Our friendship, for some

time, has been uncertain, waving

between inseparable and making

new friends that were, quite

honestly, nothing like the original.

But the school year has

settled and we have come back, as

we always do, missing

one another, but still unsure of how

close we really are. Until last

night, you told me that I make

you feel smart. The best

compliment you could have

possibly given to me as your friend. That

under normal circumstances, you feel

rather average, but with me

you feel smart.

It seemed solidifying, because

with you, I feel social

and comfortable

and seen

and appreciated.

But now it is tomorrow, and tragedy

has befallen your school. A lost

member to your own

third grade team, gone off

in the night while asleep never

to return to school to teach

the students who found her once

so permanent.

I did not know this teacher, but you

did. This teacher was part

of your every day life, a constant

in school when you did not feel

so adequate as a beginning

teacher. And now

she is ripped from reality.

I offered to talk, and you said

that I might get a call

from you later. It is

later now, and I am still

waiting, putting all on hold

just for you, in case the phone

rings. I want to be there. The friend

that makes you feel smart. I hope

I can still be what you need, because now

you don’t need to feel smart

but safe

and I want to help you feel that way.

So I will wait, putting

Jacob on hold and eying

the screen of my phone any

moment I can, just to see

if I can be the person

you need now.

I am sitting in my seminar with teachers from my district being tasked to write about my day so that I can further study how writing can impact teaching practices… by writing. And I am thinking to myself, “Well, this sounds awfully familiar…”

So, here I am, not necessarily writing about my day, but finding it interesting that this topic of teachers writing to become better writing teachers is becoming more widespread. These teachers wrote a book that they’re (slightly) promoting over the next half an hour, but I like this format, too. This interactive format or teachers helping teachers write through writing. Lots of repetition, but then also lots of reinforcement. I like the community-building across states and districts that hardly ever cross my mind. I like feeling close to people who are far.

I also am learning to advocate to teachers that writing is the best way to help with… writing. But, I think I’ll be sticking to this medium for now in order to help.

Writing every day for me has mostly been additional writing every day for me. As a self-published author, too, when I am not doing work for my intern program or planning lessons for my students, I am almost always drafting or editing my next book to be published. Due to my business with my top two priorities (aka, my kiddos and my schoolwork), I have not been able to write hardly at all for several weeks now. I carved out an hour and a half today, though, got cozy with a pen and a notebook (rather than a laptop), and began a new chapter right after a big turning point in my work-in-progress. Now, I would like to share a few short paragraphs of what I wrote tonight with you all in which you have no context for:

Tampo yanked the woven blanket from Elsive’s gaunt frame. Three days now without food. A mourning fast, or simply a lack of hunger. Such arbitrary terms for something so desperately debilitating.

“Today is the day you rise,” Tampo scolded, adopting the fierce tone that had not left since she had returned to the family tent with Shinse midday after Alphistan’s untimely death. She had said few words then, but enough that Fenish knew to make his presence scarce for the time being.

“I am still mourning,” Elsive muttered, curling in on himself. Any wisdom he possessed had abandoned him, and he had been reduced to a child. Just a boy.

“That has been your excuse for days now,” Tampo said.

“My mentor has been brutally slain, and my best friend has been stolen away,” Elsive said coldly. “So, I mourn.”

His mother planted her hands on her hips. “And I mourn the loss of your father’s faith in our own son, yet I carry on.”

They say to use technology in school with your students. I agree. This is a very good idea, and it really helps with developing skills in the field. But maybe, just maybe, introducing a new app to the students is not a great idea on a Monday morning, when a bad case of the Mondays has struck the hearts of my ever-sassy fourth graders.

I came across something rather disturbing today. My students are researching more diverse books to include in our library, per their request, so I was compiling a list of titles and summaries which they will choose from in various areas of culture, including race, ethnicity, and sexuality/gender. I scoured review sights for lists of the best middle grade books in these areas.

I had huge success finding highly rated books in the age range of my fourth graders, and I began pulling together my master list. I read the summaries as I went to ensure I knew just what I was advertising to my students (since I, unfortunately, cannot purchase and read 28 books before Wednesday). I came across graphic novels with diverse protagonists, books that compared being transgender to being a transformer (that was my favorite blurb), and unlikely friendships blending cultures, just as children do before they learn of ingrained biases in society.

But something struck me. In all of the books centered around people of color, there was violence. So much gun violence. Raids and destroyed families. Ghosts of children narrating novels because an officer had mistaken a toy for a weapon. I was completely shocked.

No, I was not shocked because I was unaware that this was what happened within the POC community at alarming rates. I was shocked that these are the stories we must now tell our children. When we look into the culture of Black Americans through literature, as literature is one of the best windows for our children, all we see is the truth, and the truth is violence. It is families still fearing for their lives, and it happens often enough that the vast majority of the highly rated middle grade books with POC protagonists are about death and how to not only cope with the death of a loved one, but how to cope with your own death, too.

This is the window I looked into today, and it is one my children will look into on Wednesday. They will complain to me that I am suggesting they read more books where characters die, which has been one of their biggest shocks this year, despite the fact that we are continually studying wars. They will ask why I always pick books that have to do with death. And what do I tell them? Do I tell them that a story of death is as common and anticipated for POC as a a story about getting a crush in fifth grade? Or do I tell them nothing at all and allow them to create their own constructs?

I know I will not hide these books from them, as they are stories that need to be told for my students to fully understand the world in which they participate in. I just wish this was not the lesson they had to learn, not because they are children, but because I wish it was a lesson no one had to learn.

As much as I love life’s little moments, sometimes I get too caught up in them. Not the positive little moments, but the negative ones. Dirty dishes in the sink. Cereal on the floor. Socks on the couch. They get to me, as I am certain they get to everyone.

But these things pass. If they did not, then they would not be little moments. Just as I love to revel in the positive ones, I must sigh at the negative ones and allow them to continue on through life and not affect me. It is a skill I have been practicing, but I will need to continue practicing if I wish to become a master, or even close to where I would like to be.

I believe in myself. I am here today, writing my books and writing lesson plans for children who I adore and getting to text my sisters from my comfy place on the couch while they are out with their friends in separate cities. My mom and I spoke on the phone last night, and my dearest Seamus heard me through the speaker phone, excited just to hear my voice telling him that I loved him. So many wonderful things happen overtop the not-so wonderful, and slowly, I am being able to focus on what truly matters.

“I know I told you I would tell Miss Sayer this, but I forgot to this morning,” my mentor said before we released our children to continue writing their historical fiction pieces. “While you were at training yesterday, you wouldn’t have even recognized some of these kids. They blew everyone out of the water with how much they wrote!”

He had assured the other students that everyone had really excelled the previous day, but these particular students he had been referencing had been permanent residents on the Struggle Bus in writing all year long, and something magical happened yesterday. They had planned their entire short story with character charts scene list and had written an entire page of a short story, all in one day.

As it turns out, the students were amped to work really hard today again. They continually came up to me, asking me to read parts of their stories and checking to ensure they were using figurative language and strong words correctly. By the end of the class, students were asking to take their stories home over the weekend to work on and were panicked when I insinuated that we might possibly move on during Writing on Monday.

I stood up to compliment the students at the end of the class session, and I could feel myself getting too proud of my students. My eyes were not watering, but I was on the verge of bursting into tears out of pride. They have come so far this year, and I can’t wait to see how much more we can accomplish this year.

I am not quite sure what to write, as I feel quiet today.

Everybody has quiet days.

Us.

Our students.

Usually, when I feel quiet, I am feeling quite reflective and introspective.

It is not me feeling sad or down or overthinking things, as I have done in the past.

It is just me sifting through my life to make room for the future.

In fact, it is really quite exciting.

For my student teaching program, I had to write two versions of a “Where I’m From” poem. One was last semester in the fall, and one was this semester.

As it turns out, I am very good at putting up fronts to prevent people from seeing who I really am, and I have so my entire life. I like others to see me as who I portray: a teacher, a writer, an artist. But never actually me. After a long while, my guard will begin coming down, and I can feel comfortable around others, but there are only a select few this happens for.

Tonight in seminar, a grueling twelve hours after I had left my apartment for school this morning, we were going back to our second versions of these poems, and it struck me: I absolutely hated the person I portrayed in these poems. I felt terrible, because we were supposed to be discussing our poems and how they captured our individual culture. One of the guiding questions asked: “Who is what is missing from your poem?” And I just blankly replied, “Me. I’m missing from my poem.”

So, I went home, did some yoga, and typed up this poem though it is already past my school night preferred bed time, and I still have a lesson plan to write, and I sent it out to my group members. Now, I share it with you, too.

WHERE I’M FROM

I am from fleece blankets, from countless

Beanie Babies, and Crazy

Aaron’s Thinking Putty.

I am from the soothing, rich, scent

of fresh brownies baking while my sisters

and I “helped” to shovel

the driveway with Dad.

I am from the spider plant that

lived on little water, the hydrangeas

that bloomed new colors

each year, the young

pine tree planted in the old

backyard,

the cacti that now

adorn my windowsill, the poppies

the refuse to grow, the wood

that has yet to take

on a new dream of mine.

I am from listening to multiple

members of my family cry

when we read the Polar Express

and talking over the end

of one another’s

sentences, from Sayer

and Janoski and

most of all, Seamus.

I am from the head-banging

to “Bohemian Rhapsody” and laughing

every time we heard a bang

after someone announced,

“Jumpin’ in the shower!”

From “You can be

whoever you want to be” and “I hope

you and your sisters

are still friends when you get older.”

I am from church by my grandmother’s

request and slowly

cutting back to going

once a year, and then not at all.

I’m from Abington and Poland, Lunchbox

Love muffins and homemade

birthday cakes.

From the teamwork used

to name Seamus while sitting

in a restaurant with lost power,

the ignored fevers to visit puppies,

and the equal parts of sadness

and excitement as Seamus was the first

of his litter to go home.

I am from Ship Bottom,

cracked seashells,  

and photo albums with strangely

humorous captions.

I am from music

and words, androgyny

and expression.

From animals I cannot

afford to buy, and the desire

to want them anyway.

I am from stories that sing

truth, crafts that inspire

talent, and actions

that show my heart.

As a writer, I have been very excited all year to take over our class writing units. My mentor and I have been co-teaching this subject since the fall, and I mostly took the lead scaffolding this past writing piece. We are starting a new unit now, however, and this is the first in which I will be teaching writing with little assistance from my mentor.

We are entering an informational unit in which students will be creating a “book” about a person or even from the Revolutionary War era. In this book, students will include their own historical fiction narrative piece regarding the time period and the topic of their choosing. We will be practicing writing historical fiction narratives rather than personal narratives (which we have already studied) using information we gathered during our last reading unit about World War II. Below is the example piece I wrote to illustrate the various aspects of a narrative that we will be reviewing and studying for the remainder of the week:

I was startled from my sleep with a sharp sound that cracked outside of my window. I sat straight up in bed though Elsie still slept beside me. A strange shadow flicked across the room, and I narrowed my eyes. Light never drifted into the bedroom of my family’s apartment overnight unless the moon was full and the sky was clear.

I pushed back my covers, careful to not pull them from beneath Elsie’s chin, and planted my bare feet on the wooden floorboards. Another crash came as I neared the window, and I gasped beneath the sound. Elsie shuffled to her side, but still, she remained asleep.

Far off in the night, black smoke poured from a dancing flame, glittering against the harbor like jewels that families here could no longer afford. I stepped back from the glass and hurried from my bedroom, wishing the sight of the burning ship would erase itself from my mind. My mother stood by the living room window, peering through the glass at the same sight I had seen from my bedroom.

Before I could open my mouth and call out for her in a whisper, an ajar door to my right silenced me. Anja’s door was never open, not when she was to be asleep, which meant that she was not asleep. She was not even in her bedroom.

“Mama?” I said now, but another bang suffocated the end of my word.