Assessment or I'm Perpetually Behind!

My elbow is starting to hurt....too many hours on the computer today.  I spent most of the day chained to my chair on the computer developing an EOC assessment.  I have spent most of the afternoon and eve chained to my chair on the computer giving feedback to my college students' blog posts.  I just realized that to make it to the end of the semester with them I will have commented on over 380 posts.  This virtual feedback does not include the actual physical papers for this class nor their projects.  Yet as much as this literally pains me, yes,  my elbow really hurts, we know that the feedback loop matters.  (I'll confess too many injuries on the right side of my body from ultimate- dislocated elbow, shoulder, wrist etc..do pain me and I see a massage therapist regularly to keep the pain in check!).

I don't have much else to slice about!  I just wanted to post and get back to providing feedback for my students.  Check out our project here:  http://knightwriting.wordpress.com/  It was my work from the past two years from doing the Slice of Life Story Challenge that inspired me to craft a weekly blogging for all of my college students  this semester.  You never know where the work will lead you.

Harnessing Your Power

I've gone a little mad this month and am participating in two challenges, a wellness challenge and the Slice of Life Story Challenge.  I can add the wellness challenge because I've made it through the SOLCS for two years.  I need to do this wellness challenge.  Two weeks ago I fasted the entire work day for blood work and discovered at the end of the day I didn't have my doctors' orders.  Talk about hating everyone and the world.  What it really came down to is the reality that one should NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, fast or deprive yourself of caffeine when you have chosen to work with teenagers as your profession. It's not healthy.  The next day I told my principal that what I hated most that day was the realization that while I was doing a good job of taking care of the work, I just wasn't able to take care of myself.  It is a problem I have. It is a problem with which I often wrestle.  I do better most times, but lately since my injury in July have not done such a good job.   My endo says celebrate the small victories, but when your A1C goes up an entire point and then drops a tenth of a point the victory is too small.  It is a signal that I have serious work to do and the wellness challenge is that work.

Saturday morning Gladiators!  Community Matters!

 It is relatively simple.  Eat appropriately and chart your food intake on My Fitness Pal, drink your water, get your sleep, post to our Facebook group, do Camp Gladiator 3xs per week and cardio at least 3xs per week. I have a checklist in which I monitor which steps I've actually accomplished.   I've actually survived week one and have four more weeks. It has been complicated and hard for me.  I am a type one diabetic and any changes to my diet or exercise have immediate scary consequences.  I had 4 lows in one day and I knew I had to readjust my basal aka the amount of insulin I receive hourly.  I don't normally do this. That is when I actually quit and go back to old habits. This time, I told myself,  I can do this.  I studied my data, made adjustments, and made it through the week.  Four more to go.

Both of the challenges that I am participating really work the same. You do the work as individual, but each individual is a member of a community that supports each other. We celebrate success and give each other feedback.  We write every day---either a log or a blog.  We do the hard work and find inspiration in each other.  Ultimately we rise to the challenge and harness the power of together.

Mermaids, Manatees, and Memories, Oh My!

Mermaids!  What I love about Florida's winter are the mild sunny temperate days like yesterday when the air's temperature is slightly lower than the temperature of the spring water.  Weeki Wachee's spring water is always 74.5 degrees and we spent the day soaking like mermaids, watching mermaids, and a mermaid aka manatee swam close enough to touch.  We capped it off with an amazing dinner at Becky-Jacks surrounded by family.  My friend and fellow slicer Lee-Ann calls these pink-stone days and I add them as another chapter to my blue-spring memories.  

When people think of Florida, they are draw images of the beach in their head.  As a Florida native, I grew up close to the beach.  It wasn't until I moved to central Florida during college that I discovered the real beauty of Florida that is often encapsulated by the shade of live oaks, fresh water springs.  I have often written about the springs and my spring-hopping adventures here and yesterday was another day of spring adventure.  This time, my nephews discovered the joy that swimming in the fresh water springs bring as my daughter celebrated her tenth birthday.  

My daughter wanted to spend her birthday at Weeki Wachee State Park.  It is one of Florida's oldest theme parks which was purchased by the state.  During the summer kids delight in sliding into the water, but in the spring, the pool is often empty since the slides are closed.  This spring is wonderful for parents of smaller children as there is a gradual incline into the spring.  Older kids enjoy swimming out to the floating dock and jumping, diving, and flipping into the 16 feet of cold blue.  

This afternoon we were not only joined by our family, but a manatee as well.  People often mistake manatees for mermaids.  We enjoy watched her fill up and then were full of wonder as she meandered through the swimming area close enough to touch.  We didn't though. Human interaction with manatees is strictly forbidden.  We backed away slowly and watched discretely from a distance. She moved in the same easy manner that we were spending out day. No hurry!  It was magical.  

Once my nephews braved the cold, they too fell in love with the springs.  They want to go back.  We will. Although our pictures of the manatee didn't come out, that memory, the blue-spring, the sunlight, the splashes are always close in our hearts and heads.   

The Third Time's a Charm

The third time's a charm I think as I sit down at my desk to write my first post for my third year of participating in the Slice of Life writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.  So much has changed for me in a year. So much has changed for me since I first participated three years ago.  

The most significant change in my teaching life has been the way that I have integrated digital writing with my students.  Writing each day in the 2012 challenge encouraged me to co-design a two week challenge with ninth graders at my high school that school year.  In spring I built a digital writing project into my syllabus for graduate students; some elected to write alongside me in the 2013 March Slice of  Life challenge.  I integrated a blogging component for all of my students this spring in the Teaching Writing in Middle and High School course that I teach at UCF.  Through each adventure, I learn more about myself as a writer, a teacher of writing, and a digital navigator.

The first year that you do this, you wonder, can I really post each and every day?  Yes, you can and you will.  I think that ultimately becomes the quest for some the first time around.  I saw it in myself and I saw it in my graduate students last year.  It was hard, but we rose to the daily challenge and produced quality work. It wasn't' always easy.  The second thought is who is going to really read my blog?  That is the beautiful part of the challenge. People will read your blog.  You will be surprised at how much that means to you.  They might not always comment, but they will read your blog.  You will realize that readership matters.  You might check your stats, but the feedback you get each day will provide you with the power to write daily and finish the month.

You will delight in the comments of others.  You will find delight commenting on others because you will learn amazing things about them. In my classroom, the undiscovered poets, musicians, and voiceless found safety in the net.  They took even greater risks as writers. They shared their hidden talents and found strength in the bonds they created digitally.  Just as I do by participating in the Slice Challenge and my Diabetes for Social Media Advocacy group--- you will make bonds that transcend the walls of your home, your classroom, and your community.

You will grow as a writer.  You will find yourself allocating time to write and then still find yourself at the desk, writing away.  That is the danger in writing.  You will get better, your words will come to you more quickly, you will write more and longer than you intended too.  You will find inspiration in the words of others.  You will try techniques out.  Just by the habit of writing each day, you will find yourself getting better. Much like the daily reading habit we work to instill in our students, daily writing works the same.  What we put our time and attention upon, blooms as your writing will this month.  

Despite what happens this month, we will be able to post each day.  It will be hard. It will be challenging. It will be done.  We will find the time and the words will come to us. We
will be changed.

Simple to Remember

Celebrating a decade with the love of our life, Hope, today!  It is my daughter's tenth birthday so I will keep it short.  She even got to be one of the last students to take the FCAT 2.0 Writing test as part of her celebration.    Keeping my slice short so that I can enjoy the rest of the evening with her and get in our daily VIRT! (Very Important Reading Time!)

1.  Modeling matters!  From the hurricane-style that I keep my clothes organized to the way I respond to situations, my daughter sees, my daughters hears, my daughter does.  Your students do the same, they are watching you and taking your cues, especially your cues about reading, writing, and learning.  Showing vs. telling matters not just in writing!  What good books have you shared lately? What well-written lines have you read to them lately?  What's something new that you have learned lately and shared with them?

2.  Experiences educate!  Luckily we have been able to travel  to some places with her such as Alaska and Washington and she understands the concept of snow.  We have, however, also immersed her in local experiences not  limited to Disney and Sea World, but the beaches, the springs, and scalloping to name a few.  She has gone to museums, plays, and football games. These experiences build neurons and help her connect the classroom to the real world.  My favorite activity is to take freshman to see one of Shakespeare's comedies. I love to sit back and watch them laugh and enjoy Billy Shakes as he was meant to be, on the stage.  We can't always take our students on field trips, but we can get them connected to experiences on our campus that they wouldn't ordinary partake by choice.  I set that experience up by having students do Independent Study Points, an idea I stole from a teacher a few years ago.  One of the band instructors complained about their etiquette, lesson learned, but that is now a mini-lesson I will teach them in class.

3.  Work and fun are not necessarily synonymous.   One challenge of parenting is pushing your kids to do the necessary work. Sometimes it would be easier to do the work for my daughter, less messy, more quickly completed, but then she wouldn't understand that when work is hard, you have to be tenacious.  You have to dig in and complete the task.  For students, reading, writing and learning are not always fun, but we have to figure out ways to help our students navigate difficult tasks. It is wonderful though when they figure out how work can be fun, especially when it was something they thought they wouldn't like in the first place.

As a high school teacher, I am fearful of what she might teach me during her middle school years, but have loved every moment so far of her first decade.

Keep Moving

I have two things on my mind today, both percolating for awhile.  I need to do a more research about one before I write about it in a public forum.  But the other has to do with the haters out there.  Pardon me for stealing a line from my students.   I have been carrying this weight on my shoulders for more than the past 8 months, long before I tore my ACL while playing ultimate. Possibly about the time my friend managed her injuries--- broken wrists from two different roller skating accidents.

I have been surprised by the negativity from on-lookers in my journey whose immediate response to my injury was, "You shouldn't have been playing ultimate at your age."  Like I somehow deserved my injury because I am old. It wasn't like I was playing against a 24 year old, I actually collided with a 50 year old woman in the recreational league. It was a freak accident.  At my age I know better than to try to play in the competitive league and I make sound decisions when choosing whom to cover.  When I told my knee doctor that my goal was to play ultimate until I was 50, he didn't laugh and tell me it was out of reach.  He told me that my knees will be good to go until I am 60 barring any other accidents. He didn't say, "Stop!"

The naysayers remind me of my grandmother although they come in all shapes and sizes, not just ladies of a certain generation.  My grandmother often chided my mother for wearing sleeveless shirts at her age.  My mom kept doing it and she still wears them despite her age and despite her mom's judgement.  I will admit, there were times when my mom shouldn't have leaped onto the rock to follow me over a river while hiking. Visions of carrying her down the mountain on my back ensued, but didn't materialize even when she missed the rock.  But there are valuable lessons that we learn about ourselves as we age---not ones that others decide or think we need to learn.

My aunt had a horrible fall from her seawall at low tide.  She survived, but she has never been the same about heights. Recovering from a catastrophic injury or any injury at any age can do that to you, change your life perspective. She reminds me that I too may reevaluate what I want to do and wonders if playing ultimate will be in my future.

Currently I am taking it slow and carefully making decisions about what to do next as I continue to heal, a process that may take up to 12-18 months and my leg may still never work the same.  I, however, am not letting people push me into exercises or actions that are inappropriate for where I am at at this stage of my recovery. Although I really wanted to do the Lake Lure Polar Plunge on New Year's Day, plunging into the icy lake with a boisterous crowd was not in my January 1, 2014 destiny.

I have no one to keep up with, but myself.  I can't jump or sprint until April.  I can't even think about competitive contact sports until May. I may never be able to do a lunge on my right leg without severe pain.   I may not overcome my fear and play ultimate when I am finally allowed to play contact sports.  I just might not be able to do many things that I once could do.

I do think I will keep moving and doing what I love in whatever form that takes even if I get hurt roller skating or playing ultimate. Even if others think, I might be a little too old.  The real danger is when you stop moving.

I know I will find other activities that I will love a little less than ultimate when the time is right, but until them, I will embrace my age and my ability to play, play at whatever is just right for me. I will continue to push myself and perhaps from time to time get injured, not just from being old, but from being active.I carry the remnants of several injuries that predate my oldness.  I will not  let others' perceptions about what they think is appropriate for me take precedence over what I know is right for myself for me right now.  And I will be careful about the presumptions I make about others.  All the more reason for me

to keep playing and growing  strong.

Cultivating Digital Writing

It has been a few weeks since I have last sliced. I have few opportunities to hibernate before the slice of life challenge in March. But I have, however, been setting up the digital writing component of the class, Teaching Writing in Middle and High Schools, that I teach at the University of Central Florida.

The Slice of Life Challenge was the impetus for getting me write more frequently on my blog. It also gave me the courage to implement digital writing with my students at the high school and then college level.  I first assigned 50 of my freshman  a two week daily slice challenge at the end of the school year using our NING space with my colleague Lee Ann Spillane and her students. Last spring I challenged my ten graduate students to either slice weekly or to do the March challenge.  Needless to say, I survived both experiences.

This fall I decided that digital writing must be a component of the undergraduate section of the same class that I teach at UCF. Although we wouldn't participate in the weekly slice or the March SOLC challenge, we would create blogs and use those as a vehicle to explore our texts and digital writing. (I will encourage them to join the SOLC in March). We have posted twice.  Check out their posts here.

Unlike the my other experiences, I have been surprised the the variety of web tools that students are using to blog including blogger, wordpress, weebly, wikispaces, and tumblr.  Some are reviving blogs. Many are enjoying the assignment because they've always wanted to blog, but haven't made the time. We are working the kinks out, but so far I have been delighted by their craft and pluck.  

To challenge myself, I chose to learn how to use a different tool, wordpress, to create our class page. Although I have used blogger successfully for a two years, I have been struggling with wordpress and have shared that with my college students as they too have struggled.  Technology doesn't work like magic.  I am hoping that my college students remain flexible enough on our digital writing journey this semester to figure it out together.  Technology often works like teaching, there isn't always a step-by-step guide and you have to make time to figure it out. That journey is what I will be exploring with my future teachers this semester.