Author Archives: olivia

Feb 28 2013
2 Comments
Health, Life, Pets, Teaching, Writing

The Secret to Forgiveness is Love.

The March Bloggers for Peace challenge is to write about forgiveness. Instead of writing about any one instance of forgiveness, I offer a simple idea. The secret to forgiveness is love, and love is a choice. If you decide to love, then you can also decide to forgive.

The beauty of this secret is that it does not apply to just lovers, or family, or friends. It applies to anyone. Strangers even. Have you ever imagined love for a person who is pissing you off? I swear, it changes the mood. Suddenly you start to see the person a little differently, to imagine what brought him or her to this moment where your paths have crossed so tumultuously. If there is an opportunity to hold a grudge or judge another person, there is also an opportunity to love.

I kid you not. In the most basic expression of this, I forgive my students all the time. In the middle of a really good tantrum, they often say terrible things. I am hated, threatened, you name it. Children or not, it is often tempting to feel angry. When I force myself to focus on my love for them, any inkling of anger is diffused, (in fact, these thoughts usually make me smile, which in turn just confuses the hell out of them and sometimes results in smiles on their faces too). Love conquers all.

Of course, some things in life may feel too terrible to forgive, but I still believe this is a choice. You choose whether to hold on or let go. It’s funny. As I sit here and type now, I realize that the hardest person to forgive very well may be yourself. So, for tonight at least, I’ll forgive myself for my own imperfections. Thanks Bloggers for Peace for helping to spread the love (and forgiveness).

For more great Peace Cats, check out:

And, thanks for sharing your peace cats, Rarasaur! (Check out other hilarious/inspiring/poignant ones here…)

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Feb 27 2013
5 Comments
Health, Life, Teaching, Writing

When it’s hard, try harder.

When it's hard, try harder.

“This is too hard.” Those words make me cringe. I hear them daily. They might be the most common words in my professional life. I tried to ban them. It didn’t work. They still sneak their way into lessons, tests, discussions.

“When it’s hard, try harder.”

That’s my newest response. I wrote those words on the board today, before we took our reading benchmark. I also tried something else. The school psychologist slipped a book into my box, Teaching Meditation to Children. We closed our eyes and imagined ourselves on a beautiful spring day confronted with an enormous wall. Instead of turning around, we figured out a way over, through, under… We didn’t give up.

The irony does not go unnoticed. I teach kids to do their best, to not get discouraged by their mistakes or failures. Yet, sometimes in my personal life I want to give up. Lately writing has felt this way. At first I was unfazed by the rejection letters from my queries, but more than forty later, they are beginning to feel heavier as they pile up. The worst are those from agents who asked to see more but then weren’t interested. The others feel less real, less personal. They didn’t take the time to look.

I’m not sure what’s next. More querying, rewriting, beta readers, self-publishing, a different project, or some combination of it all. Today I realized the important part is that there is something next, that I follow my own words to try harder when it’s hard. After all, what good is a leader who does not believe her own words. Maybe a little meditation would not hurt either.

"Children experience feelings such as love, joy, fear, disappointment and anger with intensity they may never match in adult life." So true. I remember that intensity. I also remember the teachers who asked us to close our eyes and imagine.

“Children experience feelings such as love, joy, fear, disappointment and anger with intensity they may never match in adult life.” I remember that intensity. I also remember the teachers who asked us to close our eyes and imagine.

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Feb 25 2013
6 Comments
Life, Teaching

Oh Public Speaking, I’ll Make You My Friend Yet.

Today was my big evaluation, the one worth all the jelly beans. Well 40% of the jelly beans, to be exact, but that’s beside the point. It felt big, it felt scary. My principal observed for nearly an hour and rated me on an intensive rubric, which will be used to help determine my merit as a teacher. All weekend I obsessed. I memorized my lesson, practiced by myself, practiced with my husband, practiced in front of the dog. You get the idea.

This morning as I drove to work I talked myself through my anxiety and realized I have some pretty good tricks for surviving public speaking (none of which involve imagining the audience unclothed):

1. Remind yourself that the audience is there because they support and care about you. When I remind myself of this, I am able to smile at observers who walk into my classroom. I used to avert my gaze and pretend these visitors weren’t there, but this only made it worse. A quick smile and eye contact do wonders. The best part is that usually a smile begets a smile, which reinforces the idea that your audience cares about you.

I use this same trick in dealing with parents. I tell myself that we’re there for the same reason– because we care about kids. Recognizing a common mission, even in challenging situations, helps a lot. And, if you have no evidence that your audience cares about you, telling yourself that you love and/or care for them, regardless, can ease tension exponentially. I use it on the kids (and their families) all the time.

2. Smile and breathe. It’s the moments leading up to public speaking that really get to me. If I can remind myself to stop, smile, and breathe shortly beforehand, I feel much more relaxed. I’ve heard this is because both actions send a message to the brain that there is nothing to worry about.

3. Time passes quickly. Public speaking is one of the few instances in life where I am happy this is true. Before you know it, the experience is over. And, best yet, it’s really only the beginning that feels uncomfortable, once you get going, it’s fine. Remembering this eases the torture.

4. Practice, practice, practice. That book I’m reading, Practice Perfect, provides great motivation for practicing whatever you can before the big performance. The section I just finished is all about how if you practice anything to the point of automaticity, you give your body an opportunity to take over for your brain. That was my goal in practicing my lesson repeatedly this weekend– auto-pilot for the brain does wonders when you’re nervous.

5. Ask someone to think good thoughts for you. This might seem silly, but I swear it helps. Knowing that loved ones are out there rooting for me around the time that I will be speaking is amazingly comforting.

So, there you have it. My favorite tricks for performance anxiety. Fortunately, I only feel nervous about speaking in front of people a few times a year, (next up, Saturday school where 60+ pairs of parent eyes will stare at me expectantly for an hour). Until then, I’m happy to have collected some secrets to ease the nerves.

As a teacher I spend a lot of time putting on a show, but sometimes the performances still make me nervous.

As somewhat of an introvert, I definitely picked an interesting career.

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Feb 24 2013
8 Comments
Writing

What’s up with WordPress?

Anyone else notice that posts are missing from your reader? I feel like I’m missing blogs I follow regularly– AND, because I follow my own blog, I’m noticing my own posts not show up. This worries me a bit, not so much because you might miss what I post, but because I feel like I’m missing what you post.

Have you noticed the same thing? Any solutions? Or… Is it just me?

Pretty much sums it up.

Pretty much sums it up. Thanks Wrinkle in Time.

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Feb 23 2013
2 Comments
Family, Life, Travel

Saturday Song: The Soundtrack to My Life

Do you ever have a moment where a song plays that fits exactly with the soundtrack to your life?

Last weekend, we piled into the car and drove to Grass Valley and Nevada City, about an hour outside Sacramento. Both towns are charming, Gold Rush era relics, just high enough in the mountains for pine trees to punctuate the skyline, the air to feel a little crisper.

When I was a little girl, we’d visit Nevada City at Christmastime, the decorated storefronts and snowy walkways a world away from Sacramento. Maybe that’s why an afternoon spent walking through the shops and eating with my family feels so familiar, so comforting.

In one store, this song played and I had to know what it was because it fit the mood and moment so perfectly. Nostalgia, love, life.

Ready for our mini road trip

Ready for our mini road trip

Grass Valley, CA

Grass Valley, CA

Pretty sister.

Pretty sister and late winter sunlight.

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Feb 22 2013
6 Comments
Health, Life, Teaching, Writing

Week 25: If I could just surrender…

This week I surrendered to teaching. With my big observation next week, report cards almost due, and the talent show around the corner, this week was packed. Then there was that two hour non-profit interview about my residency experience, a few more parent phone calls, and all my regular responsibilities, like actually planning, teaching, organizing, making copies.

Thursday morning I awoke from a dream where I was presenting my lesson for my observation to an auditorium full of 500 squirmy children, including a rowdy bunch of high-schoolers who entered and exited in the middle of everything. Oddly, I made it through the entire lesson, step by step, and opened my eyes with the feeling that if I could teach under those conditions, then I’d be fine in real life with the dreaded rubric.

As if it weren’t enough that I couldn’t escape my job while sleeping, Thursday turned out to be all around intense. Good old Maniac Magee had one of his most challenging days yet, (which always means ten other children also have urgent needs arise simultaneously). To make everything more fun, at the very peek of all the excitement, a herd of observers, possible donors as I later found out, headed straight for my door. Fortunately I was able to mouth the words, “We’re kind of in the middle of an emergency,” to my principal before they descended on my classroom.

Needless to say, I have been thinking a lot about what makes my job stressful and why sometimes I am able to manage it better than others. In the last seven days I have been told by three separate people that I am a saint. I assure all interested parties that I am not. But, I would really like to be. I’d like to always be calm, collected, loving no matter what is happening around me. Sometimes I am closer to this than others.

This week I accepted teaching as my entire life. I surrendered. I admit, I put up a fight on Tuesday, and felt miserable for it, but by Wednesday afternoon I accepted that things like afterwork yoga in an actual studio just weren’t going to happen. And, once I stopped fighting it, everything felt a lot better, minus a few minutes yesterday when I thought my head might explode because everyone needed my attention and I just wanted to curse.

See, definitely not a saint.

Which brings me to now, Friday night. I left work later than usual, went to a meeting, still have work to do this weekend, but I feel at peace. I’ve surrendered. If only I could always surrender. I almost wish I did not have such a deep-rooted desire to write books. If I could just teach, or at least just teach during the year and ignore book writing until my breaks, I think I could be a more relaxed human being… Half the reason I fight 11 hour days at school is because I am so anxious to get home and work on my writing. My nagging need to produce words won’t go away.

This all leads me to you, kind reader. I must know. Do you surrender to one passion at a time or chase everything at once?

Today, a student gave me the most sincere letter of my teaching career, which will now live proudly on my home desk with the school bus, a humorous gift from a friend with me at the wheel. My heart is in it. So, why do I still need to do five things at once.

Today, a student gave me the most sincere letter of my teaching career, which will now live proudly on my home desk with the school bus, a humorous gift with me at the wheel. My heart is in it. So, why do I also need to be a published writer?

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Feb 20 2013
10 Comments
Life, Teaching

My Golden Teaching Ticket: Residency & Doug Lemov

You know you’re a teacher nerd when you get asked to attend a Doug Lemov training and it’s like you hit the jackpot. For those of you who have no idea who Doug Lemov is, let’s just say he’s a rockstar in teacher land. In fact, in some circles, my excitement could even be misconstrued as bragging, (imagine that, bragging about work training, but it’s true, Lemov is the guru of effective teaching).

Lemov’s name caught my eye in a New York Times article about crafting effective teachers a few years ago, before I was even accepted to a teaching program. I thought I was ahead of the curve when I walked into my interview with it practically memorized. Little did I know, my entire teacher training program would be connected to Lemov’s book, Teach Like a Champion. Not to mention all the professional development meetings at my school to this day centered on his findings.

So, when I received an email this morning asking if I’d be willing to read his newest book, Practice Perfect, and attend a two day training down in the Bay, I enthusiastically said yes. That’s the thing, as hard as my job often feels, I am incredibly fortunate to work for an organization that is forward-thinking.

Just last night, I sat in a restaurant with representatives from a non-profit whose sole aim is to perpetuate the teacher residency model as the most effective way to train new teachers. Inspired by the medical field, residencies puts trainees to work side-by-side in the same classrooms as highly effective mentor teachers full-time, for an entire year. Instead of the usual student teacher label, residents are called co-teachers and treated accordingly.

The residency I participated in, which is also part of the organization I still work for, has proven to be one of the most successful in the nation. As I was interviewed about my second year in my own classroom, I was reminded of my passion for changing the way education looks in this country. I was also asked more than once about whether I got my strategies from Doug Lemov. I was happy to say yes.

Teacher or what-have-you, this book sounds intriguing!

Proud to be a teacher nerd.

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Feb 18 2013
2 Comments
Family, Health, Home, Life

Dear Buddha,

Buddha

Someone special gave you to me when I made a big life choice.

You sit on my desk and remind me of this choice daily.

Your goofy grin is a bit disarming.

Sometimes, I catch myself rubbing your big belly for good luck.

You carry your wealth from place to place on your back because all you need is with you.

I guess this means that all I need is with me too.

Thanks for the reminder,

Olivia

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Feb 17 2013
6 Comments
Family, Life, Teaching

Week 24: Student-Led Conferences

This week was filled with so many stories I cannot tell. Not just stories from the conferences, but stories from our half days of instruction. It seems many students had a little extra drama in their lives this week. Maybe it was Valentine’s Day, maybe it was just life.

I met 29 families to share data, classwork, progress. We meet four times in two years. This was our fourth, and last. More than anything, I was struck by the difference between the first conference, and this, the final. Only one parent was upset with me, and even that was fleeting. The rest were supportive, grateful, happy. One year, six months gives time for trust, time for change to be observed. Some parents cried in gratitude. My heart was touched.

So often I don’t feel like I’m doing a good enough job. There are so many things to keep track of, so many needs to meet academically, behaviorally, emotionally. Sometimes students show improvement in one area more than others, maybe just behaviorally, maybe just through calmer emotions. Sure, everyone learns, but often it does not feel like enough. I am hard on myself. I want to see growth across the board. I want all my time and energy to pay off exponentially.

It is hard to sit in front of a family and say I did not fix everything, I am not perfect, I tried my best. Of course, I do not actually say any of that, but it feels so obvious that there is always more to be done. This week I realized most families are grateful for what did change, where their child did grow. The tears and smiles and words of gratitude were my proof. This week wore me out, but it also reminded me that what I do really matters, not just to me, or my students, but to their families as well.

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Feb 16 2013
6 Comments
Family, Health, Home, Life, Teaching, Writing

Google Calendar, An Organizer’s Dream

Sometimes I’m a little late to the party. If you already use Google Calendar, this post is probably not for you. If, on the other hand, you are an obsessive list maker/planner and you do not use Google Calendar, read up.

This week my husband started using Google Calendar to better organize his time at work and home. He added me to his calendar so that I could schedule in all of our social engagements and know when to expect him home/free. As I started adding our upcoming obligations, I realized I needed this calendar, too.

My calendar in progress... Makes my week feel better to visually see everything coming my way, including exercise.

My calendar in progress… Still playing with how much to add, but nice to at least have must-dos in front of me and a place to combine all my lists.

Google Calendar is amazing. You can simultaneously look at multiple people’s calendars, (when they share with you), and you can color code everything, (a great way to visually get a sense of how you spend your time). For years, I have kept separate lists/calendars for home and work, and something about Outlook has never really translated for me, (especially since I don’t have it on my home computer or phone). Google Calendar, on the other hand, works easily everywhere– on any computer or device with internet access, and it’s free.

Had to share because much like Gretchen Rubin in the Happiness Project, I believe efficient and organized time use cuts out a lot of frustration and wasted energy trying to keep track of everything, (which leaves more time for the good stuff, like actually writing).

Happy Saturday and happy organizing!

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Feb 13 2013
5 Comments
Life, Teaching

Thirty Little Valentines

Say what you will about Valentine’s Day. I tried to hate it for a long time. Now I embrace it as a chance to profess my love for the wonderful people in my life, big and small.

Last year, I made a little heart for each student. A tiny token of my affection. Months later I noticed the hearts still used as bookmarks, or kept in the top corner of students’ desks, or taped to the inside of pencil boxes. In a fit of anger, one student even crumpled up his heart and put it on the floor only to pick it back up again and hide it in his pencil box when he thought I was not looking. Love games start early.

This year I was excited to make new little hearts, thirty of them, to be exact.

30 little hearts for my 30 little loves.

30 little hearts for 30 little people.

So, even if Valentine’s Day is not your thing, maybe it is still your chance to make someone else feel special. That’s how I see it. You don’t need to spend money or buy greeting cards or even be in romantic love. All you need are some well-intentioned words from the heart.

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Feb 11 2013
2 Comments
Life, Writing

Twenty Words: Life.

Life.

Life is a tenuous set of strings,

With scissors lurking.

The questions is–

Will you tie them back together?

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