Slice of Life | Reflections on the Teche

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Slice of Life: Perfecting Papa Muffins

Posted in Recipe, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged family recipe, Oat bran muffins, pumpkin muffins on December 31, 2019| 9 Comments »

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I am not much of a cook or a baker, for that matter, but I recently had results from a blood test that my cholesterol is high, so I turned to my mother-in-law.

“I seem to remember you made Papa muffins to help Jerry reduce his cholesterol,” I said.

“Yes, he’s the only person I know who reduced his cholesterol through diet,” she replied.

“Can I have the recipe?” Minga (that’s her grandma name) sent me a text with a picture of her recipe card.

Papa died in 2004, so it’d been a while since she had made his muffins, but my daughters all remember them fondly as a treat when they stayed at Minga and Papa’s house.

My first attempt was severely lacking. Once I found the Oat Bran cereal, I wasn’t sure what package meant. Was it like oatmeal that can be bought in individual packets? Thank goodness, Minga is only a text away for consultation.

“No, package means the whole box.”

The liquid to dry parts seemed uneven to me, but I followed the recipe. The muffins were dry and crumbly and difficult to eat.

Around the holiday season, I love pumpkin flavor, so I wondered how they would taste with pumpkin rather than bananas. Moister? I hoped.

A batch around Thanksgiving was good with the added pumpkin, but it wasn’t until Christmas Eve that I perfected the recipe. I only added 1 cup of flour, rather than 2 cups.

Today, New Year’s Eve, the batch is even better. I cut down on cooking time and added vanilla to the wet part. Yum! Yum!

Papa muffins will be a traditional holiday treat!

Recipe for Perfect Papa Pumpkin Muffins
1 box oat bran cereal
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 T baking powder
1 T baking soda
1 t cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar (I used organic cane sugar)
pinch of salt
Mix together
4 eggs
2 cups skim milk
1/3 cup oil
4 heavy squirts of honey
2 ripe bananas or 1 can pumpkin puree
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix wet parts and add to dry. Stir. Do not beat.
Line and spray muffin tins.
Bake at 400 degrees for 16 minutes or until brown.
Makes 24-28 muffins.
Anne Simon and Margaret Simon

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Slice of Life: A Poetry Walk

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged downtown New Iberia, field trip, poetry walk on December 10, 2019| 5 Comments »

Last week our gifted students in grades 4-6 went on a field trip that incorporated three activities. Each teacher’s group rotated through practicing for the Shadows Christmas play, visiting the Bayou Teche Museum, and going on a Poetry Walk.

Pelicans, a sculpture at Paul Allain’s Architecture office

The Poetry Walk took students through a sculpture garden, bayou side boardwalk, and a pocket park called Church Alley. I wanted the students to experience each space in a unique way. For the sculpture garden, we wrote a simple free verse poem of 15 words or less, along the boardwalk, a haiku form that reflected the theme of nature, and in the alley, a mask poem written in the voice of someone from the past.

At the museum, we learned interesting facts about the Bayou Teche and the founding of New Iberia. Frederick Duperier, a founding father, wanted a pathway from his home to the church, and later, the alley was used by nuns who lived in Mount Carmel, the Duperier’s former home.

Here’s a sampling of poems from my students.

Bayou Teche, a snake
slithering its way past us.
The Teche silent still.
Breighlynn, Bayou Teche haiku

Walking through an alley
a very dark, dark alley
to be lit up by
a beautiful church.
The dark dirt
of the alley
much darker than I thought
but a bit brighter
from my very own steps.
Breighlynn, Church Alley

Church Alley pocket park in downtown New Iberia.

The nuns, somber and solemn,
pass silently by my form.
They are hope, in a dark world.
Madison, Church Alley septercet

eyes big
nose as big as an elephant
peeper sees everything
no matter mouse or bug
Landon, Sculpture poem

On the Bayou Teche
pelican in the distance
lily pads floating
Maddox, Bayou haiku

We celebrated these small poems with sharing time after each writing time. The students cheered for each other and enjoyed being poets paying attention to common places. Each poem was unique. The whole walk took about an hour with 20 minutes in each site. I recommend creating a poetry walk for your next field trip.

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Slice of Life: NCTE19

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged #NCTE19, Charles Waters, Fran McVeigh, Irene Latham, JoAnne Duncan, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, Lauren Wolk, Lester Laminack, Ralph Fletcher, Travis Crowder on November 26, 2019| 5 Comments »

I’m back home after a whirlwind trip to Baltimore for NCTE19. NCTE is one of the most anticipated and yet the fastest events ever! So much preparation and so little time. It went by in a flash.

A flash of friends from far away!

Selfie with roommate Joanne Duncan from Washington.

A flash of powerful, profound speeches!

“Our society needs teachers who stand up for truth.” Lorena German

A flash of authors and ARCs!

With authors Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and Lauren Wolk getting signed ARCs.

A flash of authentic action!

Not just tolerance– Normalize, Nurture, Embrace
Travis Crowder, Access, Equity, Inquiry, and Reflection

A flash of the best educators!

Lester Laminack caught this shot of me chatting with one of my favorite educators, Fran McVeigh.

A flash of poets!

Charles Waters and Irene Latham talk about their new book Dictionary for a Better World.

A flash of inspiration!

Uncover your obsessions.
Keep your eyes and heart open.
Be surprise-able.
Get in touch with wonder.
Ralph Fletcher, Seeing the World through Poet’s Eyes

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Slice of Life: Wandering through History

Posted in Gifted Education, Slice of Life, Teaching, Travel, Writing, tagged field trip, Hammond, Renaissance Festival on November 19, 2019| 4 Comments »

On Wednesday in freezing temperatures (an unusual 28 degrees in the morning), I traveled with gifted colleagues and 4th-6th graders from our district to the Renaissance Festival in Hammond, LA. As the day wore on, the temperatures rose to a comfortable 50 degrees. With a number of parents attending, I ended up spending the day with just one student, Madison.

Madison loves all things Renaissance. We watched glassblowing and juggling and had a quick recorder lesson. I loved watching her absorb it all. When we ran into classmates, she pulled out the wooden dagger she had bought and challenged them to a dual.

My students wrote about their experience and here are a few quotes:

So at the renaissance fair we started at the Queen stage and watched a play which I didn’t watch all of. The next play we went to was Romeo and Juliet which was quite funny. Shakespeare himself directed Romeo and Juliet and the first thing he said was dumb which we replied with no and which he replied well your watching a play directed by someone who calls himself Shakespeare. There was two families and the I was in was the Montagues the other people were Capulets. We will not talk about the rest and no I was not Romeo.
Jaden, 4th grade

We saw this ride where you sit on a wooden horse and you in a way, joust. I think it was called “Sliding Joust.” Daniel told me he went on it. It looked daring to me.
I learned that most of the swords weighed about two pounds. She even let me hold one of them. You would think that is not a lot, little do you know it really is.
We went to a shop and we asked why did they train with wooden swords. The man told us that they trained with wooden swords because if they did not train with wooden swords the real sword would hurt the other person.
Karson, 5th grade

When it comes to field trips, this was a good one. The distance was not too far, 2 hour drive, and the experience was all in one safe, enclosed space. There are so many factors that can overshadow the educational experience of a field trip, weather, food, the bus and who you sit next to, etc. For a few hours, my students and I were transformed back in time. This experience will live on in their memory.

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Slice of Life: You were a Baby Once

Posted in Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged grandparenting, writing prompt on November 12, 2019| 7 Comments »

I spent some time with grandsons this weekend. We had Leo, 11 months, Saturday through Sunday afternoon. Taking care of him is a physical endeavor. He’s at least 20 pounds of activity. I love talking to him and watching his responses. His facial expressions are funny–the O-face, his inquisitive eyebrows, and his endearing smile. Yet, as they say, he is a handful. And rightly so, learning how to move is serious and dangerous business. You always have to be on guard. I saved his life a few times over the weekend.

Thomas at 2 months is less active and a light 11 lbs. 9 oz. of soft and cuddly. He has started responding with coos and smiles. But I don’t worry as much about his safety. He’s usually being calmly held, or he stays in one place on a floor mat.

As I was looking at my students today, I tried to imagine them as babies and toddlers. I said to them, “It’s hard for me to imagine that at one time if I had put you down in this room, you would’ve pulled all the books off the shelf, stuck your fingers in the socket, or tried to climb on the desks.” They all started talking at once with their stories of what dangerous things they had done as toddlers.

“Look! I still have a scar on my elbow!”

“I jammed my fingers in the door.”

I told them I think we need to save this as a writing prompt. They called me out on “peanut butter” which is what we call things that are off topic.

I admit I’m as bad as any of them at getting off the topic. But I got a good writing prompt out of it.

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Slice of Life: Student-Created Checklists

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Every Child Can Write, Melanie Meehan, Two Writing Teachers on November 5, 2019| 9 Comments »

I have been following the Two Writing Teachers blog for at least 6 years. At NCTE in 2014, I sat next to Melanie Meehan at the Slicer dinner. Melanie was not yet a member of the TWT team. We talked about writing, and she asked me to join her online critique group. At the time, she and I were both writing middle grade fiction.

Fast forward a few years and now Melanie has published a professional book. I won her book Every Child Can Write from a TWT blog giveaway. I’ve been reading and marking it up ever since it arrived. I am so impressed with the attention to detail and practical advice for our most challenged writers. Melanie calls them striving writers. In my opinion, all writers are striving writers.

I teach gifted kids, but that doesn’t mean they are all efficient writers. They struggle with many of the things Melanie covers in her book, idea generating, making transitions, adding details.

When reading a professional book or attending professional development, we look through the lens of our own experience. My students write a Slice of Life each week. I have been grading these posts using a rubric. Melanie made me look deeper at what I was asking my students to do. Were they authentically involved in the process?

Melanie asks her readers to consider designing writing checklists with kids. “Just as we need to understand the concepts, so do our students. Additionally, using their own language is powerful because students are then intrinsically involved in the self-assessment process…Student involvement in creating checklists leads to understanding on their part, and when they understand, the are better able to move along the ladder of mastery.”

I decided today to ask my students what they would include on a checklist for their SOLs. This is the list they compiled:

Details: Details help the reader imagine the scene
Your story: First person POV
Voice: Unique, humorous, new, emotional, have personality
Defining unknown words for others
Stay on topic
Imagery: Use the senses
Grammar
Paragraphs: Change with new topic or new speaker
Spelling

I found a few of their ideas interesting. They have really internalized the importance of using paragraph structure. They also see the value of using their own point of view as well as writing in their own voice. I appreciated that they added “stay on topic.” So often students will not know what to write about so their posts ramble. They do know that keeping to the topic is important to their readers. And their readers are each other.

This conversation inspired by Melanie helped me show my students they are writers and value their input into the whole process. And I’m only on Chapter Four!

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Slice of Life: Recipe for #Why I Write

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Georgia Heard, recipe poem on October 22, 2019| 6 Comments »

This fall has been slow in coming. The leaves are changing, the days are shorter, but the temperatures are not cooling off much. It makes it hard to get into the mood of autumn. I got a little help from Georgia Heard. She has a sweet poem from Falling Down the Page called Recipe for Writing an Autumn Poem.

Recipe for Writing An Autumn Poem
by Georgia Heard
One teaspoon wild geese.
One tablespoon red kite.
One pint trembling leaves.
One quart darkening sky.
One gallon north wind.

This is a wonderful prompt to use with kids.

I decided to combine this poetry prompt with the National Writing Project and NCTE’s Day on Writing prompt #WhyIWrite.

Recipe for Why I Write
One teaspoon clean paper
One tablespoon colored ink
One cup imagination
One pint relationship
One quart dedication
One gallon liberation
An empty page invites color, lines, words, sentences
which become an expression of emotion
looking for connection. This relationship
is rocky, requiring dedication. But one thing is certain:
The freedom to write
belongs to everyone!
Margaret Simon, (c) 2019

Jaden responded with a beautiful recipe for writing.

A Recipe for Writing a Poem

by Jaden, 4th grade

One teaspoon of creative minds
One tablespoon of repeating and rhyming words
One cup of a magic image
One pint of dazzled emotion
One quart of comparing things with like and as
And one gallon of my heart

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Slice of Life: Restoration Park

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Louisiana travel, Restoration Park, West Monroe on October 17, 2019| 12 Comments »

In early September, my middle daughter gave birth to precious Thomas. She asked me, and I quickly agreed to travel with her to Monroe in North Louisiana for a leadership program meeting with the Louisiana Tourism Association. She is still on maternity leave, but she didn’t want to miss this meeting. What’s more important than being grandma? So I took a few days off to go with her.

I thought I would be stuck in a hotel room, that I may get some reading, writing, and lesson planning done. I was pleasantly surprised by a park connected to the parking lot of the hotel. With the baby in the stroller, we headed out to the trail.

The beauty of this fall day greeted me with a cool breeze and sunlight through the trees.

Red spider lilies dotted the path.

Baby Thomas slept through the outdoor adventure, the first of many to come.

A lone egret looked at its reflection in the lily-covered swamp.

I read the kiosk to learn about this beautiful, wild park. For 50 years, the area had been a sand and gravel pit. Later, many residents used it as a dumping ground. What do you do with such an eyesore? The city of West Monroe excavated the trash and created a wild space, restoring the area to wetlands that accomplish a number of goals, controlling flooding as well as providing the community with a beautiful place of nature to enjoy. Not to mention, a place of peace for a grandma and baby grandson.

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Slice of Life: Introducing a 4 year old poet, Annie

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged The Hilliard Play Day, young poet on October 8, 2019| 6 Comments »

Nature and beauty
is pretty.
The trees, the wind,
and everything you know.
Beauty in the diamonds
and when I look inside,
I see the face
I love.
Annie, 4 years old

I was asked to teach a writing workshop for kids at the Hilliard Museum’s Play Day. “You have to be flexible because we’re never really sure who will show up.”

Annie came in with her father. I’ve met Annie a few times because our paths have crossed. I’m friends with her grandmother, and her mother is a journalist who has connected me with writing opportunities. So when she walked in, I greeted her, “Hi Annie. We are writing poems today. Would you like to write a poem?”

She began… “Yes. Nature and beauty is nice because…” and she continued.
“Wait,” I said pulling out a clean piece of paper and a pen. “I wasn’t ready. Now slow down, and I’ll write what you say.”

Me with “Princess” Annie posing for a picture to send to Nanna B.

She is already a poet. I didn’t read one of my poems. I didn’t talk to her about forms. I didn’t give her any suggestions. She already knows how to write a poem.

Then we made a zine, a small foldable from a single sheet of paper. “Now,” I explained. “I could write the words for you, and you can draw the pictures.”

“No, I can write the words.” And she could! She copied the words she had dictated to me into the book. This took her at least 30 minutes. I was amazed at her focus and her determination. I was also amazed at her father’s patience. He sat comfortably while she meticulously copied each word.

The gifted teacher in me noted signs of perfectionism. When she messed up a letter, she got upset and rubbed it as if to erase it. I said, “Don’t worry. You can just make that a picture.”

Her letter a with the too long tail became what looked to me like a bug. I asked her, “Is this a butterfly?”

“No, it’s Diamond. Daddy, does it look like Diamond?”

“Yes, it does,” Daddy promptly said.

I looked at him and whispered, “Who’s Diamond?”

“Her imaginary friend” His whispered reply.

Annie continued writing word for word. An i placed in the wrong place became a tree.

When she finished, I said, “You need to sign it ‘by Annie’.”

She asked, “On the back?”

I showed her my book, Bayou Song. “On my book, my name is on the front. It says ‘Poetry by Margaret Simon.'”

Of course, Annie wrote on the front “Poetry by Annie.”

She is the youngest poet I’ve ever met, yet I have no doubts she is a writer. Just like her mom.

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Slice of Life: Someone is Missing

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing on October 1, 2019| 29 Comments »

Kelo is gone. I can’t wrap my head around that fact. With her long weaves, gentle hazel eyes, and golden front teeth, Kelo danced with a mop and sang while she worked. She would greet you in the hallway with a genuine kindness that made you want to stop and talk.

“How’s that grand baby?” she’d ask me often because she knew I had a new grandson.

Kelo was so much more than a custodian at our school. Last year when I first started coming to the school to teach gifted, she knew my name well before I knew hers. She was pregnant with her 4th son, and my daughter was having her first, so we always had things to talk about. She’d encourage me with, “Girl, that baby’s coming soon!” We’d share photos and anecdotes. She was a friend.

I don’t understand how one day you’re here and the next, you’re gone. So much can change in an instant. Taken too soon by an innocent ATV accident, Kelo’s death has left a hollowness in the halls. My heart is heavy.

Kelo makes me want to be better about caring for others, to show genuine kindness as she did, and to sing like no one is listening, except Kelo from above.

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