im returning thisessay 2U cuz u haven’t done any of th things i asked like for example u didnt capitalize i & u forgot that u half to use spellcheck and um punctuation cuz this is something u wrote for school also i specifically asked u to, you know, spell words out instead of using txt shorthand again cuz this is for school
yah & how fast can u get it back 2 me cuz i need it for report cards? Sry! I know its late but if u cd be fast that wd be grt. Also ur parents will freak on me if ur marks r low so id rlly appreciate it if u wd do this solid
I no writing formally might seem whack, but trust, its the move – or at least, it’s ur move if u want to level up
Twenty-seven. I have twenty-seven “This I Believe” essays to comment on, ideally before tomorrow morning. And that’s just for one class. It is 6:17. Wait, let me be clear: it is 6:17pm.
Y’all. This is not going to happen.
I would like to write “How did I end up here?” but I’ve been teaching too long to pretend I don’t know. These were due before March Break and I should have been done before I even left. But some people wanted extensions and some students were late, and I put things off, and here we are.
I would like to pretend that this is because our flight home was delayed yesterday, but I’ve been teaching too long to believe it. I was never going to get through these in one day. Getting home earlier would have made no difference.
I would like to think that the students know how they did or that it won’t matter to them or that this isn’t a big deal, but I’ve been teaching too long to fool myself about this, either. They want their essays back, with a grade.
The good thing about “teaching too long” is that I have learned to forgive myself for this. Am I a fast grader? Sometimes. Thorough? Pretty much always. Right now that has to be enough because there is little I would change about the past ten days, even knowing where I am right now. I loved my March Break – I loved travelling, seeing family, learning to scuba dive. I loved swimming, walking on the beach, and hanging out with my kids. I loved writing and reading in ways that were not completely focused on work (although anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty well always half-thinking about teaching). All of those bits – plus a few hours of lesson planning – mean that when the bell rings tomorrow morning I will be ready to teach again, focused and interested and excited for what each student brings.
After all this time, I’ve finally realized that teaching is an impossible job. There are not enough hours in the day or days in the week for me to learn and plan and teach and care and mark. I could work all day every day and still there would be more. In fact, sometimes the better I get, the more work I have to do. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel guilty about work I haven’t finished, but it does mean that I handle it better, and I have a much stronger understanding that I am responsible for taking care of myself.
So here I am, reminding myself – and all the other teachers heading back to work – that it’s ok not to have everything done. Tomorrow, we will show up in all our imperfect ways, and the essays will (sadly) still be there on Tuesday.
P.S. And this is why I don’t assign homework over breaks. Everyone needs time off.
Today we are almost halfway through the March Slice of Life Challenge. My family and I are about halfway through this security line, but not yet halfway through our trip home. On paper, my lessons are less than halfway planned for next week, but in my head I’m way past halfway done. I am not even close to halfway done with grading I was supposedly going to do during March Break.
Statistically, I’m more than halfway through my life.
I tend to think of myself as a glass-half-full sort of person, but sometimes I’m glass-half-empty.
I’m really hopeful that the snow we left behind will be more than half gone when we get back. I’m only one third of the way through our bookclub book, and the next meetingis Friday. No problem. (See: glass half full, above.)
I’m starting to slow down on this list, so I’m almost certainly more than halfway through.
I’ve made eye contact with over half of the babies in this line, and played peekaboo with two. I’m half ready to go home, see the pets and sleep in my own bed, and half wishing we could live in Cayman forever. I halfway wish I’d used the washroom before we got in this line.
Some of our clothes were only half dry when we packed them today. Sigh.
We are not even close to halfway through Trump’s second term, but we are more than halfway through the 2020s.
Many people believe that we are living in the beginning of a new era, the Anthropocene, but my family and I are now at the end of the line, so I’m at the end of this post.
For multilingual Friday, I’m trying a photo “essay.” As I’ve worked on this, I’ve realized how little I know about this as a form. I have struggled for a theme, tried to figure out organization, made choices about what to keep and what to cut. I thought I was just going to play and share pretty pictures – and in the end, I think that’s what it looks like – but it turns out, given a new language, I had to work to understand form and learn how to manipulate things. Also, it looks different on a laptop than on a phone. Gah! If I had been at home rather than on vacation, I would have given up because this took so long. Makes me think of what I’m asking for when I ask my students to “just” write an essay or some such. Interesting.
We finished our scuba course today: we now have four certified divers in our family. We loved the diving, but after three days in and out of the water, learning, we were so tired that we all – including the teens! – took a nap.
The sun is slowly setting as I sit on the porch and try to find words for what it was like to experience this part of the planet we live on. Even after the nap, I’m so tired that words just keep swirling around. Our instructor told us that it’s the effects of pressure changes on the body, and he knows more than I do. Either way, I can barely think, so for today I will let words swirl and aim for watercolour impressionism:
Under the blue Kneel on the white sand and pass the tiny crab from hand to waiting hand; watch the clear blue shrimp wave their antennae, safely tucked in the tentacles of the curly anemone that peeks out from under a shell. Breathe. Silver bubbles rise. Touch the anchor of the wreck – No rust, but maybe luck, rubs off. Ascend no faster than your silver bubbles. Breathe. Equalize. Fly from coral mountain peak to coral mountain peak. Although the deep blue beckons below, Don’t descend. Know your limits; Share your air; Practice breathing as the gray sharks swim by and one turns, curious. Who are you to be in her world? Hover over a sting ray as she feeds, disturbing the white sand on which you have knelt elsewhere under the deep blue ocean. Breathe. Rise with your silver bubbles.
I have woken first. I sit at the table on the porch of my aunt’s cottage and sip milky spiced chai. I am relaxed.
The white-winged doves call almost continuously over the soft susurration of water and the cool rustle of the morning breeze through the palm leaves. I know that beyond the porch screen, the world is awake, although from here everything looks still. The deep green water in the little bay calmly offers a mirrored view of everything it sees. If I wander out across the white sand, I will be able to see hermit crabs exploring the shallow edges of the water, jelly fish – beautiful pulsing flowers – a little further out, and fish of various sorts swimming through the reeds, but for this moment, I am quiet on the land.
A grackle flies into the jungle geranium (ixoracoccinea) bushes which surround the house, and she poses. She tilts her sleek head at me as if she knows how beautifully her iridescent black feathers contrast against the green leaves and red flowers. Really, she’s just hoping for food. “I don’t have anything for you,” I say and, as if she understands, she flies away. She’ll be back throughout the day, but for now, I imagine her reporting to friends, “No, she’s the only one awake, and she’s still drinking her tea.”
Soon, my spouse appears and joins the lively quiet of this space. We speak occasionally, easily, but mostly we allow ourselves to exist independent of whatever expectations weigh on us elsewhere. The birds continue to call.
Now the human world begins to wake. Now engines growl from the road, from the water. A couple walks by, conversing in hushed tones, moving towards different water – the pool or the ocean. Two paddleboarders slip almost silently into sight. Next door, a little one runs to the edge of the bay, a pail in hand, ready to shape her tiny part of the world. I stand to make a second pot of tea and the curious grackle comes back.
View from the porch
This place – my aunt & uncle’s cottage – is my favourite place in the world.
The instructor gives the ok sign to each of us, one after the next, and waits for our mimed response. Next, he points two fingers at us and then at his eyes. Once he has everyone’s attention, he removes the second stage from his mouth and slowly blows out bubbles as he searches for his “missing” air supply. He finds it, puts it back in his mouth, and starts breathing normally again. Then, he points directly at my youngest child and signals for him to repeat the same actions. Nearby, I watch patiently, waiting for my turn, confident that, far from putting us in danger, this activity will make us all safer in the long run.
This week, my family is taking a scuba diving course. We’re learning a lot and I, of course, am busily observing both how we are instructed and how we are learning. I am always curious about how skills are taught outside of classrooms. Scuba is particularly fascinating because the consequences of not being able to perform the skills effectively can be deadly, but plenty of regular people scuba dive, so, while there can be no compromise, skills acquisition has to be manageable for all sorts of people.
Before we arrived on the island, all of us completed a five-section, multi-part online course with a final exam that we had to pass with a minimum of 75%. Each section built on previous sections for at least some of the learning (i.e., “How to be a Diver, part 3). As a family, we took four very different paths to success: one of us started early and learned methodically, using the “You will learn” introduction to each section to guide their reading, taking notes to learn “how not to die underwater”; one of us read the information in chunks, making sure they were able to pass the short required quiz at the end of each section before moving on; one of us skipped most of the reading but watched the videos for each section before “acing” the quizzes (not my word); and one of us went straight to the quizzes and tried them, then, once they knew what they didn’t know, went back to review only that section before completing the quizzes correctly and moving on. These choices were not obviously age-based, and no, I was not the one who took notes. We all passed the final exam, though one of us had to take it twice (72% then 80%). The last person finished the day we left on vacation. (Ok, that was a kid.)
If you’re keeping track… PADI (the group that administers the course)
used a focus checklist (“by the end of this section, you will be able to…”)
presented the information in both written and video format
offered low-stakes immediate retrieval assessment questions (we could redo them as often as necessary)
encouraged spaced practice by expecting us to review things we had learned in previous sections
at the end of each of the five sections, offered more retrieval with a section quiz which we had to pass but could retake and THEN
provided an evaluation which mimicked the section quizzes and which we had to pass with a 75%. If we needed to, we could review material and take it again.
That is decent pedagogy.
Today, we started the “practical” portion of the course with… wait for it… a written quiz based on the material we learned online. It was not for points. We simply took the quiz and then the instructor reviewed the answers and chatted with us about mistakes that anyone had made. For much of the information, this was at least the FOURTH time we had been asked to retrieve it. I don’t want to shock anyone, but we all passed this low-stakes review.
I’ll probably write more about the practical part of the course later, but I want to pause here and notice what I can take into the classroom from the written portion. For me, the lesson focus wasn’t particularly useful – I tended to skip that part – but one of my children loved using it to guide his attention. Interesting. We all spent different amounts of time with the information and took it in differently (I didn’t watch a single video; everyone else watched some or all of them). The low-stakes retrieval questions worked for all of us, as did the “do it until you pass” mastery quizzes at the end of each section and of the written course. The spaced practice was effective, too: if you’d forgotten something from a previous unit, you got a quick review in order to pass the current one.
I was most impressed, however, with the “extra” retrieval we did today. Let me tell you, everyone who took the course is very clear on the biggest ideas – and PADI has used both spaced practice and retrieval practice to ensure that we actually remember it.
Of course, a classroom is a different place. Most obviously, students’ motivation for learning in a classroom is not quite as compelling: rarely does anyone die because they forgot where to put a comma or mispronounced “epitome.” But I’m also thinking about how our family moved at different paces and took information in differently. That could happen in a classroom, to some extent. I think a lot about the Modern Classrooms Project, for example, which seems to account for some of that. My particular school is desperately low on technology, so I’m not quite ready to adopt the approach, but it seems right. I wonder what I could do to make learning in the classroom just a little more like getting ready to scuba dive?
Maybe I could just bring some really cool fish.
This tarpon – and her friends! – were at least three feet long & swimming casually next to our lunch spot.
Last night, after a long day of travel that culminated in beach and pool time, I crawled into bed, exhausted, and read a few pages of my new book (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store). This morning, I woke to a long meandering chat with my aunt over tea and coffee. At some point, as I caught her up on my life, I talked about literacy. If you talk to me long enough, I pretty much always do.
She has recently gone through her books and had set aside some for me to look through, in case I want any. Would I contemplate taking books from an island back to Ottawa? Yes, yes I would. I am constantly looking for ways to get books into my students’ hands, and books cost a lot, so I am well-known for my – ahem – willingness to accept books. As a matter of fact, I brought books as gifts for my cousin-nephews, so I’ll have space to take more back if any of these look enticing. Now, out on the veranda, as I sit down to write, books and reading are on my mind, as they often are.
I know the 2024 NAEP Reading Scores have just been released, and I know they’re not great. I teach in Canada, but I have little evidence to suggest we’re doing a lot better. Oh, I know our PISA scores are better than most, but only if you consider having 50% of Canadian students reading at level 2 or below “fine”. I do not.
I’ve just spent a frankly silly amount of time looking at the statistics I linked to in the previous paragraph. I was reading because I wanted to be sure that what I wrote was true, and now I’m stuck for what to say. Thinking about literacy is a huge part of my life, but is this little blog, mostly anecdotes, really the place to write about this? Is today, sitting by the ocean, really the day? And what will I say that others haven’t said? My family is waiting for me (only half true: the teens are still asleep), and hey, I’m on vacation: I should be relaxing. But I am almost never not thinking about literacy.
Even here, on vacation, reading and writing are firmly part of my life, and I find myself wondering if what I want for students is realistic. Do I want everyone to travel with books? Do I think we all need to be “readers” (whatever that means)? I don’t think that’s what I’m after. I do want all students to have reading as a back pocket possibility. I want them to develop the empathy and the knowledge and the critical thinking that come from reading. Literacy is a pathway to many kinds of success, and I know that very few people who have achieved only functional literacy are able to follow that pathway with any ease.
Now I’ve gotten lost in the weeds of this post: I’ve been typing and erasing for too long and I feel silly for starting my vacation thinking about this, but I can’t stop. Do I write about what I’m doing in my classroom? Do I link to more information? Do I share my hopes and dreams for my students? Maybe not today. For now, I’ll go back inside and go through that bag of books to find ones that students might read, then I’ll snuggle in with my cousin-nephew and see if I can tempt him into the world of Dragon Masters, one of my own children’s favourite book series when they were his age. I’ll have to pull him away from the iPad, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.
And I’ll write more about literacy later – because heaven knows I’ll be thinking about it.
We are locked out of my aunt’s house. She and my spouse left about an hour ago to go see my nephew (really my cousin’s son, but big families get confusing) in a swim meet. My boys and I stayed behind, too happy in the ocean to go with them. Eventually, I traded the Caribbean for the heated pool, and soon my kids followed.
While they roughhoused in the pool, I made my way back to my aunt’s place to write today’s post – only to discover that the key she left behind didn’t turn in the lock. So here I sit, poolside, writing on my phone and watching my teens. They’ve had me film them in slo-mo as they do various wild tricks; now they’re playing something akin to baseball with a pool noodle and a beach ball. My writing keeps getting interrupted by gales of laughter and giggles.
The sun is starting to set, so I have finally texted to admit that we can’t get in – but we’re in no rush. When we left this morning it was snowing and gray; we can stay here, locked out together, and be happy for a long time.
The thing about the March Slice of Life Challenge is that it always happens in March. Another thing that always happens in March – at least if you’re a teacher in Ontario – is March Break. Every year I tell myself that this is great because I will be able to write SO MUCH during March Break. I will go on vacation and everything will be relaxing and wonderful. I really should know better. I’ve been doing this long enough that I should be realistic about day one of March Break. And one day I will be. But not today.
On the first day of break, physics seems out of whack. Gravity works overtime; the air thickens and acceleration is slowed; every action requires more force to begin and results in smaller than expected opposite reactions.
Today, as in years past, I am sitting on the couch, mindlessly playing games – Wordle, Sudoku, Connections, Strands, Duolingo, even my Castles of Burgundy app – while telling myself repeatedly that I should get up, I should pack, I should write, I should…
Here, I’ll take a page from Sherri and make a chart:
What I’m doing
What I think I should be doing
Sleeping in
Getting up early
Having a second pot of tea
Emptying the dishwasher
Playing games
Writing
Duolingo
Commenting on other posts
Sitting on the couch
Laundry, packing
Talking to my mother
Talking to my mother
This is why it’s early afternoon, and I’m only starting my day – even though I’ve been up for hours. This is why even though I have lots of writing ideas, I don’t know what to write. This is why I wish that physics allowed for teleporters that would function exclusively to take tired teachers to vacation destinations.
Listen, I promise that one day I’ll write more. I will be witty! I will be wise! Today, however, I will accept the reality that today is not one day, it’s just day one.
Persistence and Pedagogy 