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...

Cuban Book Crisis

Recently for a genius hour, I discussed communism and the Cuban Missile Crisis with all of my seventh graders. Some of their eyes glazed over, but many of them seemed truly engaged with what I was saying. I did my best to weave the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis into something that would keep...

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...

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...

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...

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

I have to admit that I'm in a bit of a reading slump right now. I powered through my young adult novels from the libraries in town and now, I don't want to read anything. After reading Maggie Steifvater's Scorpio Races in the beginning of May, nothing has really done it for me. It's a...

Challenges

This week, I asked my Upward Bound students what they considered their biggest challenge and how they've overcome it or are working to overcome it. In The Glass Castle, we're talking about poverty and code-switching and different values. Jeannette had to overcome her own impoverished background and, in all the speeches and interviews I've heard...