this post is mostly really old songs, probably a generation or two before even my time (and I’m now regarded as veteran faculty in the middle school, at least.) I also realize my own increasingly strong opinion that the period from say 1965-1985 (give or take a couple of years either side) may be one of the best periods of popular music in the history of popularity or music. And it all (as it always does) connects somehow to teaching children.

Ever wish you could shed the heavy-weighted baggage of adulthood and go back to being four? 

Well several weeks ago, I had the privilege of doing just that.  Well sort of.  I was still 40.  But I did get to fix my gaze on PK4 students and feel the flow of their morning. And it was packed with activity and yet also somehow incredibly relaxing. 

 Here is a non-exhaustive photo and transcription account of what I encountered:

I started my day with the smooth, soft start of choice. Want to read a book about spiders and talk incessantly about so many spider facts that the adult listening feels inferior? Consider it done. Want to paint a butterfly? Got you covered. Want to go up that loft and try on fifteen dresses before 8am? Have at it. That is . . . until the pledge starts. Then I found myself, Pavlovian-like, being carried to my square on the circle to say the pledge, take roll, and shout out whether I was hot lunch, lunch box, or half day.

Now that we found ourselves in a circle, we might as well take advantage of the delightful but oh-so-fleeting attention spans that mark 8am. “What letter does butterfly start with?”

Okay enough of that. Let’s get back to play.

“How do you untangle this?”

“What color does white and red make when you blend them?”

More spider facts. And volcano-larva facts. And then, more spider facts.

Oh and don’t forget these guys up here.

The chime goes off. It is only 8:25am.

A flurry of clean up.

“What day of the week is it?” “FREE PLAY!” Nope. That’s the activity we started with this morning.

“I love art science!”

“Turn your bodies back this way. Take a deep breath. Some beautiful ready, set, go.”

“Who is the leader? Door holder? Caboose today?”

“If today is Wednesday, yesterday was . . .”

“FRIDAY!” Nope. “Tomorrow we will say tomorrow is Friday!”

“Now the weather report. How did it feel outside today?”

“Yesterday we rolled our ball to greet each other. Today we are going to do something else that starts with B to greet each other . . .”

BOW! “But I want to do it like a princess!”

“That’s a curtsy. Maybe when we talk about C.”

It’s also “wave it out Wednesday!”

“We are now doing our listening activity; you listen to what I do and then you do it.”

“Take a minute. Check your body.”

Rhyming words! Blending words! Compound words!

“Now to get our wriggles out! Oh no- I can’t find the right song on the CD!”

“It’s okay! We love you anyway!”

Switching classrooms.

“Do you know what it’s like for your parents when they come see your PK4 Sing?”

“It’s like taking off the wrapping paper of the most ginormous gift ever- the biggest gift they’ve ever had is your beautiful VOICE!”

“TOMORROW fall starts . . . Tomorrow we are gonna say BYE BYE to summer. What is another word for the new season besides fall? Let’s read a book about fall, one that I loved to read with to my children when they were young!”

“Time for us to go potty and go outside!”

“This is our string family!”

“WAHHHHH WAHHHHH”

“Why are you pretending you’re crying?” “WE DON’T KNOW!” WAHHHHHHHHH

Meanwhile back inside . . .

Let’s say our blessing!

“The Ants Go Marching . . . ” 3 at a time excused from the circle to get snack!

“Sit by me! I love these!”

“If you have a book out, shut it tight! If you have a MOUSE on your book, you may put it up and line up. Time for music!”

“Who can march REALLY high? Thumb’s up if you are ready!”

Meanwhile in another co-curricular . . .

“You made la Luna feel very safe!”

“Remember we don’t touch our friends we don’t want to get our germs on them!”

“Let’s take one rainbow breath to calm our bodies! Air hug .. . I can feel that air hug!”

“Now that we’ve had time with puzzles, let’s join the circle! Criss cross applesauce. Ms. Rubinski is going to bring you FOUR BUTTONS!”

“Pete the Cat! Take your buttons off and count with the book! 4 minus 1 is . . . “

“THREE!”

“Okay great work! Now I’m going to open up upstairs, the dollhouse, legos!”

[Insert massive giggles and potty humor whoops.]

Meanwhile in another classroom . . . some are doing this:

While others are doing this:

And across the hallway it is clear center time:

And in yet another classroom, children are choosing to either:

But now it’s time for show and tell. So everyone needs to put things away.

“If you have shoes, put them in the cubby so I know you are ready for show and tell!”

“Tell your friend, ‘I don’t like it when you punch me there.'”

“Okay, now we will share what we brought that starts with B! If yours isn’t chosen, take a big breath and know that there is always next time!”

“Can you all say Barbie?”

“I’m so excited! Are you so excited?!”

“That’s gorgeous!”

“When I “wink” at you it will be your turn to get up and get ready for lunch. . . . so watch my face closely!”

WINK!

Whether you’ve taught for two days or twenty years, you’ve hit the same conundrum.  How do we help youth foster a sense of personal responsibility? How do we inspire intrinsic, not just extrinsic motivation? In other words, how do you help young people care about things that we think matter and be accountable for their part in the dance of teaching and learning?

In this week’s podcast, hosts Toby Lowe, Kim Sewell, and Julie Rust speak with Anne Avery Boling (senior) and Tanner Purnell (fifth grader) about student accountability.  From losing pencils to bullying to due dates on assignments . . there is a lot that can go wrong for youth in school settings. So how can we help each other work toward the best versions of ourselves?  Listen to the full podcast or skip to sections of interest below:

Show Notes

6:07-8:10: What does accountability have to do with responsibility? 

9:00-15:00: Our guests say the honor code and talk about its implications in relation to this theme of accountability.

15:03- 15:52: Tanner talks about the woes of losing pencils, and what ordering a whole bunch of extra ones from amazon has to do with accountability.

15:53-17:28: What role do students have in holding other students accountable?

17:32-19:30: We explore scenarios that demonstrate that making the right and honorable choice isn’t always as clear a path as we assume.

19:35-25:54: Students wrestle with what to do when someone misbehaves in the classroom and the teacher demands that someone speak up about who did it. . . and why it is far more preferable in these situations to speak directly to your friends, rather than the authority figure. 

26:23-32:15: What about due dates, late assignments, etc?

33:00-34:42:  Anne Avery’s advice to teachers/students as a key to success toward accountability and really all things: communication

34:58-36:48: Tanner’s piece of advice to faculty: publicly holding students accountable to know something can actually be painfully embarrassing in such a classroom setting.  If they don’t know the answer, see if another friend in the class can help!

Special thanks to the Instructional Assistants that shared their daily realities to make this post.

In the Hamster Wheel of our school ecology, there is perhaps no population more integral to the wellbeing of our students, no oil more diligent to the squeaks that inevitably ensue on that well- trodden wheel of teaching and learning, than our instructional assistants. The official job description is filled with nods to all aspects of teaching: classroom management, differentiation of lessons, work with assessments, supervision, and on and on. But on October 11th when I sat down with our instructional assistants, I wanted to know more than their official duties. I gave them 5-10 minutes to jot down words or phrases or pictures to help me understand the flow of a “day in their lives.” I found, of course, that their days were as varied as those of classroom teachers at different levels on different days. As one assistant quipped in the room: “FLEXIBILITY is the name of the game. You have to be ready to jump up and shift gears on a dime.”

Of course in the process I learned that our assistants are rockstars. And that they know a lot about the repetition and relentlessness of the hamster wheel.

They are also quite patient. And optimistic in spite of it all. And, more often than not, more than their fair share of inspirational.

I took all 22 of their quick scribbles about “a day in their life” and transcribed them onto a google doc. I copied/pasted all of that text and it created the word cloud you saw at the start of the blog. But I needed another form to represent their lived realities. So here’s a “found poem,” a creative reworking of their words (none of mine) that I’ve mashed up together in attempts to reflect their collective experiences. It is imperfect and incomplete, but then, language always is.

A Day in the Life as Shared by 22 Instructional Assistants

I start my days off with my daily prayer and thanking God for the day.

I wear lots of hats.

Starting with a smile assisting kids.

Running less than 2 minutes late and getting stuck in the carpool line.

Greet, greet, greet;

Take care of whatever notes are in my basket. Copies.

Listen listen, take care of backpacks not fitting,

“I forgot my math homework.”

Manners at morning meeting, lessons, tea party, lunch, recess;

Thank you-please- interrupting when people are speaking.

Give bandaids and miracle water,

Weed/remove damaged and obsolete books,

Assist in whatever capacity I’m needed–

It varies day to day and hour to hour.

(You never know what the day is going to bring.)

Fill in for whomever isn’t here,

Glue stick and glitter fingers usually by 10am;

“Where is lunch; I’m hungry?”

Playtime, nap, lunch, playtime;

Listen to everything, what happened last night, the weekend?

Also others that need love/attention.

See-saw: all day posting;

Changing diapers/potty,

We are with the children most of the time throughout the day,

When teachers are out, we are the teacher.

Playground police officer :(, nurse, boo boo fixers,

Organize take home folders,

Copy-laminate-grade papers,

Put in help tickets, solve problems, create solutions, tech help.

I love to see them during playground recess time as they show other sides of their personality,

Shady bench at recess; laughter; sunshine; swingsets and soccer.

Conflict resolution, coach, friend, buddy, colleague, hugger.

Teaching/coaching them to find peace.

Feeling like I need 8 arms– Multi-tasking (a skill I had to re-learn) 🙂 

“Will you open my milk, yogurt, water bottle?”

Pretty packed days.

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Okay, so confession time:

1. I have been working at the school for over three years and in this particular whole-school position for no fewer than 470 days, and our 10/11/22 PD Day was the first time I have had the distinct opportunity of working directly alongside instructional assistants.

2. Since the inception of the blog in 2019, we have put out 131 posts into the universe. None specifically feature the daily lived realities of instructional assistants. (It should, however, be mentioned that regular contributor and writer Mary B Sellers has, by virtue of her awesomeness, represented some of that distinct vantage point all on her own . . . despite my own editorial failure on this front.

It was high time we fixed both of those errors.

To all Instructional Assistants: Thank you for your work. Thank you for your love. Thank you for these words.

Believe it or not, this episode marks the start of the fifth season of Inspire & Innovate: A Podcast for Educators.  This little podcast has seen a lot: from the start of the pandemic when we used video chat to connect us with thought leaders across the country; to a summer set of with stories from educators across the Jackson metro area;  to last fall’s conversations that bringing together parents, faculty, and students across a range of issues; to last spring’s theme of bridging the faculty/admin divide.  Throughout every episode, we’ve been lucky to feature practicing teachers who could bring in the truth of their lived experiences in classroom settings. 

This season is “Reframing Accountability,” and if you’re wondering why we chose such a scary framing topic, look no further than our first episode: “Why is Accountability Such a Dirty Word?” In this episode, Toby Lowe, Rachel Scott, Michelle Portera, Kim Sewell, Julie Rust, and Buck Cooper engage in an honest conversation about our love-hate relationship with the word.  The entire episode is worth a listen, but if you only have a few minutes and want to hop to a particular topic, check out our show notes below:

1:02-2:04: Toby, the idea man for this theme of accountability, shares why he wanted to frame up this season with such a baggage-fraught word.

4:12-5:38: Hear Michelle Portera unpack why the word “accountability” can induce eye rolls. 

5:39-6:04: Why the word can make Rachel Scott cringe, particularly when it is issued forth by someone you don’t know.

6:05-12:45: How the “accountability movement” in schools has tainted the word. Hosts discuss how ”it sounded beautiful, but felt terrible . . . reduc[ing] your work [with youth] to a number on a spreadsheet.”

14:38-16:16: Reframing accountability as SELF-driven, not OTHER-driven.

16:15-17:28: Why accountability can only take root in community to grow into something good, and the problem with checklists. 

17:29-19:49: Buck breaks down the word and discusses why “accountability in its best sense is about relationship being forged through explanation or dialogue.”

19:50-22:08: What Julie’s group text with old professor buddies has to do with accountability.

22:08-22:35: Why what happens when you do make a mistake matters.

23:34-26:00: Can accountability survive hierarchy, and relatedly, how can I be vulnerable to someone who can decide I don’t get to work here anymore?

26:27-28:33: Why is it so easy for us as adults to hold children accountable but so difficult to be held accountable?  What falls apart as we grow older? 

28:40- 31:00 Julie’s pet peeve and what to do with folks that don’t seem to have that internal drive.

31:45-34:32: The difference between accountability and justice, and a friendly reminder that “some people want to make the world burn.”  Also, just because you think someone is slacking doesn’t mean you know the full story.  

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As great as this conversation was, it is just the beginning, the initial unraveling of the complex knot that composes accountability.  Go ahead and do yourself a favor and subscribe so you can make sure not to miss our weekly drop of this season.  In future weeks, we focus our lens on student accountability, parent accountability, faculty accountability, and admin accountability.  Can accountability be a crucial piece of our commitment to community? Is is possible to reframe accountability as an act of radical love? I’m not sure about the answers, but I’m sure that leaning into these questions will be illuminating for us all.  See you next week!

This is a story of us.  This is a story of caring teachers planning the stuff students do to show their learning.  This is a story of well-meaning administrators giving advice.  This is a (yet another) story of best intentions.

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Interestingly, the same very sentence (via a quick convo on the sidewalk, an email, a text) tends to preface a conversation that is either the best or worst part of my job: “Hey Julie- do you have a second?”

The crucial part on whether it becomes the best version or the worst version of my job is what those words are followed up with.  And here is where the gold is found:“I’d love to brainstorm with you about _______” or “I’d love to reflect with you on how something went down” or “I’d love to show you what we’ve been up to in my classroom.”

Introducing my buddy Monica Colletti, sixth grade English; she does that. 

We met a few weeks ago to chat about whether or not she should assign a project to her sixth graders that they loved in the past. It involved the summer reading (Wonder) and each student choosing a “precept” (quote about life) that the English teacher in the book used in class to highlight and creatively represent using some form (e.g. art, video, etc.)  As in any pedagogical choice, there were pros and cons.

Pros: The kids loved it last year; ties to socioemotional learning; good match for their abstract development/understanding of the world; let’s them choose the quote and the creative outlet; sets the stage for similar projects to come.

Cons: Takes too much class time; exhausting to present; doesn’t really “test” the kid’s knowledge of the summer reading; kids can get stressed by open-endedness; etc. 

In the end, the joy-creative affordances won out.  She decided to assign the project.  We talked through some tweaks to make it more doable.  For example, to take up less class time I suggested rather than having all students individually present their projects, she should consider a museum/gallery walk situation. And off we go.  

Zander Rust, by the way, talked more about this assignment than he has talked about any assignment in a long, long time.  He loved every piece of it: choosing and dissecting his top five precepts, narrowing them down to one single precept, and getting to use his stop motion animation app for a school project.

Of course, there were also tears, as there are in any endeavor.  He first tried one style of video in a tedious-laborious sort of way that he didn’t love. It didn’t translate.  He got super frustrated.  He was tired from a trip.

Did I mention the irony of the quote he chose?: “If plan A doesn’t work, remember there are 25 more letters in the alphabet.”

In the end, he went with this video instead. 

He was so proud of himself.  His dad pointed out that his journey through the project actually illustrated the quote pretty darn well.  I lol’ed.  It hadn’t occurred to me.

Anyway, I saw Monica the day of sharing out. And while Zander Rust was floating high on cloud nine with the entire enterprise, she was EXHAUSTED by the end of those days.  The noise level in the room! The kids’ excitement but constant “needs”!  The difficulty of trying to both manage the class and pay attention to the projects as they were presented!

Is this a blog-warning not to listen to Julie’s advice? Possibly. At least partially.

There were other unanticipated wrinkles. (As there always are.) I met with Monica to reflect (again.)  I’m impressed she was still willing to brainstorm with me after my dubious advice.  Here’s what we’ve got:

Pros after the fact: some kids got excited by the project; socioemotional connection; forced kids to think more deeply about metaphors/figurative speech/etc.

Cons: final grade based on the rubric didn’t always reflect the quality of the project; some kids weren’t happy with their grades; the move to “museum format” made it hectic and all the grading had to be done separately; it was noisy/tricky for classroom management and was recipe for overstimulation for teacher and students.

We were still left with the big question: “Was this project worth the time and headache?”

All of that time for reflecting, all of our best intentions, and we never reached a solid conclusion.

So, like all of the best teachers I know, Monica is going back to the kids. She is going to give them a survey adapted from this to give them the dual-edged-sword opportunity of (1) reflecting on their own learning (2) giving her feedback on how to improve the experience.  

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This I don’t believe: there is one best practice, assessment, rubric, silver-bullet answer to masterful teaching and if we all just worked hard enough we’d find it.

This I believe: every test, every project, every homework assignment sheet that we design is like the launch of a stone in a moving current.  There are ripples of impact.  Some are good; some are bad.  Some are anticipated; some are unanticipated.  Most often the experience wildly differs based on the kid involved.  The best work we can do is work that is responsive, reflective, and intentional based on the information we notice around us.  The best we can do is talk to our colleagues about it to hear their stories.  The best we can do is be honest and real.

This is the story of teaching.  This is the story of us. 

Shea and I had the distinct joy this past weekend of analyzing first grader’s spelling tests.  These weren’t, though, just any spelling tests.  They were inventories designed to give educators pointed cues regarding each student’s distinct spelling developmental stage.  I’m not going to lie.  It was FASCINATING to see the range of ways that students made sense of word rules that they had explicitly been taught or implicitly absorbed from text exposure along the way.  I found myself rooting for every kid.  “I know that looks like a b but they definitely meant d . . .I know they did!” There were significant patterns of similarity, and there were also a few outliers in every class.  

We didn’t just do this for kicks, although I certainly did get kicks.  This practice is part of a new program we are piloting with 1st, 3rd, and 4th grade this year called “Words Their Way.” It begins with figuring out where each child is, and then provides them targeted practice (called “word sorts”) at the stage and with access to the skills that they need.  The program has one thing noticeably absent from its many resources: the one size fits all weekly spelling test.  It instead asserts that regular practice with immediate feedback at kids’ just-right-fit level (ahem zone of proximal development, thank you Vygotsky) is the most effective way to help children internalize and apply spelling patterns in their own writing.

Of course weekly spelling lists and Friday spelling tests have been as much a part of the rhythm of our 1st-4th graders’ experiences as Friday morning chapel, May Day, and class plays.  Though their function may not echo as romantically as our lower schools’ sweet-voiced rendition of “This is the Day the Lord has Made,” they have been a crucial lynchpin in the literacy progression our students make from their chubby-faced entrance into the first grade hallway until they wrap that May Pole as longer-legged fourth grade pre-adolescents.  And while spelling well may not be a marker of every fifth grade student that moves on to north campus, most are relatively adept at encoding words to page by the time they reach middle school. Why, then, fix what isn’t broken?

Just because something isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be better.  And while all of us giving weekly spelling tests that are one-size-fits-all in nature have been operating with the BEST of INTENTIONS (subtle nod to theme), I think we can serve our children better by addressing the knowledge (and the gaps in understanding) that they bring to our classrooms.  There are also other unanticipated ripples from the weekly spelling test.  Many children see spelling as the most important part of the curriculum since it feels like the most consistent “high stakes/formal” test they encounter throughout their years.  Kids that do well can absolutely thrive with the weekly test, and they look forward to their weekly time to shine and the inevitable positive reinforcement at home they get when they bring home that “M” the following Monday.  However, some of these same youth already know the patterns of the spelling words they are given each week, and the time could be better spent challenging them at their more advanced level. Worse, our kiddos that really need the spelling instruction the most can begin to internalize the test as an insurmountable, stressful, anxiety-inducing task, and they can begin developing (negative) self-narratives about their own identities in relation to academics.  I know both versions of this story from my own experiences as a St. Andrew’s momma.  In all cases, my kids’ teachers were absolutely incredible.  They provided support when needed and challenge when they could.  But they too were operating within a system that existed decades before they began teaching at the school.  

I think we can do better, and I hope this new program is one step closer in that direction.  But I am not so naive or confident to say that Words Their Way will be our spelling silver bullet.  My guess we will fall prey to NEW unanticipated consequences, despite our best intentions in adopting the program. But I believe we will all learn a thing or two along the way: about each child, about the preconceptions we bring to instruction, and about the ways all of us fall into teaching rhythms for sometimes-good, sometimes-less-good reasons, and most usually a blend of both.

This post was contributed by Saana Watson.

Saints@Home. I could write a book about this but I’ll try to keep it short! It was June 2020 when I was asked to help design and teach in this new, innovative program in which our youngest Saints (PreK3-1st grade) get a teacher to come to their house twice a week to provide in-person instruction.

At the end of summer we had an info session for parents who might be interested in enrolling their children in this new program. I can’t remember the exact number but we had about 10 families join. I remember being hopeful that this program would be successful, having already spent hours of preparation to familiarize myself with the fourth grade curriculum. It was a challenge to wrap my head around logistics that would be involved, but I was excited about this new opportunity.  A few weeks later, when the fall semester began, we had over 40 students and three teachers in this program. I think nobody had expected the program to have such a strong reception among the St. Andrew’s families. Scheduling and planning my routes from house to house took a while, and Google Maps was my best friend! 

When we got so many students in Saints@Home my main responsibility was Kindergarten and first grade even though I also taught a couple Prek4 students my experience mainly focuses on K and 1st students. During Q1 I had 20 students from Gluckstadt to Pearl, who I visited weekly, and as you can imagine I had a minute-to-minute schedule. I started teaching at the first house at 7:30am and finished at the last house around 2:30pm. I spent my lunch”break” parked on the side of the road eating my sandwich in the car while replying to a couple emails and setting reminders for myself for all the things I would need to prepare the next time I went to school. 

During in-home visits I got to see a different side of the students and build the connection to the next level going into their world, getting to know their families, pets, etc. which allowed me to tailor the lessons towards each student’s interests. This is something I carry on to my K classroom after Saints@Home as well. The students enjoyed hearing their pet’s name in a math problem or getting to read to their teddy bear. Obviously being in their home also came with challenges. Creating rules and expectations, that in some cases were different from rules and expectations their parents had, took being very intentional and explaining that during teacher visits their playroom is a classroom. Most of the students responded to this very quickly and set up their learning space, wore school uniforms and were acting just as we had been at school. 

Teacher visits weren’t just a time for the students to see us, but often it was also a special moment for the parents. Some parents took advantage of seeing their child’s teacher and wanted to have a mini conference each time, some parents didn’t have many other grownup contacts outside of their family and teacher visits were a moment to briefly chat about anything and everything!

There were many things, some funny, some not so funny that happened on the road. I attended almost all of our virtual faculty meetings in my car after driving back from the last house, I taught virtual lessons in my car at Starbucks parking lot, I spent hours after my days of teaching recording lessons to supplement for the days I didn’t see the students. I had a flat tire at a student’s house one day and my husband had to come fix it while I taught a first grader so I could make it to the next house on time. I’m so thankful for my sweet husband! I taught lessons in playrooms, kitchens, out on a picnic blanket, garages, out on a patio when it was raining sideways. I was welcomed to all these families’ homes, offered water bottles and snacks for the road, got a traditional Indian meal a mother of one student prepared during our lesson (and packed in a container so I could take it with me) and had so many sweet interactions with these families.

Someone asked me if there are elements of Saints@Home that could work longer term or if I’d do it again. Helping create and teaching Saints@Home was an extremely demanding (and sometimes lonely) experience that I could do again with some tweaks. It’d be crucial to set clear expectations for parents’ involvement. Some parents were very involved and helped their child through work through the materials that were assigned for the week and those children were thriving. Some parents expected us to cover everything during our sessions despite being asked to cover some topics and skills with their child outside of teacher visits. Those students struggled to achieve their full potential. There was no way for us to cover everything in about 2 hours that was covered in a classroom in a week.

I know as educators we all have experienced the lack of time but Saints@Home took it to the next level. At times I would have a student who wanted to show me her new bike or his trampoline. These students needed these moments with their teacher and of course I stayed an extra 5 minutes which took away my chance to stop and use the restroom or have a snack in between houses. I had so many students looking at the window to see my car pull up, running to open the door or already waiting outside when I came to their house. These visits were meaningful to the student in many ways. I believe it was giving them a way to feel part of Saint Andrew’s and often they would ask about the other students at school or ask me why some of their friends got to go to school and they stayed home. I had several conversations, especially with the first graders, about different situations in our lives and reasons why they stayed home all while reassuring them that their friendships won’t disappear and that they are an important part of our community and that they belong to St. Andrew’s.

I am grateful for the experience, it taught me a lot about myself as a person and educator. It gave me a great perspective to teach my Kindergarten class. I am proud we responded to a unique situation in a creative way. 

Authored by: Hollie Marjanovic

Here we are already into one month of school and talking about good intentions.  When I heard this topic, I thought about the saying “the road to hell was paved with good intentions.”  So, I hope that the choice of this topic was not because we are all thinking that the year has already gone to hell or that we are on some collective road to hell.  Although, the last weeks of August might have felt like it.

An example of a good intention–About a week ago, I placed 10 one gallon jugs in my car to fill with water for our house in Jackson and still they remain empty in the back of my car – just rolling around and with every turn I’m reminded that they are still there…the sound of plastic crashing and crinkling.  The good intention is that I want to be environmentally friendly by filling the jugs with water at school and not consuming more plastic. I’m so thankful that we can fill our bottles at school and take showers there.  I enjoy the time I have spent standing next to other Jacksonian colleagues filling water bottles in the faculty workroom.   It’s fascinating that when people come to my house now, instead of bringing a bottle of wine, it’s a bottle of water…I could go on, but back to my intention–  it hasn’t happened yet.  This is largely because it is overwhelming to look at all of those bottles, to take the time to fill them and walk them back to the car (can we say new workout regimen!).   

This summer the TEAM group got together and we talked about a theme for the year and one of the ideas was along the lines of “keep it simple.”  When faculty arrived in August, so many of us had such fantastic ideas about what new things we would do in our classroom.  The coaches had dreams about how their teams would do this year.  The SSS people had ideas about the programming we could do in the realm of social and emotional learning. Then by Labor Day we realized that being in school actually involves these people called students who might not be  ready for our plans or have their own plans.  We realize that schedules sometimes shift and that there aren’t enough hours in the day.  Injuries and illness occur–COVID and Flu reports already and athletic injuries!  Record amounts of rain happened with leaks in so many places around campus.  Then flooding, port-a-potties at the LS (AGAIN!)….then the ongoing water crisis in Jackson became a catastrophe that caught national news.   The plans we had to start the year had to be adjusted.   The good intentions we had for lessons might have translated into having too much to grade with not enough time to set up the activities we wanted to do or maybe we felt like we weren’t living up to the standards we set just less than a month ago.  All of these thoughts mock us, just like my unfilled water bottles.

The thing about good intentions is that we often have really big and great ideas and we make a schedule to accomplish them.  Then other realities happen which mean that sometimes (most of the time, I’m finding) we need to allow for adaptation of our plans.  And, that is okay!  We are not less than amazing if we adapt!  We can work together and find ways to uphold our standards and do what might have seemed impossible.  Keeping it simple, doesn’t have to mean that we aren’t doing amazing things, it means that we are realistic about the amazing things we can do.

Back to my water story– I have a lot of bottles to fill, my plan is now to place two in my front seat every other day.  It is a lot less overwhelming to visualize and a lot more doable.  I can accomplish my goal of filling these bottles, I just have to take a different approach.  Oh, and if I don’t remember, I’m going to be nice to myself when we have to buy yet another plastic bottle.  I’m thankful to be in a community where we have access to water, even if it’s just not from our tap.

This year, let’s be good to ourselves and realize that August might have seemed like we were living in some sort of crazy hell, but we are making it and I see good things all around!  Our students are learning, our pep rallies have been so much fun, the band sounds amazing, field trips are back on again.  Keep your grand plans and continue to be as creative as you can be, but know that the lesson so far has been that our good intentions might be made even better when we allow ourselves to accept the realities around us and adapt.  We will always find our way or make one.

Submitted by Michelle Portera

Paul Smith, our fabulous new Senior Level English Teacher, is the kind of new community member that so easily and quickly became a part of the fabric of our school that it feels like he’s been here forever. So it didn’t come as a surprise when he shared a fabulous teaching strategy the other day, and it became my goal in life to connect it to our “best intentions” theme  so I could include it in our September blog blast. 🙂 It may be a stretch, but here goes:

I have a theory.  Every time a student does a paper, a worksheet, a project, a performance, an art piece, it represents (at least a form) of their best intentions. (Note that I didn’t say “best work” . . . best intentions don’t always represent a living-out of our most shiny manifested hopes.)  Our feedback/critique/assessment/grade can help students understand the ways in which their best intentions measured up to the goals at hand. And most importantly, they can help our learners progress a step or two the next time around.  

For some reason, that seems like a helpful nugget to keep present in the corner of my mind as I grade tests and provide feedback on first drafts. “This represents this student’s best intentions.” 

I wish I could go back in time and share this with my dad.  In my growing up years, at certain times of the school year, I would note him scowling at the dinner table. “Don’t worry, honey,” my mom explained. “He’s in the middle of grading exams.” My dear father, who was an incredible professor and cared more about his students than anyone I’ve ever known, would get progressively more and more furious as he graded his electrical engineer students’ tests, particularly when the results weren’t what he had hoped. Maybe thinking of student work as their “best intentions” would have helped those poor marks feel less to him like a personal insult and more like a roadmap for the next few weeks of class. 

But I digress.  

Paul does NOT get furious as he grades student work.  Instead, he understands the power of feedback (in green, not red pen) and he recognizes that students need space and time to make sense of that feedback and apply it to their practice. So, he leverages a meaning-making tool (yay writing!) and has them WRITE a paragraph about their WRITING! It’s totally meta and it totally works. (Not to mention, it totally fixes the “I spent hours on providing feedback on their essays and then found them unread and crumbled on the floor” conundrum.)  Check out how he framed the assignment and how Sandra Crowder and Grant Worsley took up the invitation to reflect on their best intentions below.  Then, feel free to steal the idea and adapt it to your context!

Authored by Mary McCall McArthur

August 1: Check email. Read Back to School Faculty Agenda. Make childcare and meal prep plans for days I’ll work in my room after PD time.

August 2: Check email. Read they’re looking for breakout sessions. I might have something that can help?

August 4: Thanks to childcare, by 7:30 I have a full day of child-free prep in the classroom ahead of me. I’m going to get so much accomplished, especially now that the floors are clean. Before leaving for summer, we purged outdated materials and sorted them by category. What’s left is organized chaos. 

Time to begin. 

Place a pile here, stick some stuff there, create a new category. Wait, what’s this? Pull out faded, spiral bound book labeled “RANCK” and inspect copyright date. 1995!? How?

Timidly place Ms. Ranck’s “Elements of Reading” curriculum map in the large black, garbage bag to sneakily conceal the summer checklist oversight.

Look around. Piles, piles everywhere. Deep breath. Water break. Keep going. 

Soon the double cabinets are beautifully bare, sanitized, and seemingly light! I wonder how this cabinet would look over there? The class would have easier access to their materials. Quickly learn a piece of poster board underneath creates a smoother slide, preventing excess snags on the carpet. Set cabinet in proposed spot. Step back. Gaze. Nope. Scooch it over. Step back. Gaze again. Nope. This is creating less space to gather as a whole group on the carpet. I’m creating a community, not dividing it. Shimmy poster board back under the cabinets, and move it back to its original space. 

Decide it’s a better investment in the long run to pull out all of the materials stowed away in the window seats. Yes, it’s creating more piles, but it’s eliminating duplicates. One place for each category. It’s creating time in the future. 

Sort, pile, stack, mound, create more categories. 

DONE! 

1 empty double cabinet and 2 empty storage benches. 

That’s a good stopping place. It’s half past 4 anyway. 

Gather things, shut door behind me, and pretend it didn’t take 8 hours to clean and organize materials that won’t even be seen most of the time… No big deal. It was an investment in the future me’s sanity. 

An investment. 

August 5: Return to piles. It’s worse than I remember. Thankfully I brought reinforcements. Will drove separately with tools in tow to fix the broken easel, adjust desk heights, reach the really tall things, and help me meticulously hang new butcher paper, among other things here and there. Most of the morning has passed, but most of the heaping piles have yet to be addressed. 

(Enter Mrs. Hoppe)

She’s kindly taking a break from New Teacher meetings to willingly assist on the last available Friday afternoon of summer break, to walk in on one of the biggest disasters ever to have been created by a single person in a classroom.

“Welcome! So glad to have you!! I’m really looking forward to the year.” At least I think I said that. Goodness, I hope I said that.

What I do remember thinking (feeling?) was panic filled prayers. Prayers she didn’t go straight to Cassie’s office and quit as soon as she walked out of here. “I promise it doesn’t always look like this,” I desperately joke (OMG, pleeeease don’t quit).

She’s offering to help, she’s willing to help, I need the help, but among the now suffocating clutter, I couldn’t even form thoughts, much less a directive. If one were to have imagery of my brain, it would have been actual question marks and squiggles. No real thoughts. Just clutter. 

Spend the rest of the day placing categorized materials. It took all afternoon, and I’ve yet to address the elephant in the room: the neglected classroom library. 

The classroom library may be my nemesis. Sometimes when I’m looking at it across the room, I’d swear it’s mocking me. 

Thankfully I categorized half of the books earlier in the summer. I’ll simply pick up where I left off! Begin sorting, create piles. Ugh. I JUST got rid of PILES!!!! 

Pile, sort, hoist, dust, sanitize, repair, tape, stack. 

Realize it’s nearly silent on my end of the building. Check time. It’s 4:25 on a Friday. 

The ASC workers probably hate me. 

Where does all the time go? 

Text the number, push anxiety aside, grab belongings, calm nervous feelings, convince myself that next week will bring plenty of opportunities, walk towards the Commons, take deep breaths, spot my child, smile… “Hey Norah!!!” Crouch to accept the sweetest hug from the most petite “big girl.”

August 6: Wake to two tiny humans harmonizing “mAHHHHH mEEEEE.” Stumble out of bed, and feeling the full weight of back to school exhaustion, aches, and sinus pressure, find the Advil, take a decongestant, and start the coffee. “MAAAHHHmEEEE.”

Pour juice, open granola bars, turn off alarm, let dog out, open blinds, and wonder if the smell of coffee brewing is enough to begin combating fatigue… 

“Maahhhmeeeee… mommy… mommy. MOMMY!” 

Swallow anxiety, greet extra-energetic children, search for lost lovies under covers.

Hunt between couch cushions for remote. Click sound to minimum volume level. 

(Queue Bluey theme music)

Mindfully practice gratitude for the coffee that is slowly sipped, not speedily gulped, for the brilliance of this tender children’s show, and for the time we have together before I work in my classroom later. 

Anticipate the coming year.

Acknowledge sadness of an all-too-brief season.

Watch the sunrise.

Pull up roster to pray for each student.

Work Week Begins

August 8: Drive to school worrying about the large decomposing lizard on a sticky trap, mouse “gifts” and crumbling wall I found in opposite corners of the classroom over the weekend. 

*Shivers of disgust*

First plan when get to school: Search for someone willing to move the lizard and let Greg know about the water-damaged wall. 

Then, First Grade Team works together to:  

-Sort through dozens of shipping boxes, dividing supplies between classrooms or the workroom, cross-referencing items received with receipts and highlighting what’s missing. 

-Distribute EPI boxes with individual student supplies. 

-Distribute workbooks: three literacy, one math.

Last, try to find spaces to store supplies, but…where do I put them…

To make space, the books I lugged (over the weekend) to the desks to categorize now need to move back to the shelf, but the shelf can’t be moved until the damaged wall is repaired, and it’s entirely too heavy to move when books are ON the shelf. 

What to do until then?

Refocus energy into organizing the books by labels. Print tester labels and place them on the spine of the books. LOVE IT! Now commit to doing that hundreds of times. I

It’s gonna be great. I still have time! 

Tuesday, August 9: Delayed start to the whole school meetings. We quickly make alternate arrangements for Norah to go to work with Will and since I wasn’t driving all the way to the south campus, after dropping off my [tearful] Russel at daycare, I used the extra time to shop. For pillows. And Lamps.  

Our first back-to-school COVID guidelines two years prior had given me the needed push to toss the old pillows. 

I’m so excited to start the year seeing children’s full faces and look forward to bringing back comfortable spaces. Pleasantly walking through Walmart (yes, believe it or not, it’s a very decent place to shop around 8 AM.) I imagined students growing their love for reading, relaxed in the sunny window seat, propped against the new, plush pillows. 

Locate pillow aisle. Find patterns that blend with classroom color schemes. Fill cart. Run into Sarah Walker who shows me where she found a super cheap lamp. Score! 

After whole school meetings, I eagerly unload the morning’s purchases and place them around the room. Glancing at the window seat I reminisced how a little more than four years prior, I’d sat in the same window seat as a new employee, enormously pregnant, nesting in the warmth of the space that somehow already felt like it was mine. That peace is what I wish for students: for them to feel they belong right away. 

Assemble lamps. Find bulbs. Plug them in. 

The pillows are a nice touch. 

Wednesday, August 10: After Lower School faculty meetings, the entire afternoon is blocked off for classroom time. What a relief. 

After checking on the crumbling wall repair situation, the shelf needs to remain unplaced with books still in piles everywhere. It’s fiiine. We have plenty of labeling to do, and not just books.
Did y’all know first graders begin the year super pumped about having a desk? It’s their first time without little tables! Not only are they feeling the maturity of graduating to a desk, but they feel welcomed when they find their name. A name that’s been written with a fresh Sharpie, triple-checked for correct spelling, and letters that will serve as a “neat example” when children refer to this precisely centered reference atop their desk. 

During Meet the Teacher, when they curiously explore the inside of the desk, students will excitedly announce, “My name is on here!” when spotting their personal scissors, glue stick, and other supplies. The same enthusiasm is used if they spy names and birthdays written on the cupcake chart (birthdays are found by individually selecting “view contact info” on each students MySA profile) and parents, the sweet, nervous parents give that famous, tilted head smile of contentment when locating their child’s name written in the 1.5 inch tiny space holder found above the red cubbies of the hall. Some even pat their heart. 

Realistically, we teachers don’t have to do this. We know children could easily help us with most of the labeling once school begins. But, have you ever been surprised by a gift or an act of service and exclaimed, “You did that for me?!” It’s a similar energy. It’s the unexpected joy over the seemingly “small things” such as finding their name, that sets the tone of the beginning of the year. They feel instant belonging.

On the practical side, labeling everything in advance nearly guarantees a smoother start for the already hectic first days of school. Instead of noisy, chaotic sorting, we’re calmly focused on creating a community.

So, year after year, you’ll find south campus teachers unpacking each individual box and writing student names dozens of times across dozens of materials. While there’s a consistent concern if there will be enough time, this is one thing we will always prioritize- putting in the extra hours so the children can feel “instant” belonging.

Thursday, August 11: Oh my goodness, I’m leading a breakout session this afternoon and I’ve not taken the proper time to prepare. I’m fine! The plan was to keep it casual anyway. It’s a demonstration… not a presentation… I’m fine? I’m fine. 

After soaking up the knowledge and big questions of my incredible co-workers, I leave the North Campus, gearing myself up for another evening of trying to pull the classroom together. 

Call my mom. Stop for caffeine. Text husband reminder about Back to School party tonight. Set an alarm to leave no later than 4:15.

I entered the room to not only find that Tamara checked everything off of the discombobulated list I’d scratched out the day prior, but she even sorted the manipulatives by color, a request I didn’t make, but that she perceptively did to match other components of the classroom. I feel so seen. 

Inspect the newly mudded wall. Double check the fan is in optimum drying placement. 

Disappointingly, notice I’ve neglected to frame bulletin boards. It just looks weird without it. 

Search first grade workroom for border stash, measure what’s needed, locate step stool, tack border to secure, step off ladder, back up to observe, scan for stapler, realign border patterns for continuity, staple one end, remove tack, staple other end, remove tack. Trim any excess. Repeat 20 times. 

Am I going to have this room finished tomorrow?

Work past alarm. I’m not going to make that party tonight. Text Will updated evening plans. 

Friday, August 12: Hannah asks the team if we have plans to be here this weekend: Shea wants to schedule security if enough folks intend to be here. That’s so caring. “Surely I’ll be finished today. Can we definitively say a little later?”

Check on wall status. Needs sanding. Needs paint. Can move shelves soon, but not yet. 

Tamara and I print more library labels and finish sticking each book. 

Eventually, in a desperate effort to tidy up, we move the books from student desks to the shelf. It will be more work in the long run, but moving them now is a critical step towards progress. 

Tables are grouped, surfaces are cleaned, and supplies have been moved from the floor to the inside of desks. 

It’s coming together!

After days of sitting crumpled in the hallway, the carpet can finally move back to its permanent spot. Hoping the weekend gives these creases and lumps a chance to relax. 

“Bye, Tamara! Hope y’all have a great weekend! Thanks SO MUCH for all of your help.”

Turn and stare at the calendar wall. Use all of my remaining energy and focus to place pocket charts, posters, ten-frames, etc. in a mockup on the floor.

(Enter Greg) with sander and paint! WAHOO!! Progress!! He asks if I’d like to borrow the shopvac after he’s finished repairing the wall. I graciously declined, not wanting to be a further bother. “Someone else may need it!” Hilariously, I’m sure after years of working in a school, he’s learned to “place the vacuum nearby- just in case.” Not three minutes later, I retrieved the vacuum and started cleaning behind, inside, and on top of every shelf of the library and every crumbly looking corner of the classroom. Soonafter, he’s walking by with Marvin, humbly laughing. I think he needed a win. 

Check time. It’s time for me to leave. How? Why? I have to get my kids. 

Where. Does. The. Time. Go?

Finish tacking materials to the calendar wall and plan to finish it, plus the bookshelves, tomorrow. 

Tell Hannah I’ll be at school tomorrow, in case security needs a heads up. 

Saturday, August 13: Spend the day tying up loose ends: complete calendar wall, move all books temporarily to desks, rearrange shelves. Ask Judy to come look. Not quite right. She helps me lift one unit on top of another. Woah! This is the one. Begin moving books to their new home!

(All-school announcement that security is leaving.) Decide to stay. Tomorrow will be a day of rest. 

After several hours more, the largest project of the summer is finally complete. But wait. Nooo. I was afraid of this. The shelf needs support. I unload all of the books I’d just placed, and find a sturdy crate that will hold until I can come back tomorrow. Measure height and depth of shelf to makeshift a support at home.

Plan to stinkin’ come back tomorrow. 

Sunday, August 14: Make family plans to take the kids to the park at Lefleur’s. It’s the last day of Summer and it’s important to me that we make it memorable and fun. I’ve been absent too much lately. 

I leave a few hours before my family, ensuring the classroom will. be. finished today. 

Will comes later with the kids to assist with securing the shelves.

After replacing the books to check shelf strength, it’s finally done.

Eleven straight days of work, not including the random days in June and July, the classroom finally feels inviting, warm, and kid-friendly again. 

Windows are sparkling, lamps provide balanced lighting, student materials are within reach. 

Children’s supplies, tables, and spaces are labeled. 

Books are sorted by genre and color coded for easy returns. 

Cabinets and window seats have practical storage solutions. 

These are a few of the things. 

Could I have accomplished a seemingly put-together classroom during the allotted time of work week? Probably. But would it have the same tone and intentionality? Probably not. 

None of this is a complaint, by the way. I wholeheartedly think the time spent prepping my space provides closure for the previous year’s bunch I’ve grown to love and miss, while simultaneously opening my own heart to accept a new group. 

Being a teacher and a parent has grown my desire for the classroom to be more than a space. Walking into the ECC for Norah’s Meet the Teacher days have made significant impacts on me as a parent. The fine details of my little girl’s school picture on a lunch magnet, plants near the windows, labeled blue bags hanging in cubbies.. It’s so homey. These remarkable teachers made space for my child, and they hadn’t even met her yet. One walks in and feels the love they’ve created in the space, which compliments the words they use to greet and comfort us as we embark on the new year. I want this feeling for the parents of my students and will do whatever it takes to ensure parents feel secure that their babies have a space. It takes time. Often it takes extra time. It’s straining, but it’s worth it. 

August 15: Meet the Teacher is done. Let’s eat some lunch. Oh my goodness. Tomorrow is school. I HAVE NO LESSON PLANS. It’s fine. I have time. <3

Our esSAy is back for the 22-23 school year, and we are fresh-faced.  Welcome (from left to right) to Hollie Marjanovic (US), Kim Sewell (ECC), Michelle Portera (LS), Rachel Scott (LS), and Brad P–. ..I mean Buck Cooper (MS). (I promise to replace this image with the real Buck ASAP!)

We are also fresh-themed.  And for the month of September we share stories from faculty and community members that all point to “Good Intentions.”  It’s an apt-theme for any school-based blog, really, because what could possibly push us more as teachers, more as a school, than our unfailing, unwavering, sometimes blindingly GOOD intentions?

In this month’s set of content we explore what good intentions fuel us, which good intentions blind us, and which ones (ahem) sometimes pave the way to  h-e-double-hockey-sticks.  We accept the fact that there is never a simple fix, a silver bullet, a one size fits all.  For those of us who tend to be people-pleasers (I mean I have NO experience with this), we may even begin the first stage of realizing . . .

And, perhaps, most importantly, we explore a oh-so-tentative but hopeful thesis that, even if good intentions don’t always equal perfect results . . . they produce something even better than pure success.  With the right mindset and space for reflection, they can result in learning a thing or two, getting knocked down a peg or two (surprisingly good for most of us), and understanding one or two more perspectives than you did before.  

Exhibit A: Our 8/11 Workshop Week Day of Incredible Breakout Sessions. (Link to schedule)

Ya’ll.  Those sessions were FIRE.  The whole day of things and people, collectively and individually, made me so proud my heart coulda burst.  

I promise you that stuff we pulled off rivaled the breakout sessions of any national/international conference I’ve been to.  You can try to convince me otherwise.  I dare you.  

Besides that, faculty as attendees were ROCK STARS.  Actively engaged, you asked probing questions, you provided super helpful strategies in small groups.

But wow that day was fraught.  Despite the fact that I built the day with feedback from faculty reps, despite the fact that faculty assured me it would be a good, practical use of their time in setting up the school year, about a week before the event, the complaints started coming in. Most of them centered around the need for more time to get classrooms set up for the school year, the sense that sessions wouldn’t apply across the board, the sense that two days together as whole-faculty wasn’t a thoughtful use of their time.  

Some, in fact, felt like the workshop week schedule was outrightly disrespectful and a flagrant disregard of their lived reality as teachers. Others were more gentle in their language. I was grateful for all the feedback in the way I am grateful for a vaccination: painful in the moment, helpful in the long run. After all,  I have never set up a classroom for four year olds.  When faculty speak, I believe them. 

So . . . men plan, and God laughs?

Let me make something visible, in case you don’t know.  The current administrators that I work with are incredibly sensitive to faculty feedback.  The pre-event outrage was enough to result in no fewer than 3 conversations with leadership and a flurried string of emails.  “Should we cancel the day? Make it optional? Tell people to just come for half the day? Explicitly tell everyone they can skip at least a session?  Tell this division it is optional and that division it isn’t?” We went back and forth so many times about the pros and cons of all of the things.  

 But I could not stop thinking about the sessions we had lined up, the faculty who expressed excitement about sharing something on their mind, and our original impetus for the day.  So many of the things that plague us in teaching/learning/setting up positive cultures are mistakes made the first few weeks of school.  Many of the topics felt urgent.  If we pushed them off to October, would it be too late? And if we told everyone to skip the sessions they needed to, would that mean none of the five presenters in the last session would have an audience? That certainly felt disrespectful to the time they had put into proposing and planning their sessions.

So we proceeded, tentatively, as planned.  But even two minutes before the morning began I was having hurried conversations with folks in different divisions about whether Kevin or  I should address the elephant in the room of faculty discontent about the day.  I feared, though, that for folks NOT feeling preemptively angry about the day that would set them off on the wrong foot. (To be fair, there were also faculty in a very different place, interested in the experiences the day would hold.)  And mostly at the center of my vision were those generous, brilliant faculty that had stepped up to be presenters. I felt responsible in some way to avoid ripping the carpet out from under them.

So we proceeded.  Maybe it was the right decision.  Maybe it was the wrong decision.  It was not made thoughtlessly.  And it was not made with a dismissive attitude toward faculty’s lived experiences of real stress that week.  

I fall short.  I fall short.  I fall short.  

Maybe it’s time to bring back that meme again. 

I will spare you the speech about how many hours it took us to shape the program for that day. I will spare you the speech about how rarely we have entire days dedicated to the art and science of teaching/learning together as a collective.  I will spare you the speech about how EVERY PD day I have ever helped organize has been filled with complaints (in August, in October, in February, in May) about how poorly timed it feels: we are working on report cards and need to do comments, we are trying to set up classes, we are planning for midterms, etc . . . I will spare you the speech about the fact that admin are not evil people trying to ruin lives, but we are most certainly imperfect and sometimes miss the trees for the forest. (On the other hand, I suspect sometimes faculty miss the forest for the trees.)  I will spare you the speech about the wild sinus infection I developed that week and how badly I felt throughout the day racing from session to session.  

Whoops. I guess I didn’t spare you the speech; sparing people speeches is not one of my fortes.

I sent out a feedback form.  I knew it was gonna be ugly, but usually it is just those hunches that mean the information will be valuable, will teach me something. 

Lemme be real for a minute: I cried all weekend. Like, faucet tears every few moments.  Like, Alianna Rust sitting beside me on the couch rubbing my arm asking me if I was okay and I may have said at some point “I ruined my life when I stopped being a professor.”  Ya’ll I was a GREAT professor.  Like a really good one.  I promise. People loved me.  I loved being loved.

It was irrational, it was steeped in a combo of my oversized ego and sinus infection and overarching exhaustion, and it was the culmination of a month of planning mentor program and workshop week stuff and accreditation and going to a conference and etc. etc. Dude, the feedback wasn’t even that harsh.  People mostly said they were exhausted by the day and needed less.  A few got a bit more heated in their reply about the uselessness and utter disrespect they felt that day, but they too spoke their truth.  When faculty speak, I listen.

Here is one thing that bugged me.  When we gathered as senior leadership to reflect on workshop week, the conversation centered mostly around the 8/11 day of sessions.. . in not a good way.  Very few faculty had feedback about the Tuesday (first day) of meetings, and it is clear that divisional meetings are really needed for nuts and bolts things.  I’m also the only one dumb enough to send out a formal survey soliciting faculty feedback about what I planned. Ha! I suspect there was also just something about the timing of that Thursday that set people off.  I worry that Kevin and others may have gotten the message that faculty don’t like faculty-led PD.  I worry that I won’t have the courage to propose something similar again.  I worry because that kind of day is my favorite version of my job, and I want to love my job. 

I never shared with folks the kind, positive words I got about that day.  There were 3-5 thank you emails and a few “let’s walk together and lemme tell you what an incredibly valuable, power-packed day it was.”

The bad sticks with us and the good slides right off of us.  Perhaps this isn’t great. Or perhaps this is distinctly human in an evolutionary sort of way.  We have to pay most attention when we are in danger, threatened.  We are in peak performance when the defensive adrenaline kicks in.  “HEY JULIE” the bad feedback yells, “THIS FEELS BAD, SO THIS MUST BE A LEARNING MOMENT!  BUCK UP AND LISTEN!”

So what, exactly, did I learn?

1. I will never ask for a whole school day dedicated to whole-school teaching and learning during workshop week again.
2. Those sessions and presenters were FIRE.  
3. I need to get over myself.
4. Tell people they have permission to take a break during the day, and trust that they won’t all skip the last session.  Fatigue is REAL.  Info-overload is real too. 
5. Just because sessions are fire to me doesn’t mean there will be unanimous agreement all around.
6. Different divisions have different divisional needs; sure we can all learn together, but it takes a lot of work and thoughtfulness for that to go down well.
7. Many faculty really do feel ignored and dismissed by admin decisions, despite all of the work we have poured into  this very issue of faculty leadership and admin listening. We need to keep digging to figure out why and make changes so they don’t feel this way. 
8. Less is rarely less.  Less is usually more. 
9. I shouldn’t come to school and work when I am sick. I am not that important.
10.  I am not what I do.  I am not what I do.  I am not what I do. (Neither are you.)

I told our TEAM folks I needed to write about this topic on the blog because writing, for me, is sense-making, and I still can’t see my way clear on the Great 8/11 Breakout Session Day of 2022.  I think it was the simultaneously the grandest success and the most spectacular failure of my career at St. Andrew’s.  I reminded myself as I cried my way through that weekend that I am only three years into this career.  My grad school mentor had to remind me this when I got like one negative comment on my student evaluations in my first English Education class for undergrads.  She was shocked when she heard how high my eval numbers were (“I’ve never gotten numbers that high!”) and she followed it up with an appropriately patronizing tone: “Baby- you are just STARTING your career.”

I’m an impatient one. Three years in,  I feel old, seasoned, veteran.  This is absurd. I am a brand new baby administrator. I am going on four years old.  I still benefit from sippy cups generally, and naptime is still needed to get through the rigors of the day.  Sometimes I can navigate complex situations like a pro, and sometimes I find myself reaching for a pacifier and crying myself to sleep.  I am grateful for a faculty and admin community at St. Andrew’s that is willing to tolerate me and my flurry of ideas, despite all of this.

My  intentions were good.  And so were all of yours. And I am grateful for all of you who have tried, gently and not-so-gently, to show me how good intentions are not all that matters.  

We forget, especially when we are deep in the weeds of the school year and our work and our lives, how important it is to simply have fun. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry says in The Little Prince, “All grown-ups were once children … but only a few of them remember it.” And I think this is not just true of teachers, but all grown-ups? Yeah, all grown-ups. 

Much of what we do as educators can quickly become laser focused on meeting curricular goals, checking off academic boxes, teaching to tests, making sure students are “college ready,” etc. In this way, school is hard, not only for us, but the kids we teach who are swamped with “stuff” to do. If you’re not convinced that students do too many school work related things, you should read my previous blogs. If you’ve been reading my blogs over the past several months, you’ve likely noticed an ongoing motif that I’ve been interested in—how we’re all jumping through hoops. So much of what students do in school, and even what we do as teachers, often feels performative. In this way, most of our students don’t have time for fun . . . unlike students, I don’t think I need to convince you that the job of teaching and adulting is full of “after-hours” work. It’s when we’re deepest in these pursuits though, planning, grading, and checking off curricular boxes, that we also fail to remember how important it is, simply and earnestly, have a good time. Which is why olympics, service days, field trips, recess, that daily, ten minute “break” period are, in my view, so doggone important—imperative even. 

Throughout this post, you can see some of the joys we had at the Middle School olympics this year. Students spent the better part of this second quarter writing commercials and crafting flags for their fast food related teams. They played various games all across campus, from a trivia quiz bowl, to beach towel volleyball, to relay races, and the perennial dodgeball tournament. I know that there are those among us who might think that these days are laborious. Some even might think that activities like the olympics aren’t even “school” in the traditional sense. Certainly those of us from the South understand that there’s nothing more joy inducing that the swampy sweat and humidity of an absurdly hot day in late May.

But these are the memories and moments our students cherish the most: that awesome tag out they got their 7th-grade year playing dodgeball, the time the ran the table getting question after question right at trivia, or how they were so sweaty and exhausted after their 5th-grade olympics, but they had pure, unadulterated, fun. And If that’s not reason enough for their value in what we do, I’m not sure what is. I hope you all have a fun summer! I have had such a blast writing these blogs each month. It was work, to be fair, but the best work is the work you have fun doing, and these have brought me so, so, so much joy.

A fully dressed maypole is a stunning sight, even during rehearsals. It’s Friday, known around here as “May Day,” and the fourth grade has just completed their final dress rehearsal before this evening. 

I’m standing to the left of the field next to the 70 empty fold out chairs, getting a little sad all of a sudden. 

My nostalgia is hasty, a little too early, I’ve still got 2 weeks with the kiddos before they’re released to Summer, to their individual, eager anxieties for what comes next, to 5th grade prep, to family vacations, to the stilted, sleepy boredom that comes with summer vacation if you’re lucky.

I want to tell them that what they’re making right now is called a memory and that the rarest and sweetest ones come from childhood. I want to say: remember how the 9 am breeze feels on your ankles and how the blades of grass are jade-colored. 

Even more so, I want to tell them to remember how it feels to be watched, to be as loved as they are in this moment. Forgive me this sentimentality–you can’t spend 10 months with seventy 10-year-olds and not feel something. 

May Day was blessed with ideal weather, balmy, dusk spring temperatures, and no major mishaps. 

The fourth graders were jangly with excitement and nerves. 

…and many extra Bobby pins for the girls’ flower headpieces were distributed liberally.    

At this age, remember, you are standing on the cusps of many changes. Physical, psychological, emotional, maybe familial, intellectual… not to mention hormonal.

It’s around this time a child gains a bigger sense of the scope of the monumental bigness of life, and that can be more than a little scary. It’s downright terrifying, actually.

When I get frustrated (and I have, many times) I have to remind myself of how brave they’re being. It helps with correcting my perspective and reactivates my empathy.

You’re old enough to have gotten a couple of scars on the outside as well as the inside but there is still innocence, a sweetness, to the way you pedestal your hopes and believe in the cores of goodness in everything, everyone.

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It’s one week later…

…and we’ve just completed this year’s 4th Grade Crossing. After parent photos, we herd our students into classrooms and student bathrooms and even my office. They’ve shed their pristine whites for bikinis and bathing trunks.

Now, all five of us—Chandler Buggage, April Cosgrave, Anna Frame, Susan Pace, and myself—are standing outside and waving goodbye to them—sardined-in on the bus, grins cracking, sun-screened faces pressing against the school bus glass so that they look a little like cute ghost children. They’re being spirited away to a parent-sponsored pool party and to an afternoon already pregnant with their laughter.

Godspeed, kiddos. Please don’t drown.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–” 

(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

It’s been a long, long long year
It’s been a long, long long year
How did I get here?

(Todd Snider, “Long Year”)

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I can’t speak for anyone else at this school, but, for me personally, this past 2022-2023 school year was awash with contradictions.  Moving to this full-school role professionally was exhilarating, but it also brought with it a steep learning curve.  We felt a return to normalcy in regards to the pandemic, and yet this school year I also (finally) got covid . . . while visiting my father-in-law in Indiana at his deathbed. He died the next day.  I turned 40.  My family took an epic trip to national parks in Utah and Arizona over Spring Break.  I went on generative work-trips to the east coast, to Salt Lake City, to Atlanta three weeks in a row in April.  However, all this travel made me feel disconnected from what was happening in classrooms on our campus.  I missed teaching deep into my bones.  (This was the first spring semester in seven years I haven’t taught at least one college class.)  We looked, and failed to find (so far), a new home closer to one of the campuses. I loved my job most days; sometimes, though, I went home so drained from the problem-solving and interpersonal negotiations that I locked myself in my room and told my family I was done for the day with mediating.  There were so many successes.  There were just as many failures.  

You could all write a paragraph like mine above. I would like to read all of them.  We all are made up of tiny connect-the-dot moments in our days and months and years.  They make a shape, and we tell an identity-story about that shape.  But it is never really exact.  And it never really captures who we are. 

“You are a human being, not a human doing,” my Mom always said.

Nevertheless, I would like to end this year by remembering some of the things we all have done this past year.  So in the spirit of the end-of-the-year nostalgic slideshow that people like to play at graduations (by the way, here’s a fabulous 12 minute segment on a This American Life podcast reflecting on the peculiarities of that particular genre), here are some of my own personal top hits of the year:

1. That time Meredith Kochtitzky invited to me to see PK4 students in centers, and I got to hang with some world-builders working out how to build a community together

2. That time Matt Hosler helped eighth graders better understand Lord of the Flies by using the modern concept of “gaslighting”.

3. That time Dalton Howard had her fourth grade students “moving around the world” in math problems. . . and I eavesdropped to hear her say to one on-top-of-it group: “Wow- and that was a tough one. Do you think your group could teach that to the class?”

4. That time Burton Inman got his 9th grade history students revved up for a robust Document Based Question conversation.

5. That time Sarah Walker had a last-minute surprise of an additional class to supervise during her coaching visit and she totally incorporated the extra 15 kids like it was nothing.

6. This blog. Marty had the brilliant idea to rebrand it from “i2” to “Our EsSAy” and in so doing she perfectly captured the heart of this blog all along.  This year it felt less like “my thing” and more like “our thing” (shout out Maggie, Rachel, Dean, Marty) and that was always the ultimate hope.

7. That time Taylor Davis illustrated gratitude to her PK3 students by handing out distinct notes for each child; “let’s try to guess which person I’m talking about!”

8. That time Anna Frame somehow magically tricked her class to beg for the opportunity to write an “informational essay” so they could share what they learned with a larger audience.

9. This school year’s season of faculty-brainstormed, faculty-hosted podcasts. In the fall we hosted our first video version (thanks Josh Brister!) in “Parent Teacher Conference” and this spring we hit some pretty hard-hitting topics in “Bridging the Faculty/Admin divide.” Grateful for any opportunity to dialogue with each other.

10. That time Toby Lowe had all of his fifth graders wave their hands in the air eager to share their own word problems (ranging from simplistic to super sophisticated; the perfect differentiated activity) that would get them to the answer A=10.

11. That time Kathy Vial used (slightly spoiled) milk to illustrate magma, lava, and the earth’s crust.

12. That time Matt Luter utilized the art in his anthology to help students practice analysis.

13. That time Nicole Robinson masterfully encouraged her ECC friends to illustrate their feelings into boxes, interweaving art with SEL.

14. The imperfect construction of FAAC (Faculty & Administration Advisory Council) in hopes of fostering dialogue and increased transparency.

15. That time Dr. K helped students internalize the concept of inertia using coins and dollar bills.

16. That time that Mayson McKey wowed these kindergarteners with his charismatic Spanish teaching persona and his “magic bag”.

17. That time Mary Margaret got some shy math students to make their learning visible and audible through use of the white board space and spoken reflection.

18. That time Marie Venters got fifth graders excitedly talking about set design and costume choices by analyzing various scene snippets. . . in the middle of a monsoon. 🙂

19. That time Kerri Black masterfully leveraged second grader’s background knowledge and interests and equipped them with active reading strategies all through the magic of pumpkins.

.

20. That time Dennis Cranford used a particularly tricky rhythm warmup exercise to springboard into a trouble spot in a piece.

21. That (very recent almost like yesterday) time when the (probably exhausted) fifth grade team created a host of fun activities for Ancient World Days.

22. The multitude of contributions from our inaugural members of TEAM (Teacher Education, Assistance, and Mentoring): Marks McWhorter, Emmi Sprayberry, Nancy Rivas, Jim Foley, Marty Kelly, Rachel Scott, Maggie Secrest, and Dean Julius. And the many to come from the 2022-2023 cohort: Kim Sewell, Michelle Portera, Buck Cooper, and Hollie Marjanovic!

23. That time I accidentally drank a hemp-infused drink while chauffeuring around an SUV full of passengers on a really fun trip to Atlanta with lower school faculty open to dreaming of future learning spaces.

24. A record number of Summer of Excellence proposals(!) featuring a myriad of super cool collaborative projects faculty across three divisions will be busy with.

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It’s been a year. (Said with a sigh of exhaustion). But luckily, it’s also been a year! (Said with a note of triumph!). May your summer bring you many more top hits. . . or maybe just some peace and quiet. That sounds lovely too.

With gratitude,

Julie