Volleyball is Back!

February 19, 2026

We're back for volleyball season-senior year edition! 

Volleyball Tourney

February 9, 2026

Andrew's senior volleyball season looks to be a strong one. It is always a fun time getting to watch these boys play together!

Senior Ditch Day

February 6, 2026

I always have seniors skip school on Senior Ditch Day, but for the first time ever this year, I had an entire class missing! It is the most unified they've been all year! (Well done, 2nd period.)

Early Valentine's

February 4, 2026

Today my AVID students delivered early Valentine's appreciation notes. The ones I got told me my classroom made them feel comfortable, included, and cared for. What more could I ask for? It made my day!

Some Days Just Really Work

February 3, 2026

I love teaching almost all the days. (Let's be honest-not every SINGLE day, because I'm human-but really, most days.) Today's lesson really just clicked and the kids were invested and had great insights and contributions. Even better that my L.D. came in for an observation today!

Winter Formal

February 1, 2026

Last night was Buchanan's Winter Formal, and as usual Rafe was a good sport and came along to keep me company. I just love to see the kids all dressed up, and I love getting dressed up to go out on a date with Rafe, even if it is to a high school gym.

The Show Must Go On

January 23, 2026

I didn't go to school on Friday because of my CAT scan appointment, but our school's production of Mamma Mia was in its run, and several of my students had principal roles in it. I had committed to going, and I really didn't want to go back on my word. Both Lisa and Bree were supposed to go with me, and both ended up feeling under the weather and bowed out. Rafe was a good sport and didn't want me to go on my own, so he (somewhat reluctantly) went with me. It was a really well-done production, and I loved getting to see the talent of my students being showcased. I don't think it was great for my concussion, but still worth it! Also, thank goodness for makeup-I did not look like I had just been in a bar brawl!

Waiting to Go Back

January 7, 2025 I am still waiting on medical clearance to go back to school, even though the new semester started today. I am feeling very guilty about having left my kiddos, since even with the best of subs the experience isn't quite the same. Having A.P. and Dual Enrollment students makes it even more stressful because they are worried about being prepared for the A.P. Exam and their college-level courses. I know I have to make sure I am fully able to go back without putting myself in position to reinjure my knee, and I also know that the kids will survive without me. Still, I wrestle with the dual roles of taking care of myself and taking care of my students. I will be back very soon, however, and we'll make the most of the rest of the year together.

Testing, testing...is this thing on??

February 17, 2024 My students had to transition this week to a new platform for submitting their work. They are dual enrollment students, so they had to interact with and submit an essay to the community college platform, instead of the usual Google Classroom platform. After my first few students came in and reported issues with logging in and 'finding' the right place to go, I decided I needed to devote class time to ensuring students could navigate the site. Mind you, we already did a trial run a couple of weeks ago and I made sure everyone could access Canvas. Nevertheless, students were struggling, so I scrapped part of my planned lesson and backtracked to offer support. In addition to devoting classtime, I also published a flier of Google Classroom with step-by-step instructions, and gave them reminders about how to navigate regular issues students were having. In class, I projected the flier and talked them through the steps. Still, I had students with issues. --Ms. L, it still won't let me login. It says I don't have permission. Me: Are you going to the webiste address on the flier, or another address? (She was not going to the website on the flier.) --Ms. L, it says it doesn't recognize my user name! But I'm using my I.D. number! Me: Which I.D. number? Remember that I said you needed to use your college I.D., not your high school one, since this is the college platform? (He was, in fact, using his high school I.D.) --Ms. L, when I log in, it takes me to a page that's not our class! Me: So, when I said when you log in it will ask you to update your communication preferences before you move on, this is that page. (It literally says, "Please update communication preferences before advancing to the next screen.") --Ms. L, I have to put in all that information?? It takes so much time! Me: It's verifying your name and email contact information. You can handle that. --Ms. L, now that I logged in nothing happens! Me: See the icon that says 'Canvas'? The one the flier tells you to click on? Click on it! (The icon wasn't even hiding from her; it was right out there in the open, just patiently waiting for her to click.) --Ms. L, can I just email you my essay instead? I tried to upload it, but it says it doesn't recongize the file. Me: I told you you can't share from your Google Drive, because this platform doesn't talk to Google Drive. Did you download the file as a doc or a docx so that you can upload it to the site? (No, he hadn't.) --Ms. L, I DID download it, but it says it won't accept it! Me: What kind of file? Is it a pdf? (Yes, it was.) Remember how I said NOT to download it as a pdf, because it would only accept doc or docx files? (She did remember. She just didn't think I meant it.) Most of the time, the intelligent, diligence, and knowledge of these kids is impressive. On a day like this, however, it's a little less so. This is not to say I don't have those days myself--we all do. But the collective troubleshooting ability was definitely not functioning at its highest level. My only saving grace is I am sure it saved me from about 90% of the panicked emails I would have gotten this weekend without taking that time in class.

Lucky Day for Volleyball

March 17, 2022 

For St. Patrick's Day this year, our boys' volleyball team held their senior night. I have five of the varsity seniors in my classes, so a few of them had asked me if I was going to go to cheer them on. It was really a lot of fun to see my kids doing something they love, something they really excel at. Rafe was even willing to join me, even though he didn't know another soul there. It was my first chance to introduce him to some of my favorite colleagues, which was pretty cool. Even better, the boys won their match in three games. A successful night altogether!

Me in the Hot Seat

March 16, 2022 At the beginning of my classes, I usually ask the students a little question that each one has to answer. It's a little way of building community, connecting with each other, and easing into class for the day. Some of the questions I've asked are, "What's up next on your to-read or to-watch list?" "Would you rather take a vacation to the beach or the mountains?" and "What's a unique talent or skill you possess?" Today in one of my classes, I told the kids that they could each ask ME a question. They came up with some pretty good ones: my favorite color or number, whether or not I dye my hair, what kind of car I drive, what I am most proud of besides my kids, my favorite sport to watch, and so on. It was really kind of fun!

The End of the Mask Mandate

March 14, 2022 The state mask mandate was lifted for school settings as of last Friday night at midnight, and to be honest, I debated all day on Sunday whether or not I would continue to wear mine in my classes. It is still highly recommended, and in fact I am still required to wear one in class for my community college classes. Like everyone else, I am tired of wearing masks all the time, but I also believe they have done a lot of good in mitigating the spread of the virus over the course of this pandemic. On the other hand, the variants seem to have minimized devastating results in Covid patients for those who are vaccinated, which I am, so I feel pretty safe on the whole without one these days. Ultimately, I know that many of my students will rejoice in being able to take off their masks as will many of my colleagues. However, a significant number of my students will continue to wear masks either because they have medical conditions that make them more vulnerable, or someone in their family does, or they have a family member in the medical field, or they might just be more cautious. Regardless, I have decided that at least for now I will continue to wear a mask in my classroom even though I feel safe without it in order to support my kids who have chosen for various reasons to continue wearing theirs. I want to support them and keep it normalized to wear one if that is what makes them more comfortable.

Monday, Monday

March 7, 2022 Today was one of my long days, with meetings sandwiched between my day job and my night gig. Add to that before and after school duty (my very least favorite part of my job), and office hours at the end of the day, and my Monday is kind of a non-stop frenzy this week. Weirdly, though, I got to the end of my day still feeling wide awake, energetic, and in a great mood. I loved my interactions with the kids today even more than usual--I love when they make me laugh--and I feel like everything was just productive and positive today. What a happy way to begin the week!

A Little Restored Faith

March 3, 2022 Last week I wrote about how disheartened I was when I had students choose to disregard my request that they wear masks in my class, at least until the mandate was lifted. Today in class my students were working on drafting a research paper, and kids could get my individual attention if there were questions or confusions as they worked. I noticed one of my students who had chosen last week not to wear a mask, looking around the room. I didn't have a chance to ask him what he needed before his eyes landed on what he was looking for--the extra stack of masks in my classroom. He walked over to the table where I keep them, and he donned his before approaching my desk to ask his question about citations for his paper. It definitely restored my faith a little that he was thoughtful enough to put one on before approaching me, even if he doesn't wear one while sitting at his desk. I know he was listening when I made my request last week.

Mask Mandate

February 24, 2022

Our school board decided to call an emergency meeting at 3:00 yesterday afternoon to discuss the current mask mandate that is in place.  The meeting was announced on Tuesday afternoon.  Wednesday at 3:00, of course, teachers are still within their duty hours and are still at work, therefore teachers would not be in the room discussing the mandate that daily affects us within the scope of our classroom.

This is absolutely par for the course.  The meeting was called because our 'task force' of board members had been meeting regularly about whether or not we could play around with semantics and get around the state-mandated requirement that all students and teachers in school settings must be masked.  They did not ask for teacher input, nor did they actually think about the practical application of their slippery definition of the mandate--which they determined they could 'faithfully' uphold through education, rather than enforcement, since the language of the mandate says that schools have some flexibility in enforcement.  In their emergency meeting, our board voted unanimously (by the board members in attendance) that our district could uphold the mask mandate by 'educating' students/staff with the posters already plastered throughout our school buildings.  However, enforcement of masking was effectively shut down.  Even though the state mandate is still in place, which means masking is a requirement, our board decided that as of today, students who refuse to wear a mask can do so with no penalty or consequence.  As teachers, we are still required to tell them that masking is the expectation and still required, and we are to offer them masks, but if they refuse nothing happens.  This puts teachers (and site administrators) in the untenable position of asking students to follow rules, but having absolutely no recourse should they choose not to do so.  What could possibly go wrong?

The sad thing about this is that the governor is set to make an announcement on Monday, and they knew that.  The assumption was that the governor would eliminate the mask mandate, so their Wednesday meeting is nothing more than grandstanding--an attempt to appease a very loud minority group who has been begging the board to ignore the state mandate that was oppressing the 'freedoms' of their children.  Making a move a handful of days before the governor's decision allows them to claim that they are acting on behalf of those people to whom they are kowtowing, and enables them to take credit for being 'forward-thinking' and 'trailblazers' ahead of the other schools and the state.  It's a transparent move--a non-decision decision--that is a desperate attempt to mimic action without actually taking any.  The problem is that they are also still beholden to the state for funding, so their non-decision actually asks us, in the classrooms, to send the message that we must uphold the mandate, but must not in any way actually ask the kids to adhere to the requirement.  Even a brief conversation with even a handful of teachers in the classroom would have let them know how difficult this would be in implementation.  And if the messaging to students is that we have rules, but you only have to follow some of them, how could it possibly not occur to some of those students that the other rules are 'suggestions' as well?  How are we not sending the message to the parents that if you yell loudly enough, our board will eventually get tired of fighting the battle and lay the issue down at the feet of the teachers in the classroom to uphold on their own, without support?  How does it not occur to any of them that we are, in fact, sending a pretty strong message through example that we only have to follow the state rules if we like them, and if we don't, all we have to do is look for a loophole?

Because we are still required to remind students that the mandate is still in place, I decided to handle it in my way in the classroom (as did all of the teachers, since we were given no guidance, direction, or plan for implementing this).  I simply reminded my students that the mandate was still in place, and that it was still the expectation that students would wear masks.  I added that as a cancer survivor, and one who is immunocompromised, I would ask them respectfully to continue to wear the mask in my class, at least until the state mandate was lifted.  The response?  I still had four students in each of my classes simply stare at me blankly, silently drawing their line in the sand.  I don't have to, and I don't want to.  Honestly, it was disheartening.  I get that not everyone believes in the efficacy of the masks, and that no one actually likes to wear them, but here's the thing: When I asked them, as a human being, for my benefit (and for the benefit of others in the class who might be reluctant to speak up about their own fears or health issues) to wear them anyway--even for just a couple more days--the stance for breaking free of the rules superseded empathy and kindness.  These are kids who are wonderful people--kids I really like and who like me.  But at the end of the day, what we have now taught them is that their individual desire is more important than concern for anyone around them.  That they are justified in not considering others- righteous, even.  That individual choice doesn't carry with it social responsibility.   And I think those lessons are ones that will take a very long time to unlearn.  It was one of my saddest days in education.

Balance

February 10, 2022

After sitting through an evaluation meeting with both my Learning Director and my principal that was incredibly positive, I had a student tell me that some of the students in one of my classes didn't like my class because they thought I was 'controlling' (I was pretty astonished by that one, because I give a lot of choice in class) and gave busywork.  I am big on trying to explain and show why any given assignment is given--the purpose of things like outlines, or annotating what we read for study.  Still, there are kids who don't make the connection and just want us to 'let them read' or 'let them write' without what some of them consider 'fluff'.  Clearly I need to circle back and explain some of the benefits of why we do what we do, but also, sometimes I think that some of our students call 'busywork'  is merely 'work they don't want to do'.  Whenever you think you're doing a good job, someone will come along and make you question it.  Balance keeps us on our toes.

Teacher Burn Out

February 4, 2022

Much has been made of the mass exodus of teachers from the profession over the past three years, but most especially this year.  There are literally schools having to close down because there aren't enough teachers to staff them.  Of course the pandemic and all its attendant stresses, anxieties, and health concerns have been a big contributor to the problem, but it occurs to me that there is another huge contributing factor that not too many people are talking about.  

One of the ways schools, including mine, adapted to online teaching during the height of the pandemic panic was to shorten the school day for students and offer essentially online office hours every day,.  Teachers were required to be online for an hour and a half or so, and students could use that time to process, do homework, or check in with a teacher if they needed additional guidance.  In addition to being available for students, teachers were able to use that additional time to plan, grade, collaborate, and prep for their classes.  Of course during the normal school year most of us secondary teachers have a planning period, but it is nowhere near enough time to adequately do all the things one needs to do in order to be an effective, creative, and responsive teacher at the highest level (especially if we are constantly asked to give up this planning period to cover classes for absent colleagues).  Elementary teachers don't even have a planning period scheduled into their day at all. This profession is predicated on the understanding that we MUST do work outside our teaching day in order to do the job well--a lot of it.  During our online pandemic response, when we actually built time in the schedule to do those things, and to give kids time to work and process within their school day, it was literally the first time in my 30 years as a teacher that I felt I could have a life outside of the school hours without constantly feeling guilty that I should be ALWAYS working.  My students felt like it was the first time they had ever really had time to give full attention to the study and learning of materials, rather than just speeding through deadlines.

When we think of teacher burnout, perhaps it is because that for a moment in time, when we reimagined school for a moment because we HAD to, there were some things we got right, and we were all able to catch our collective (academic) breath.  In our rush to go back to a sense of 'normalcy' for everyone, we forgot that we could instead move forward and incorporate some of the good we learned from our forced pause in traditional learning.  Instead we all just jumped back on the hamster wheel.  If we had never gotten off and stepped back to see that the hamster wheel is capable of slowing and changing pace, we might not be so overwhelmed racing to get back on it.  You don't realize what you don't know until you experience it.  And now that we have, we recognize that spinning our wheels faster because that's 'normal' isn't the best plan of action; it's just what we have always done in the past.  And man, some people just want to get off altogether now that we have seen another way to operate the ride that doesn't have us spinning out of control.

It Was a Good Day

February 1, 2022

I don't get nervous nearly as much as I used to when I get observed in my classroom, but of course I still like it to go well.  After my Learning Director finished observing my class this afternoon, she left me a little post-it note.  It definitely made my day!

Still Not Out of the Woods

 January 27, 2022

For my night job, I've been back on campus three times so far.  For the first week, I wasn't allowed on campus at all, because I had been in close contact with Nicholas, who then took a Covid test which turned out to be positive.  Within those three visits to campus, I've now gotten notified twice that I 'may have come into contact with someone who tested positive' who was in the same buildings/rooms as I was.  They have also now told us they are so far behind with contact tracing that they are essentially just sending out mass letters to people telling them if they don't feel good, they should stay home.  Two and half years in, and it's still ever-present, and we still haven't figured out how to handle it.  (This doesn't even begin to address the winter formal we held at my high school, where we had 800 students in attendance and no mask enforcement at all.  I am holding my breath to see if there's going to be a delayed fallout from that petri dish of a dance.)

Wednesdays are Gonna Be Rough!

 January 19, 2022

For the first time tonight, I get to meet my Clovis Community students face-to-face.  I was supposed to start with them last week, but since Nicholas got Covid, I was in quarantine and couldn't come to campus.  Normally I try to teach Tuesday/Thursday classes with CCC, but this semester they only had a Monday/Wednesday class available.  My Wednesdays are packed:  PLC meeting before school, straight-through class schedule with no prep period, a class officer meeting at lunch, a two-hour CCC class at night, and then Family Zoom.  Thank goodness Thursdays are light days so that I can recover!