Pennies for Miles

For the month of February, I wracked up 110 miles. It's beginning to feel like a lot of running, almost too much. In February, I began to face that mid-training slump where you dread the moment you have to lace up your shoes and step out the door. This was probably in part to my...

A Few Remembered Things

Ever since I returned from the CCIRA conference, I have been meaning to blog about lots of different sessions and ideas that I came away with. To give you a very brief overview of the conference, I left feeling rejuvenated in my practice and it also reminded me of some simple truths that I had...

Conference Time!

Today, I am headed to Denver for the Colorado Council International Reading Association conference. This will be a new conference for me too, though it will be my second conference as a real teacher and my 13th conference since I began my college career. I'm excited to continue to learn more about teaching reading and...

Lost Connection

Connect – to relate to or be in harmony with another person, one’s work, etc. ; to establish communication between; put in communication. Connecting is a huge part of teaching. We are constantly trying to connect to our students, to find parts of our own lives and personalities that click with 72 other lives and...

Feedback Promises

Recently, I have been reading a professional development book over giving effective feedback that my district asked me to read at the beginning of the year. It's not a thrilling read, but it has made me think about how I am interacting with students and how I am responding to their work and their behavior....

Little Victories

My parents once told me that when you turn eighteen you know everything and that every day after that birthday, you realize how little you actually do know. It's like all of that self-confidence and wisdom slowly leaks out of your brain somehow for the rest of your life. I find this to be very,...

It’s Monday and I’m Back

It's Monday evening and I am making good on one of my New Years Resolutions. I promised myself at the end of 2015 that I was going to begin writing again in 2016. I would blog three times a week and try to write 15 minutes a day. Writing 15 minutes a day has not...

Take Off

This post was a struggle. I didn't really know quite what I wanted to write about. I've wanted to write about stress, running, about leaving things behind, and about looking forward into the future. Looking at these different topics, I felt like they each deserved their own post. Yet, seeing them written out, I see...

Promise to the Future

In this whole complicated moving process, I have decided that I really want to grow some of my own vegetables and herbs all year long. Really, I'd like to grow all the herbs that I can because I find that I like to use them a lot when I'm cooking and that I like them...

Compromises

In reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls this month, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the compromises Jeannette's family is willing to make for their values. They never really had enough food or a home that was decent and warm because Jeannette's parents were unwilling to compromise their idea of independence and...