Heart for Writing

Today is my birthday but it brings back a memory that my "Icelandic mother" made for me many years ago.  After I arrived in Iceland , I turned 18 several days later.  It is still difficult to be away from home at that age, although you think you are all grown up. I remember being tired after those few days, “jet lag” as I would call it.   Iceland is five hours ahead of us.   Mamma heard me mention something about a song that I liked.   She was fluent in German along with her native Icelandic and spoke some broken English. We taught each other. So she had a record that she put on the stereo and turned it up so I would hear it. “Upon the Roof” played and made me feel right at home.   I loved the other songs too.   It was instrumental by Percy Faith and his orchestra. What can you do, but get up to that?   I got up and went out to the living room to smiling faces.   It was the weekend and both mamma and pabbi were home.   We ate b...

I can’t believe it is the first of July already. Where does time go? Time! I have been gone and not near any internet access so that’s why I missed my Tues. slice.   I know that I want to write more than just Tuesdays but life just gets in the way. I was cleaning my parent’s home.   My mom can’t do it any more and my dad is ill and we have no idea how long it might be and my mom wants everything to look nice. Mom is 86 and Dad is 88.   I feel very blessed to have had my parents this long.   Mom has severe emphysema and Dad has Parkinson Disease.   Dad was a very industrious farmer who worked in the factory to feed and clothe his five children and wife.   My mother never worked outside the home but she was a help mate to my dad. I believe I talked about that earlier.   She is still by his side in their home.   They have been married for 65 years this year.   It is a legacy for us. Time! What is time?   It goes too slow when we are waiti...

First I have to make a few comments about a workshop I went to yesterday. It was the All Write Institute and it was so inspiring!  It's like a breath of fresh air and like the first day of spring and summer, a new beginning! It makes me feel ready to begin again.  With the Keynote, I listened to six speakers.  Some of course were the same speakers because I liked Jeff Anderson so much, I went back to hear him twice.  I felt he could help me with what I wanted to learn at this time to help my students the most at this time. With that said, summer brings in things we don't have to do; we don't have to wear winter coats, no worry about snow or shoveling, the lack of ice on the roads makes it so much easier to drive and easier to walk, we don't freeze and have cold breezes that make it hard to breathe in the cold, no fear of sickness like colds or flu, and finally we feel more like being outside (well I don't like cold) so I stay inside more in the winter. Thi...

Hello!  I just had to write today!  I was so inspired again by what Ruth said in her blog yesterday and what another blogger said.  There are so many things in our lives happening but we do have priorities and we manage to always do what is most important to us.  Writing is one of those things.  I knew something was missing.  I loved writing in March and April but when May came, I just fell apart.  No excuses! Sure I have aging parents, school was coming to an end, I had standards to meet and lessons to prepare but the enjoyment of writing could have eased the stress and helped me to cope. Isn't that the way it is? Sometimes, we have to go through things and situations in our lives to really understand what we are missing.  I appreciate all the people who blog and are willing to write down how they feel.  It puts them out there. Sometimes at the risk of being shot down but in the end, the community embraces who you are and identifies wit...

This will be an unusual post.  I am trying to decide what to write about and decide to just write about what comes to mind. I know it is sometimes difficult for my students to come up with ideas and I want them to know that it is sometimes difficult for me as well. Writing isn't always easy for me either.  I have to dig deep for ideas. Sometimes it is about myself, my family, my pets (even though I have none at the moment- I can write about the ones I have had), my hobbies, my children or grandchildren.  I have to stop and think about what I am going to write about. Today I was so excited to see the class and the students in my 6th grade Language Arts class.  They bring excitement and life to class.  I look at them and see potential for the future.  They care about each other. Oh, that doesn't mean that they are always nice to each other, but they act like siblings and they at least respect each other most of the time. They aren't rude and nasty. I appr...

It has been many years since I arrived on the island of Iceland.   However, I still harbor wonderful memories from my time there.   I was only seventeen when I first stepped off the prop plane in Keflavik, Iceland.   It was scary at first.   The bus I was riding on drove over a gravel road through fields of lava.   The land was black and barren. A cold blue sky was clear as crystal lakes I had seen in pictures. At seventeen, life is so exciting. I was ready for adventure and it never occurred to me that I wasn’t going to see my family, pets, and friends for over a year.   I just went with a vision of seeing the world.   All I had to go on was a picture of an older couple, who turned out to be 14 years older than my own parents,   that I was going to live with.   I had found out the last week of my senior year of high school that I was accepted into the exchange program to go to Iceland.   My plans originally were to go to Switzerland, bu...

I’m continuing the persuasive research paper in class.   The students have their notes written.   We marked them with the arguments/counterarguments.   Then they cut them out and pasted them on paper in the order in which they wanted to write them in paragraphs. They wrote their introduction.   Today we worked on beginning to type the rough draft.   I am conferencing with the students while they work on their papers. Tomorrow they will be back in the computer lab to type the whole paper.   They have to add the conclusion.   My goal is to have the paper at least typed by Thurs.   We’ll type the bibliography in the classroom because next week we begin to take our state proficiency test and we won’t have the time nor the computer lab.   I’m excited because most of the students appear to understand what I have asked them to do.   There are a few who do not have all their notes and don’t have the rough draft. These had the notes but have l...