Freedom of Voice

I have this crazy habit of bringing home my work laptop and ridiculously heavy teacher editions of the ELA textbooks for multiple grade levels many nights of the week and even on weekends. Just in case I get motivated to get some work done.  This is a new phenomenon for me. Typically, when I brought work stuff home, I did work stuff. I would venture to say I did work stuff most nights of the week. As a teacher and ESE case manager, there were always papers to grade, lessons to plan, emails to answer, IEP's to write. If I didn't work at home, I would have never been able to keep up on it all. As a district coach, there were always trainings to plan, data reports to analyze, emails to answer, resources to build. I am willingly, happily back in that world, but something in me has shifted. It may be a consequence of my time alone: first as a part-time reading teacher where, yes, I worked at home but was more cognizant of how much time I spent off the clock, mostly because the...

Asbestos. Fire Extinguishers. Blood borne pathogens. Bullying prevention. Safety data sheets. Hazard communication. And, now, active shooter. I know so much about all of these topics, I score 100% on the quizzes without watching the videos. But, I have to watch the videos. Some are easy peasy, 10-15 minutes. Others drag on for 40+ minutes,  the pace of the reader painfully s-l-o-w for this speed reader. Fast forwarding is not an option. I tried that last year, only to be shot back to the same video because I didn't meet the time requirements. GAAAAAAAAAH!!! Since I definitely don't have time to do these things at work,  they become homework, as they do for 99.9% of my colleagues. I am a firm believer that we should be allowed to CLEP out of these things like you can some college courses. Instead of CLEP, (College Level Examination Program) we could call it the STEP (Safety Training Exemption Program). Seriously.  We differentiate learning for students all the ti...

John and I spent hours in the back room of our home yesterday, a room we don't hang out in all that often. It serves as the den where we house our printer, important documents, and other office whatnots, so it gets a lot of pass-through traffic, but not a lot of extended-stay visitors. It is also the room where we decided to hang our gallery wall of vacation pictures and other family pictures. I'm a little embarrassed to admit it took 10 months to get that ball rolling. First, it took us a while to decide it was a priority (moving and getting settled poops a person out). Then, we had a hard time finding frames we wanted (the old ones were a hodgepodge, and many were scratched up from all the moves). Once those frames arrived, we had to unpack them (those suckers were packed with more foam, cardboard, and tape than necessary). Once they were unpacked, we had to put the selected pictures in them (luckily, I had already taken the pictures out of the old frames, a seemingly easy ...

Breathe. It's something we do all day everyday without thinking about it, an autonomic reflex. However, unlike some other reflexes, our breath is something we can actually control--to some degree.  Think about the little kid who holds his or her breath in the midst of a temper tantrum. Not that I've witnessed this, but apparently, if said kid passes out, breathing will resume. Let that be a lesson to small children everywhere who might think this tactic will freak their parents out and get them what they want. It won't work.  Disclaimer: I'm going to publicly admit something that may paint me as a monster mom, so if you don't want your opinion of me tainted, stop reading here. My son actually pulled this stunt once. He wasn't even a year old, and I was at my parents house with him. I can't even remember what triggered the tantrum, but the little sucker threw himself back in a fit of rage and held his breath. My mother begged me to pick hi...