We’re nearly done reviewing yesterday’s words when a voice floats up from the back corner of the classroom. “Why are we learning these words? Who even says ‘persevere’?” I bite my lip to keep from laughing as I face the class. “Persevere? Of all the words, persevere is the one that bugs you?” Giggles. Yes. It’s the second day of second semester. Most students have all new classes, but Reading class has only sort of changed. Sure, some students from Semester 1 have “graduated”; they are now reading at least a grade 8 level, so we’ve sent them off into the wilds of their regular classrooms.

We are rapidly approaching the end of January. Here in Ontario that means plunging temperatures, rising snow banks and the end of first semester courses in high schools. That, in turn, means that stress levels in schools are ratcheting upwards. Students race to finish assignments and juggle projects from various classes; teachers push to gather evidence of student learning and struggle to mark myriad late assignments before exams. And everyone worries about report cards. As a Department Head (officially known as a “Position of Added Responsibility” - a phrase designed to make it very clear that I am in charge of precisely nothing), I experience the end of January as a long series of “what if” questions that usually end in either frustration or confusion.

“Miss!” my student wailed, “my story is showing up as AI on all the checkers, but it’s not AI. I swear I wrote it!” Forgive me if I immediately doubted her. The story was due that day and, from what I could tell, she’d spent at least as much time in class playing on her phone under her desk as she had actually writing. I also knew that she was very grades-driven, often sharing her results with friends as they measured their success and, I think, some of their self-worth by the numbers on their assignments.

In the late 1770s or, more likely, the early 1780s, young Abraham Colles is said to have found an anatomic textbook floating in the river Nore in Kilkenny, Ireland. Apparently the river had flooded, and the local physician’s textbook had been carried away only to arrive, fortuitously, in Abraham's hands. Abraham tried to return the book, but Dr. Butler gifted it to him, and thus was born a great physician. In 1790 Abraham and his brother William enrolled in Trinity College in Dublin.  At the same time Abraham became an apprentice at  Dr Steevens’ Hospital.

Max found a Labubu - and ate it Our dog Max is a rescue. What he was rescued from, we don’t exactly know, but we do know that he came to Canada from Lebanon, we assume in a large dog crate. This explains many things. First, Max is an anxious dog. Second, he does not love crates. According to our dog trainer, his anxiety presents as aggression - so, she assures us, he’s not really an #$@hole; he just acts out because he’s nervous and doesn't know what's expected of him.

9:30 sharp (as per the email)- PD Day beginsTeachers wander into the library and mill about, slowly noticing that we have assigned seats. Some people try to switch groups. One entire table switches locations because they have been placed so far to the front and side that they cannot see the screen.  9:33:30 - Principal addressToday’s PD will be extremely useful 9:35:12 - First speaker. Topic: substance abuseY’all, it is happening: kids are still abusing substances. You know it, I know it, they know it. Sure, the overall stats are pretty good and, yeah, we *could* invest in vape detectors for the bathrooms, but that costs money, so instead someone will tell you about marijuana and cannabis as though it is still the 80s.

“We all have stories to tell,” I say to my Creative Writing class. “We tell stories all the time. We swim in them.” I draw their attention to the Thomas King quote I’ve put in our Google Classroom: “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are.” Students bob their heads up and down. They are nodding, but they are also wary. After all, we’re starting our “Narrative” unit, and they know they will soon be writing “a story” that they will have to share with others. This is terrifying.

I’ve already handed out the papers - forty words neatly divided into two columns with checkboxes next to each word; forty words we read aloud earlier this week as a group; forty words that should be easily accessible to high school students, although I am well aware that they will not be easy for the students in this room - and the students are calmly looking them over. Calmly, that is, until I say, “So, today’s challenge is to read these words out loud in your small groups.” As the words “out loud” leave my mouth, a hand shoots up.

As I approach my classroom, I glance down at the crack between the door and the floor. “Wait - is it dark?” It’s Monday of the third week of school. I shouldn’t get my hopes up, and yet I can’t help it. I call out to my colleague, who trails behind me, somewhat less obsessed. “I think it’s dark!” As I get closer, reality sets in, “Nope. It's still light.” My shoulders slump and my pace slows. The lights are still on - exactly as they have been 24 hours a day since some time during the week before school started.

What happened was a thunderstorm with a massive burst of lightning and a thunderclap so loud that I jumped out of bed even before I understood that the dog was barking. What happened was that the dog went crazy, running and barking and shaking, after the thunderclap that shook our house and shook me out of bed, so now I was wide awake and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I talked to my visiting in-laws about the much-needed rain that was pouring pouring pouring down. What happened was that the rain started coming down so hard after that giant clap of thunder that it took us a second to register the blaring of the fire alarm.

It’s been twenty years since I taught American Lit to 11th graders in a high school in Washington, DC. Once I’d taught the course a few times, I used to start the class with the same qu…

I’m losing them and there’s no time to think this all the way through. The class is smallish today because it’s Eid al-Fitr. Split-second decision: I go for it. “Let’s play a game!” I clap my hands together. Faces look up. At least one cell phone gets pushed into a desk. “A good game?” someone asks. I shake my head. “Always a teacher game.” They’ve heard me say this so many times, I half expect them to chime in, but they don’t.

In 12 days, he will be done with high school. Today, however, he is sitting in my classroom during his "spare" period, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He has his earbuds in, his phone out. He’s using one of my Sharpies to write a thesis on a scrap piece of paper. He will not catch up. I’ve known him since his first day of grade 9, and I’ve taught him English three times. Usually, when I say that out loud, I put air quotes around “taught”. When he was in grade 9, I hid the Sharpies and push pins from him so that he wouldn’t casually harass his peers. 

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teach…

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teacher can safely assume that every child in a class of 25ish can, with relative ease, find a person in their life who has immigrated to the country. Oh, and we live in a place where that is a good thing. I no longer take this for granted. My child chose to interview…

She had grade 9 English with me and, though it’s hard for me to believe, she’s in grade 12 now which means we’ve been smiling at each other and saying hello in the hallways for three years. In seven weeks, she’ll graduate, yet it was only a few days ago that I realized I’d never told her the story. Oddly, I’ve told a lot of other people the story: how we were both new to the school; how she was quiet but eager; how she finished reading a book then asked me shyly if I had any books about Asia.

“Have you talked about the election in any of your classes today?” Most heads shake no. Interesting. “Do you know who won last night?” Now a few heads nod. A few voices venture an actual response: “The Liberals.” “Right!” I push on. “Great! So… who knows the name of the Prime Minister?” Hmm… harder. Murmurs move around the room. Maybe it starts with an “M”? Someone is sure there’s a /k/ sound. One confident student says “Not Trudeau” and everyone laughs. "Mark Carney," I tell them. A few fingers snap, a few heads nod.

April is Poetry Month, so I've been occasionally stopping over at EthicalELA to participate in Verse love and write some poetry. The people who write there are incredibly supportive, which encourages me to keep playing even though writing poetry intimidates me. Today's prompt suggested writing a prose poem (a poem that looks like a paragraph but reads, somehow, like poetry), something which has fascinated me for a few years now - ever since I discovered Nicole Stellon O’Donnell’s book of poems You Are No Longer In Trouble - specifically, the poem "Marriage," which makes me giggle.

One thing about writing later in the day is that sometimes I can catch an unexpected moment that might otherwise slip by. Tonight, I am writing in the moments after Senator Cory Booker broke the record for longest floor speech set by Strom Thurmond in 1957. While I realize that many people in the US and the world will not know or care that this has happened, or maybe they won’t recognize how impressive this is, Andre and I called the boys into the living room so we could watch this historic moment as a family. 

Not for the first time this month, I nearly forgot to write. Tonight seems egregious, since it’s the last post of the March Challenge, but there it is. I’m the mom who would forget to leave the house with a spare diaper, even with the second baby - even when the second baby was over a year old. Apparently I have trouble forming new habits. Of course, part of the reason I almost forgot to write is that I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. Wrapping up a month’s worth of daily writing and publishing is definitely part of the challenge, and this year is no different.

The text from the young teacher comes in on Saturday. They want to start reading Lord of the Flies or maybe Hatchet with their intermediate ESL class. They’ve looked into purchasing copies, but it’s expensive. Maybe they could just print the pdf of the book, chapter by chapter? How do I buy books for kids? I am quietly stunned. I sit with this for a few minutes, trying to decide where to begin my response. Finally, I point out that printing the entire book for 20 students is still expensive - we just transfer the expense to the school.

We may have been talking a little too much about politics in our house over the last few weeks. Just now, when I told Mr. 14 that I was writing about tonight’s dinner table discussion with friends - the US, Trump, tariffs, deportations, Signal - he rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows what you're going to say." “What should I say instead?” I asked. “Tell them that someone thought tariffs were a great idea,” he suggested. “Tell them that we had a big fight and we threw the person who thought tariffs are good into the backyard with the dogs.

Tonight, I offer a true free write - from my brain to the page, and then to your brain. I warn you now: it got odd. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write, it’s that I have everything to write. It’s not that I have everything to write, it’s that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to. It’s not that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to, it’s that I am doing too many things.

We went out for burgers with our kids tonight to celebrate a birthday. The Works isn’t fast, but their burgers are delicious. While we waited for our food, we talked; when the burgers came, we kept talking. Once we were home, I was stunned to look back on our meandering conversation and to realize how interesting I find my teenage children. When did they get this curious about the world? I can’t possibly write it all up, so I’m taking (more) inspiration from Sherri and trying an alternative format. Here’s an outline of we discussed:

As I pulled into the driveway, Andre was coming out of the house with the dog. They paused to greet me (aka Max dragged Andre to the car door), and Andre said, "I thought I'd go ahead and take him for his walk since you were running a little late." I gave Andre a funny look. "Mr. 16 didn't walk him? He said he would." Andre, in turn, gave Max a funny look. "Max? Did you already have a walk?" Max looked off into the distance, the picture of doggy innocence.