A Great Day In Sheridan

I got to work with some truly wonderful educators yesterday in Sheridan. I presented on “Teacher As Writer” to second grade teachers in the morning and third grade in the afternoon. I read a couple of my pieces and snippets of books about writing by writers such as Stephen King, Anne Lammot, Judith Barrington, and Deborah Cameron. We followed that with a writing prompt asking participants to write about something they were feeling at the moment. Here’s my own response to the morning prompt:

Yes, I am so delighted. I’m sharing with other educators, it’s about writing of course, what else would I share about…and that delights me. But I think what delights me even more is that after 28 years in education I have something to share. I’m not burned out, broken, beat down, holed up in my classroom, nursing a career of wounds perpetrated by parents, students, and agenda-laden administrators. I remember thinking early in my career I might not ever have a valuable contribution to my craft. I’d go to inservices like this one and hear older educators talk about some cool idea we could use and I wondered…will I ever have a cool idea to share? Then I joined the National Writing Project and realized I was a writer and that I always had been. So many educators don’t realize this…and that’s my cool idea.

And this from the second:

Woah, I’m tired. I’m not prepared for the “over fifty” changes taking place. I hear the bed calling some nights at 8:30. The images of me in pictures on the walls point and laugh as I admit I just can’t stay up as late as they used to. I can’t remember a whole lot of junk I used to and some of it isn’t junk-sometimes I look right into the faces of people I’ve known for a few years and the name just won’t come. I don’t burn calories like I used to; my body is creeping toward the apple shape of my father’s. Like his eyebrows, mine too are slowly edging toward one another above my nose, and speaking of the nose, I’m shaving or trimming in there a lot more often, which must have made my ears jealous for they too are now longing for scissorial attention.

The best days of my life used to exhilarate me – I could go for hours. Now those same activities, exciting as they are, drain me. Of course, I love my life, but there a few things of old I miss, and a few new visitors I just don’t care for.