Thank You

Thank you for reading here! 
This blog has been such a joy for me to create for the past six years. I'm grateful for each reader and each post. I've learned and grown so much as a teacher and as a writer. 

I've made friends and written 712 posts here. 
Joined TeachWrite and I blog over there. 
I've become a faculty member at Teach Write Academy
I started #100DaysOfNotebooking and Beyond.
I've written a book! (Coming out soon...)

And now...

I'm so excited because my journey takes me to my own website and I'll be blogging/writing over there. I hope you join me at michellehaseltine.com as I continue my journey as a teacher and a writer. 

My OLW for 2020

#100DaysofNotebooking

A new year is a good time to begin new habits. Are you interested in beginning a notebook habit? Take it one day at a time. Let's notebook together. Starting on January 1, 2020, I am inviting you to join me in #100daysofnotebooking. Let's find time each day and write in a notebook...open the notebook every day and write. My goal is to do this for one hundred days. Let's share our progress on social media using the hashtag: #100daysofnotebooking. Share your progress, a photo of your notebooking, or ask for some support from fellow notebookers.

I'll share invitations for notebook pages to help you out. Hope this motivates you to start a habit that will change your life! Your job before January 1st...find a notebook and a pen you love...find a place and a time to write...find a writing buddy to share this journey. Let's begin notebooking in 2020!

Will you join us for #100daysofnotebooking? It's time. 

No Voice

I've been fighting some kind of congestion for a few days. The medicine is helping. I've been trying to get lots of sleep, too...that's not working as well. I keep waking up around two or three A.M. and I'm up for the day. So I shouldn't be surprised to wake up today (at 2:23 am) with no voice. 

Every teacher has experienced this...teaching with little to no voice. Physically, I'm feeling better than I have in the past few days. Today I have to face my seventh-graders with no voice. It's days like these where I realize how much I rely on my voice. It's also days like these when I'm reminded how awesome my students really are. Usually, I'm greeted with help as I whisper and croak my way through instructions.

They help each other out more. They offer me help. It reminds me of how grateful I am that I get to spend my days working with these kind students. 

Wish me luck today! Oh, and if you're going to NCTE, hope to see you there...

Sharing this as a slice at Two Writing Teachers. 

Read more slices there! 

Notebooks & Goodbye Notes

I just arrived home from a surprise trip to Massachusetts. I drove north to surprise my niece and nephew for Halloween...and I did! 

On my second day there, my niece grabbed a notebook she had from a year ago. She asked me to work in our notebooks together. I told her that I was her age when my mother gave me my first notebook. She said she wanted to use notebooks too- just like me- except she wants to draw in her notebooks. I told her that she's the boss of her own notebooks, and that sounded like a great idea to me!

We spent time each day doodling and writing in our pages. 

She showed me some of her drawing tricks and I showed her some of the things that I wrote. It was heaven. 

Saying goodbye is always hard, so a tradition I started when they were young is I leave them a goodbye note. My nephew always reminds me that he has a collection of all of my notes. I usually leave in the morning before anyone wakes up, so it gives them one more surprise. 

When I got home last night after a long day of driving, I got two texts. My sister texted me to show me what my niece was doing...

 A few minutes later, I got this text from my niece...

Be still my heart!!! Today I will be texting her what I did in my notebook. The power of writing to develop relationships is real. I witnessed it. I am living it.

Sharing as a slice at Two Writing Teachers!

I Did It!

Today is the final day of #TeachWritetober19! I set some goals and more often than not, I met my goals. I leave this month having written and post thirty blog posts. I finished and started a notebook and I revised more than half of my book. That's not bad for thirty-one days of work. I leave this month feeling proud of myself. I did it! I focus on what I achieved and how I can keep this habit going!

Email

Yesterday I cleared out all of my email accounts. Answered emails. Organized emails. And then, the best...delete, delete, delete! I sent from over four hundred emails in my three accounts to twenty-nine.

What is is about organizing an email account that feels so good? It's like an empty sink and all the dishes have been washed or a freshly vacuumed floor. It's like laundry folded and put away. 

And now I feel old...I just wrote a blog post celebrating an organized email inbox. Well, whatever brings you joy, right?!?!

Almost Halloween

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday...even as a kid. A few weeks ago, I was Facetiming with my niece, Jillian, and she was telling me all about her costume. She even asked me to come trick-or-treating with her. The problem with that is we live 400 miles apart. After I hung up I thought, "I could go trick-or-treating with her..."

It's a surprise. I'll be driving up on Halloween to surprise her. I can't wait!

Now for my costume...we Facetimed again and she suggested what I should wear on Halloween for trick-or-treating with my friends. She said that I should dress up as HER. My dark curls are the opposite of her blond tendrils, so I solved it. 

For the first time ever, I am looking forward to Halloween! 

Listen for...

Listen for 

the love

Ignore all 

the hate-

Listen for

the kindness

Ignore all 

the malice-

Listen for

the laughter

Ignore all

the yelling-

Listen for

the honesty

Ignore all 

the liars-

It's not easy

Nothing worthy

ever is...

It's what I'm

trying to do

today-

Ignore the 

phonies and 

Listen 

for the  

love, 

laughter,

authenticity,

friendship, 
and the

truth.

I'm feeling a bit down today...struggling with some relationships in my life. As always, writing to the rescue. Poetry to the rescue! I needed these words and I'm sharing them because maybe someone else needs them too...

Number 82-ish

A few years ago, I began sorting through my notebooks- all of my notebooks. I decided that I wanted to count them. That seems easy enough, right? Until another notebook pops up in a different spot and I've already numbered beyond that. I will usually tack it on to the end and keep going. Today I started a new notebook. 

The last notebook that I wrote in was number eighty, so you'd think the next notebook would be eighty-one, but NO. I found a notebook that I hadn't counted. 

Number 80

Number 81

So, my new notebook is number eighty-two. I still include -ish because there may be another notebook hanging around waiting to be counted...until then, I will happily write in my new notebook.