There’s a balcony overlooking a spread of red hills and sagebrush where we’re staying in St. George, and I often find my whispering feet tip-toeing out there to drink in the tranquility and heat. I’ve been to this condo here in Southern Utah many times now, but each time is a new revelation: about myself, …
May Reading
You could call May the month of young adult literature (mostly just because I was assigning my students a bunch of books I’d never read before, which just eats away at my soul until I check them all out myself). This month is set to include literature much more geared to adults, but I will …
Tips for Surviving your First Year of Teaching {Part Two}
Here’s a continuation of the list I started last week of 39 tips to help you get through your first year of teaching (one for each week of the school year): 14. One of the best ways to praise your students is to contact their parents, either through an email, letter, or phone call. Of …
Like Sardines to St. George
This is how we looked on the first leg of our road trip down to St. George. If you look carefully at this visual evidence, I think you’ll understand why we had to have someone else let us out of the vehicle when we arrived at our destination. But now that we’ve finally arrived …
Skunk Hair
Well, here you go: some before/after shots of my new haircut/color that my dad affectionately dubbed “skunk hair” because of the blonde panels I had put in underneath. And I somehow magically look a lot tanner in the “after” pictures, even though I swear I’ve had no major sun exposure lately or faked it through makeup. …
Tips for Surviving Your First Year of Teaching {Part One}
In celebration of my very last school day as a first-year teacher, I have decided to share some of the vast amounts of wisdom and experience I’ve gleaned (let’s be honest–mostly from my own mistakes). And, to make it even more exciting, you get to hear one for every week of school I’ve taught …
Tuesday Tell-Something
Judging by the fact that I got home from the school at about 8:15 PM tonight (almost six HOURS after the dismissal bell rang), you are not going to get a Tuesday Tell-ALL today. However, I will tell you 3 things: 1. I finally finished grading the last of my students’ book projects. For the …
What Does Memorial Day Mean to You?
What does Memorial Day mean to me? Perhaps not surprisingly, I found that it means a lot of things: It means the gathering of family at cemeteries, to remember those we love and miss. I love how the photo below shows the bringing together of posterity that happened because of one truly great man: my grandfather. Even …