The end of the school year is a time of reflection for me. I think back through the year and I wonder about what worked and what could have worked better. I make plans to change things for next year. Reflection is powerful. It changes me.
I ask my students to reflect too. We reflect on ourselves as readers and writers, as students and as people. This week a simple exercise in organizing gave my students an opportunity to reflect on themselves as writers.
Living in this digital age, much of our writing ends up online...in google drive or on the blog. This week, we went through google drive and organized our writing. Then we went through our blog and copied our posts into google drive. It was meant to serve as a place to hold their writing for seventh and eighth grades. It turned into reflecting.
"Oh my goodness! I wrote this?! It's terrible!"
"I can't believe I didn't write this better!"
I kept hearing statements like these from my sixth graders as they browsed through their writing.
"I totally forgot that I wrote this! WOW!"
"Hey, this is pretty good. I should finish this."
Listening to them reflect on themselves as writers made me smile. In my reflecting, I will think that my students consider themselves writers. They've grown and they can see their growth.
As my students organized, I returned to my online writing folder too. It made me want to write again...so I did. I've been writing daily this week.
Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own!
Thank you to Ruth Ayres for providing this space to share our celebrations. Please join us and share your own!
Happy New Year!
As I awake, a new year dawns...fresh, with no mistakes in it. A new start. That's exciting and a little bit scary. Being single, this can be a lonely holiday...no one to kiss at midnight. Years ago, I decided I would take back this celebration for me. I've spent a long time developing traditions to ring in the new year and now I'm proud to say it's become one of my favorite holidays. Here are some of my favorite ways to celebrate...
1. Writing and reflecting on New Year's Eve. I spend much of the day rereading notebooks and blog posts from the past year. I think about where I was this time last year and how I've changed. I look at pictures and writing from the entire year to help me see how I've grown and changed.
2. Happiness Jar...I call it my JOY Jar! This tradition I learned about from Elizabeth Gilbert. I read about this years ago. I have an empty jar on January 1st and I spend the year scribbling down memories filled with joy and drop them in the jar.
I'm starting my third year of this tradition today. The thing about traditions is sometimes they take awhile to catch on. The first year I only jotted things down for two months. This past year I got to nine months, but inconsistently.
My hope it in 2016, I remember to do this everyday. (I'm going to need a bigger jar.)
3. Cook something. I pick my favorites and indulge...sometimes it macaroni and meatballs, sometimes it's shrimp and pasta, sometimes it's steak. There's always something sweet too.
4. Create something. Spending time creating inspires me. I used to create a vision board for the year and hang it in my home. I abandoned that practice...instead, I paint. Last year I made my new joy jar.
5. Spend time alone. Really being alone and being ok with that has taken some practice, but I do cherish those quiet moments. I read a book or take a long walk. I listen to my favorite music or watch a movie. I meditate and pray about what's been and what is coming.
6. Spend time with friends. Spending time alone is a great way to reflect, but time with friends is invaluable. I feel seen after time with my friends. It looks different every year. Last night, I was invited to a small get together at the home of some friends. Talking and laughing and just being together is the perfect way to spend the final hours of the year.
7. Project for a year. In 2015, I committed to taking a picture everyday at the same time. I picked 5:22pm. I took 341 pictures. I missed 24 days...bummer. As the months went on, I also used a picture from anytime that day. It was an interesting project. I'm ready to say goodbye. What will my 2016 project be? I think it will be filling my JOY Jar!
8. Share my word of the year. This is the eighth year that I've picked a word of the year. It's also called my One Little Word (OLW). Here are past words...
2009: Mettle
2010: Engage
2011: Build
2012: Embrace
2013: Author
2014: Risk
2015: Fly
The word I've picked for this year is SELAH.
Weeks ago, I saw this word on Facebook...
I was immediately intrigued. I love what Glennon said, "Selah means holy pause. The Selah is the space between what happens to us and how we respond to what happens to us. When we don't take a Selah—we tend to respond from fear." A holy pause to help me respond from a place other than fear! I needed this word. I did more research about this word. It turns out it appears in the Bible more than seventy times. No one really knows what it means. Here's a list of possibilities...
stop and listen
pause and reflect
praise
do a riff - go off the page
a pause, a reframing
pause, examine, consider , pray
to pause and praise
pause and calmly think about that
God has spoken
prayer
to lift the voices in praise
to pause and reflect
After words like FLY and RISK, I felt like I wanted a word that helped me pause...listen...examine...and even praise.
Selah...
Thank you to Stacey, Betsy, Dana, Tara, Beth, & Anna for this amazing platform to write and share writing! What a wonderful community you've created! I'm honored to be part of it. Join us at Two Writing Teachers.
I need my brain to slow down. It's on auto-pilot during the day. Teaching, meeting, making decisions, conferencing, listening. All of these things are happening in my classroom. When I sit down to write, to read, to grade, I can't. The neurons in my brain continue to zoom around there like a hummingbird and I can't concentrate. I can't focus. This is a problem.
Today during my final block of the day, we wrote brain dumps. A brain dump is a free write, but brain dump is more fun to say. This is where you keep your hand moving for the entire writing time...seven minutes today...and you write continuously. Brain dumps get the stuff out of your head that's blocking the really good stuff. It gives you, the writer, a place to put all of the worries and concerns you have. This way you are able to write all of those interesting and creative ideas that are hiding in the back of your mind. No judgement during the brain dump. If you think it, you write it. No worrying about correctness. Write. Write. Write. Release your stream of consciousness.
Once we discussed the ins and outs of a brain dump, I set the timer for seven minutes, sat at an empty student desk to join them, and we were off. I wrote and wrote and wrote and so did the sixth graders.
After the timer sang our end, we discussed our feelings and thoughts about this process. Students answered thoughtfully about this experience.
"I started full. Emptied out. And now I'm full again."
"When I started, I felt bad. Now I feel good."
"I had no idea this is how I was feeling before I started writing."
While I needed the writing time, it seemed the students did too. I'm impressed at their reflective statements. This short time of writing didn't change the world, but it changed us. More brain dumps coming soon. You should try it!
