30 Days of Wellness

Well here it is. 30 days with me and the voice in my head. I've been thinking about many things recently past, present and future and they all have one thing in common- ME! :) I've been running into several people from my past recently. People who I have not seen in many years. People who know recognize me even though on the outside I have totally transformed my appearance. Many ask, how did you do it? I as myself, "how do I keep doing it?" So here it is 30 Days of How I Keep Doing It.





Many of my new friends and acquantences have no idea who this is:





Look closely, I'm under there. 6+ years ago, this is what I looked like on the outside. Now, depending on the day of the week or hour of the day, there is someone else standing in front of you. Sure she maybe sneaking in the back door of school 2 minutes before the bell rings with 6 bags, her shirt on backwards and inside out, taking 2 seconds to inhale deeply and exhale slowly. But that person in the photograph above is still a part of me.





Throughout all of this, I tell people, it's not about the weight. (Thanks, Lance.) It's not a number on the scale, or how many calories I burned that day. Bottom line- it's about what I fed my body. I cannot be mentally or physically healthy without making conscious choices.





2 confessions:


1. I am a stress eater. When stress rears its nasty head, you will see me reach for the candy bowl or tiptoe to hide in the kitchen with whatever I can get my mits on.





Stress has reared its ugly head in my life. Like, most of the world, the economy has impacted my family in ways that I can't begin to describe. My husband lost his job in March of 2010- 3 weeks before my son Toby was born. Since then, he has gone back to school fulltime for nursing and works parttime at Menards. So my role in our family has changed. Not only, am I the breadwinner, I teach fulltime (only my fellow teachers truly understand what this is like), I also have had to add other jobs on to my already amazingly hectic whirlwhind of a day. To help supplement our income I tutor and teach cycling at the Y. I needed to keep a gym membership- a gym that has a pool and provides daycare so that I can work with other people on their own road to wellness. As Covey would say- Win-Win. I also feel like a single mom- which many of you reading this are.





2. I started this rapped weight gain in the 4th grade, possibly when my best friend moved away. I spent my teens overweight, college life overweight and the first 5 years of my marriage weighing 250+ pounds. (This will be a future post- has my weight loss affected my marriage?)





With that said. I know what it's like to "be there". To stand on the scale with 100+ pounds to loose and think, "I can't do that." Staring 100+ pounds down is like handing someone a pair of running shoes and saying, "Today you're running a marathon. Ready- Set- Go!" Get real. I broke it down step by step- day by day. So I will spend the next 30 days letting you know how. How I did it and how I keep doing it. Step by step- day by day.

Brushing the Dust Off

Wow- it's been three years! I make may way back to the blog-o-sphere for a little professional study. For the next year I will be using my blog as a tool for reflection. My goal as an educator, mother, wife and all around human is to improve on my current state. I will be posting my reflections here to document this journey.

I started a new position in my building this year. While it is still 5th grade, much of the curriculum is accelerated. I also have the pleasure of teaching 4th and 6th grade Social Studies, which I am extremely excited about! My students all use Learning Logs to reflect on their work in my classroom. If I am expecting them to do it, I have decided to take a great leap and follow as well.

WARNING

My reflections may be more honest and straight forward than I have been in the past. Well, enjoy the ride and thanks for following along with me!

Jog the Web

So I found a wicked website that allowed me to keep a running track of middle grade authors. Here are 11 authors sites. Some may be new but most of them you should recognize...It's called Jog the Web and you can "jog" along with me by clicking here: X

Hear Ye Hear Ye

Don't forget that Reading Logs for September are due Wednesday!

You also need a white t-shirt on Friday for Tye-dying! How messy and exciting! Twist, twist, wrap with rubber band- snap!

Busy Week!

Not only do we start Stanford Testing this week. We also have these celebrations going on:

Tuesday Night: Curriculum Night
Wednesday: Drama Club Tryouts and Math Curriculum Night in the Round Room
Friday: Scholastic Book Orders are due!

Phew....I'm looking forward to seeing all the parents again or for the first time!

Our Read ALOUD

The Wednesday Wars

On Wednesday afternoons, Holling Hoodhood is alone in the classroom with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, who Holling is convinced hates his guts. He feels more certain after Mrs. Baker assigns Shakespeare's plays for Holling to discuss during their shared afternoons. Each month in Holling's tumultuous seventh-grade year is a chapter in this novel set in suburban Long Island during the late '60s.

Mrs. Baker is too good to be true: she arranges a meeting between Holling and the New York Yankees, brokers a deal to save a student's father's architectural firm, and, after revealing her past as an Olympic runner, coaches Holling to the varsity cross-country team.

However, Schmidt, makes the implausible believable and the everyday momentous. We are finding the story's themes: the cultural uproar of the '60s, the internal uproar of early adolescence, and the timeless wisdom of Shakespeare's words very interesting. Holling's unwavering, distinctive voice offers a gentle, hopeful, moving story of a boy who, with the right help, learns to stretch beyond the limitations of his family, his violent times, and his fear, as he leaps into his future with his eyes and his heart wide open.

Schools then Vs. NOW
SO far we have found that in Y2K there aren't many chalk-filled erasers here to clap at Baldwin.

Just like Holling's school, we too have little rodents running around freely!

They have textbooks for each subject while we only have 1.

That Shakespeare is a wordsmith!

Hurricanes, living things, Podcasts- Oh My!

Classification

So we rounded up the week classifying the alphabet! How do you classify letters you ask? Easy. First we grouped them A-J (the first 10 letters) then we broke them down into smaller and smaller groups. Students came up with grouping them by shape, strokes, sounds they make, vowels, even students names. So creative! We related this activity to how scientists classify animals. Scientific Classification is a grouping in itself. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Or as we like to say: Kings Play Chess On Fine Grained Sand.

Can you name the 5 kingdoms?


Our Living Things Research Project

Students created a web of the 6 functions of living things. Then in groups of 2 they analyzed different animals from Sandra Markle's Animal Scavengers Series. Here are a few of the finished posters. This is one bunch that is crazy about living things!

Hurricanes

We are reviewing map skills by locating the current hurricanes. Students are also locating places on a map using longitude and latitude coordinates. Check out Ike and Josephine here!

Podcasts- Oh My!

As word nerds and future word nerds unite we are sharing books that we love by giving book talks. We listened to our first Podcast: Chatting about Books from Read Write Think. Emily Manning introduced us to some This week we checked out the Spatulatta Cookbook and Fairy Tale Feasts- two great additions to our library.