savor it

2014 was a big year for us. We dove into our third year of teaching. We finished up grad school. We found out that we are expecting a new little adventure buddy in May of 2015. With all of the amazing things that have been going on, it has been easy to just let the time slip by. 

It would be easy to continue in this manner too. Even though we will no longer have grad school taking up whatever free time we thought we had before, we will always find ways to fill our time - with adventures, with good books, with creating, with long runs - but will we be approaching each of these activities with purpose? Will we be living in the moment, or letting the moments pass us by? 

These past couple of years we have taken advantage of our location and have ended one year and begun the next by doing something that we love - running (or walking, or hobbling, depending on the time of day). We have surrounded ourselves with a community of crazy runners as we ring in the New Year as a part of Aravaipa Running's Across the Years 24-hour event. This is a great opportunity to meet other runners, have thought provoking conversations, and push yourself to the limit. During these past two years I have had the opportunity to engage with some very interesting people, and this year I was left pondering two words: savor it. 

Throughout the first 15 hours of the event I found myself chatting with a fellow runner, Cliff, whenever our paces matched up. Cliff is full of motivational wisdom, and at one point he shared the story of his first 50 mile race and being told to savor the final 1.5 miles (or so). This sounded as odd to me as I am sure it did to him when he first heard the words, but as he explained what happened during those final footfalls of the race, no two words have ever sounded sweeter. He savored those final miles and as a result, the time flew by and he was finished before he knew it, leaving the pain of so many completed miles behind and taking in the experience as opposed to suffering through it. After all, as he later pointed out, there isn't anyone forcing us to do these crazy things that we do (such as signing up for 24-hour events), so why not savor the moment?

speaking of crazy... midnight in the cold... before running my first mile of the new year

 As I continued moving through the event, I found myself returning to these words over and over again. However, I was not thinking of them with regards to the race itself, but with regards to life. How often have I been guilty of pushing through or suffering through, and not savoring the blessings that have been laid before me? As I pondered these words, I thought about the year to come, about living with intention, and about being in the moment. I thought about other wise words that have been shared with me by friends and the conversations that have arisen as the result of my pregnancy. I thought about books that I have read that portray women suffering through their pregnancies and not savoring the miracle that their body is capable of creating. After all, when you're walking around in the middle of the night you have a lot of time to think.

And so, I now find myself approaching this new year with a new outlook - savor it. What a simple mantra to bring me back to the moment. As we meander through life we can never experience the same moment twice, so why not savor each and every one. The good and the bad. The celebrations and the challenges. The ups and the downs. After all, the good wouldn't be quite as good without the bad, and we learn more about ourselves and about life when we encounter struggle. And with these thoughts (if you have managed to suffer through my ramblings up to here), I challenge you to savor it. Savor the moment, the day, the year, your life. After all, we only have one life, why not savor it?

pausing to savor the first sunrise of 2015

love

This afternoon I opened up a National Geographic catalogue that I got in the mail and turned immediately to a page that was selling Kanji birthstone necklace pendants. I spotted April's and thought, that looks familiar. And it was. The symbol for April was love.

Once upon a time I broke up with my high school sweetheart and my amazing friends in college bought me a necklace with the Kanji symbol for love on it. I loved the symbol and the simplicity of the necklace and wore it day in and day out for the next five years (with a brief respite where I wore a turtle necklace that I got on a trip to Hawaii because my sister's favorite animal is a turtle and it made me feel close to her at a time when I moved across the country). Then one day my necklace broke.

My necklace broke on January 3, 2006. I know this because it happened when I took off a hoodie before bed on the day that I began my Team Leader year of AmeriCorps*NCCC. I'm not generally a superstitious person, but I will say that I find it coincidental that the day that my Love necklace broke was the day that I met my mister. Perhaps it was the universe's way of saying that I didn't need a necklace to remind me that I was loved anymore. 

Whatever the case, the mister and I started going on runs together (probably the fastest I have ever run in my life and the slowest he ever ran willingly), going on hikes, and throwing the occasional date night in to get away from our campus. And while we may not run together very often anymore, we do still go on hikes and have an occasional date night to get away from teaching and grad school. 

And here we are, eight years later, and I still don't need a necklace to remind me that I am loved. I am reminded every day by my amazing mister. But sometimes it is nice to be reminded of where you came from and how you got to where you are.

Life is an adventure. It is not about everything always fitting neatly in a box or about following a plan to the T. It is about embracing what you encounter, living in the moment, and being willing to take on whatever comes your way because in the end every moment of every day shapes who you are and how you view life. And I choose to embrace my adventure in love and all of the amazing things that have happened in my life because of it.

the things they say

This week we began studying measurement and comparisons in math class. Yesterday we did longer and shorter, today we focused on taller and shorter. I introduced the topic and the vocabulary words. I showed the students an example of measuring height to compare and then I had some students participate in a comparison activity. After that, they were set free to explore the classroom and find things that were taller and shorter than them.

After 4 minutes I called them back to the group. We sat down and each student had the chance to share about something that they had found. The students went around saying, "the door is taller than me," and, "the bookshelf is shorter than me," and, "Mrs. S's table is shorter than me." That's when I got my winner.

Me: What did you find?

Student: Ummm... the green tub.

Me: What can you tell us about the green tub?

Student: [blank stare]

Me: The green tub is sh.....

Student: The green tub is sh...maller?

I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. I love my kinders. While it may not be a real word, I think it deserves acknowledgement for being an accurate descriptor. 

 

 

 

 

 

the things they say

Today, during our morning meeting, I asked my students to share what their favorite food is. I had a lot of the usual answers, "I like ice cream," and "I like pizza." At one point, when asking a student to elaborate on their answer, the conversation looked like this.

Me: "What is your favorite food?"

Student: "My favorite food is pizza."

Me: "What kind of pizza do you like the most?"

Student: "I like mushroom pizza. I eat it and grow big like Mario. Then Sonic says, 'Wow! You're big!"

It was pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself.

six is six

When it all comes down to it, six year olds are simply that - six years old. It does not matter where they are from, what their background is, or what language they speak. They all want to have fun, make new friends, and explore everything in front of them. 

Today my new Nepali friend joined my classroom and my above statement fits her perfectly. The day started with two of my kinders coming in and saying "We're going to have a new student!" I had not told anyone yesterday about our incoming classmate because you just never know for sure if someone is going to show up. It turns out that my newest kinder's grandparents live next door to one of my students and they had spent some time jumping around on the trampoline together. Friends were made before my classroom even came into play.

My new kinder is simply amazing. She is a sweetheart and is excited to learn. She has lived in the United States for a whole 23 days and despite any worries about culture shock, she seems to be adapting quite well. While she has a thick accent, she has a solid base in spoken English and her written understanding of the language is quite phenomenal. While she may not be reading yet, she knows a lot of her letters and some of the sounds. She knows a lot of basic three letter words though and shocked Mrs. S today during centers by writing the entire word for each image on a worksheet when all that was needed was the first letter. I think we'll be getting along quite well.

As I mentioned earlier, friends were made rather quickly so my only real concern now is keeping the chit-chatting of new best friends to a minimum and to squelch the constant hand holding among said friends (the group reached six today) as it makes forming a line and walking through the hall rather difficult. If these are my biggest concerns right now, I'll take it.

early release

Today we had a half day. Since it's hard to have any meaningful instruction on half days, kindergarten decided to use the day to do unit benchmark tests for both language arts and math. I am happy to report that my kinders did a pretty awesome job. Of the thirteen students that came to school today (another reason to avoid meaningful instruction - poor attendance) ten scored proficient on both the math and language arts assessments. I can now alter my strategic intervention groups to provide more intensive support to those students still needing to master skills from our first quarter (plus a couple of weeks) of instruction.

I wish that the day had remained pretty awesome. However, our professional development was teaching other teachers how to use the online resources for our content area materials. I played on my computer. Oh well, at least we were out early.

To end on a positive note though, we played some sight words around the world this morning while we were waiting for busses to arrive. The kinders were super excited and cheering one another on. Every student won at least one word. They're rock stars!

And, as an added bonus, I had a great "things they say" this morning:

" Mrs. Hall, do you know what I did yesterday? We had dirt in our house. And I dug in it. And I found a T-Rex bone. Then I found another one. Then we found two skulls. Then my dad said that we had to burry them again after he fixed the pipes."

I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but this kiddo was super excited about his story. He shared it as soon as he walked into the classroom. Then he told all of his friends during breakfast. Then he shared again during our morning sharing time. Either he's going to be an amazing author or story teller one day, or there just happen to be dinosaur bones in the foundation of his house.