The Fifth Year of Two Writing Teachers' March Slice of Life Challenge

   It is the fifth year of the March Slice of Life Challenge with Ruth and Stacey at their Two Writing Teachers blog.  This link speaks about starting a blog if you need one, but the basic challenge is to post every day in March and to support others through your comments.  At this post, scroll down to see the comments of others who blog with us.  It's such a supportive and wonderful community of bloggers.  One learns much about oneself and others by writing.  Please take the plunge and join us.

Sweetness for Valentine's Day

         Poetry Friday is hanging out with Laura Salas-Writing The World For Kids

                                                        If you love Valentines

                                                   and the sweetest of rhymes,

                                                please read these poems today  

                                                written in old fashioned ways!

      I had a wonderful mother-in-law named Helen.  She warmly welcomed me as a new daughter into her family.  Through all the years and visits, she and I had fabulous talks about just everything:  raising children as well as politics, people’s behavior along with town events, the virtues of hand-mixing batter or use of an electric mixer.  I never heard her say a bad word about others, nor did she complain about anything.  As they say, she kept a stiff upper lip, even in the most sorrowful times, like when her husband of many years died suddenly of a heart attack soon after he retired.  Broken dreams.  She was a kind woman who helped out at the church nursery well past seventy and continued to play the piano for church when needed until the last year of her life.  I loved her and still miss her.  She just made it into the 21st Century, after having lived almost all of the 20th.

My dear mother-in-law Helen was one of those teachers who, after leaving high school, taught in a one-room schoolhouse in the 1920’s.  She rose early, saddled a horse, and rode to the country building where her first duty was to start the fire.  Like that story told so eloquently by Charles Portis, she had grit.  And, as a true woman of her generation, she saved everything!  I am the proud recipient of many old-fashioned Valentines given to her (Miss Helen) by her students, probably about 1928.  I thought since we will celebrate St. Valentine’s Day next Tuesday, I would share a little sweetness with all of you. 

Here are photos of some, and the rhymes found inside are beneath.  Many are intricate, lacy, and pop out.   A few have been altered like little hearts have been cut out in them, and it’s clear that it was hand done.  You may be able to see which are the pop out ones, but photos did not show that very well. 

                                              Happy Valentine’s Day!

To my Valentine

      Your voice is like a

              song bird

The sweetest thing I’ve

         ever heard.

May you be always happy, gay,

And joyous, as you are to-day,

Is what my ardent hopes express

For you, my Love,

           and nothing less!

The whole world

   loves a lover

So they say—I hope

        it’s true,

‘Cause then the world’s

     in love with me

‘Cause I’m in love

           with you.

Dear Teacher,

Don’t overlook

This One

from

me

You’re my Valentine

‘Cause you’re sweet

as you can be.

I hope my heart will

     reach you

And be there right

       on time,

It’s just chock-full of

     loving thoughts

For you, dear Valentine.

Oh let’s make life

a jolly lark

A picnic if you

please.

And it will be just

this for me

If words you say

are these:

I Love You!

The Valentine I’m sending

Is sealed with kisses two.

Which I trust will reach you safely,

For both are meant for you.

Of all the girls I know

You are the very best.

To me you seem much brighter

Thank any of the rest.

Postman, handle this with care!

I’m sending my heart to a lady fair,

Who is an old sweetheart of mine

And I want her to be: My Valentine.

I think that I shall try a line,

I hope to catch a Valentine,

There’s only one I want, ‘tis true.

Oh! Can’t you guess that one is you?

Comfort - My One Little Word - In the classroom

Tuesday Slice of Life Is Hosted by Ruth and Stacey at Two Writing Teachers.  Check It Out!

Toward the end of October 2011, Ruth Ayres wrote on her own blog, Ruth Ayres Writes-Discover, Play, Build of the importance of noticing the tiny things.  One line from Ruth continues to strike me as important in the classroom as it is important in the details of our lives.  She writes:  This is true in life, teaching, and writing. So I decided to challenge myself to writing small, looking for the tiny in order to make big realizations. 

            Whenever I am struggling to find a topic on which to write, I return to that post to re-read it.  I have copied it to put into my writer’s notebook.  This time, like so many other times in my posts, I am making connections.  I’m connecting again to Ruth’s ideas, I’m connecting to my One Little Word, Comfort, and I’m connecting to the classroom and teaching.  The quote I chose for my first page in my One Little Word book is this: Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things in which smiles, and kindnesses, and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort- Humphrey Davy.  I am also connecting to Diana and her blog, One Literacy Coach because she sometimes posts such creative and thoughtful graphics like Wordles or something from Tagxedo in her posts. 

Two Books Based on Truth - But About Lies

You can hook up with this kitlit meme: It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA at teach mentor texts, thanks to Jen and Kellee!  Visit to find still more books for your TBR list!


  It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys, a variety of reviews to find even more books that you can't live without.

I managed to finish two books this week: The Blood Lie by Shirley Reva Vernick and An Elephant In The Garden by Michael Morpurgo (War Horse).  They are both fiction stories, but based on truth.  

The Blood Lie is an alarming story about a little girl lost, prejudices jumping to conclusions, and will be useful in middle school or higher in discussing how people act out of fear when they encounter differences, and the terrible result of a seed planted with rumors and lies.  In this particular story, one person needed to move the searchers out of the woods where people were searching for the girl because he was waiting for an illegal liquor delivery. (It was the time of Prohibition.) So, he told the story that Jewish people made sacrifices of young children in order to use their blood on special holy days.   It is based on an event that happened in a community of Massena, New York in 1928, when a young girl disappeared and a Jewish boy was accused of her murder.  Five years later Hitler held the reins of power in Germany. 

A Favorite Anthology

All the Poetry Friday posts this week can be found at The Iris Chronicles with Karissa.

It’s been a long week, yet I am being renewed by attending our state’s annual Reading Conference.  Some days are better than other days as all of you know and I am happy to be able to do something different besides my regular job. 

If I cannot run off to a conference full of inspirational people and conversation and books, often I turn to a book that was gifted to me a few years ago by a colleague.  It is a poetry anthology titled Teaching With Fire, Poetry That Sustains The Courage To Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner.  Considering the year’s challenges to teachers and the newest steps to be taken with the common core standards, it seems that each teacher should be given this book, or at least a poem from it, for personal restoration when there happens one of THOSE days, sometimes weeks.  The book is organized into sections like Hearing The Call, Making Contact and Daring To Lead.  A brief essay from a teacher, sharing what makes the poem a special one in his or her life, prefaces each poem. 

As I browsed my copy of the book, I looked at the poems I had marked with sticky notes.  Three are from William Stafford, and those are the three I will share.  Each is one I love, and each connects to a personal story that makes me love it even more. 

     The first is The Way It Is, the whole of the poem found here.

          There’s a thread you follow.  It goes among

            things that change.  But it doesn’t change.

           People wonder about what you are pursuing.