The Sunrise Story

This week has been full of celebrations for me! I will celebrate the people in my life this week! Thank you Ruth Ayres  for providing this space to celebrate! I celebrate Jenny! Monday: Literacy Journey began for the fourth year. The teachers in the group I'm co-facilitating are positive and motivated! My co-facilitator is one of my favorite people to work with...it's like we share a brain. Have you ever worked with someone and felt like that? It's such a gift! I'm so blessed to work with Jenny and I learn so much from her. Monday night we had our first Twitter chat. It was to practice and to talk about setting up our classrooms. It started out slow...just Jenny & I for awhile and then it really got going! We will have chats on the second Sunday of every month at 8pm EST. Everyone is welcome to join. #litjourney I celebrate my students! Tuesday: Sixth grade orientation. My first chance to see the faces I've been planning for...Students got a chance to...

I'm so grateful to Holly for the inspiration and opportunity to write about my spiritual journey. Please stop by  her blog  and share your own spiritual journey. Patience.  Hmmmm... I practice patience. Persistant patience. God's plan in God's time But... Time passes and I'm frustrated... not getting what I want,  when I want it in a  world of instant gratification Does God hear me? I practice patience. Persistant patience. I want it now! Why? Why not?  She has it. He has it. Don't I deserve it?  I'm a good person. The desire is in my heart,  but nothing ever seems to change.  Is God really listening?  I practice patience. Persistant patience. OK, fine. Maybe it's not for me. Who needs it? Forget it! I don't even really want it... Do I? I practice patience. Persistant patience. Thank you.  My life is full. I'm  grateful... gratef...

Slice of Life Challenge Please join the challenge over at  Two Writing Teachers ! Monday was spent working with teachers. I am a facilitator for our county wide professional development called Literacy Journey. We learn about being readers and writers as we teach readers and writers. We focus on best practices and learn from each other. I've been part of this amazing group for the past four years and I feel so grateful! Every year we ask our teachers to write an initial reflection about themselves as teachers. I decided to write my own here today.  Me as a teacher?!?! I'm beginning my twentieth year and I still have so much to learn. That surprises me. When I think back to my beginning years, I looked at those veteran teachers and thought...Wow! You must know it all!!...I certainly don't. I do know this, I still love my job. I love reading and I love writing and I love reading and writing with my students.  Looking back, reading and writing in...

Thank you to  Ruth  for giving us the inspiration and the space to share celebrations every week!  This week has been busy! I have much to be celebrating, so we'll go day by day. Monday: Training meeting in the morning. I met a new teacher that I'm mentoring. She's enthusiastic and nervous. It's a great opportunity to get to meet her before the entire staff returns. I'm excited to work with her! Tuesday: Oh what a day Tuesday!! I spent the morning enjoying cappuccino (my first ever) and yummy home made muffins while talking with a new friend. We met in church. It was one of those talks...you know...where you share about yourself and learn about someone else...where you discover random similarities and you feel like you have found someone important in your life. We talked about so much. I discovered that I'm really an introvert. It's TRUE! I was so shocked, but I feel like knowing that about myself has helped me accept my choices in my life.  We...

I'm so grateful to Holly for the inspiration and opportunity to write about my spiritual journey. Please stop by her blog and share your own spiritual journey. Prayer. As a child, prayer meant reciting prayers...Our Father and Hail Mary...before dinner we said grace, "Bless us, O Lord, for these thy gifts,  which we are about to receive, for your bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." Before bed we said, "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take." These were recitations said without any thought to the meaning behind the words. I said them to please my parents, to please God. I said prayers.  I had never prayed.  Six years ago I was invited to a small group with some neighbors I had recently met and about a year after that I started attending their Methodist Church. That's when praying took on a whole new meaning for me.  In our small group,...

Slice of Life Challenge Please join the challenge over at  Two Writing Teachers ! One of my favorite things about reading so many blogs is the ideas I get for posts. If you aren't reading The Messy Middle , you should! The last post was about the news and headlines. Watching the news is hard. If I'm being completely honest, I often avoid it...so sad! Last week seemed unusually sad with the death of Robin Williams...which seemed like laughter died that day! That's nothing of the unrest in the Middle East and the riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Amy, the author of The Messy Middle invited her readers to create their own headlines. She provided three of her own...so that's what I'm going to do today! Closet Mess Conquered, No More Blue Sweaters Oh the mess that was my closet!! Piles of clothes everywhere...the floor was buried and I could barely open the door. After an afternoon spent organizing, sorting, folding, hanging...it looks beautiful! Also, I r...

Thank you to Ruth for giving us the inspiration and the space to share celebrations every week!  This week I had two school days. One day was meetings and the other was working in my classroom. A few days ago I wrote about this quote... In reflecting on those words I realize that I often stress out during the opening of school because I am comparing myself with those around me. To help me with this, I sat down and I wrote about returning to school and I made plans for my classroom.  I decided to break it down into steps, so this week I organized the furniture. I thought about "dead" space from last year and I played with the arrangement. This week, I'll organize the books and bulletin boards and the walls. I celebrate growth and acceptance. I know who I am and I am accepting that I am enough.  Here are some pictures to help you (and me) see the progress. Here's the what the space looked like when I first walked in... With...

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to write and reflect and share my spiritual journey. Thank you, Holly ! Today our focus is JOY. For me joy is deeply rooted in my faith...one cannot exist without the other. I've been reminded of that so many times this week. To begin, what is joy? It's not happiness, although there are similar elements. Happiness is a state of being happy...to me it's more of a surface and temporary feeling. Joy is deeper. I was doing a little research and found this definition & chart . I also discovered that the Bible uses the word happy about thirty times and joy (or rejoice) over three hundred times! Another website (and I can't remember where I read this, I'm sorry) said that joy is something you can search for, but you can't force and that's where faith enters the picture. I believe the sun will rise every morning. I believe something good will happen in the worst of days. I believe that God will provid...

Slice of Life Challenge Please join the challenge over at  Two Writing Teachers ! Why do I focus on what's lacking instead of what's there? Does everyone do that? I want to change that. I've been stressing about the summer ending because I didn't get all of my goals accomplished. Sigh! I keep thinking about what I didn't do...what didn't get done and I feel ashamed of myself. My internal dialogue is not pretty right now and I know that I need to change it, but it continues... "Why did you waste all of that time?"  "You always do this...plan big and don't get anything done!"  "Everyone else got so much reading and writing done and you did nothing."  Today I decided to make a list. Two lists. The first list is titled "Goals Not Met this Summer"... The second list is "What I Did this Summer"... I also started & ran a summer reading program for my middle school.  What's fun...

Ending each week with celebrations and gratitude makes the moments in the week so much more precious. I'm so grateful to be part of this community! Thank you to Ruth Ayres and all of the bloggers! Please join us  here .  In ten days, my school year begins again. Two weeks after that, the students arrive. Summer is coming to a close. I always have mixed feelings about this time...missing the relaxing pace of summer days, while yearning for routine and engagement! The combination of these emotions often causes anxiety...so my goal for August is to remain in the moment. Appreciate where I am. Celebrate the little moments and do NOT compare where I am with others.  I celebrate where I am.  I celebrate my journey.  I celebrate my mistakes. I celebrate my successes. (I'm struggling with celebration & gratitude today and reading the other posts bring me such joy & smiles and they remind me that good times are always around...look for them!...

Thank you to Holly for inviting us to reflect on our own spiritual journey! Please stop by and join us at her  blog . Today Holly invites us to write about wonder and awe...what a perfect week for that! I spent the past four days with my four-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew. Seeing the world through the eyes of a young child...you can't help but feel awe and wonder. Here are a few examples I witnessed this week... 1. Creating. I'm in awe of the risks kids take when they paint and draw. I never hear my niece or nephew insult their own art or make excuses like, "I can't draw." Why do adults do that? Why do I do that? Watching them freely and joyfully paint and create art inspires me! 2. Playing. We spent lots of time playing outside. We ran around my mom's backyard. Jack gathered up hay and made piles of it. Jillian blew bubbles. They both proudly demonstrated their writing skills and wrote our names in sidewalk chalk. Again, I looke...

Ending each week with celebrations and gratitude makes the moments in the week so much more precious. I'm so grateful to be part of this community! Thank you to Ruth Ayres and all of the bloggers! Please join us  here . I feel like I was able to "let go" this week. Relax. Breathe. Be. I stopped worrying and stressing and pushing and I lived. I wrote...a little. I read more. I cleaned. I organized. I played with Bella. I lunched with friends. I talked to friends. I stopped comparing my progress with others. I stopped worrying about getting things done.   I missed blogging and I'm happy to be back today. Here are some big celebrations this week: Anything Goes .  I got the opportunity to watch a good friend perform in an amazing production of this musical. To see her singing and dancing on stage, inspired me! Her talent is enviable and I enjoyed every moment of the show!!  Journaling . Although I didn't blog much last week, I did journal. I'v...