Gin to Juiceboxes

We have a planning day coming up at our school! If you’re not a teacher, I’ll explain the chorus of angels that just started singing when I typed those words: A planning day is a golden opportunity to actually spend time in your classroom without your students during a regular school day and get some of that endless pile-up of work wittled down! When the words “Planning Day” are announced at our school, one can almost hear the collective cheers (silently of course – inside voices) among the teachers.

So, teachers don’t get a lot of personal time throughout the day. We all know this. The most coveted time in my day (I can’t speak for all teachers, but I have a feeling some will agree with me) is my bathroom break. You see, it’s not like I get to leave my classroom anytime nature calls and just skip to the bathroom to take care of it. No, I am allowed to go during two 40 minute periods throughout the day. And those are the same 40 minute periods when I am allowed to make all my copies, do any planning, call parents, have meetings with colleagues, eat my lunch, get a drink, and oh yeah, breathe.

The fact is clear that I have not written in months. It is not because I haven’t wanted to share what’s been going on in my classroom. Actually, after my breakthrough of deciding that I was going to let go of control just a little bit (a big first step for me) and allow the 5 year olds to just be 5, make some messes, have a cupcake on their birthdays, use 2 minutes of instructional time to cry because they miss their moms and dads – since that day, I have been really rocking in the classroom, I must say. I have planned integrated content lessons, I have taught math and reading in ways that are relevant to the students, “Let’s go to the playground and find 2- and 3-D shapes on the jungle gym everyone!”…”Let’s search for Non-fiction books in the library about real underwater animals and compare them to Spongebob, class!”