The Charm - 3.1 #sol18 Story Challenge

The Two Writing Teachers community and its challenges have proven to be a charm for my own writing life. For the past two years, I've committed words to screen at least once per week and once per day in March, and now it's my third time accepting March's Story Challenge.

Amid this taking stock, here's what I realized: The Slice of Life blogging habit coaxes me to create nearly 70+ posts per year, and 31 of those are supposed to materialize this month. I'd be lying if I said that's not freaking me out just a little, and yet I'd be telling the truth if I admitted I felt the same way the two previous years.

Just like the bumper sticker says, "The only way out is through." So alright, let's write.

Quote & hopeful postscript

Last week, having followed a book recommendation from a Twitter connection, I finished The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. This line, among several, stuck with me:

[T]he corporate bathroom is the one place in the whole office where you understand completely what is expected of you. (71)

Excising 'corporate' from this quotation and replacing 'office' with 'school' gives a surprisingly accurate -- if snarky -- summation of my professional footing in the closing days of February's seismic grind.

p.s. Maybe writing daily in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge will help me distill expectations moving forward into spring...

Progress sells, apparently

I'm parked on the couch, kidding myself that I'm multitasking with work and the Winter Olympics. And a plant-based milk commercial with this tagline just pilfered my attention: "Progress is perfection."

Is it? the teacher in me wonders. (If so, how much? Does any progress qualify?)

Or what if 'perfection' actually proves problematic and, once we attach that label to an endeavor, it sets us up for misguided competitions -- us to each other, our work to everyone else's, all aspiring to a punishingly elusive ideal? Even standards-based or mastery learning, while celebrating progress, don't hold it up as the ultimate goal.

Besides plying me to try non-dairy milks as part of my dietary routine, does the tagline's context matter? What if "progress is perfection" only when the alternative is for Ray, the every-man swimmer featured in the spot, to compare his recreational pool splits to elite Olympian Michael Phelps? When all the players are amateurs, does progress still qualify as perfection?

Even if it doesn't, perhaps it can be a panacea for how we've traditionally prioritized grades in education. As the car commercial that flashed onscreen before I pressed publish touted: "Progress is performance when it counts."

10 drops of #CCIRA18 conference knowledge

I brought myself to the Annual Conference hosted by CCIRA last week. Here are a few quotable glimpses of what I took away:

1. “Bring your new self to your thinking as you read farther.” --Maggie B. Roberts
Why this matters: The best reading experiences aren't static. They change us and how we see what we're reading.

2. “Listen for ideas that are buildable and build them up.” --Jeff Zwiers
Why this matters: Unlock power of communicating collaboratively with each other, rather than popcorning disconnected ideas past each other.

3. “If we’re the only teacher for our students, then we’re not doing it right... We don’t have to be limited by our own knowledge and expertise to support what students are interested in.” --Meenoo Rami
Why this matters: Connecting -- virtually or actually -- is more powerful than it is risky.

4. “When you tell your child, you can’t read [Insert Title they're rereading incessantly] for the [umpteenth] time, you’re saying they can’t spend time with a best friend. When you say, don’t read [Insert Title to which you object for any number of reasons], you’re kind of saying I don’t want you to be a reader.” --John Schumacher
Why this matters: Good intentions can be unintentionally stifling. Remember to exert influence with care and two-way conversations.

5. “Blog to the job you want, not the job you have.” --George Couros
Why this matters: Looking forward unleashes untapped power, in blogging and elsewhere.

6. “As long as you write better than your students, you’ll have it made [in a writing conference].” --Aimee Buckner
Why this matters: Teachers are learners, too, and learners can be teachers.

7. “If it’s important to you, you’ll find a way; if not, you’ll make an excuse.” --Eric Sheninger
Why this matters: Identifying (and prioritizing) what matters is essential, even as we understand this target can move. Reflect regularly on current direction; adjust course when needed.

8. “What you think you’re doing changes how you interact with children and how you interact with children changes everything.” --Peter Johnston
Why this matters: Perception can be tremendously influential. When in doubt, fake it [optimism, purposefulness] until we can reliably make it!

9. What we write should contain “our emotional truth...Turn yourself inside out in your work to inject your deepest feelings.” --Ruta Septetys
Why this matters: When we don't care about what we're writing (or making or doing), nobody else will. Fortunately, the converse is usually true.

10. A writer's notebook can't be "too precious." --Linda Urban
Why this matters: Beware of taking our work too seriously, protecting it too much. If it's messy or ragged from being over-handled, that probably means we're getting the most use and benefit from it.

Crisis of Conscience, low-stakes edition

I like to believe I define my identity through what I say and do. At best, this is partly true since, in moments both big and small, forces I neither understand nor control exert their influences on me. Exhibit A: the trivial matter that confronted me around dawn Monday.

As happens some workday mornings, I had to run to catch a bus. I made it, and the bus turned out to be late. That gave me a few minutes to grimace to myself about Murphy's Law. It also meant while pacing around the bus stop, which abuts a gas station. I started noticing trash on the ground: an empty bottle of Powerade, an open milk pint, empty wrappers from Hostess products.

Enter: my conscience. See, I've trained it this school year to prompt me to pick up and throw away trash, especially on the walk into school from the closest stop where I exit the bus. How did I train it? Through repetition, stooping to pick up detritus rather than passing it by has apparently created a persistent habit.

And that habit was now speaking up. "You can't leave that garbage there," it nagged.

"Why not?" I imagined my ego protesting. "I'm not responsible for every piece of trash I meet."

"Why shouldn't you be?" parried my conscience.

"Not my appointed rounds," I said. "I don't usually use this stop. Besides there's no trash can. What do you expect me to do -- put that crap in my bag to carry until I reach the bin at school?"

And then I saw, through the darkness, across the street on the corner, a large trash-bin shadow, recognizable as a newly installed unit with spaces for recycling, compost, and landfill rubbish.

"The bus is coming any moment," I offered lamely. But it wasn't.

My last rationalizations drifted away with the sigh I expelled. I scooped up the wrappers, the plastic bottle, and the carton (pouring out some liquid and pointlessly rattling a frozen milk chunk that refused to shake out) and scampered across the street -- a good Samaritan jay-walker -- to deposit each item in its respective receptacle. Compulsion may never have felt so good.