Stories with Sophie

Take a moment out of your day and CELEBRATE with us at Ruth Ayers Writes. It's a great place to share! Last weekend, instead of heading to the lake, my husband and I headed to small town a few miles from my hometown. For the first time since I was in elementary school (well, at least the first one I could get to since then) my mom's family had a family reunion. All of her living siblings and their kids showed up (well, the ones who live in state. We missed the California cousins.) .  It was amazing. It was fun. It brought me back to who I am and where I'm from. It was the first, but it won't be the last. The first two of four generations gathering together ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Every semester in Drama, the first assignment is "Don't Be Boring". Kids can do anything they want in class and there is only one requirement...Don't Be Boring.  They are scared, nervous, and swear this is the worst assi

It seems so easy for some to put the total blame for a student's failure squarely on the shoulders of the student.  And, sometimes, that's exactly where the blame should be. But most times, there is plenty of blame to go around. And sometimes, we need to start with the teacher. Back when I was in seventh grade (and I rode a dinosaur to school), I was required to take Home Economics--one semester of sewing, one semester of cooking (only girls, no boys). I can remember being so excited to take these classes.  Especially sewing. No one in my family sewed and I thought it would be cool to learn. Oh, I could thread a needle, I made lots of embroidered dish towels. But this class would get us at a sewing machine. We were going to sew our own clothes! I soon hated going to class. You see, the teacher stood in front of the class, told us what to do and then stepped back. If she helped anyone, it was the girls who already knew a little of what they were doing. Girls who had pe

118 students. 5 preps. This has been the smoothest, happiest start to a school year I can remember. I think I've said that before. But I come home every day loving my students more than I did the day before. It helps I've had most of them in class before. We all know what to expect. They know I expect them to work hard, to think hard, to take charge. I know that they are kids and that won't always happen. We adjust. And when you love them, they love you back. And how can your day not be better when you receive all that love? It's not that there aren't negative things going on. There are. Some personal. Some professional. Some both. I'm choosing to ignore the negative. Choosing to focus on my kids and the community we are creating.  It's a safe, comfortable place. A place where kids can come and honestly say, "I don't get it." And no one will ridicule them. Or tell them to read it again. Or ignore them. We are reading Fahren

Join the celebration over at Ruth's  blog. You'll be glad you did! Here I sit on Saturday morning, doing exactly what I dreamed about all week... drinking more that one cup of coffee watching The Today Show snuggled in a blanket on a chilly Iowa morning writing about celebrating my week And this was one amazing wonderful week. I don't really know why the start of this school year has gone so smoothly, why I'm enjoying the start of this year more than years past, but I am. Seems like I am celebrating daily! My favorite celebrations came in hashtags this week... #CWFierce I try to come up with hashtags for each class. As I tweet out what we are doing in class, I have a hashtag we can use. It's mostly for our class, but parents catch on and so do other teachers.  #CWFierce is the hashtag we came up with for Creative Writing. It's been quite active this week as we wrote 6 Word Memoirs and Twitter Memoirs this week in preparation for Ex