It’s May!  Mid-May at that.  High gear testing season in my district, and my teacher friends are being kept busy with proctoring.  It’s often a high anxiety time for students, a time of them being rather resistive to more lessons and reading and learning.  Definitely a difficult time for teachers trying to teach for another 2-5 weeks, depending on your state and district.   However, if possible, it’s a great time to incorporate lessons that are a little lighter and a little more fun into the classroom.  I always liked to do shorter lessons over novel units around this time, because so many students are pulled on so many days for various assessments and said students…

Snoopy.  Such a smart little beagle.  Last post I talked about how ridiculously high physiological stress I am, and today I’ve some tips for handling classroom stress, be it physiological or otherwise.   Focus on finishing the thing or task right in front of you before moving onto the next thing or task, (whether in action or just thought) I’m not good at this one, because I like to strategize and Tetris out my next several moves for maximum accomplishment.  However, as I’ve looked at my physiological stress data from Oura, I can see that the times my attention is very divided are the times my stress levels are at their highest.  When I’ve managed…

I am a fairly high stress person.  This is confirmed by my Oura ring, which rudely clocked seven hours of physiological stress yesterday.  I know that not all stress is bad and some helps us to be productive, but sheesh.   I’m not quite sure when or how this happened, because it certainly wasn’t always the case, but as I get older, I seem to be a little more high-strung.  I was never stressed growing up or even in college or post-college I don’t think.  But I didn’t value time then like I do now either, and I think that’s perhaps the root of my stress (which though clearly measurable, isn’t something I usually feel…

Welcome April!  My second favorite month, after November.  And what better way to start it off than with a Chaucer quote!  The OG of British literature, and my personal favorite.  (Sorry, Will, your tragedies have nothing on the pilgrimage to Canterbury!)  Of course, the better known ditty goes “April showers bring May flowers,’ and being National Poetry month, April is chockablock full of more great rhymes than these classic, little gems. Students notoriously hate poetry, so when ELA teachers opt to really utilize April for the likes of Dickinson or Longfellow, there is often much groaning and use of hyperbole about how displeased they are.  Yet poetry really needn’t be such an academic chore for students…

It is Spring Break time already!  For not being in the classroom, the days sure are flying by as if I were still there.  The homeschool boys I work with are taking a Spring Break to match the District, and I was excited because I thought I wouldn’t have to leave the house, but wrong!  Lots of plans this week, which are mostly gathers with still-in-the-classroom teacher friends who are savoring the rapidly fleeting week.   And while the week quickly goes, the exciting thing about returning is that one *usually* returns to the last lap of the race.  I always liked coming back from Spring Break and starting fourth quarter.  It just made the remainder of…

This past weekend our little family piled in the car for my first indie author fair.  I did not want to participate in it because I thought it would be awkward and embarrassing and I didn’t tell anyone at all about it (okay except my friend who lives out of state because she’s too far to come!).  I just have one self-published book from a few years back and I don’t know anything about author fairs, so I thought I was quite likely to be the bumpkin of the ball.  Which, it turns out, I was.  Hahaha, however, it was a surprisingly great time.  I met some interesting, very nice and encouraging people, and overall…

There’s a bit of a semantical game with that quote.  I don’t particularly like it, but it’s useful enough and applicable enough for recent days.  Luis bought me a health tracker ring that came yesterday, well two days ago by the time the mailer picks this up, so after one night of sleep and heartrate and respiratory tracking, and the various other trackings, my “readiness score” was a 77, which I didn’t think was too bad considering I haven’t slept a full night in over nine months now.   Sleep was my worst metric and probably will be for a while still (though in fairness our son only woke once or twice,…

I’ve been meaning to do an AI/writing post and hadn’t gotten around it, but, since AI has been in the news a lot lately, now seems like a good time.   Also, completely randomly, I saw this AI video on Instgram last night and was fascinated by how real it looks.   If I didn’t know great white sharks can’t live in captivity or that they must be swimming to breathe, I’d have really struggled with this sight (and apparently sharks don’t blink so that was a giveaway, too, but I learned that in the comments X) I’ve never used AI bots like ChatGPT; I am just not a fan.  I know it…

I’ve been a baker for a long time.  Nothing super fancy or particularly aesthetically pleasing, but cookies and cakes and tasty sweet things.  Palate pleasing things.  This probably stems from the greater enjoyment I get from eating the raw dough.  Some of my earliest memories are eating raw cookie dough with my mom, hahaha.   A little over a year ago I started down the sourdough path, and I have a handful of recipes I’ve become pretty good with.  Today was supposed to be a loaf bread baking day.  But I did something wrong and my starter did not rise …soooooo…it’s a discard biscuit day instead.   Change of plans! In my early teaching years, I experienced classroom faux paus,…

Happy 2025!  Crazy!  December had so much going on, I decided to take it off from the blog and focus on the first Christmas season with our son–i.e. things that have never been and will never be again.  But it’s time to get back into the saddle with structure and some New Year resolutions!  Top resolutions:  Make a lesson a month, increase activity level (I need some weight training besides carrying my son all over, haha) and continue decluttering/organizing.  I started decluttering our house in September, and I am still in the process of going through little things, getting rid of duplicates or things forgotten about and found, organizing for better efficiency, etc.  The decluttering kick…