The Sunrise Story

Thank you Ruth for this opportunity (and reminder) to celebrate this blessing of life! Join us here to celebrate. Yesterday afternoon I was struggling with a grumpy mood. I couldn't shake it. A friend offered to cover my class while I stepped out for a moment to gather myself. When I returned, this is what was waiting for me. Each sticky note filled with compliments and kind words for me from my students! I celebrate kindness and thoughtfulness. These words literally lifted me out of my gloom and opened my eyes to the blessings sitting in front of me.  I celebrate the POWER of Twitter. I changed my Twitter header and look what happened!!! Here is my new header... @Mhaseltine I LOVE LOVE LOVE your profile image!!! #YOUMATTER — Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) April 28, 2015 @Mhaseltine That is sooo awesome! Hugs and love to you and your genius learners!!! #YOUMATTER — Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) April 28, 2015 @Mhaseltine love 4u to share ...

Be still and know that I am God...Psalm 46:10. This is my favorite verse. I share this favorite verse with a good friend. BE STILL. Ahhhh! The command to BE STILL is one that I don't follow often. I allow the busy-ness of life get in the way. BE STILL means stop. BE STILL means listen. BE STILL means believe...which leads me to the rest...AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD. KNOW. Just know. Stop. Know. That's it. Today I will search for pockets of time amid the busy-ness to STOP and KNOW. It's important. It's faith living in me. I wanted to share this amazing poem that I found on Momastery this week. I feel like if I followed the advice of scripture...and stopped and listened to God, that maybe I would hear this sometimes... God Says Yes to Me by Kaylin Haught I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic and she said yes I asked her if it was okay to be short and she said it sure is I asked her if I could wear nail polish or not w...

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, & Anna 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 .  Yesterday I gave my students the test that will be used for my teacher evaluation. I walked around the room as they tested and sent them my best wishes! Watching their faces focus and work so hard to do their best makes me so proud. I don't care what the numbers are! They are more than numbers. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago...one of my students declared, "Testing is like that quote by Albert Einstein. A fish is smart, but not if it's riding a bicycle, then it can't and everyone thinks it's dumb...or something like that!" She made me smile when she said that. She was grasping for this quote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it ...

Thank you to Ruth for this amazing community to share our celebrations! This has been a tough week, but those are the weeks when it's most important to celebrate! Also the weeks when it can be the toughest.  I celebrate... * my fitbit which is getting me walking more. * participating in a new early morning twitter chat called #BFC530. It's a fun way to start the day. * reconnecting with friends.  * poetry with my students. * a hug from a former student (she wouldn't let go for the longest time)! * Bella cuddles. * finishing a couple of good books. * writing in my notebook. * working on establishing my boundaries. * having good friends that love me...as I am. Celebrating changes the focus from stressed out to grateful! I'm glad to have this time every week to be able to do that!

April is poetry month. This month I will be crafting and sharing original poems. Often, these poems will be messy and early drafts. Many of us are sharing our poems on twitter using the hashtag, #digipoetry. We hope you join us! I discovered a cool new kind of poetry called Zip Odes. This form uses a zip code. Each line has that many words. The poem is usually about that place. If a zip code has a zero…no words for that line. Here’s my zip code from my hometown Springfield, MA….01118 and my Zip Ode: Childhood home where I grew up and learned who I was! I learned about Zip Odes from my friend, TaramSmith on her blog . Today I am going to ask my students to write zip odes...about themselves, for characters in their books, the possibilities are endless. What will your zip ode say?!?!

Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, & Anna 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 .    April is poetry month. This month I will be crafting and sharing original poems. Often, these poems will be messy and early drafts. Many of us are sharing our poems on twitter using the hashtag, #digipoetry. We hope you join us! Yesterday was a long day. I was supposed to give a test to the students, but for many, many reasons I needed to reschedule at the last minute. Stuck without a prepared lesson, I decided that we'd LEAP into poetry. Instead of a day of silence where the students would be testing, this is what my classroom looked like... Students engaged in discussion...reading and writing poetry. It did my heart good to see their work and to hear their words. Here are some list poems that came out of yesterday. They were in...

Join us on  Holly's blog  as we delve into our own  Spiritual Journeys every Thursday!   April is poetry month. This month I will be crafting and sharing original poems. Often, these poems will be messy and early drafts. Many of us are sharing our poems on twitter using the hashtag, #digipoetry. We hope you join us! This post was supposed to be for Thursday. I even had all my ideas planned out and then life got in the way. I've been resisting blogging for the week, but I have been writing like crazy in my notebook! Funny, isn't it? This week we are writing about LOVE. The first thing I have to say about this is my life is blessed with much LOVE and for that I am grateful. My faith is based on the idea of LOVE. Jesus taught us to LOVE and showed us how to LOVE. I just finished a book that will be released in August titled, For the Love . It's written by the amazing and funny and wise Jen Hatmaker . The words in that book ooze love! (Does ooze have the wro...