(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
Day Four
The first face I meet
greets me warmly,
a neighbor as a host of
an Election Day gathering
I’m led to the volunteers
at tables, situated at seats,
rolls of residents on paper,
fingers along city streets
Two sheets — national and
local —and a black marker for
coloring the oval, dark
please, I’m reminded,
shaded beneath
then its a play in reverse,
the machine opens its mouth
to feed on my forms,
and we’re biding goodbyes,
voting complete
(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
Day Three
Figures prone, as if
exhibits in a museum,
a gathering of stories
and words in hand
with not a breath of voice;
each mind’s alive
with what’s unfolding
inside the bound texts
If you could listen,
the inner working
might reveal cacophony,
a multitude
but here, in the classroom,
through this window,
it’s a comfortable quiet,
a sustained silence
(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
Day Two
The dog breathes
in then out, and
out then in, his
slumber, deep
as my wife
reminds me,
so often do I,
a conductor
waving a baton
(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
Day One
I’m looking
as she’s reaching,
fingertips for the solitary
snowflake,
a floating apparition
in the early
Springtime sun,
but then it’s gone
before we even notice
what it is
we were watching
when we were watching
this
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
I was wandering our small city’s downtown, a little bit bored and sort of wasting the hour. This is often when our attention to the small things of the world is at its finest — when we are not consumed by other tasks. I noticed the window of a public art gallery, and wandered in. I had time.
The latest art show in the gallery is called Tiny Pricks, and it features embroidery of President Trump’s craziest quotes, with art as the lens of protest. It’s both amazingly insightful and sadly alarming (the things Trump says). Along with the art on display, the gallery has hosted sessions for more embroidery for visitors. At a table, all of the materials were laid out, at rest, as if the embroidery team had just suddenly gone off on coffee break and would be back soon.
If I knew how to embroider with needle and thread and cloth, I might have sat down and continued their work. Instead, I kept making my way through the hanging wall displays. There must have been at least a 100 or more embroidered works of art.
I wandered in the gallery for some time, just staring at the embroidery and appreciating how art is a way for us to express our political views, and then wondering if projects like this will translate into votes in November. I eavesdropped in on other patrons, who seemed to be asking some of the same questions.
I left after a bit, still thinking about the artwork for hours later, which I suppose is a sign of the power of the embroidery, of the artists, to help us see the world — political, or otherwise — in a new way and to wonder about other paths forward.
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
Back in December, I was struck so hard and so suddenly by an idea for a short story that I remember I literally leaped out of bed, sat down at the keyboard and started writing it for an hour. The narrative just untangled its way out of me. I could see the whole story clearly — the premise, the characters, the flow of it.
It was right around the same time that I saw a notice in our local newspaper that it was relaunching a popular Short Story Contest again after pulling the plug on it a number of years ago. I once got an honorable mention in that short story contest, which gave me about three seconds of fame among my friends in this literary city where I live.
The story that sparked me in December, I decided, is one I will submit to the contest, with the deadline looming in the coming days. Since that initial burst, I have been weaving my way back into the text, making revisions and tightening the story, expanding the characters. I’ve shared multiple drafts in a writing community that I am part of (called Yap.Net, which is a free but closed online space for writers and media makers sharing draft work), and have been helped in many ways by insightful readers in there.
Last night, I left the story for my wife to read. She’s a writer and teacher, too. She was asleep when I got home from band practice last night, but I see some of her notes in purple ink on the print-out of the story, including a helpful insight that I had missed about flowers and seasons and number of petals.
It’s interesting to be close to the end of a story, to know that soon, I need to call this revision cycle quits and be satisfied. To be honest, this revision process on this piece has been longer than I normally would have done for any of my writing, which I so often do in quick bursts. I’m proud of this story, even if it’s not a winner, and thankful for those who have helped make it better in the last few months.
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
The student arrived already grumpy on a two-hour delay day, as if the weather were plotting something against them, personally. They expressed that the bad day had already begun and would likely keep going, probably bound to get worse. All day. Today. There was make-up work to get started on, some daily things to accomplish, their friend was absent, a pencil wouldn’t sharpen, a paper was missing, and so on. All of it evidence of a world conspiring against them, today, this day.
I countered with a cheerful “good morning,” and made sure to check in with them a few times, smiling and being purposefully upbeat (not that I’m not anyway, but still …), and slowly, their mood seemed gradually to shift back towards some semblance of normal. By day’s end, as I was saying “have a great afternoon” when the dismissal bell rang, I saw glimpses of a smile and the carrying of a body that suggested some of the melancholy had dissipated.
One may never know what affects the moods of our students on any given day. What we can do is do the best we can to help them keep some balance and perspective on a swirling adolescent world, through our words and our actions and our caring dispositions. This has nothing to do with academics. It has everything to do with the child, and our role, as teacher.
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
I was following the Democratic election news out of Iowa about the first caucus, thinking about where we are as a country and where we might be heading (although, who can say with any certainty?) and this song began to write itself. Sometimes, writing is like that. So I spent some time with it, sitting with the words and the chords, scribbling in and scribbling out ideas, and letting it flow forth onto the page, and then into the microphone.
As usual, the notebook page is a mess of ideas.
It began as a song of resistance and defiance in this age of Trump and the GOP’s control of government – the title of Bend ‘Em ‘Til You Break ‘Em gives it away — but something arced for me about halfway through, and the third and fourth stanzas are more hopeful, more optimistic, more reasoned.
I’m not driven anger not driven by hate I’m driven by the chance you might reciprocate
You hold out a hand you might invite me in we might find it in common a place to begin
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
The ripple effect of Tik Tok in my classroom continues. Not just with synchronized dance moves — which seem to break out randomly during any down times — but also, hand dancing.
This elaborate, scripted dance of hands is pretty cool to watch, as each partner has a role and the timing of movement and contact is key to the magic. Think of a unique handshake, but add layers of complexity and you have an idea of what I see happening every single day as we wait for the busses to be called.
Many of these are either inspired or lifted from the popular (but sketchy) app that my sixth graders use and the hand dancers are mostly girls (although boys will sometimes try to get in the action for a laugh or do a variation of friend handshake, which is like a simple cousin to the hand dance.) When the dance is done with no flaws, it is sort of like watching something smooth and flowing unfold in the air before you.
When I asked one particular adept students how long it took to learn a certain complicated move that involved the hands going in and out and under, and then fluttering to chest and back to partner, they roll their eyes and say, “hours and hours,” and I have this vision of them, hanging out together, teaching each other how to do the latest hand dance moves and gestures, and laughing at the mistakes.
“Again,” is the word I hear a lot as they play the dance. “Do it again.”
It’s all about perseverance and muscle memory, and connecting with friends with no devices (at this point), and that’s something worth celebrating.
(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)
This year, Minecraft players in my classroom suddenly became a ‘thing’ again after a few quiet years. I have clusters of sixth graders talking about building, playing, exploring, and as we are in our Video Game Design unit, there’s plenty of chatter about how Minecraft is different from other games they play.
There’s also been a lot of conversation about Minecraft shutting down. A lot of worry and concern. Questions. Some heard it here. Some heard it there.
This news of Minecraft closing up by the end of the year is false, just so you know, but the fact that so many of my students have heard it and passed it along to each other in our classroom space — never mind across whatever apps they are using — gives me a chance to revisit with them a Digital Life lesson from earlier this year about false information and the viral nature of social media sharing.
And how to debunk fake news.
Last night, I did a little investigative work. I was already wary of the reports because of the “this doesn’t make sense” common sense test — Minecraft, owned by Microsoft, has more than 100 million users who pay a pretty hefty fee for the game. If Microsoft were truly closing it up, it would be more than a ripple. It would be an uproar.
I searched “Minecraft Closing” and saw a slew of articles, including the one I was really looking for at Snopes (don’t know Snopes? It’s a site dedicated to researching news items for veracity).
Snopes clearly labels the news of Minecraft’s demise as “FALSE” and then goes into the back story. It all began with a prank that went viral when an openly prank news site first published it as a joke (sort of like The Onion does) and Google’s algorithm temporarily grabbed it for a news item. Oops.
You know the rest: prank becomes news, becomes shared.
Here’s a Minecraft Vlogger, explaining all this, too (while wandering Minecraft world)
I’ll be going through this thread of discovery with all of my classes today, to remind them of techniques for investigating fake news and to ease the minds of my Minecrafters.
And it looks like I need to add a new slide about this into my Fake News presentation …
(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)
