True Confessions: I make a lot of mistakes during the course of my day.

Sometimes I print color instead of black and white. I never ordered a stapler last year and THANK GOD FOR NICE SECRETARIES. Sometimes (um, maybe all the time) I leave my water bottle, clipboard, or pencil case in my colleagues’ room when they graciously allow me to teach in their sacred space. I became distracted and missed a meeting with my boss two weeks ago. BUT. I have this really, really, great redeeming quality: I am loyal to a fault when I work with kids. And I work with a lot of ém.

I work with kids who I´m positive are going to change this world for the better.

I work with kids who make me laugh so hard I snort.

I work with gifted kids.

I work with some kids who play with baby dolls and matchbox cars, and some who wear makeup and vape in the bathrooms.

I work with kids who are so polite I will pay their parents to teach me how I can teach my children to be so courteous.

I work with Type-A kids.

I work with Type-B-Surfer-Dude kids.

I work with kids who are not going to bloom on my watch but need my nurturing right now.

…I also work with some really, really, REALLY, needy kids. When I stop and think about the stuff their childhood was made out of, I feel relieved that they make it into school every day.  Some face hunger, abuse, neglect, or the unfair responsibility of helping to raise and look after younger siblings. Some face a grain of the aforementioned while others face a walloping combination of them. It is unbelievably hard to be a young adult in the most normal of circumstance-our kids need us to be tireless advocates who can teach them how to be really awesome humans. And for those that are facing adversity on a large scale, they need us to believe in them. The gross fact is that our kids need more and more socio-emotional support than we would like to believe they need. I know many teachers who refuse to let kids leave their classrooms for music lessons or guidance counselor appointments. I admire these educational giants who are relentless about delivering high-quality craft to their kids. Let me say again, Educational Giants-I admire you. But I also wonder…does it matter? If they don´t get that music lesson to get through the day, if they don´t get that support group that only meets period 2…does our lesson even matter?

I think I said ¨More kindness,¨ about 1000x this week. I said it when students became impatient with one another, themselves, or with a teacher. They are so quick to rip themselves down, which is scary to me. If I can get them to be more kind and internalize some self-worth, I´ll feel proud of myself come June.

And this, my friends, is why I had my cell phone out in class this week! (Stay with me, I promise.)

I´m in the throes of teaching Writing: Units of Study over multiple grade levels, and coaching/cheerleading/begging teachers not to throw in the towel when it gets really tough. Because like all good things in life, the very best writing instruction comes with the very hardest work. I had a major problem this past week: my mini-lessons….not so ¨mini¨. They were creeping into the (CRINGE) 15-17 minute range, which left less time in the precious allotment for writing.

Enter, my cell phone.

I literally set the timer on it for 10 minutes, and when it went off…I knew I had to shake my tail feather. It was incredibly helpful for my time management, even though I had promised myself that keeping an eye on the clock would suffice. Spoiler alert: it didn´t. The architecture of the minilesson is so precise, that I need all brain cells operating on the connection, teach, active engagement, and link components.  I cannot rely on my eyes watching the clock. When I tell my kiddos ¨Off you go!¨, I really need it to be a ¨wheels to the rail¨ situation. And when I can accomplish this in 10-12 minutes, the wheels are. Kids write longer and stronger, and their hands fly across the paper, filling up pages. Each small group I worked with this week was curious why my phone was out because this is a pretty major taboo school rule. The cool part of this is that when I explained why it was out (¨Your writing is so important that I need to make sure you get at least 30 minutes of today to do it¨) their reaction was palpable. They sat up taller, and they were more self-assured. I treated them like writers, so they acted like writers.

Our kids deserve this. They deserve a tight minilesson so that they can have protected space to read, write, and share. In that moment, it does not matter if they forgot a pencil because they were busy making breakfast for a younger sibling. It does not matter if they have been on Superior Honor Roll every marking period since Pre-K. It does not matter if they never remember their locker combination. In this moment, they are all writers. They are all writing. And they know they can.

18 months ago I came home to a box sitting on the island in my kitchen.

¨What´s this?¨ I asked The Husband.

¨A chromebook,¨ he said. ¨So you can start writing¨ (Swoon).

I wrote, and I wrote and I wrote. I created Google Doc after Google Doc. I got smarter about my teaching. I decided to start a blog. And then I stopped.

I got nervous. It´s intimidating to write all the feels, and put them out there for the world to see (or, for the 13 people that currently read this). It´s easy to think you don´t have much to say.

I also lied. I said, I´ll do it tomorrow.

Do it this weekend.

Do it in the morning.

Do it next month.

Do it over the school break.

Might as well be, won´t do it.

If I wait until I´m ready, until I have the ¨perfect topic¨, until I have enough time to proofread, until I am done revising each blog post…I´ll never do it.

This year I´m co-teaching an ELA class, and I´m coaching teachers in Middle School on writing instruction. The two things I say over and over to teachers are ¨Audience matters. Confidence matters.¨(they will actually tell you I that also say ´teach the writer not the writing´ pretty often). The more I blog, the better I relate to my kiddos. The more I blog, the smarter I get. So I´ll be doing more of this. You can probably expect typos.

The time is now.