Greetings

I was greeted almost every day with some new sentence and thought for the Day in the Sentence activity and there was a mix of messages, too. Some of us are looking ahead to the United States presidential election and others are looking at the moments of our lives, both in the classroom and in the home. That’s what I love about Day in a Sentence — the variety.

So, thank you to all who contributed.

Here are your Days in a Sentence for this week:

Gail P. and I teach in the same school and this week, we were both immersed in parent-teacher conferences, but not before we had dinner with some friends from online communities (Liz and Maureen). And now, Gail is on Twitter, ready for another adventure. This week, she writes: This week has been full of important and interesting conversations with family, friends, students, and their parents.

Liz is new to Day in a Sentence, but she went at it in great style. If you head over to her blog, you can see how she made her entire thinking and editing process transparent as she moved from a long piece of writing to the very concise: My mind jumps, I wonder, am I learning less than I would if it were still, is ADD another word for the 21st century brain?

Janice took a step back and listened to the voice of her mom. Perhaps that is something we should all be doing more regularly, don’t you think? (Maybe the world would be a more peaceful place). Anyway, Janice realized a lesson in perspective. This week provided several examples of what my mother often said when I was complaining about my state of affairs; there’s always someone worse off than you.

Chaos? Yep, we know about chaos. And when Lynn J. finds the right tool to rein it in, she will share it with us. Right, Lynn? Lynn? Can you hear me? (hey, pipe down, you there, in the back of the room …) Lynn writes, Chaos reigns at the middle school again this week, and as I look for what will calm and engage my students, I wonder whether we will ever get our footing this year. (Good luck, Lynn)

Michaele has voted and hoping for the results. Me, too. It took a week to hit me, but the delayed surprise was still intense when I realized that I had signed, sealed, and hand-delivered my absentee ballot to the post office with as much care, determination, and HOPE as I did with each of my letters to my husband when he was last depolyed overseas to Iraq.

Yeah for reading! Sara, who is new to Day in a Sentence (I believe — welcome), shares this wonderful moment when the light goes on for a child. And when it is your own child, all the better. This evening I proudly listened to my six and half year old daughter read Ten Apples Up On Top! BY Theo. LeSieg for the first time ever.

Lynn C. (my other Californian Lynn) worked on the Day of the Dead this week and found a couple of cute C words to capture her thoughts (I added a few C words of my own). Comics, calacas, and can’t think of another “c”-word to describe prep for Day of the Dead this week. (Yeah, comics!)

sara p. had some venting this week, so I will just step out of the way and let her go: mike had back surgery on tuesday. it’s wednesday morning now. i slept on the floor last night, my emotional tolerance is, um, low. so here’s my sentence -
note to the nurses of the world: trying to catheterize my husband without a numbing agent makes me want to punch you in the face. don’t ever do it again.

Delaine has gone, and come back, and now contemplates the work on her desk. I think I know that feeling. After taking 34 seniors to visit University of California, Merced, on Tuesday, I returned to a pile of yearbook proofs to check.

Perhaps Liza needs a breather. You have our permission, Liza. There is stress all through her words this week. Feeling overloaded is starting to feel normal and I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.

Lori (also new to Day? I think, so welcome) had one of those weeks where the pieces don’t always seem to fit in place. But I hope it turned out all right for her in the end. Here I sit my school’s media center, surrounded by books, overwhelmed by it all, attempting to puzzle out what to do with Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this fragmented, out of order, falling behind week.

I love the poetry of Lisa’s sentence this week. I’ll leave it at that. Normal days only exist in my imagination.

Bonnie is all in with the election, making calls this weekend (hey, don’t hang up on her) for her candidate and excited about the possibilities. We are coming to the end of a very long presidential campaign and I am holding my breath, hoping for the best and looking forward to next Wednesday, the morning after. Life goes on of course, but I think we need someone like Barack Obama to take the reigns away from Bushwacker. Here’s a great polling site:http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ for updates.And for bit of diversion, here’s yet another writing challenge, the National Novel Writing Month that begins on Friday. Write a novel in the month of November: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Cheryl engaged them, with complaints. Now, how in the world did she do that? (through wonderful mentoring, I am sure). I spent an afternoon in a training with educators about using the online reading resources we have available to us. With purpose, there wasn’t one complaint about using technology.

Stacey needs a new light. Now, this could be metaphorically, I suppose. Or not.  I’m sitting in darkness because my desk lamp, which has had the same fluorescent bulb for the past five years, just blew out.

Joe (another new friend here) made some discoveries just below the surface that has him thinking of many possibilities. Way to go! This half-term week I’ve leapt far further into the future of teaching than I thought possible, discovering that what I have been imagining is actually happening and all in between digging the garden!

I want to get on an airplane and head to Anne M.’s classroom. She describes a possible project that would have engaged me to no end as a kid. Where were all the musicians when I was in school? Had a meeting with a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra member who wants our school to be involved in a music classroom that will be a virtual one, next year, term one where our students work with two other schools and will be taught how to make compositions of their own and save them for digital use, with the orchestra providing any sounds or effects that they need.

Nancy read a book! (which is not so easy to do when juggling an newborn child). I wonder what she read. Nancy?  This week was all about trying to get back into my pre-mommy groove by reading an actual book; so far, so good!

Nina did the impossible: she beat the clock and got things done earlier than usual. I hope she relaxed a bit. Instead of staying at work until 7 pm on Friday as I usually do, I managed to plan next week’s lessons by 11 a.m. today, so why can’t I do this every week???

Gail D. had a well-deserved respite and found a way to rejuvenate herself in the hills. I had the week off – and savored every moment of the last days of October in the Sierra foothills.

Amy has a sentence and a request (which I just did for her): I thought I was crazy to try to do anything academic on Halloween. I decided to have the kids create their first blog posts on our brand new classroom blog. They got out the laptops and you could’ve heard a pin drop in my room. They were engaged and focused, even in full costume! Click here to visit our 3rd grade page. The kids would love to have adult and student comments on their work.

Thanks to everyone for sharing out this week.

Peace (in words),
Kevin