Celebrate XIX: In Which I Celebrate Snow Days??????

Wow. What a week. 

Two major snowstorms.
One on Monday. One on Thursday, a blizzard that went into Friday.
And it was conferences week.
And we only had two days of school.

But there were things to

My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing your own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. 

1. Well timed days off
We only had ONE snow day because we had Monday off for President's Day, so while other schools missed the day, we were already home! Because of conferences, Friday was a compensation day, so, again, we had the day off. Only Thursday ended up being a snow day. WooHoo!  We have six days as it is to make up. We didn't need anymore!

2. Technology to the rescue
Our next speech contest is next Saturday. Missing all these days really hurts us. BUT, since we are a one to one school, all our kids have computers and most of them have internet.  I've been practicing with some students via Facetime on our Macs.  We set up a time through the Facebook page and PRESTO, rehearsal time!

3.  Hints of Spring
Even though we are buried under tons of snow, the other day as I walked from my car to the school I noticed something important. THE SUN FELT WARM ON MY FACE.  There was snow and the air was chilly, but the sun had warmth to it and that is something to cheer about.

So, there you are. A few of my things to celebrate this week.  Be sure to hop on over to Ruth's blog and share yours!

Celebrating a Little Late (But Celebrating, Nonetheless)

My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing your own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. 

 Reasons I'm late to the Celebration Link Up:

1. Stomach flu since Tuesday afternoon ( I didn't slice either). 

2. State Contest Week for speech

3. A rough day at contest

4. Tired

5. Grading

6. Procrastination

7. Couldn't find the celebrations

And then I started to think

And they were there

Those celebrations were hiding out, waiting for me to be ready to appreciate them.....

This week I wrote letters of recommendations for several of my senior speech kids. And this gave me a couple of things to celebrate. The first, kids who asked me back in the fall to write theirs.  So nice to write letters when there really is no deadline. And the second, well, first I have to be honest.

As many high school teachers will tell, I keep copies of all the letters I write. And every year, when a kid asks me to write a letter, I think about what former student they are most like. I use that letter as a template for the new one.  Of course, I add personal info about the student, personal connections, etc, but the form tends to be the same.  And with each letter I wrote, I began thinking about these students and our years together. Each and every one of them holds a special place in my heart. It was fun looking back at the growth they have had.

Friday, I wrote a letter for a student who is so unique, that there was no letter to fall back on. I had to start from scratch. And no letter will do her justice. I wanted to send video of her dancing with abandon during a "Don't Be Boring" Friday in Drama class. I wanted to send the brochure she wrote in Creative Writing about her ideal school. I wanted them to listen to her tell stories. And the whole time I wrote, I heard this song in my head:

As I said before, Saturday was a rough day at contest. I felt like I had failed the kids. It was hard for me to be positive when I got home, hard to find positives. But again, there were there

• singing boys on the bus ride down
• parents who drive down to see their kid perform for 5 or 10 minutes
• students supporting each other
• great attitudes
• The "let's move on to individual" attitude
• Seeing growth from one year to the next
• A student who will be a leader next year, although he doesn't know it now

So, you see, even when it seems like you had a crappy week and there was nothing to celebrate, there really is. You just have to peel away the crap and look.

Aloha!

Celebrate 16:

My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing your own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. 

What a crazy week. Contest last Saturday. Two cold days. Trying to figure out just where all my classes are at......

But there is a lot to celebrate today!

1. SPEECH KIDS!

Here's a few of them, waiting on the last results of the day. The day didn't go quite as well as I had hoped, but we are taking four groups to state competition next Saturday and that is something to cheer about. But what I really celebrate is this. In this picture are a football player, a couple of cheerleaders, some 4-H kids, choir kids, band kids, weird kids and popular kids. What do they all have in common? They are SPEECH KIDS!  I love that this activity brings them all together as a team. They are all so supportive of each other. And the older kids show the younger kids what it means to be a SPEECH KID. We even had a couple of alumni show up during the afternoon just to say hi!  

Tradition continues.

2.  A LITTLE RECOGNITION When we finally got back to school on Wednesday this week, we found out that a "local" TV station (from sixty miles away) was coming to interview my "flippingfamily" group about our classrooms. They were supposed to come last week, but weather got in the way of that. I wished I had thought about the possibility of them coming. If I had, I might have worn something a little more professional. But here I am wearing my new speech shirt in celebration of Saturday :)  

Anyway, there was a lot of talk amongst us about this interview. There was a general feeling of uncomfortableness. You know how teachers are. They don't like when the center of attention is on them. What we do is for and about the kids, not us. But what I kept in mind was this: for years our high school and it's teachers didn't have a great reputation, even with the district staff. And at times, that reputation was deserved. But it isn't now. With new leadership, great things are happening. In order to change our reputation, we have to put ourselves out there. We have to share what's good.

3. Romeo and Juliet Time to share with my freshmen. I have always taught Romeo and Juliet at the end of the year, but the last couple of years I just felt like I was really rushing through it, so I decided to move it up this year and really spend time with it. Of course, Mother Nature is trying to disrupt us as much as possible, but we are finally starting to read. Yesterday we made paper swords and read through scene 1. All I can say is--it's a good thing we used PAPER swords! I definitely practiced living Aloha during these classes :)

So there you have it. A few of my celebrations this week. 

Until next week

Learning Doesn't Have To Stop

Here's the best thing about being in a 1to1 environment

Learning Doesn't Have to Stop!

Take a minute.

Think about it.

No snow days. Or cold days. No heat days. Or fog days. (We've had them all!)

Start up the computer, send out a message, and class is in session.

Learning Doesn't Have to Stop!

In creative writing, all they need is on the website (or will be once I finish this post). With schoology and remind101,  it's easy to communicate with students.  

And then there is email.

Learning Doesn't Have to Stop!

For quite a bit of this day, I've been communicating with one of my senior Creative Writing 2 students. I read her blog posts and did a website check. She's doing an amazing job. A requirement of the class is that students blog three times a week. She is using weebly to house her work, but she was putting all posts on a standard page.

I emailed her that on weebly there is a blog page. I told her I would show her tomorrow how to set it up.

Here's her response

And so, we have communicated all day about her work. I read and commented online, I sent her templates to create magazine layouts for her informational piece, and we've discussed the drawbacks of the firewall on the student computers.

Learning Didn't Stop

Gotta love a snow day.....

A little something to brighten a cold winter day.....

 

Practicing Aloha

My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing your own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. 

The week of speech contest is always a bit frantic, and this week has been no exception. Weather has brought it's own special problems this January. Seems we've been out of school as much as we've been in school. Trying to keep things going is a challenge. I've been managing things pretty well, but today I kind of let the stress get to me. I hate that. I sometimes forgot to "Live Aloha"

So, celebrating the good things....

1. Here's to my former co-coach, who took over improv rehearsal Tuesday when an emergency dental procedure kept me from being able to go to rehearsal.

2. Here's to one of the bravest kids I know this year. A sophomore girl who didn't blink an eye when I asked if she could take over a part in our Reader's Theatre group on Saturday because someone else was academically ineligible. She took the script, highlighted her part, made sure she got the cuts we made. She came after school and practiced the scenes she was in like a pro.  My words to her after school, "No matter what happens tomorrow, it will have nothing to do with you. You stepped up and gave the rest of the kids a chance to perform. I'm really very grateful for that."  I hope she believes me.

3. And here's to the rest of the group, who rallied around her. Who told her not to worry, they'd take care of her. And they will. This same group, practiced on their own Wednesday when I was at a state meeting. 

4. Here's to the improv group who also lost a member (same kid). They took it in stride (although I hear they "beat" him with their choir folders when they saw him in that class). They tried it on their own and then decided they need another person. So they took one of alternates and worked a bit after school with him and promised more practice time tomorrow.

5. And the real celebration--my kids. My kids who go out for speech, not for the accolades, not for the ratings, but for the fun, camaraderie, and experience. 

Now that's something to celebrate.

Aloha.

Black Tears

They call this "Black Tears".

In reality, it small amounts of oil still leaking from the Arizona years after she was sunk at Pearl Harbor.

I shouldn't have been surprised at the tears. Mine had been welling up all morning. Why should the Arizona not share her tears with us as we strolled above her?

You think you know. You think you are going to see a war memorial. You know you will see names and ships. You think you know.

I take lots of pictures, but above the Arizona, I just couldn't. It seemed wrong somehow. So I listened to the voices tell me about that day.

And I cried.

Visiting Pearl Harbor was a powerful experience. If you go, spend the $7.00 and take the audio tour. Listening to the story, hearing the voices of survivors, seeing the ship....I still can't wrap my head around it or share it. I don't have the words. 

But trust me, you should do it.....

Time to Celebrate

  My friend Ruth Ayres has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about sharing yor own celebrations. So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating. Normally, I would give you a link to her site and the exact page, but I am writing this from my iPhone and haven't figured out how to do that yet from the blogger app:)

This week I'm celebrating...

My new iPhone 5c. It took along time to convinced my husband that a smartphone was worth the added expense and then that we needed two cell phones. It didn't take long for him to decide he liked all the iPhone could do, especially getting directions when we were a little lost or getting the road conditions while traveling. Right now he got himself a tracfone, but I have a feeling that by this time next year, he'll have his own iPhone. 

Celebration 2. The new blog that my school family and I have started. As part of our professional learning time, we have started a blog to reflect and share information on our flip class journey. Check it out if you would like over at flippingfamily. blogspot.com. We've written our intro posts and a couple of others, so things are getting started.

Celebration 3: We also got a nice write up from our district. I'll see if I can figure out how to link that later:). Let's see if I've got it now

 http://howard-winnpublicrelations.blogspot.com/2014/01/exploring-flipped-learning-at-howard.html?m=1. 

 Woohoo. Except it doesn't link. Hmmmmm

Celebration 4: my creative writing 2 class is coming along. They have blogs up and running  we have connected with another small class accross the state, and the drafts of their first genre has been handed in. I think I will find lots of reading and writing joy as this group continues through the semester. 

Well, that about does it for this week. Hope you all found the fun and the joy in your week. Be sure to celebrate and share it with the world over at ruthayreswrites.blogspot.com

Aloha