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Poetry Break!
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Category Archives: Books I Love
Don’t Expect Applause
One of my absolute favorite poems.
I share it in my yoga classes and now with you here.
Don’t Expect Applause
And yet, wouldn’t it be welcome
At the end of the each ordinary day?
The audience could be small, the theater modest,
Folding chairs in the church basement would do,
Just a short, earnest burst of applause
That you got up that morning
And one way or another you made it through the day
You soaked up in the steaming shower
Drank your Starbucks in the car
And let the guy with the windex wipe your windshield
At the long red light at broad street.
Or maybe you were that guy, not daring to light up as you stood there because everyone’s so down on smoking these days.
Or you kissed your wife as she hurried out the door,
Even though you were pretty sure she was meeting her lover
At the flamingo motel,
Even though you wanted to grab her by a hank of her sleek hair.
Maybe your son’s in jail, your daughter’s stopped eating
And your husband’s still dead this morning,
Just like he was yesterday and the day before that.
And yet you put on your shoes and go for a walk
And when a neighbor says good morning
You say good morning back.
Would a round of applause be amiss?
Even if you weren’t good, if you yelled at your kid
Poisoned the ants, drank too much,
And said that really stupid thing you promised yourself you wouldn’t say.
Even if you don’t deserve it.
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What are your thoughts? Wouldn’t it be nice at the end of an ordinary day?
Back to School Is the Perfect Time for Resolutions
It’s that time again… back to school.
Back to school for kids means buying new school supplies, daydreaming about their new teacher and getting up early. For teachers it can be a perfect time to renew and refresh your teacher tool belt.
Every year I make new school year resolutions and this year is no different.
This year I have decided to work on my classroom management.
My goal for this year:
Work from the positive, reinforce appropriate student behavior, and help students struggling with appropriate behavior make better choices.
In other words:
I don’t want to be such a grouch, I want to enjoy my well-behaved kids and stop the knucklehead behaviors in their tracks, preferably before they start.
Oh and I want to do this without raising my blood pressure.
Tall order I know.
Reflecting on what has worked well in previous years and what needs refinement, I’ve decided to brush up on tried and true methods for classroom management and student discipline.
Today I participated in a brush-up course on the methods taught in Tools for Teaching by Fred Jones. After the training I was inspired to dig out my copy from the bag I’d stashed it in back in June {Apparently, this new-school-year resolution was on my mind when I left my classroom for the summer}.
With chapters like “Being Consistent”, “Staying Calm” and “Keeping It Positive, Keeping It Cheap” this book is a treasure trove of simple to implement lessons to teach and reinforce appropriate classroom behavior.
My favorite parts of the keeping calm are the deep breathing exercises. What a great reminder of how you can incorporate your yoga practice {or start one!} right in your classroom.
If you’ve never read Tools for Teaching, please stop what you are doing {ok, finish this post first} and order yourself a copy or check it out here for free. Be sure to check out the illustration on page 176. I may or may not have been the model.
Do you have any classroom management tips that consistently work with your class? How do you keep your sanity during the school year?
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Books I Love: The Help – WIN THIS BOOK!
I love reading. In fact, I spend most of my time reading: non-fiction work or yoga-related mostly. And blogs. Lots and lots of blogs.
Part of the reason I became a teacher is so I could get paid to read. Seriously, I don’t get people who don’t read. It’s weird.
Anyway, lately I’ve been so busy reading for work, yoga teacher training, and keeping up with all the blogs I follow, I had forgotten how much I enjoy reading fiction. The feeling of falling into a world that is nothing like your own and developing real feelings for characters that only exist in the imagination of the author and cheering for your favorites to overcome the obstacles in their lives.
I decided to revisit this long-lost love while I was traveling and had some good old-fashioned uninterrupted reading time flying across the Atlantic.
Remember earlier this summer I wrote about the adult summer reading program through the Sacramento Public Library? In order to win prizes (!) you must fill in a bingo card. I chose the line where you get to choose 3 books of your choice and a biography.
I went on vacation without my laptop and very limited access to the internet. I brought 3 fiction books and breezed through them in the first 5 days of our trip.
This is the first in a series about the books I read while I was on vacation. {You will have a chance to WIN THIS BOOK!}
Title: The Help
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Fiction
Setting: 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi
Characters: Abileen, Minny and Miss Skeeter
Synopsis: Abileen and Minny are domestics and Miss Skeeter is a young, white frustrated budding writer that has just graduated from college. Over time, the women develop a secret friendship and decide they are going to tell the truth about what it is like to work for the white families in Jackson. Risky at best and potentially deadly at worst and yet they risk everything to tell their stories.
My thoughts: I had vaguely heard about this book. I had no idea what it was about so when I came upon it in the only English bookshop in Munich I immediately picked it up.
I was intrigued. A Southern white woman writing from the perspective of pre-Civil Rights African-American women? The author herself had grown up with a domestic and I was definitely curious to find out more about this author and her first novel.
I was hooked from the first chapter and despite my best efforts to pace myself I finished reading the entire novel the day before our endless travel back across the Atlantic. I just couldn’t put it down!
Want to win this book*?
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Am I eligible to win?
Book(s) #best09
Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane touched my heart this year. Although it wasn’t published in 2009, I read it this year. I picked this book up from the McClatchy Library because I had loved Kate DiCamillo’s other books: especially Because of Winn Dixie and The Tiger Rising.
I needed a book to use to teach my class about story structure, a book that would clearly spell out the story’s problem and resolution. My plan was to find a read aloud book to my class that we could analyze and enjoy the book together. My search for the perfect book was over when I found Edward Tulane.
As usual, I always pre-read books that I read to my class. I want to make sure I know what is coming, what I’ll need to explain and so that I can practice my read aloud voice. I don’t remember the details of my solo read, but I do remember thinking this is one of the best children’s books I’d ever read.
As I sat on my chair in the front of my classroom, kids sitting on the floor at my knee, I began the read aloud by showing them the cover of the book. Like the good readers they are becoming they began asking questions and making predictions about the story just by looking at the cover.
The kids asked what miraculous meant and wondered who was that little rabbit in the red pajamas in the picture? They decided that this book must be fantasy because rabbits don’t really wear pajamas.
Sharing a chapter a day, the kids sat on the carpet criss-cross-apple-sauce, leaning forward listening intently. They were immediately entranced with the story of this China doll rabbit.
When asked about the story’s problem, one of my students explained that the story’s problem was really Edward’s problem: “It’s all about love, Ms. Hackbarth. Although many loved him, Edward himself was not able to love.”
Nothing warms a teacher’s heart more than an eight year old so clearly articulating the problem! The main character’s inability to love is the problem in this story. The other students correctly predicted that by the end of the story he would come around to loving those who had loved him longest.
Some may say that makes Edward Tulane a predictable story, but I would argue there is so much suffering in this story that the resolution leaves you feeling like love really is possible. This book is absolutely heartbreaking and in the end so redeeming that I can’t wait to share it with my class this year.
BONUS BOOK!
I am a very lucky woman. I get to read to kids and they pay me. So in order to earn my keep, I read kid’s books more than most.
The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake made my class laugh so much that they made me read it to them more than once. They even made me read it out loud in front of one of our parent helpers because they said I read it so well.
This book was a particularly good pick for this class because many in my class were reluctant readers, especially my boys. By the time I had returned The Dirty Cowboy to the library, the book had been well-loved and reread by many in my class.
Teacher Goes Back to School 