the only answer I have: do more than just show up.

I'm writing again. Not much - just little bits - but I'm writing. None of it is finished yet, but I'm getting my sea legs again after a summer off and a life full of moving and mothering and making. I'll share some soon.

I've been thinking a lot about what we do when the path ahead is difficult, uncharted, or frightening to us, and I keep coming back to something I had the opportunity to share when I was asked to give a commencement address at the school where I taught in Colorado. I struggled for weeks, months really, to decide what I wanted to share with my beloved students who had put their faith in me to say something meaningful to them as they went off into the Big World. I tend to be someone who wants a ready-to-use map to everywhere (the more landmarks and road signs included, the better), but I hope I did right by them by pointing them in the way of asking the right questions instead of getting some Cliff's Notes version of an easy answer.

If you want to read the speech in its entirety, you can click here.

school days, school days, dear old golden rule days

There are some things in life that are flip-of-the-coin worthy - I could go either way, easily, and then wonder for ages if it was the right choice for me or if, in this grand Choose Your Own Adventure book we're all in, I'm going to end up on the game over page sooner than I'd like. But there are other decisions where I feel a laser beam shining directly from my brain towards my future path. Having children at all was one of the former, but staying home with them was the latter. I'm funny like that.

Deciding what to do about schooling for Lorelei this year was and is an ongoing process. It's our last year together before "real" school begins, and our last year as a daytime party of three. Since we're spending it in a brand new city with a cadre of cultural opportunities, part of me wanted to keep her home this year so we could treasure these days in whatever way we choose with New Orleans as our textbook. I'd sign her up for enrichment classes - dance! gymnastics! art! music! - so she could do all the things she loves while leaving most of our days open-ended for exploration and discovery.

But in my heart, I knew I couldn't. I can't homeschool my kids. Don't misunderstand me: I'm an educator through and through, and I will always be Lorelei and Phoebe's first teacher. I try to make our days together as much like homeschooling as I can, with opportunities for reading readiness, writing practice, creative expression, logic building, spatial awareness, and investigation of our natural world.  I've even purchased homeschooling resources (tell Leah I sent you!) and spend lots of my precious free time finding and preparing educational activities for our days together. But I believe strongly in public schools, in learning to work with and amongst peers, in developing relationships with adults other than your parents and the benefits of letting teachers provide constructive criticism while Mom and Dad get to be cheerleaders and sympathetic shoulders on the sidelines. I also know that I simply cannot do a sufficient job of teaching my girls on my own - I will continue to do all that I do now for the forseeable future, long after they've started leaving each morning on that big yellow bus, but I cannot and will not be their everything, both for their sakes as well as for my own.

So off to school Lorelei goes, a little Montessori school ten minutes away where she can practice taking turns, learning routines, and making friends - a good-enough school that allows us to send her only in the mornings, which is a rarity here, and a school that is fine with me keeping her at home whenever we have a pressing adventure. On this coming Monday morning, we'll be learning about tigers and leopards and camels at the zoo. Another day, we'll walk through the sculpture garden at City Park to draw pictures of our favorite works of art. We'll go to free kid concerts and try new food and go on scavenger hunts for letters and numbers and colors in the old neighborhoods of New Orleans.

And above all, we'll play and imagine.

Hoping we're opening the door on a year of wonder for all of us.

the best kids' song (so says the ethics professor)

It's Monday, but this isn't so much a mixtape - it's just a little plug for a song that is barely a minute long.

Because I have a 2-year-old, I have "sharing" on the brain a lot - it's a hard concept to learn (and teach). Which is why I love this song from Raffi so much.



I know, I know - RAFFI. His voice is like nails on a chalkboard to a lot of parents, and this doesn't even have any redeeming humorous lines like the bad puns in "Bananaphone." But this is my husband's favorite kids' song, and here's why: it teaches a real lesson about why we should share instead of the usual response we give when trying to convince our toddlers to stop grabbing toys away from their friends.

Typically, we say that sharing is important because we would want someone to share with us. "How would it make you feel if you didn't have a toy and your friend didn't want to share with you?" we cajole our tots. But this just perpetuates the problem toddlers already have: thinking that the world revolves around them. The only reason to share, if you follow this logic, is so others will give things to you - not because sharing has any kind of inherent or intrinsic good on its own.

And that's why Jason loves this song. "It's mine, but you can have some," sings Raffi. "With you I like to share it. 'Cause if I share it with you...you'll have some too." Sharing is good because then everyone has something. People who have a lot (like "a tasty treat" or "a book to read" or "a block you need" - can we extend the metaphors here without beating a dead horse?) can make the world a happier place by giving some of what they have to people who don't have so much.

If you come to me and ask, I'll give some to you - because even though it's mine, I'd like you to have some too. Isn't that a good lesson for all of us?

refreshing. {wordy wednesday post}

I haven't been doing much reading lately. Usually the only time I have is right before bed, but because someone has decided to become a terrible sleeper in the past two weeks, I am so tired at night that I just go right to sleep (for a few minutes, until I'm woken by the inconsolable crying). I'm still about halfway through Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  and waiting to start Major Pettigrew's Last Stand  and A House and Its Head, plus I've also added The Glass Castle  to my nightstand "to read" pile.

So I wasn't sure what I was going to be able to post today. But I was delighted to receive a surprise package in the mail this week from a former student of mine who is now studying to be an English teacher (best compliment ever, right?) -- a poem of his was published in Baylor's literary magazine this year, and he wanted me to have a copy. It reminds me of Billy Collins and of a favorite poem of mine by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, too. And the note that accompanied the poem? It made me miss teaching. Not so much that I'm ready to jump ship and go back next year, but it's refreshing to be reminded that you are at least a little bit good at something.

Here's the poem. And here's hoping you find some refreshment today, too!

REFRESHMENT
by Trey Willetto

The most important thing
is not the book
But if you have a choice,
a hardback novel
or paperback poetry
is preferable.

The most important thing
is your location.
An agreeable place,
where you and the author
can try and understand each other.

The most important thing
is sunlight, maybe a window.
Or a park with a nice breeze,
a hammock in between trees,
with a river so you can listen
to its ceaseless flow.

The best possible scenario
is that it is fall, the sun
filtering through dying leaves.
Where you forget your intent
to try and read.

this week's adventures in motherhood: decisions, decisions.

So while I'm steadily working towards my birthday resolutions, there's one really big one that I've been avoiding: deciding if I'm going back to work next year.

I've been employed as a teacher for 9 years, but I've really been a teacher for a lot longer than that -- head writing tutor in college, teaching assistant for my favorite class in high school as an independent study (yep, I'm that nerdy!), private violin instructor, swimming teacher, vacation bible school leader...all the way back to teaching my stuffed animals in the basement when I was 4 or 5. At an awards banquet my senior year of high school, I stood and listened to the presenter read a personal statement I had written in which I said that I hoped, in ten years, to be working on improving educational policy at a national level while the other students around me wished to be married with kids. Teaching is a true passion; I feel happy and fulfilled when I'm working with students, especially when those students are my fellow educators -- and my job as a literacy coach gives me the chance to do just that. Working with teachers to help them hone and perfect their craft to better reach and shape young minds? What could be better than that?

me, giving the commencement address at the school where I used to work

Even with all of that passion for teaching, I had always felt that I would quit my job if and when I had children, and I had planned to do just that, but my principal convinced me to apply for a year leave instead so that I'd have a chance to see how I felt once I actually had a baby. And now I find myself in a difficult position: do I stay home with L, or return to my job next fall?

I admit that I'm incredibly lucky I even get to make this decision in the first place. So many parents find themselves forced to go to work for financial reasons, and I am grateful every day that we planned very carefully so that, when we moved here almost three years ago, our mortgage and monthly expenses would be entirely covered by my husband's salary -- everything I made was icing on the cake and savings for our future. It's tight, and we have to budget and go without, but we can do it, and I'm very fortunate to have a husband who says "Do whatever makes you happiest."

with the co-captains of the amazing speech + debate team I used to coach

But what makes me happiest? I love who I am at work -- I feel confident, responsible, valued as an integral part of something that matters. I like getting dressed up for work, getting to check things off my to-do list, moving towards a goal with a purpose and a greater good. I like the thought of life-beyond-parenting, of having experiences to call my own, of interacting with adults and knowing that people care what I have to say.

At the same time -- this time with my daughter is fleeting. I will never be able to get it back. Having a child is the greatest teaching job of a lifetime -- why would I skip it to spend time with other people's children?

too cool for school!

Have you ever had to make a difficult decision? What helped you figure out what really mattered to you?

"texting makes u stupid?" hardly.

Have you noticed that the new editor of Newsweek (and continued head of The Daily Beast), Tina Brown, is madly in love with Niall Ferguson? That guy gets top billing and cover teaser placement for everything he does. I, for one, don't think he's that great. And I really disagree with his article in last week's issue about how the United States is collapsing due to cellphones.

(image)

Come on, Niall! First, let's think about all of the cultural revolutions that have happened in the past year thanks to the social media available on smartphones. Isn't it remarkable what the thumbs of young adults can accomplish?

But I take more of an issue with his assumption that our society is becoming less literate simply because teenagers are no longer reading Moby Dick and Saint Augustine's Confessions (because so many 15 year-olds in the 1950s were lining up to check these out from their local libraries. Right.).