The Sunrise Story

Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own! I've had the last six days off for snow days. I live in the bullseye of the blizzard that hit the east coast. The best thing that happened this week was an email I received from a former student. The subject of this email from this seventh grader was Random Acts of Kindness. Here's what it said: " Hi Ms.Haseltine!! Long time no see! How are you? I wanted to let you know that today my mom's friend is coming home from California to an un-shoveled driveway. I have a huge group of friends and we call our self, "The Squad" and it seems to be falling apart.  :( I saw one of your posters from random acts of kindness in the 6th grade locker room and I thought of an idea! What if our "Squad" went to go shovel her driveway as a way to do a project together and hopefully help us stay as a group of friends!" I don't need to explai...

Thank you to Holly for the opportunity to write and reflect and share my spiritual journey. Join us here ! This series of posts is about our One Little Words for the year 2016 and how they will guide and impact our spiritual lives. Today we write about SELAH. This is my word. Join us, please! SELAH is a word that appears in the Bible. It's exact meaning is unknown. I like that. It can mean praise. It can mean pause and reflect. I feel like SELAH is a word to take on faith. I believe this word will guide my year. When I pick my word, I like to pick a word that's unusual...a word that one doesn't often hear in everyday life. To me, it makes it more special. SELAH is a word that popped into my vocabulary from one of my favorite women in the world, Glennon Doyle Melton .  She wrote about it one day on social media and her words are my definition. She wrote, "Selah means holy pause. The Selah is the space between what happens to us and how we respond t...

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, Anna, Kathleen & Deb for this amazing platform to write and share writing! What a wonderful community you've created! I'm honored to be part of it. Join us at Two Writing Teachers . I love this saying... It reminds me to look deeper. It reminds me to see beyond the masks that we all wear and remember that we are all trying our best.  I wanted to get some history on this phrase, so I began doing some research online. I love research because you never know what you're going to find. When I began looking, I found an old CBS news segment by Steve Hartman called, " Everybody Has a Story ". Hartman would take a dart and throw it over his shoulder at a map. That would be where he would find his story. When he arrived in the location, he'd close his eyes and find someone in the telephone book and interview them. It started as a joke, but 123 stories later, it's a legacy.  Here's one of my fav...

Join us at Margaret's blog to share posts about digital literacy.  Writing instruction for me this year is challenging. I feel like I'm waging a battle against short attention spans and technology and a serious dread of writing. It's taken me awhile to feel like I'm in my groove this school year, in terms of writing. I desperately needed inspiration. Beautiful Words. Two years ago the amazing Penny Kittle shared this practice from her teaching at the Language and Learning Conference (presented by the Northern Virginia Writing Project ). She shares poetry with her students. They annotate and write all around and over and on the poem. We do that, but now we do that digitally on Google Docs. It's different. As an avid notebooker, I miss the physical interaction with paper and pen but as I watch my students work with these poems, I realize that everyone has their own process. After we read and interact with the poem, we use the beautiful words  of the poet ...

Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own! I'm sitting in the middle of a giant blizzard.  6am Saturday morning I grew up in Massachusetts and I don't ever remember anything like this. I celebrate the extremes of a storm like this. I celebrate the quiet...how the whole world just seems to stop. I celebrate the beauty of the crisp, white snow. I celebrate the exuberance of teachers and students for snow days. I celebrate snow days.   As with anything, there are some struggles. It's cold! There's a lot of snow. Sometimes I get scared because I live by myself. The shoveling. It's cold! Today I choose to celebrate this history making storm.   I celebrate time with my sweet Bella. Time to read and write and paint and do. Time to nap and binge-watch tv and rest. Time to write! I celebrate the slowing down and focus on slowing down myself. I don't have to s...

Thank you to Holly for the opportunity to write and reflect and share my spiritual journey. Join us here ! This series of posts is about our One Little Words for the year 2016 and how they will guide and impact our spiritual lives. Today we write about PRESENCE. This is Margaret Simon 's word. Join us, please! PRESENCE. I love this word. In such a busy life, I've been working on being in the moment, being present, without distractions. It's work to do this, but it's so worth it. I've disabled email on my phone. I walk away from the screens in the classroom when my students are there. They deserve my full attention. It's changed me. In my spiritual life, PRESENCE or being PRESENT, is even more valuable. My mind races with to do list items to accomplish, so to turn that off while I pray is such a challenge. How do I do this? I try to write my prayers. This focuses me to be fully present with my attention fully on God. I am working on listening too. "...

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, Anna, Kathleen & Deb for this amazing platform to write and share writing! What a wonderful community you've created! I'm honored to be part of it. Join us at Two Writing Teachers . I've been in a classroom as a teacher for my students since the 90s... It's changed. Different. Change is inevitable And hard. Change is hard! More facilitator, less teacher. Is that right? More tools, More choice, More freedom... But Where do I fit? What's best? What's right? I worry... What should I do? Is this ok? Social media has given me access to authors, leading educators, my PLN... More ideas, More collaboration, More comparison. I worry. Am I doing my best? How do I fit it all in? What's best for my students? My classroom? Breathe. Be authentic. Admit imperfection. Ask tough questions... What do I want my students to learn? ...

Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own! Saturdays are often for errands or cleaning or laundry. It's rare that a Saturday is reserved for friends, but that's what yesterday was. Months ago, my friend Jessica, invited me to Women in Faith. I'd never been and it sounded interesting, so I agreed. Saturday morning came quickly. I picked her up and off we went to begin our adventure. Since we work together, most of our time is spent at school and talking about teaching so this time was precious. As we arrived at the conference and walked into the arena, the first woman who greeted us handed us a card and said, "Good Morning, Beautiful!" I'd like to officially declare that the very best way to begin the day. I smiled back at the lovely woman who complimented me. Inside the arena we listened to strong and funny women sharing their stories...We heard stories from... Patsy Clairmont ...

Thank you to Holly for the opportunity to write and reflect and share my spiritual journey. Join us here ! It's been a long time since I've blogged about my spiritual journey. I'm so glad to be back. This series of posts is about our One Little Words for the year 2016 and how they will guide and impact our spiritual lives. Today we write about BELIEVE. This is Carol Varsolana 's word. Join us, please! BELIEVE. This word is powerful. Declarative. I believe...in what? This past year has been a year of growth for me in my spiritual journey. I haven't blogged here for months and looking back, I needed some time and space to struggle and figure out what I BELIEVE. It's a journey, but here's what I BELIEVE today. I BELIEVE in God. I BELIEVE in love and kindness. I BELIEVE in forgiveness and grace. I BELIEVE we are all made with God's love. I BELIEVE God wants the best for everyone. I BELIEVE that hugs are healing. I BELIEVE kind...

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, Anna, Kathleen & Deb for this amazing platform to write and share writing! What a wonderful community you've created! I'm honored to be part of it. Join us at Two Writing Teachers . http://asunshinemission.com/tag/motivational-quote/  Who said this? It's everywhere now. It's valuable advice I've been given and followed...and it's changed my life.    What does tribe mean ? In biology terms, it's above genus and just below family. It also means, a distinctive, close-knit group. YES! These people who make up my tribe are as close to family as I can get and they are certainly distinctive. A tribe protects and guards. A tribe loves and supports. A tribe nudges and encourages. A tribe is there...always there. I love my tribe. I'm grateful for my tribe. I'm not sure if they (many of you are reading this) truly understand how much you mean to me a...