Why is it so hard to get out of bed in the summer?

Many Summers ago ....unfinished                                                                  post from 2010.

Get Ready...Get Set....Go

I never seem to have time to finish the "get set" portion of this process.  One day I was teaching Summer Enrichment...then I was entering a school year full of chaos and dysfunction.  In between there were some good family times.  It felt like I was learning to prioritize, but now that the school year has started, it feels like my family is sitting in the back of the bus again.

Between Summer Enrichment and the new year, I visited my sister.  Emily stayed behind and spent more time with them.  Then she went to camp and VBS, then she spent another week with my sister.  I think it was a good summer for her.  Sam and I hung out a lot and enjoyed some field trips together.  We also learned to appreciate the value of Netflix.  We went out during the day and watched MANY old movies in the afternoons. 


NOTE one March 7, 2016 - This blog is unfinished, but I am going to post it just to keep the thoughts and memories recorded.  It was written in 2011.

Seeking Change

I am in the second semester of my fourth year at J.C. Harmon High School.   For the past two years I have been teaching Strategic Reading and supporting my students and classroom teachers with literacy strategies in the content classrooms.   I was invited to propose a intervention process for struggling adolescent readers, someone listened, and for the past two years that curriculum and intervention process has been used in the 8 middle schools and 4 mainstream high schools in the district.   It has kept me busy, but also intellectually engaged with kids and adults.

During this same time, Emily has found success and connections in high school  This year she is the ads editor on the yearbook, she was in two productions in the drama department,  and she survived two marching bands seasons.   She took two trips this years.  With the yearbook, she traveled to Washington D.C.  With the marching band, she traveled to California to march in a parade, at the Holiday Bowl game, and in Disney Land.   She is now trying to decide if she wants to be involved in the AP or IB programs in her high school.  In order to make this decision, she has to have some future vision of where she wants to go to college and what she wants to commit her life to as an adult.  This is hard talk for a momma to hear.  She is talking about schools that are hours away from home.

Samuel is working his way through the purgatory of middle school.  He has done remarkably well, with only a couple of glitches.  His glitches tend to have more to do with adults who have too much too do or too little actual interest in students.  The lessons were good for Sam as a student and for me as a parent.  We are constantly learning how to navigate this world of public education with personal challenges.   Right now,  Sam is playing basketball for the first season of b-ball supported at the middle school level in his district for 29 years.   He made the B-team.  He was disappointed, for sure. He struggles with the try-out process.  I think he gets too anxious or nervous.  In the games he is much more impressive, but that is too late for making the team he wants.  I he is making the best of it.  There is growth needed.  He will be a better leader and stronger player in many ways.

My Ashley has been out on her own for 8 years.  Emily will be gone, for the most part, in another 2 1/2 , and Sam in 4 1/2.   It seems too soon.  I feel like the business of life, and most specifically of being at teacher, hasn't given me enough time with them.    This school year in particular I spent most of the weekend for the first four months of school in Iowa with my mom while she was in the hospital in Des Moines.   The rest of the time, I was trying to support this TLI (Targeted Literacy Instruction) program.    I am feeling the pull to moderate my existence more, spend more time making memories and living the moments.  I spend so much time checking off lists of things i need to do.    I am in a transitional place.  I "plan" to listen and reflect more as this school year winds down.  I am feeling a pull for change.    I have a difficult time believing God's will for me includes leaving students, but at the same time I am feeling some kind of needed shift.

Long Time Gone

I spent my summer as part of the Great Kansas City Writer's Project in the Summer Institute of 2012.  I put this experience off for many years because I didn't want to take from my family's coveted summer adventures.  My babies are now 11 and 13.  My oldest daughter is now 23.  I decided they might like me to be gone some this summer.  Sam and Em spent most of those days with  Ashley at the "All Things Small"" Daycare (you can follow them on Twitter).  Indeed, they were okay with my working through the summer institute while they hung with the cutest kids in the Metro.  We still did hang out quite a bit, but it was time for me to take this opportunity to explore this professional development and make writing instruction better from my freshmen.

When you have an intensive six hours a day, five days a week, for four weeks experience, it seems essential that any new beliefs you have about writing and writing instruction be embedded in your action right away.  One of the things I have always believed, and believe even more strongly now, is that the more you read the better you read and the more you write the better you write.  I already read a whole heck of a lot.  I decided I needed to get back to the practice of writing a whole heck of a lot more.  I started out strong.  I got a flash drive where I intended to record my writing as I committed to writing about 30 minutes a day.  One of the things I wanted to do is to get on to paper all those crazy stories I tell my students.  So for one, okay maybe two days,  I wrote down some of those stories.    That was about 2 months ago.   

I got back to my classroom and all the responsibilities I tend to accept, and the writing returned to it's location in the basement of my priority structure.   I do write with my students, and I love doing that.  I may even start to post those shaky efforts here, but I've rejected the practice of sitting in the quiet of my personal space and writing my stories in honest and authentic ways.  

I have four blogs.  Yes, FOUR blogs.  It occurred to me that each as a purpose I can use as a way to motivate my writing.  The intention behind this blog has always been to work out the thoughts and feeling, successes and failures of mixing urban education with passionate parenting.  So I asked Emily to join me here.  She will be the new manager of this site.  She will post pictures and the occasional post.  Mostly, I am hoping this collaboration will help remind me to write and be reflective about those two things I love most...teaching and parenting.   

Emily, Ashley, Sam and Mom - Memorial Day 2011.  We all still miss Grandpa. 

Emily at Northwest

Emily joined my Summer Enrichment group this summer.  She participated in all the technical projects and some of the readers' theatre work.  She also went with us on our last two field trips:  Nelson Atkins and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.  I took both Sam and Emily back to see all of both museums on Friday.  I was surprised by how attentive both kids were.  We had a really great time.  Both of them are very curious and interested in new things.  I truly enjoy my summers with them.  I hope next year we get more time together.  As it looks right now, we will get about 25 days together before I go back for a retreat at the end of July.  I am keeping myself open to the needs of the many new teachers at NW this year, but at the same time I do not want to forget that my babies are going to a new school, a public school for the first time.  They will be my priority this year.   They were my first assignment from God, and I can't forget that.  It would seem that would be impossible to forget, but when you have 80+ kids counting on you, it is easy to make excuses for reassigning priorities.  As the father says in Cheaper By the Dozen,  if I fail raising my kids, nothing else will matter much. 

Making Up for Lost Time

So we are on day three of spring break.  The important thing about winter, spring and summer breaks for a person like me (obsessive-compulsive, workaholic) is that if I take the time to remember the purpose of a "break,"  I can use that time to create enough memories with my kiddos to help them forgive me for the limited portions they often get the rest of our lives together.  I like to work.  I am not just some sacrificing, do-gooder who works in service to others even if I don't want to.  I like it.  I like to be busy, I like to have goals.  Actually, I am impossible to get along with in 2, maybe 3, situations in life: first, when I am so busy, I don't feel like I am being success or helpful in anything I am doing AND when I don't have a somewhat complicated and meaningful objective to keep my mind occupied.  My son did not come by his ADHD by accident.  I passionately love my kids, but over the years I have lost some of my ability to effectively prioritize.  I want to do it all; I want to do it all now, and I want to do it all well.  Just for the record, moms, we can not do it ALL well.  That is a myth.  I can't truly parent and enjoy my kids on spring break with a poetry methods book in my hand, for example.

So in order to put parenting on that list of "doing it well,"  I do try to make the breaks filled with "them" time.  Since I am very much an outdoor person,  the memory-making was on short supply with the overflow of an excessive winter.  It has been chilly and rainy for the last 4 days.  In spite of this, we could put off our adventures no longer. We had no plans, we were just certain that they would not involve me working or Sam playing video games.   Sam and I collected Emily from her friend's (Victoria's) house.  The day just about stalled out there because things got rowdy while I was visiting with Victoria's mom.  When I finally got them to the front door, Sam's face was red and his neck was scratched.  Emily was crying and holding an area near her left eye. This is a long story that involves the breaking of a HUGE rule in our house....don't put your hand's on people in anger.  So as I calmly (yes, I was calm) walked them through the choices (while trying to drive) they made and how they made the decisions to put their hands on faces and throats,  they cried profusely and apologized to each other and to me.  I am not naive...just for the record, but I do think they realized they were acting like heathens and I didn't want to go home to perform the semi-required ritualistic removal of fun.

At this point it was still cold,  but we had been planning to visit the community center in our new neighborhood.  We went in an played two hours of Foosball and ping pong.  I was gracious in my winnings and I even gave them a sporting chance.  After two hours of indoor table sports, one works up a thirst.  We went two doors down to an old-fashioned soda fountain in a drug store (I am not making this up). The gentleman there made me an old-fashioned diet cherry coke.  Em had a rootbeer float.  Sam had something green with a name that said something about being green and had a very strong lime flavor.  Then something AMAZING happened, as the gentleman was telling us about the drug store's large assortment of urology supplies, THE SUN CAME OUT!  It also seemed like it warmed up about 10 degrees, but that might of just been the warming of our hearts.  We went home, pumped up our bike tires and explored the new bike trails around our house. May I say at this point, the trails in KC are a gift.  Eventually, we we got home. Mike/Dad was there when we arrived.  He was a little miffed that I took the kids on some adventures on which he intended to be the first to take them, but he forgave me.  Emily and Mike helped me clean leaves out the the flower beds for about 20 minutes.  At about 6pm, they left to go back to the community center.  I cleaned out the beds for another two hours, and as I sit here at 8:31, I have not worked on teaching, coaching, or sponsoring anything for middle schoolers all day.   I am better for it, and I think Sam and Em are too. 

A Day Off......Mostly

So the Coopers are in full-fledged spring break mode. It is officially day 2, if you count the days we would normally go to school, and it I just got up, Sam is already playing Kirby on the wii, Emily is still sawing logs, and Raymond is sitting lovingly on the floor outside my office excited that the people are home again (no 8 hours in a kennel). We have big plans to day...we might go for a bike ride around our new home, then go to the civic center to play some pool, and maybe start on Emily or Sam's science projects (getting chocolate out of fabrics and building a newt habitat, respectively). In between I need to reinvent the curriculum "wheel" again by turning a topic and a book normally for 8-9 graders into an exploratory poetry unit for 7th graders.

So we don't have less to do, but we have more flexibility over when we do it. It is days like this when I get how my job has its perks for my own kids too. Even Ashley has gotten more mom-time. Plus I get to take my 21-year-old baby girl up to get her grown up license tomorrow. We won't mention that I wouldn't have to take her if she hadn't had a series of silly ungrown-up reasons for not having it renewed already...but, again we won't mention that.

On an added note....Ashley and her friend Megan (with more than a little help from her roommate Kreisa) are officially off on their American dream journey of starting their own business. They have obtained their first new client (the only one currently not related to the preschool teaching duo) into the coolest licensed preschool/daycare in Mission. She doesn't look like me, act like me or even think like me, but I managed to damage her with some seriously obsessive similarities when it comes to caring and educating children. She will need her own blog soon. Wait...that is a good idea..I am going to tell her right now. Blessings all!