The Craziness that is November

Hej friends! I haven’t forgotten about you all, I promise!

This November was a little rough, and also completely awesome. Rather than writing you one complete narrative, I’m going to share a ten vignettes about what I’ve been doing to try to give you an overview of what I’ve been thinking and doing. In no particular order:

1. I learned that every once in a while, I need weekends. I biked in Fruita with my Jonathan and Jeff, went to Missouri for my fall break in mid-October to meet Jonathan’s extended family, presented at the NSTA regional conference in Salt Lake, traveled to Philly for the Knowles Fall Meeting, went to Sun Valley to have a family weekend with Jonathan’s parents, brother, and sister-in-law, and traveled to Chicago for the National Association of Biology Teacher’s annual conference (AKA the nerdiest sleepover ever). That’s six states in six weekends (Colorado, Missouri, Utah, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Illinois) and I was exhausted. I loved all of the things I did, but it was too many things. That’s part of why I haven’t been posting – I was overwhelmed with sub plans and normal life and planes and bikes and meeting people. Last weekend I stayed here, and it was AWESOME. I climbed. I cleaned the house. Like, really cleaned the house! I slept in, Jonathan made me delicious breakfast, I did the massive Thanksgiving grocery run, and cuddled my cat. I love my cat.
2. Thanksgiving is coming! My parents, my brother, and Jonathan’s parents are all coming to our house for Thanksgiving! Excitement about this has been sustaining me through lots of crazy the last week or so. I love the cooking, I love having lots of people over, and Jeff gets to meet Hobbes. It’s going to be awesome. Awesome sauce.
3. It snowed yesterday!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say anything else?
4. Bonnie Bassler was the final speaker at NABT, and her talk was the most re-energizing argument for why we teach science I’ve ever heard. She studies quorum sensing in bacteria (see her TED talk here) and teaches a molecular biology for non-majors class. In that class her goal is to create scientifically literate citizens, people who aren’t afraid to read about science in the news or ask questions about science. She pointed out that four major problems we have are biology based: food, energy, the environment, and health. We need people who aren’t scientists to understand this science to be able to work on it.
5. My friends are great. Really really great. The last night of NABT, we stayed up until 12:30 swapping ski videos, stories, and back rubs. I felt so very much like part of a community, which is something I’m still really missing here in Utah. It was really important for me to feel that.
6. I can’t multi-task to save my life. This is true of having good conversations (thanks to Mom and Kirstin Milks for the best conversations of NABT), grading, reading, knitting, you name it. I work best when I do one thing at a time.
7. Jonathan and I saw Roy High’s Cinderella last night, and it was amazing. We got super sappy (we both participated in Cinderella in 7th grade, and he remembers watching me dance from the catwalk as he did the lights) and really just enjoyed ourselves. It was a really top-notch production. Of course, now all the songs are stuck in my head and I only remember half the words…
8. November is hard when you’re a teacher. For everyone. This is the month of PD conferences (I missed four days in November, and two in the last week of October). It’s when we get into cells and cell energetics, and most of my kids hate biology right now. We’re tired. But I also know this happens every year. I was talking with a first year teacher at NABT, and his face when I told him that this was normal was one of pure relief. So no, other teachers, it’s not just you. It’s me too, and everyone else. We’ll get through it.
9. I had a great conversation with my kids setting boundaries around emails. This is a bit of a follow-on from my previous post about boundaries. I got seven emails in two days while I was at NABT from students asking me when I was going to grade whatever late thing or test correction they had turned in. I purposefully don’t bring grading to NABT because I want to focus on being there, and these emails always turn my stomach. It’s really hard for me to feel like a good teacher when I’m constantly getting reminded that I haven’t done something; it makes me feel like my kids don’t trust me that I’m working as hard as I possibly can. There are lots of reasons why they feel pressure to keep their grades up, but they’re offloading that pressure to me rather than turning stuff in on time or studying for the test the first time. So I told them they weren’t allowed to email me that anymore. They are totally allowed to email me and ask me if they turned something in and I’ll check my folders for them. And they are allowed to come in (in person!) and talk with me if they think I made a mistake! But I’m just deleting emails that ask “when will you grade this.” They were actually really receptive because I explained why I was frustrated and that I didn’t want to be frustrated anymore. So I’ll chalk that one up as a win.
10. Through all of this craziness, people have showed me that they love me. I am so lucky. Sara and Bernice both picked days of the week and they call me once a week just to say hi. Jonathan has made me breakfasts and dinners and taken care of the cat and hugged me and cheered me on at the climbing gym and emptied the dishwasher and folded laundry and sent me silly memes. Hannah gave me excellent advice and told adventure stories, one of my colleagues left me the best motivational geology pun ever, Jeff has planned adventures with us, Dad and I have swapped stories, and Mom and I have had some (but never enough) of our two/three hour conversations. I am so so so lucky.

 

I don’t give my kids homework over Thanksgiving Break, or any break. I want them to actually be able to take a break. And for you, I’ll do the same. My wish for you this Thanksgiving is that you get to sleep in one morning, eat something you love, and be around someone that you love!

Hej då,

Jamie

That one time I was stuck in Chicago…

This past weekend, I flew to Philadelphia for the 2016 Knowles Fall Meeting! I’ve written a lot about this community and what they mean to me, and this weekend was no exception.

Of course, in order to hang out with them, I had to get there first. This proved to be an adventure.

I started in the Salt Lake airport with a 5pm flight to Midway, Chicago. Unfortunately, Chicago had gotten lots of snow that morning, so afternoon flights were all super full of people whose morning flights had been cancelled. I made it Midway just fine, only to receive an email upon arrival that my Midway to Philly flight was delayed from 9:40 to 12:35. Ouch.

Luckily for me, my friend Sara Abeita was on the same final leg with me, so we propped our feet up and chatted the hours away. When our flight got delayed until 1, I bet her five bucks we’d be spending the night in Chicago. A lot of drama later, they finally cancelled our flight. Sara got on the phone with the booking company and I got in line with the Southwest desk, and soon we had a new flight at 8am the next morning. Several phone calls to hotels later and a thirty minute drive to O’Hare and we slept for three hours before getting up and going back to the airport.

Those of you who know me know that I don’t function super well without a whole lot of sleep. I was completely slap-happy and I thought everything was hilarious! Luckily, I had the whole back row of seats to myself (and so did Sara on the other side) and we both laid down and passed out for another two hours on the plane.

The beautiful thing about all of this was that Sara and I didn’t totally stress out. Lots of people around us were mad and complaining and Sara and I just did what we needed to do and got out of there as quickly as possible. The negativity was overwhelming! I was so very glad that Sara was there, and that we just fixed as much as we could and then went to bed.

Once we finally got to the meeting, though, it felt a bit like coming home. I really really like those people. I like working on my teaching with them and I like swapping stories with them and they really are one of the best parts of my whole life. It feels good to have a rhythm of how we work together, especially with my inquiry partner! We’ve been a pair for two years now, which means I know a bit about Jonathan’s classroom and school (yes, this is a different Jonathan than my husband, and yes, I appreciate the joke) and we both have a good feel for how we work together. I haven’t had this kind of long-term working relationship with someone before, and it means we can do a lot of vulnerable and difficult work I couldn’t do with someone I didn’t know as well.

Also Jonathan from Knowles got to talk to my Jonathan about skis for twenty minutes on my phone, which was the first time they’d met, and it was hilarious and perfect. I like it when my worlds overlap.

The flights home were boring, which is exactly how I like flights to be. Now I’m scrambling a bit to get caught up after two weeks of conferences in a row, but we’ll get there.

Your homework: How do you react to stress out of your control like cancelled flights? Who would you most want to be stuck in an airport with?

Hej då,

Jamie