How A Teacher Keeps Her Optimism

August 16, 2013August 5, 2016 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

When I left my classroom two years ago to stay home and raise babies and blog stats, I didn’t expect to miss teaching much. I didn’t expect that this time every year, I would get a little wistful for new pencils and Expo markers and highlighters. I didn’t expect that this time every year, I would miss the anticipation of readying my classroom for a new group of silly, rambunctious, and yet, ambitious young teenagers. I didn’t realize that even though I had left the classroom, that my teacher optimism, that beautiful gift teachers have to believe every new year will be better than the last, would remain so deeply embedded in my heart.

You see, it never occurred to me that I could miss teaching because by the time I left, I had allowed myself to be so beaten down and discouraged that I had no hope the next year would be any better.

Teaching is an ironic profession. In the same day that you can spend all your extra planning time helping a student organize their backpack and locker in order to find three weeks of lost homework, you can sit at a conference table with parents and have profanity hurled at you for not giving enough of your time and energy to have made that same student successful from day one.

One thing that drove me away was the feeling that I wasn’t doing a good enough job raising my own children, because I was so afraid to fail at raising someone else’s.

A teacher’s career is filled with accolades and rewards, but that career is forged in the fire of expectations from lawmakers and parents that are often unrealistic and unachievable for our current system.

Teaching today is an intense, data driven, marathon. There is always some new piece of technology or curriculum on the horizon. Textbooks are becoming obsolete, and classrooms are equipped with laptops and iPads. Email is the new parent contact, and weekly, if not daily, updates of grades and reports are expected.

When I was teaching middle school, I could use my 90-minute planning block to attend a parent conference, help write an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), analyze benchmark test scores to determine our Response to Intervention (RTI) tiers, administer a make-up test, pull novels for my students’ next library check out, and grade half a dozen essays.

There was nothing easy about it, but one thing that made my days worthwhile, and kept me going through eight years and five certifications, were the all too rare times a parent was supportive. When a parent took the time to acknowledge the work I was doing to bring education alive for their student, that’s when I knew I was in the right place.

So, this fall when you take your student to Open House, when you meet their teacher for the first time, when you attend a parent conference, or chaperone a field trip, go out of your way to thank your student’s teacher for all they do.

It’s those few and far between accolades of support that fuel a teacher’s optimism, that reminds them, indeed, every year can be a little bit better than the last.

birthdays · motherhood · school

More than Flowers (What May Brought)

May 21, 2013September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

So it’s occurring to me while I’m working on a (hopefully) profound post about how I need to slow my life down, that I haven’t done a lot of casual blogging lately about what’s been keeping us so busy. May is marching on by with its cold snaps and thunderstorms and heartaches too big for words, but here’s a bit of what we’ve been doing.

Gus turned one. I didn’t even write about it. I wrote this the week before and the week of I was busy with this.

That’s the incredible Mrs. Gibson and her talented students and crew. Blessed that she allowed me back in the school to help with the annual spring musical. I almost missed teaching that week. But then I came home to this and remembered why I left.

We named our children like dwarves last week: Sleepy, Whiny, Sassy, and Screechy. Guess which one she is?

We’re digging the CSA that’s started up in the past few weeks. Now I just need a more expansive repertoire of what to do with collards and turnip greens.

Oh, here she is again. Joshua wants to know why we’re not marketing her so that at least one college education is paid for.

She likes to dress herself, can you tell? Tomorrow is her last day of preschool this year. Insane how fast it goes.

That’s my sweet friend Shanna giving Gus his first haircut. I almost cried and she told me I’d be fine. This from the woman who had to let someone else cut her baby boy’s hair because she didn’t think she could do it. Love you Shanna! Thanks for making sweet boy look good.

It’s been field day and field trips and general chaos around school these past couple weeks. Glad I get to hang with my big girls sometimes!

When I was teaching, we used to have faculty meetings and brainstorm how we could move some of the craziness out of May. Yes, please. Let’s figure out how to do that.

monday · motherhood · school

What Three Weeks Can Bring

September 10, 2012 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Three weeks is long enough. Or short enough as the case may be.

I just spent three weeks as a sub over on the other side of the county at the middle school that was the arch rival for the place where I used to spend most hours of my day.

And after only three weeks, I am learning to embrace new notions about myself as an educator…but mostly I have discovered new ideas about myself as a mom.

Days move more quickly when you’re out the door with the sun and begging for bed instead of lingering over one more blog, one more episode on Netflix, one more cup of coffee.

Days are long enough, however, for those babies I left at home to change and grow and become when I’m not there to see it.

Did you know it only takes six days of preschool for a two year old to learn to sing the ABC song and that age-old classic about the bumblebee?

It only takes three weeks for a baby boy to outgrow my favorite sleeper with the zipper.

Over three weeks that same baby boy might cut a tooth. Or two, prompting this mama to rummage for baby books to confirm that, yes, he is three months ahead of his sisters’ chomping timelines.

In three weeks sixth graders come to believe that the sub is their teacher and they look at me a little skeptically when I announce she’ll be back on Monday.

Three weeks can drain a checkbook when mama is too tired to cook and AWANA starts in less than an hour and dance got out late and McDonald’s is just too easy.

But not too good unless it’s a mocha frappe after a hard day’s work.

Three weeks taught this mama that planning is essential, menus are a necessity, and hands-free pumping can be achieved.

But it’s pumping nevertheless, and I’d rather just nurse.

Because three weeks taught me ultimately that I’d rather stay home than have a fancy house or a new car or a mocha frappe everyday.

Some things aren’t worth missing, even for only three weeks.

linking up with Carissa today…

Friday Five · motherhood · school

Stretched Between

August 18, 2012 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Stretch is the prompt…

In so many ways, it’s all the same. Desks in rows and newly sharpened pencils and stacks of kleenexes and way too much paperwork.

But the feet in Toms or neon Nikes belong to children I don’t know, have no connections with, will only be here long enough to barely know before their real teacher returns. They slouch or hide behind their hair or sit and stare at me with eyes big as I welcome them to their first days of middle school and tell them how many days they will have to know me.

I get up too early but not early enough to fix the breakfasts and brush their hair and take the first day picture. My throat catches when I climb into the minivan alone to drive away and let their daddy load them up all four for first grade and second grade and Mimi’s house.

There I’m in control, the teacher, the confident one who could do this with on the fly and make it seem planned. I console tears and fright and lost schedules and mix ups. I breathe relief at the end that this classroom isn’t mine and I can give it back in only a few short weeks.

Here I stretch to make it all work. The backpacks and lunches and laundry and supper and preschool Open House and all the times that I am mommy.

Even when I’m not there.

http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post · school

Top 10 Why the Book Tops the Movie

March 28, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett5 Comments

I had a mommy break yesterday. I left Amelia with my sister, dropped the big gals at school, and boarded a caravan of buses with 175 8th graders (about half were former students of mine from last year) and headed to the biggest mall around on a field trip to see The Hunger Games.

This is the second year the novel has been taught in a unit that encompasses almost every reading and writing standard there is for eighth grade, so our students already had a unique perspective on the story. They’ve been discussing everything from figurative language to the desensitization of our society and after it was over, most of them uttered words this English teacher loves to hear: The book was way better.

I have to agree. And here’s 10 reasons why.

1. Character development. Katniss is one of the richest and most complex heroines to come along in a while, and as good as Jennifer Lawrence was, the movie didn’t let you hear the battle in her head the way the book does.

2. Madge. She’s barely there for the first two books of the series but she’s important as the giver of Katniss’s token and even more important when you learn the history behind that little pin. But screen time? Cut completely.

3. Mother-Daughter relationship. Seeing the movie alone might make you think Katniss is a typical teenage girl who doesn’t value her mother. Or you could read the book and get the whole story of how Katniss feels let down by the one person who should have cared for her unconditionally.

4. Who is Peeta really? Again, the movie can’t show you nearly enough to help you understand who this boy is and why he loves her and how she will never feel that she can stop owing him. In an ironic twist, he saved her life long before the arena, but you lose all that in the film.

5. Being fatherless. Losing her father defines Katniss…I can’t say it enough. There’s so much back story.

6. The Triangle. Teenagers (girls) love the conflict between who Katniss truly loves. Is it Peeta or is it Gale? It’s a question that can’t be answered until the last book, but its build up is lacking in the film. Although the girls all agree they are both “smokin’ hot.”

7. Haymitch. He wasn’t drunk enough. Which is probably a strange thing for you to hear me say, but it’s true. I like Woody Harralson as this character, but he’s just not quite as sloppy as I pictured him. Haymitch evokes both pity and disgust, but for the film he seemed more charming than anything else. He’s one of those people you really are supposed to hate before you grow to love.

8. The bloodbath. It’s a violent book. It’s a horrific idea. No one’s saying it’s not, but actually seeing it instead of just having it imagined in my head…let’s just say I appreciate the film makers not going to the extreme they could have.

9. The Capitol. Again, if you haven’t read the story, you really don’t get a sense of just how decadent the lives of those who inhabit the Capitol are. We barely see Katniss’s prep team and she certainly doesn’t eat enough. Lamb stew with dried plums anyone?

10. Rue. She’s one of the most tragic figures in the entire story, and she was beautifully cast, but there’s not enough development. Katniss immediately bonds to this child who had no older sister to take her place and though I love the movie’s take on how this moment is truly what starts the rebellion, I missed getting to know Rue better.

What did you think? Are you of fan of the book or the movie or are you simply wondering what passing craze is going on now? And for the record, I could easily come up with ten moments I liked about the film adaption because I read the book.