Author Archives: olivia

Sep 08 2011
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Life, Teaching

Something Old

Yesterday after I wrote about my necklace, I remembered how as a kid I used to carry around a good luck charm in my pocket.  In elementary school alone, I went to four different schools, and often had trouble making new friends in the beginning.  Somewhere along the way, I devised a plan to carry the little porcelain chick below in my pocket.  Just like the necklace, it helped to give me both courage and comfort when I felt alone.  Given its small size, I’m amazed that I never lost it!

Now that I teach kids, the chick is a good reminder that sometimes we all need something magical to believe in.  I’ve noticed that many of them carry little toys in their pockets that I confiscate throughout the day.  It never occurred to me that some of these toys might be a source of strength when they need it!  
Tomorrow I will bring my little chick to class and share my story with them.  Maybe it will mean something to some of them. I just hope that I can help make their childhoods a little happier, (even if I still have to temporarily confiscate their good luck charms from time to time!).  
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Sep 07 2011
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Life

Live Life, Be Brave

I’m thinking about getting a tattoo.

One of my most childish secrets is that when I was grappling most with my anxiety, I would put on the necklace below each day as a reminder to be brave.  It helped.  A lot.  Even now that my anxiety is just a whisper, I still wear it almost everyday, accompanied by one of two Celtic knots.

Thank you Jen for the poignant reminder to live, and Alex for the Celtic knots of our family.

As I was putting it on the other day, I thought that maybe I should get those words tattooed on me, as a permanent reminder that life is short and that it is up to me to be brave and live it.  It is a funny thing in life how living to our full potential often takes the greatest courage.  I do not want to ever forget that I control my courage instead of my courage controlling me.

If I choose to get a tattoo, I also want to integrate the tree of life somehow.  I am fascinated by its symbolism throughout many cultures, including the Celts.  It annoys me that the tree is becoming trendy, because my connection to it roots back further, to my childhood.  I used to sit high up in the branches of old trees and talk to them.  They even told me their secrets about life and our interconnectedness.  No, I was not on drugs.  Yes, maybe I am part hippie.

All joking aside, I really never thought that there would be anything permanent enough for me to want to have tattooed on my body.  However, anyone that really knows me, knows that I am an odd mixture of over-thinking and impulse.  It will be interesting to see which side wins this battle…  Maybe I should just buy myself a tree of life charm to add to my necklace and save myself the trouble!

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Sep 03 2011
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Family

Here is Your Life…

The night before last I had a dream that I showed up at my dad’s house and found a party in my honor in the backyard.  Attending this party were all of the people in my life that have ever mattered to me, even if only for brief periods or in small but significant ways.  If you are reading this, you were probably there, too.  It was a little like my wedding but bigger in scope because of the wide range of people there.  It was one of those dreams that remains visually haunting throughout your day, almost as though you’re still dreaming it hours later.

The funny thing is that I spent the whole day thinking back to the “Here is Your Life” segment of Sesame Street where all of the old friends and family magically appear to surprise the contestant, (in this case a carton of eggs!):

Okay, I know that was corny, (pun and reference to the clip intended), but it is interesting to me that “Here is Your Life” was the most memorable segment of Sesame Street for me growing up.  I’ve often thought back to it over the years, even if my memory of it was a little different than the reality of watching it for the first time in decades just now.  But, I often find that dreams are like those segments as people from your past mysteriously reappear from the depths of your subconscious.  This most recent dream was like “Here is Your Life” on steroids with a combination of both long-lost and present friends and family all together in one space in my brain.  It left me thinking about how many people have touched my life in various ways and how the routine of life limits how much time I have for everyone, even those that are closest to me.

This is an important reminder because I deeply believe that it is the connections that we share with the people in our lives that make life matter.  I feel like the universe has been shouting this at me between the events in my family this week and this dream that still will not leave my head.  On both sides of my family there will be gatherings in the next two weeks that mark the importance of coming together.

These pictures of then and now-ish of my dad’s family gatherings are a tribute to my Uncle Mike, who was good at bringing us together, and to my big family, who I hope will come together more often in the coming years.

So, here is my life, and I am happy that you are ALL part of it!

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Aug 27 2011
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Family, Life

Cheers to new traditions!

I’m finding it very difficult to sleep in on Saturday mornings after getting up early everyday during the week.  Today, however, I did not mind, because Alex got up with me to ride our bikes to the gym and then the farmers’ market.  I had no idea that just riding our bikes instead of driving could make me like where we live more, but it did!  I had assumed that a farmers’ market in a mall parking lot would not feel the same as the markets that I love in cute little city centers, but it was surprisingly enjoyable.  Live music, beautiful flowers, fresh fruits and veggies.  I think we have a new Saturday morning tradition!

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Aug 26 2011
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Family, Health, Life, Teaching

Sometimes sadness has its own poetry

At around 5:30 this evening I found myself crying, alone, in my classroom.  It was the first time that I’ve ever cried at school, even through all that I survived last year in my program.  I had just sent a couple of emails declining professional development opportunities because of an impending visit from my mom and grandma, who is awaiting the results from the removal of cancerous breast tissue.

Ironically, earlier that day, another teacher on my team lent me a book to read to the students called The Lemonade Club, where a child has Leukemia and her teacher has breast cancer.  Reading the book aloud to the students pushed me to the verge of tears, as I thought of my own family and watched 90% of the students respond with our hand signal for also having a connection.  In quietly sharing our sadness together through this book, I found myself feeling more connected to my students, which oddly compounded my own sadness as I felt some of their pain too.  Somehow, I kept the tears back for the sake of my students.  But, sitting in my classroom, tired, surrounded by work, and reminded of the book as it sat on the ledge of my whiteboard, I let myself cry and it felt surprisingly good.

Crying amidst the brightly colored posters and joyful displays of learning created this strange duality for me of life’s emotions.  It reminded me that in life there must be balance and that maybe conscious sadness is as important to living as conscious happiness.  Oddly, crying left me feeling the most alive that I’ve felt in the past few weeks.  I think sometimes I put too much emphasis on happiness and not enough on just allowing myself to feel what is around me.  I was left with an awareness that sometimes sadness opens our eyes to the fleeting beauty of life as long as we don’t allow ourselves to dwell there indefinitely.

Sitting in this scene of colors and stimuli as I cried this afternoon was a little surreal…   But, on the bright side, my beloved world map carpet finally arrived today after school!

It is hard for me not to look around my classroom and feel the joy on the walls.  So many pieces of myself and my students, smashed together.  I love the huskies that they colored in, each one different and imperfect.  I love that Matilda, our end-of-day book, somehow found its way into the picture, (it migrates).  I love the spelling wheel and the theatrical afternoon game show that it represents…  I could go on, but you get the idea.

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Aug 24 2011
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Life

Happy now instead of happy someday

Today when I logged into my blog, I had to change the background.  Seeing something that reminded me of school made me not want to write.  Apparently, teacher brain has its limits, and I’ve reached them.  This week is about delineating work and home.  It is also about consciously working toward happiness.

Yesterday was a rough day of school.  The students were extra challenging, my air conditioning broke, and I found myself trying to have a chips and salsa party in a room full of thirty sweating 9 year-olds.  The combination of 85 degrees Fahrenheit and 25 grams of sugar in the “natural” box drinks that I purchased was too much.  Note-to-self, I am not the kind of teacher that enjoys unstructured time.

It seemed like a good way to help them remember our acronym for editing and revising (CHIPS & salsa), but it turned out to be more of a headache than it was worth.  I spent the whole day trying to keep everything positive so that we would not lose our party by the end of the day, but it tanked by 2:30 PM when the sugar and the heat hit simultaneously.  Today I made up for it by being lightning fast in my consequences and allowing the tone to shift into negative territory when it needed to, (something I avoided yesterday), and it felt so much better.  I admire teachers who can keep it positive ALL the time but I also recognize that for my own sanity I have to use what works for me, which is a combination of both negative and positive tones.  I feel like I learned a really important lesson.

After my semi-disastrous Monday, (I’m sure it wasn’t entirely disastrous, it just felt that way to my OCD, perfectionist self), I came home feeling really unhappy.  Being a little on the OCD side of the spectrum can be dangerous as a teacher.  Not only can it keep you in your classroom far beyond the call of duty in the evening rearranging desks and tidying up the upheaval of the day, but it can also result in an unrealistic expectation of what teaching should look like.  Yesterday I was feeling really down on myself for not being able to successfully use a positive vibe all-day-long to trick my students into being complacent angels.

When I got home, I found myself calculating how my teaching career could be a stepping stone to something else that interests me, like policy work, curriculum design, a PhD, founding new schools, writing…  And that’s when it hit me that I’m back to a spot that I routinely get to where I have to take control of my own happiness instead of counting the days until I can be happy again.  Happy now, no matter the circumstances, instead of happy someday.

As I’ve said before, happy for me is sometimes a conscious effort, instead of something that just magically happens.  As I pushed my tired body through an hour of yoga last night, I really focused on what I want and what motivates me to teach.  Already, teaching has been such a roller coaster for me.  I’m obviously passionate about it and why it matters, but some days are really hard.  Some weeks are really hard.  As it’s turning out, some months are really hard.  Spending 60+ hours a week doing a job that is far underpaid for the amount of expertise, energy, and love required can feel confusing.  I’ve heard it called the hardest job on earth, and some days it feels like it.  But, the challenge is also what keeps OCDers like me enthralled.  It is such an intricate web of demands that I feel much more engaged and mentally stimulated than I did writing economic reports on some very complex topics (mezzanine loan structures anyone? Bueller?).  It’s funny, when I was fresh out of college, I always assumed that teaching elementary school would be too elementary to be engaging, but so far I am very very very wrong.

That said, I still don’t know that teaching is the key to my long term happiness, but last night the conclusion that I reached was that it does not matter.  Instead of thinking long term, I need to think right now, which is teaching.  How do I make the most of each day and consciously cultivate happiness?

Ironically, part of the answer to this question is creating clearer boundaries between work and home, since it has all been blurring together lately.  The biggest irony of this is that I started my blog today by changing the background away from school but it is still all that I ended up talking about.  Oh well.  I guess that teacher brain prevails again.  The good news is that I’m already feeling happier in my reminder that happiness is sometimes a conscious process.  I’m also happy in my hell-bent desire to take a good vacation soon.  The only question is tropical, South America, or Europe…  At least I have the time off to make it happen!

Even a weekend in Tahoe is sounding pretty damn satisfying about now.  😉

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Aug 20 2011
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Teaching

Teacher Brain

I have teacher brain.  I don’t know if all teachers develop teacher brain or just people with obsessive thought patterns, like me.  All that I think about now is teaching and my students.  My poor husband has to listen to me rattle on about their backgrounds, their behaviors, their quotes, my fears, my little victories…  When the dog wakes me up in the middle of the night, I come to from a fog of classroom dreams.  While I’m talking to friends, I find myself droning on with my teaching stories.  I called my dad back after a ten minute conversation about teaching the other night just to tell him one more story.  It consumes me.

I wonder if teacher brain ever goes away or whether you have it as long as you’re teaching.  In a way I like it, because I feel passionate about it and my brain seems to be eagerly processing the challenge of so much information coming from so many different directions.  On the other hand, I think I might drive the people in my life crazy if teaching becomes the only thing I talk about!
Since I’ve admitted that teaching is all that I’m thinking about right now, I’ll share a couple of my favorite moments from the week, (and, to be fair, I guess it’s not ALL that I think about, I have also been planning where we’re going to travel during my breaks, but maybe that is part of teacher brain too?!):
  • Yesterday my students wasted time during art by playing around when the art teacher asked them to clean up their supplies.  When I came to pick them up, they were nowhere near ready to leave, so they ended up wasting about ten minutes of my instruction time and ten minutes of the art teacher’s prep time.  When we got back to class, I had them write letters apologizing to me and the art teacher for wasting learning time by playing around.  The responses were hilarious.  My favorite letter was one where a student tried to explain to us that the Huskies, (that’s what I call them because our class university is UW), just want their freedom because this is a school where they come to learn, not play.  His use of the word freedom made me giggle.  Ironically, the letters made me like my students more because they were generally very endearing and included references to how important learning time is. ❤
  • This week one student told me in the middle of solving a math problem on his white board, “I LOVE THIS SCHOOL!”  (Same student that was trying to explain in his letter that the Huskies just want their freedom…)  I asked him why he loved it and he responded, “I just love it,” while smiling down at his math problem.  I asked him if it’s because he’s good at math and he gave me the biggest smile/nod combo.  Adorable.
  • At afternoon recess, a group of girls called me over away from the other students to show me a cheer they had made up, (or partially stolen from some book about witches turning themselves into eternal youths).  It was pretty hilarious/cute at the same time.  They were so nervous to show me but so proud of themselves when it was over.
  • Last, but not least, our school is participating in an event put on by the 20/30 club where students in need get to go on a mini shopping spree for back-to-school clothes, (thanks to an amazing teacher on my team!).  Five of my students were selected and when I handed out the notices I felt like it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the golden tickets.  I made sure to do it discretely, but in my quiet little conversations with the students that received the spots, I felt like I was handing them winning lotto tickets.  They were so excited!  I could feel some of the financial stress that they already carry at such a young age melt away.  I’ll admit, it made me a little teary.  
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Aug 11 2011
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Teaching

Thank Goodness

I’m afraid to say it but I’m finally starting to feel back to normal again, like I can do this and I like children.  I’m afraid to say it because I do not want to jinx it!

Today I realized that I’m starting to fall in love with my students.  I fell in love with my students last year, which is an odd feeling.  You just suddenly find yourself really caring about them, even when they’re challenging, or maybe especially when they’re challenging.  I felt twinges of it this weekend when I missed them a little, but today I actually realized that I’m beginning to know them and like them.  That sounds odd because you expect people that work with children to like the kids automatically, and even though I do conceptually, it takes me a little time to truly care about them as individuals.  Today reminded me of the feeling that makes me like being a teacher.  Hopefully, the more that I get to know my students, the more I will go home with this feeling.

Yesterday, a student came out of nowhere and wrapped her arms around me and told me that I’m her favorite teacher.  Every teacher knows that you only get to be the favorite teacher while the student is in your class.  But that’s beside the point, if nothing else, at least the universe still finds a way to remind us that what we’re doing matters to someone.

🙂

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Aug 04 2011
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Teaching

Consequences

Day two was much better.  We started using consequences and I’ve decided that they’re a girl’s best friend! What a difference in behavior from day one.  I heard through the grapevine that one parent said, “I like my child’s teacher (me), she’s strict!”  This made me smile.  I think that maybe you have to be a teacher to understand why being called strict can feel good…

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Aug 03 2011
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Teaching

Survival

I survived the first day of school.  I know that sounds extreme, but that is how it feels.  It was a mixture of successes and challenges.  I felt successful in using all of the tools in my belt but I also felt the magnitude of the undertaking.  I know that many people have a great deal of respect for teachers, but I really do not think that most people understand what it takes to teach.  I didn’t until last year, and even then, I don’t think that I’ll fully understand until I’m a few more months in!  Despite the challenges, I’m excited to go back tomorrow and hopeful that if I just work hard at it one day at a time, the magnitude will feel a little less heavy over time.

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Aug 02 2011
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Teaching

First Day of School Eve

Tomorrow is the first day of school!  I’m definitely feeling nervous and excited.  My room is still a work-in-progress, but it’s feeling like a real classroom!  Go team!

PS.  If you love to put together furniture and want to volunteer to help me assemble some bookshelves and storage space this week, let me know!

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Jul 31 2011
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Teaching

Gratitude

Working for a school is a humbling experience in itself, but the last two days have been the most humbling so far.  I arrived to my classroom yesterday to find desks and chairs, that’s it.  School starts Tuesday.  The desks weren’t even the right ones and the chairs were zip tied together in bunches, so the room felt truly empty.  I know a lot of new teachers begin with the same or worse, so this is not a complaint, I just did not expect it to feel so overwhelming to discover that there were not even shelves in my room!

My classroom in the first couple of hours yesterday.  Putting the UW chair in the corner made me feel a little better! 

I think part of my reaction was due to expectations.  I expected most of the furniture I needed to be in the room and started to feel lost knowing where to put everything I purchased and collected over the summer without it.  However, this is the part that is really amazing!  With the help of my lead teacher, other teachers at my school, the principal, and the building manager, there was enough unwanted furniture collected from other parts of the school to make my room functional within hours and the rest was quickly ordered to reach me in the next few weeks.  Moreover, my husband and sister spent the entire day with me, helping to make do with what we had.  So, by the end of the day, my room was far from complete, but so much better thanks to the help of nearly a dozen people!

I am truly humbled by all of the help that I have received to make my classroom ready.  My mom has been collecting books for my classroom library and other odds and ends for over a year.  My dad bought me the coolest maps to hang on my walls.  An old friend from college donated a wonderful used stereo.  Another friend gave up the husky stuffed animal that her husband worked so hard to win at the fair for their kids.  Other friends have promised postcards for my students, including one who has already sent a postcard from Chicago.  Yet another friend is going to spend part of her Sunday in my classroom, helping to put together a bookshelf and get posters up on the wall.  My husband spent both yesterday and today running around campus helping to whip my room into shape, giving up both of his days off.  My sister spent nine hours on Friday in my room and is recruiting friends to come help with her again all-day Monday.  My lead teacher spent half of her classroom prep day helping me to get what I need for my room.  My entire team of fourth/fifth grade teachers has contributed time and classroom items to help me be prepared for Tuesday.  My coach came in and patiently listened while helping to move desks and tape off the spot where our class carpet will be.  Another new teacher, and friend from my program, lent me bins for my students to use since their desks will have no cubbies for the time being. Many others on my school team popped in to help me with materials or kind words of encouragement or simply to offer help…

I know that the list of helping hands in the coming days and years will only grow longer.  This is why I feel so humbled this afternoon.  Even though my to-do list still feels endless and probably always will, I feel like I can take it on because others have so selflessly helped me.  Working at a school is the most humbling experience I’ve ever had.  I feel part of a true community and am really touched to have so many wonderful people in my life willing to help.  Thank you all!

My first morning message for my students, including our first postcard.

The beginnings of the Husky fan club, hope you’ll join too!
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