Riding in the Car with My Teenage Daughter

There are many ways to measure growth. We may hang an oversized ruler on a wall and mark different milestones in a child's life. We may keep track of stats from doctor's visits. We may take pictures every year in front of a birthday cake. Yet sometimes we don't even recognize the growth in the child sitting beside us day in and day out. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, it just happens.

One morning on the way to school, I happened to glance at my daughter, sitting in the passenger seat. Long brown hair, long eyelashes, hazel eyes fixed ahead - the same eyes that had just been rolling at me moments before. The scowl that had been on her face replaced by a smile as she started singing aloud to the song coming from her phone, which, these days, is never far from her hand.

I'm not sure when she evolved from the little girl in pigtails in her carseat in the back to this young woman suddenly sitting beside me. Long gone are the days of listening to Dora the Explorer songs on repeat. Gone are the days of looking in the rearview mirror to see her tiny hands grasping her white blanket, sparkling eyes and cute smile peeking back at me. Gone are the car rides filled with singing ABCs, playing games, and listening to stories of what she did at preschool instead of taking a nap.

These days, I find that many of our car rides are spent in silence or punctuated only by the music coming from my daughter's phone. I ask questions that yield one word answers, and then her attention is diverted elsewhere to anything more captivating than a mom trying to make conversation. I know that this is part of being a teenager, but I don't think I was prepared for this measure of growth. I miss that little voice in the back seat.

Just as I did when she was younger, I have started to truly cherish these car rides, though on a different level. I'm not sure that the fact that she is growing up has ever been more evident to me than it is right now. We may not discuss the day in the same detail as her younger self would allow, but we are together. One day all of her possessions won't be strewn througout my car - it will be empty. One day we won't be arguing about homework or dinner or what she forgot at home. One day I won't be driving her to and from activities, constantly in a rush. The next time I get frustrated because I find trash under the front seat or have to drive back and forth across town, I need to stop and remind myself that this stage of her life is just another mark on the continuing growth chart that I will look back on with wonder as to how it filled so fast.

Regardless of how many eye rolls or exasperated huffs I get, I have come to appreciate my teenager's current love language. After many rough morning starts, most of our rides start with, "Any song requests?" and then the rest of our ride is spent sharing a very diverse range of music that inevitably brings us both to a common ground where we don't have to speak to know that the love is there. She may not tell me in words, but I can usually gain insight into her emotions from her music choice of the day. I may not be able to make her belly-laugh like I could when she was little, but my car rapping skills never fail to bring a smile to her face. And if nothing else, we start and finish our day together, just the two of us.

So until the day comes when she gets into her own car and drives away, I'm going to let my no-longer-little-girl push play and sit back and enjoy the music.

Why Kids Need to Read the Tough Stuff

"You know the thing about magic, Charlie? We can wish on clovers and shooting stars and ice flowers all we want. But in the end, the only real magic is what's inside us and the people we love. Some things are beyond even that magic."

On this unusually quiet and uneventful Saturday afternoon, I have just finished the last pages of Kate Messner's newest book The Seventh Wish. This is a book that has been on my radar for months, and I am finding it hard to put into words the plethora of emotions I am feeling as I close it.

Back in June, I heard reports that a librarian had rescinded her invitation for Kate Messner to speak to students at her school. You can read Messner's blog post about it here.  I find it completely unfathomable that anyone would keep this book out of the hands of children. In fact, children are the ones that NEED to read it.

The Seventh Wish is about Charlie, a typical middle-school-aged girl who has a close family and loves Irish dancing. One day, Charlie goes ice fishing with her neighbor and his grandmother, where she catches a quite unusual fish - one with emerald eyes who offers to grant her a wish if she throws him back. Not believing what is happening, Charlie makes a wish to see if there is any truth to it.  Her wish comes true, but not necessarily the way she had hoped. She continues going back to the same fishing spot and makes more wishes, all of which come true but in convoluted ways. Just when she starts to think that maybe her wishes are causing more trouble than good, Charlie's sister Abby has some complications in her own life and starts down a path that Charlie struggles to understand. Charlie quickly finds out that all the wishes in the world can't change what is happening to her sister and her family.

In the midst of a story about friendship, family, and usual middle grade worries, Messner has expertly and tastefully written about addiction in a way that is both relevant and appropriate for upper elementary to middle grade readers. She has included all of the typical tween worries - friends, boys, extracurricular activities, family - with a touch of magic that creates a scenario that is just the tiniest bit outside the realm of possibility to make it feel real. The way in which she handles the topic of addiction is both realistic and gentle, yet it is not the sole focus of the book that runs deep with other themes.

According to the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, one in ten Americans is addicted to alcohol and drugs.  The children sitting in our classrooms have probably encountered someone with an addiction at some point in their lives, and if they haven't, they probably will.  What better way to help them understand and process this very real sickness than through literature? Addiction is real.  It affects everyone involved, and it will for a lifetime. There are children that sit in my classroom every day that I know need to read this book.  There are children all across the country that need to read this book.  They need  to hear these words, over and over:

"'There's nothing you can do when someone you love is an addict. So you just...' She shrugs. 'You keep living. And do other stuff.'"

I wish this book had been around when I was in middle school.  I wish I had had a teacher that handed it to me, urging me to read it so I could feel a little less alone. Growing up with someone who has an addiction is draining.  It is so hard for children to understand, and sometimes it seems like life is full of one broken promise after another. Charlie and Abby's story on the pages of this book was so heartfelt and real, I found myself tearing up with recognition of all of the emotions they were feeling.

Toward the end of the book, Abby describes addiction in a way that is so straightforward and true, defining it in a way that is often extremely difficult for children or those outside the addiction to even begin to understand:

"That's the whole thing with addiction, Charlie. And it's the worst thing in the whole world. Knowing that you want to promise and never, ever hurt the people you love again. And knowing that the addiction is bigger than you, bigger than love, bigger than everything. If I made that promise, I'd be lying. And I'm not going to do that."

Who are we, as adults, to deny children the opportunity to read a book because it deals with an issue that is mature, yet very real in their lives? We can never tell which book will be the one that changes a child's life. Books that are relevant to children's lives are the ones to which they need access. They need to read about characters that they can believe in and that can give them hope in some of life's most difficult situations.

The Seventh Wish spoke to my heart, and I wholeheartedly believe that it belongs on classroom and library shelves everywhere. Children need to read about tough subjects. Adults may feel uncomfortable discussing them with children, but isn't it better to provide children with a safe place for them to glean understanding and feel less alone? Children often experience these tough subjects in their everyday lives, and by censoring the books that explore them so eloquently, we are robbing them of feelings of connection and humanity. Children need to know that they are not alone in their experiences, especially when they are at such a critical age of development. While every book may not be right for every child, books such as this one are right for many children, and they deserve to be on our shelves so those children can discover them.

Loving, Losing, and Living

It's amazing to me that life still goes on after losing someone you love.  You spend your life loving them, looking up to them, relying on their voice to be on the other end of the phone, and then, just like that, they are gone. The world keeps spinning, regardless of your attempts to slow it down. Other people are unaware of the significance of a certain date, of the emotional punch it carries for you. Yet it happens - the sun rises on a new day, one that is missing a piece of the one before it, and somehow you keep going. You learn to look for meaning and find significance in things that give you hope.

May 6, 2013 is the last time my dad ever told me he loved me. When my sister went home to get some much needed rest, I was suddenly in charge of making one of the most critical decisions of my dad's life in a frantic rush to get him into emergency surgery. After weeks, months even, of trying to figure out why he was so sick, doctors knew they had to get inside for answers before his health got even worse. As I went with him to prep for the surgery that I had okayed, he and I both knew that there was a strong possibility he may not survive the surgery. I remember he - the man who was always terrified of being on an operating table - told me he was so tired and wanted to proceed.  I promised I would bring him a Coke as soon as he woke up, something I have remembered every single day for the past three years.

The next five days could be simultaneously described as both a whirlwind and as the longest days of my life.  Looking back, it seems like weeks passed between his surgery and the day that he actually left this world. In reality, it was just five short days, a culmination of months of suffering, as his body, unknown to anyone else - including his doctors - slowly poisoned itself from the inside.

Losing a parent is hard. Even when you can describe your relationship with that parent as tumultuous at times. As much as I always longed for it, my dad and I never had the ideal relationship.  He had his faults, I have mine, and we tended to butt heads on many occasions. People close to me have a hard time understanding why I still tried to be close to my dad, why I picked up the phone after the hurtful words he hurled at me that always left me in tears. They find it hard to believe that I can still shed tears because I  miss him.

Regardless of our problems, he was my dad.  There is no denying the bond between a parent and child. My dad was the one person I always wanted to make proud. While he could indeed be quite truculent at times, he also had a heart of gold.  He would have given the last thing he had to someone in need.  He was one of the most brilliant men I have ever known.  He may have had some strange ways of showing it, but, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, he loved my mom "with a love that was more than love."  He taught me the value of hard work, to always change my oil, and that birthdays and holidays are special occasions. I would be lying if I said I didn't learn some colorful language from him, and I'm sure I got a little bit of his temper too. Many times in my life, I felt like I'd never quite measure up to the kind of daughter he wanted, but deep down somehow I always knew he loved me - and that's what kept me constantly striving for that relationship with him that I always wanted.

It's ironic to me that I ended up alone with him on the morning of his surgery. Of my dad's three daughters, I may not have been the most preferred, but there I was.  He was so scared, but I also got the sense that he was at peace with the decision we made. I got to have a few quiet moments alone with him where we had some very important conversations, which made me feel like I had somehow been placed in that moment for a reason. If nothing else, he was able to see that despite all of the other baggage in our lives, I was beside him, and I really hope that made him proud and feel loved.

In the last few months of his life, my dad unknowingly presented my sisters and me with a gift that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. His gift to us was that the three of us now have a bond that will never be severed. I have no idea how any one of us would have gotten through the months leading up to his passing without the other two.  Whether on the other end of the phone, in a text message, curled up in a hospital chair, we were beside each other every step of the way, and that is something for which I will be eternally grateful.

My dad had quite a sad childhood, which I think influenced many of the decisions he made in his life. I'm not sure that he always felt loved, so he sought love in different ways. When he took his last breaths on May 10, the three of us held his hands and filled that hospital room with an abundance of love.  I sure hope he felt it, as I know we did.

It's always amazing to me how books come into my life at just the right time.  Every time I read something, I can glean new meaning from it. When I was reading aloud the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio for probably the fifth time not long after my dad died, a passage jumped out at me.  Two of the characters in the book were discussing death, and one said,

"I think when people die, their souls go to heaven but just for a little while. Like that’s where they see their old friends and stuff, and kind of catch up on old times. But then I actually think the souls start thinking about their lives on earth, like if they were good or bad or whatever. And then they get born again as brand-new babies in the world."

Camden, my two-year-old daughter, was born on February 10, 2014 - nine months to the day after my dad died. I look at her sometimes and feel so incredibly blessed that she is even here. After a miscarriage and a year of failed attempts to get pregnant, suddenly there she was - after I had lost one of the most important people in my life.   She's smart, funny, sweet, and spunky. I like to think that she is all the good things that my dad always wanted to be in his lifetime. I know there were things in his life that he wished he had done differently. When I look at this little miracle of a child, I see his opportunity to get it right.  Somehow the magical timing of his death and her beginning of existence gives me a peace I never knew I needed.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of my dad. There are many days that I want to pick up the phone to tell him something about my day.  I don't think I will ever stop trying to make him proud.  Every May I will most likely relive the final days of my dad's life, but as the years pass, I am able to look back on that time and feel a sense of purpose.  His struggle was not for nothing. There was meaning behind everything that took place, and that, along with my memories, is what I will carry in my heart. Losing someone is never easy, but the meaning it has brought to my living is what gets me through.

The Power of Co-Teaching

A co-taught classroom can be one of the most powerful tools you have to truly reach all of your students. I was fortunate to work with the same co-teacher for seven years. Throughout that time, we learned each other's idiosyncrasies and personalities, and ended up becoming not only teaching partners, but wonderful friends. We reached a point in our co-teaching relationship where we could finish each other's sentences.

When I found out that my co-teacher was leaving the division, I was extremely nervous about starting all over. It was like a relationship had ended and I was back in the dating game. Luckily, my new co-teacher and I have a lot of similarities, and we have developed a strong partnership in the classroom in just three short months. This became even more evident to me yesterday.

Our inclusion class is challenging this year. We have a large class of students who have a plethora of needs. My co-teacher and I meet almost daily, despite the fact that she is also working with two other teachers as well. We problem-solve, research ideas, and try new strategies all the time.

When we received scores from our first benchmark, it became clear that we needed to do more. We were not reaching a handful of our students.

We have been trying to implement station teaching as much as possible, but stations are only effective when they are being done for the right reasons. Sometimes I think we make up things to do in stations for the sake of saying we are using stations. My co-teacher and I sat down and carefully planned our learning objectives and what would best suit our students. We talked, planned, researched, emailed, texted, changed our minds a few times, and then formulated a plan.

The result was probably one of the very best teaching moments of my (only ten-year) teaching career. Had someone walked into our classroom, they would have seen all students engaged, learning, and working on their individual levels.

We had a carefully planned schedule for each student. Each student visited three stations for 20 minutes during the class period. In the independent reading station, students read self-chosen books on their independent reading levels. This is an everyday occurrence in our class, but they were doing it in a smaller group instead of everyone at once. In another station, my co-teacher taught a mini-lesson on summarizing and then guided the students as they practiced the strategy. In a third station, students completed word work and studied vocabulary words using interactive materials on the iPads. Finally, I met with a group at the guided reading station, where students read a story and we worked on retelling while reteaching story elements.

At the end of the period, we could not have been happier.  Our normally rambunctious class had been quietly engaged for the entire time - reading, writing, and learning. We were able to work with struggling learners on a more individualized basis. I heard students read and measured their comprehension through the conversations we had about a text. We were able to deliver immediate strategy instruction, which we hope can only benefit our students.

It is difficult to describe just how great it felt to feel like we finally accomplished what we have been working so hard to figure out. But I think we have finally taken the first steps to creating a classroom structure that will benefit every student and allow them to grow as readers and writers with the right support. In addition, we used one of the most important tools we have - the power of two.

#FlyHighFriday

My colleague and friend, Justin Birckbichler (@Mr_B_Teacher on Twitter), is encouraging teachers on Twitter to tweet their #FlyHighFriday moments of the week to celebrate the positives in their schools and classrooms.  It was during a read aloud the other day that I discovered my #FlyHighFriday moments.  From that point, I started noticing many of the same instances throughout my week.

As I began reading Rain Reign to my students, I looked up to see two girls scrunched together in their desks whispering.  I paused in the  middle of the sentence I was reading and took a breath to say something to them when I had a realization. I saw that they were not just whispering the dramatic happenings of typical sixth graders, but they were actually discussing a book. They weren't talking about the book that we were reading together; their conversations were spilling over from their independent reading time. One of the girls was holding a book and showing the other one an exciting part that she had reached in her daily reading. These two students are self-professed non-readers. They don't like reading, and they are not afraid to let me know that - sometimes on a daily basis. To see them smiling and sharing a book almost made my week.

Then, during a transition from one activity to the next, I looked up to see another student with her nose buried in a book.  She glanced up and caught me looking at her, to which she responded, "I'm sorry, I just really like this book.  I can't stop reading it."  This is the same student who told me on the first day of school that she does not like to read and spent the first two weeks of school avoiding independent reading at all costs.  Since that day, she has not only finished the book that she was so engrossed in, but has also recommended it to several of her classmates and has found other similar books that she cannot seem to put down.

After these two incidents in one class, I realized that I needed to pay closer attention to how my students are growing.  I started the year with quite a challenge before me.  For the first time, I had students that were just flat-out refusing to read.  They told me that they did not enjoy it, and most of them seemed pretty stubborn when I tried to convince them that I was going to change their minds.  I am slowly starting to see progress, and nothing could please me more.

Just yesterday I looked up during independent reading time to see one of my most stubborn students completely absorbed in his book.  After switching books every other day for the past five weeks and not making much progress in any of them, I gave him A Child Called It at the beginning of the week. Of course, I explained that it was a book that I only let my most mature readers read. I explained the first two chapters, and then sent him off with it.  I told him to trust me.  I stopped by his desk yesterday to ask how it was going, and he said, with a huge grin, "It's actually really good."  I even made him repeat that statement.  He kept smiling and quietly went back to reading.

Students are starting to recommend books to each other.  They stop me in the hallways to tell me how far they got in their book at home or to tell me what book they just started.  Two students even checked out the same book this morning so they could sit together and read and have something to discuss.

Their excitement is starting to build, and I can see reading becoming a habit right in front of me.  To experience this transformation is what propels me out of bed each morning to share my day with impressionable tweens that have their whole lives ahead of them - as readers.  For me, nothing could make me fly higher on a Friday than that.

Here We Go Again

Here I am again, in the same place I was two years ago when I started this blog.  Yearning to write, trying to find the time to get my words on paper (or screen), yet falling short.  I vowed to start writing every day.  Somehow, though, life got in the way.  It could be my full-time job, coaching, a new baby, balancing being a mom of two, all the books that I want to read...  I am sure I could go on and on with excuses, but the reality is, I just need to sit down and do it.


After returning from winter break on Monday, I had my students write reading resolutions.  I have never been one to make New Year's resolutions, and I typically think they are ridiculous.  However, creating reading resolutions seemed like fun to me.  Probably because I am so completely head-over-heels in love with books.  Some might like to call it an obsession.  As I explained to my students, books are starting to take over my house.  I could probably start using them as furniture. 


We talked about resolutions being like long-term goals.  I like having goals, as they give me something to work toward.  One of my reading resolutions was to start working through some of the books I have at home so I can begin the process of de-cluttering my house (though are books really clutter?  I think not.).  I came up with four reading goals, all of which I shared with my students.  Then I started thinking.  Since I have created these goals for my reading, I should give myself a goal for writing.


Writing is something I love.  It is something I always say I need to do more.  It is always the first thing I cut out of my day when I get busy.  So here we go again.


So many exciting, monumental things happened in 2014 - all of which occurred without me documenting them.  Inspiring, wonderful things happen every day in my classroom.  Things that I could reflect on and use to help me grow as a teacher and a person.  There are many books that I read that I want to share with the world.  What better way to do it than through writing?


That being said, I am going to write.


No time limit.  No number of days per week.  I simply need to do it. 


That is my goal.  This time I will achieve it.  I will.

Zac & Mia by A.J. Betts

 This is a story of an unlikely friendship.  While in the hospital after a bone marrow transplant, Zac hears the angst of his next door neighbor.  Beginning with a knock on the wall, Zac reaches out to Mia.  She doesn't want anyone's help and keeps her sickness a secret even from her closest friends.

After leaving the hospital, Zac finds his thoughts drifting back to Mia.  Then one day she appears - broken, lost, and looking for money to run away.  With a newly amputated leg, all Mia wants to do is escape.  Slowly Zac helps her find the things in life that are worth fighting for.

At the beginning of the book, I thought it was very similar to The Fault in Our Stars.  However, the similarities started to fade, and Zac and Mia took on a life of its own.  The Fault in Our Stars is probably one of my all-time favorite books, but I thought Zac & Mia's characters were more believable.  This novel is a story of friendship and how sometimes all you need is a little hope to get you through the toughest of days.  What could be a romantic component is not capitalized upon, and it makes the book work.  It is instead about two people who form a bond over a shared hurt, understanding how much one's life is altered by a disease as devastating as cancer.  It is through this bond that each is able to grasp onto hope that propels them through another day.

I will definitely be recommending this book to my students who loved The Fault in Our Stars and Eleanor & Park.