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Wonders

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Teaching, Writing, tagged Berry Queens, gratitude, Illuminate, International Dot Day, John Gibson, Peter Reynolds on September 24, 2013| 8 Comments »

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For today’s Slice of Life, I want to express my gratitude for the Wonders in my life.

I. I am part of a Wonderful group of women called The Berry Queens. At the 6th annual ball on Friday night, I was honored to be named Head Diva.

2012-13 Head Diva, Susan and me, 2013-14 Head Diva.

II. My Wonderful baby girl was home for two weeks. We enjoyed some fun times together. Her boyfriend, Jeff, came in for the weekend. Here they are posing at the Grandmother Oak.

Daughter Martha with boyfriend, Jeff and Grandmother Oak.

Daughter Martha with boyfriend, Jeff with Grandmother Oak.

III. Reading FREADOM: This is National Banned Books week. My students are discussing their favorite books. I am grateful that they are Wonder-filled readers. Some of them made Animoto videos about their books.

IV. International Dot Day celebration continues: My younger students (2nd-4th grade) discovered the Wonder of creating their own mark using Paint.

Emily’s Dot created on Paint.

Emily’s Acrostic Dot Day poem

Decorating Dots
Oh,what a nice day
Today, today dots we make.

Dabbing on dots
All day I say
Yay! oh what a nice day!

V. The proof is here! The book of my poems with my Dad’s art, Illuminate, will be coming soon. Here I am with the Proof! Wonders never cease!

It may be small, but it is oh, so precious. My book of poems with my father’s art.

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International Dot Day

Posted in Slice of Life, Teaching, tagged Creativity, International Dot Day, Peter Reynolds on September 17, 2013| 7 Comments »

I discovered Peter Reynolds and his delightful collection of creative books a few years ago. I made International Dot Day a part of my classroom lore. Teaching gifted students allows me the luxury of having the same students each year, with some additions along the way. All I said last week was “Dot Day is coming,” and my students cheered. I gave them 3 choices for celebrating: 1. Create your own dot. 2. Present the book to a kindergarten class; or 3. Both. Guess what they chose? You got it, option 3. So our Dot Day celebration is only just beginning. I love that Peter Reynolds says Dot Day is Sept. 15-ish because we plan to celebrate all week.

You’ll have to stay tuned for more posts about our week. The first thing we did was, of course, read THE DOT. Vashti thinks she is no good at art. Her very wonderful caring art teacher thinks otherwise and honors her most miniscule attempt to draw by framing her small dot in gold. Vashti then becomes determined to make more and more dots, various sizes and colors. She even paints a dot without painting a dot. The most important thing is to sign your name.

Sixth grader, Brooklyn, read the story.

Each of my students led a small group of kindergartners to create their own individual dot.

My students had a great time with the little ones and want to make this a monthly activity. Their teacher was happy to have us, too.

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Some Dot Day links:

International Dot Day Website: Free Posters!

Facebook Page for International Dot Day: Share how you are celebrating.

The Dot Club

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My Father’s Drawing

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, Spiritual Growth, tagged ekphrasis, Illuminate, John Gibson on September 10, 2013| 10 Comments »

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Margaret Gibson Simon and father, John Gibson

I am visiting my parents in Mississippi. My father and I are working on the final touches of our book project. Yes, you heard me…book project. I am excited to announce the publication of Illuminate, a book of poetry and art.

I started writing poems to my father’s Christmas cards in December of 2012. I’ve posted some of the drafts on this blog. My friend Victoria Sullivan at Border Press will be publishing it. The book will be small, about 25 pages. The drawings to me are striking, done in pen and ink pointillism. I hope the book will be ready mid-October in time for Christmas.

In 2008, I wrote my first poem about my father’s art. There is a drawing framed in my bedroom of an American Indian woman with her child, wrapped together in a blanket as though she is shielding her child from all danger. The writing connected me to his art work in a spiritual way. I share this first poem in the preface of Illuminate. Check back in October to order your own copy.

My Father’s Drawing
Dots of ink and graphite rise in tension with paper
to form a likeness of mother and child.
The wild contrast of darks to light plays
in harmony creating a vision of love.

In the meantime, I grew up,
became a woman with children
living away from my father.
His letters come to me in thank you notes.

Yet everyday, I look at this drawing—
the dots of pointillism reach out from the wall
and grant me an audience
with his graceful praise.
–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

Mother Earth by John Gibson

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What We See

Posted in Slice of Life, Writing, tagged 15 lines, poetry, quotes, writer's block on September 3, 2013| 12 Comments »

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15 Lines

an interesting exercise to try when you have writer’s block

I didn’t know what to write about for my Tuesday Slice of Life Challenge, so I went back to an exercise from Poets and Writers The Time is Now to collect 15 lines in a day and write from those lines.

Here are some lines I collected:

I write to honor childhood and extend dignity to children. —Caroline Starr Rose

The more unlikely the guest, the more likely it is that we are entertaining Jesus himself. —Bishop Jake Owensby

A great day to do nothing. —Carol Rice

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. –Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Everything we carry, even the smallest thing, has weight. —Clare Martin

Love the one you hold. —Mumford and Sons

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. —Winston Churchill

These lines spoke to me and this poem emerged, still rough, but it seems to be wanting to tell me something…

The way you see me is who I become.
I am the unlikely guest who stands
with feet crossed. My toenails are orange.
I wear a cross on my wrist
and another on my neck, in amethyst.

Am I the angel you will entertain today?

I cannot lift you without holding you,
holding some of what weighs you down.
Maybe if we interlock our hands,
intertwine our fingers, the load
will be easier to bear.

A new writing challenge by way of Teaching Authors: Write Fifteen Minutes a Day on Laurie Halse Anderson’s blog. Join me? Can you write 15 minutes today? Set a timer and just go for it.

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Put on your best Antoinette

Posted in Slice of Life, Spiritual Growth, tagged 8 Habits of Love, Antoinette Tuff on August 27, 2013| 8 Comments »

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I have been writing this blog for two and a half years. I usually write Slice of Life stories, poems, or about activities I do with my students. I have tried to keep from making any kind of political statement. But when I heard last week about the bravery of Antoinette Tuff, I decided I had to speak up.

When the tragedy of Sandy Hook happened last December, it touched everyone around the country. Teachers were especially effected as we heard of the sacrifices our colleagues made for their students. We had to ask ourselves what we would do in a similar situation. And in this day of unlimited access to guns along with limited access to mental health care, our fear is a realistic one.

Our school system responded with a new mandate that our classroom doors had to be kept locked. While I understand the reasons, I am not comfortable with the atmosphere it creates. When I walk down the halls and pass all the locked doors, I feel alone, not safe. I miss seeing my colleagues and hearing the voices of active classrooms. Most of all, this response spreads fear, not love, to our students.

When we started inservice training days before this school year, we reviewed the crisis plan. While last year we were told students had to stand against the wall during lockdown, this year they are to lie flat on the floor. While last year we were admonished for leaving any crack in the blinds, now we were told to leave a space so the authorities can look in. In all honesty, nobody really knows what will save us.

Nobody, that is, but Antoinette Tuff. She responded with love, not fear.

He said that no one loved him, and I told him that I loved him and that it was going to be OK. –Antoinette Tuff

I have been writing this summer about Ed Bacon’s 8 Habits of Love. Antoinette Tuff probably has never heard of this book, but she knew that the perpetrator needed to feel loved. And her act of love saved countless lives, as well as the life of the gunman.

We don’t need more guns, more guards at our schools, or training of teachers to carry guns (heaven-forbid). We need more Antoinettes. A woman who reacted with love, not fear or hatred. She spoke bravely and made a personal connection. I pray that we have no more school shootings, but instead of locking my door and barricading it with desks, I hope I can put on my best Antoinette and face adversity with love.

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Community

Posted in Slice of Life, Spiritual Growth, Teaching, tagged 8 Habits of Love, community, Ed Bacon on August 20, 2013| 13 Comments »

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As the school year begins and gains speed, the Habit of Community makes me think of the school community and our classroom communities. Ed Bacon’s book 8 Habits of Love ends with this habit. All seven habits (Generosity, Stillness, Truth, Candor, Play, Forgiveness, and Compassion) lead to this final one. He begins the last chapter with the epigraph from John Donne, “No man is an island, entire of itself.”

Class group hug

The Habit of Community lets us know that we are not, in fact, alone. Each of the other Habits of Love ultimately leads to this most critical, life-affirming habit. –Ed Bacon

Life-affirming, that is the reason, the meaning, of community. We are all in this together. Community is designed to help us through the darkness and to celebrate the light. Tragedies put our communities to the test. In most cases, the Habit of Community saves its loved ones from fear and leads them to healing.

I pray that my classroom community will not be tested by tragedy, but everyday there are failures to be reassured and successes to be celebrated. We have a responsibility to encourage a sense of community so that our students feel safe to be who they are. They learn empathy and generosity by our modeling.

True Community encourages everyone to clarify their own values without having to agree with the group. There are few experiences that bring more energy to the soul than belonging to a durable Community without the pressure of having to agree. –Ed Bacon

One thing that stands out to me about the Habit of Community is that we have to open up ourselves to vulnerability in order for others to connect to us. Recently, a friend’s son had his first child. The baby was born early and had some difficulties. He posted daily on Facebook about the progress of his son and his wife’s recovery. I found myself looking for his updates every day, and I know that the support of all of us reading them helped him get through this difficult time. They are all home now and becoming the family they were meant to be. Somehow, though, I feel blessed from having shared in this journey.

We now have so many more ways to connect with our wider community. If we can use the social media to spread the Habits of Love rather than fear, to encourage the life-light in each person, to be there for each other, we can spread the energy of peace and health to the world. We can inspire change. We can be a community.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the community of Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Tuesdays. We are all teachers together on a journey to provide the best for our students. We are a supportive, encouraging, and loving community, and I am proud to be a part.

In what ways will you build community in your classroom? A community of belonging, a community of trust, a community of learning?

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The Habit of Compassion

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged 8 Habits of Love, compassion, Ed Bacon on August 13, 2013| 9 Comments »

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Duperier Bridge Sunset

To be rich in admiration and free from envy, to rejoice greatly in the good of others, to love with such generosity of heart that your love is still a dear possession in absence or unkindness – these are the gifts which money cannot buy.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Essayist, Poet, Novelist

The 7th Habit of Love in Ed Bacon’s 8 Habits of Love is Compassion. Compassion is not just about kindness, or generosity, or even pity. Compassion is deeper, stronger. Compassion leads us to empathy, then to action.

The Habit of Compassion is, at its core, about acting on the knowledge that everyone is a God carrier…It distinguishes between charitable empathy in which we seek to wipe out others’ pain or discomfort,and incites us to action in which we honor their future by helping them, help and honor themselves. The Habit of Compassion reminds us that none of us is as evil as our worst act; no evil deed or deeds can erase the goodness and love at the core.

The belief in the God carrier, that everyone is essentially good leads to tolerance and love. We can spread this love through our actions, our words, and our being. I had the opportunity to show compassion in April of this year when I helped a homeless woman. You can read the story here. I never found out what happened to her, but I must believe that my small act of compassion encouraged her. In addition to practicing kindness, we must believe that kindness changes people.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem Kindness moves me. “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

Before you can be compassionate, you must know the compassion of others. I have felt the compassion of others at my worst moments. One I remember was a few years ago when I had what I later figured out was a panic attack in the lounge at school. I had never had one before and haven’t since. I don’t remember what brought it on except I was feeling nauseated and fearful. A colleague looked at me and said,”Are you OK?” And I lost it. I started crying uncontrollably. I ended up on the sofa with a wet cloth on my head. One teacher stayed with me and comforted me until I felt better. This expression of compassion made me feel like I was not alone and not a complete fool. Her presence was enough.

Ed Bacon speaks a lot about having compassion for those who have done some wrong or evil. When the terrible tragedy at Sandy Hook happened last year, one of my students was quick to remind us all that the killer was a person, too, and he died. I was moved by her compassion for him. Often the evil someone does comes from a place of deep anger or emotional distress. And who are we to judge? Compassion does not excuse the evil or make it less horrible. However, when we react to aggression with aggression, what we get is more aggression. The vicious cycle. Compassion frees us of this cycle and helps us to move forward in love.

In what ways can you encourage compassion in your classroom this year? Bullying is an issue that has come to the forefront in education. I plan to read aloud two books that show kindness over bullying, Wonder by R.J. Palacio and Kate Messner’s Sea Monster and the Bossy Fish. If I teach compassion, show compassion, and live compassion, my students will know love and practice the habits of love, too.

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Being a Piece of the Wind

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged hot-air balloon on August 6, 2013| 16 Comments »

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On Saturday, I went on a ride of a lifetime. Several months ago, I was out walking Charlie and saw a hot-air balloon flying over our neighborhood. I shot some pictures with my phone and sent them to the local newspaper. They printed one with my name in a caption. The owner of the balloon saw the picture. He knew my husband, so he gave Jeff his card and said, “This is good for one balloon ride for you and your wife.”

In ballooning, everything depends on the weather and the direction and speed of the wind. Ted called me Friday morning and said he had plans to ride on Saturday morning. He promised to call and wake us up if he was going. At 5:30 AM, our phone rang loud and jarring. “Meet me at 6:15.”

Everything I knew about hot-air balloons came from The Wizard of Oz. I’ve only seen a few in my life and from far away. Ted involved us in the whole process, not just to teach us, but he needed the extra hands. I was surprised at how much work goes into launching and landing a balloon. Ted was meticulous about every step, and he had done it many times, so I was not at all afraid. His “crew” were two women. They were excited to try out the new cart for the balloon. In the 20 years they have been working together, they always bagged the balloon and lifted it into the trailer. Ted, being a mechanical engineer, made a cart using a janitor cart. He added thicker wheels and a rolling pen to the handle to help guide the balloon out of and into the cart. He even thought to attach the handles high, so you wouldn’t have to lean down to pull it.

The genius balloon cart

Once the balloon was out strewn across the field, Ted set up a fan to get the balloon inflated. Jeff and I held either side and watched as the huge stained glass nylon got bigger and bigger. Eventually, the balloon was inflated enough to be heated. This was the only part that scared me, the fire. He shot huge flames into the balloon. Each shot of fuel made me jump.

The lift off of a hot-air balloon is incredibly smooth and quiet. Before we knew it, we were floating in the air. Ted told us we were just a piece of the wind. I felt I was standing on the air, like Lois Lane when she first flies with Superman. Soft, quiet, peaceful. And the views! We could see so far. But it was difficult to understand where we were. Ted pointed out landmarks to us. He said, “Trees are our friends. Power-lines are not.” I understood the power-line problem. I later asked him why trees are our friends. He explained that the tops of trees can help to slow him down. They are not hard like the trunk. The branches are soft and bend easily.

The flight was over before I knew it. Finding a place to land was tricky. We had to find an empty lot with no power lines. We ended up landing in the side yard next to a house in a neighborhood. People were coming out of their houses to watch us. Imagine if you woke up one Saturday morning to look outside and see a hot-air balloon in your backyard. Some neighbors brought us water. Taking down was harder. It was hotter, and we were standing in thick wet grass with gnats. Once we had packed everything back up into the trailer, Ted invited us to breakfast at a local cafeteria. Sweet potato pancakes topped off my most perfect morning.

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The Habit of Forgiveness

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged 8 Habits of Love, Ed Bacon, forgiveness on July 30, 2013| 11 Comments »

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The only essential to practicing the habit of Forgiveness is a genuine wish for both yourself and your adversary to become whole. Naturally, there are times when we cannot manage this. But we will see that, in genuinely opening ourselves to the power of Forgiveness, we ourselves become free. –Ed Bacon

I have come to understand that forgiveness is absolutely essential to happiness, wholeness, and love. What kind of person would I be if I still held on to the hurts of childhood bullying? What kind of life would I lead if I could not forgive? Forgiveness allows us to move on and be free.

When I discovered that my forgiveness of someone did not mean that I had to be in relationship with them, I was freed. Years ago, I was hurt over and over again by the same person. And, stupid me, I kept going back for more. Like I somehow deserved the condescension. I failed to see how I was in control of my own life. I matured and got wiser, but also I had someone who valued me as a person help me see the problem. Forgiveness, however, took longer. I ended the relationship, but I was still chewing on her critical words. Still feeling unworthy and unloved. Oh, the power I was giving this person, I shudder to think about it now.

Forgiveness became a process. I first had to realize my own weaknesses, my own contribution to the situation, and then I had to truly forgive. However long and hard, it was well worth it. Now I recognize when I am giving someone power over my sense of self-worth. I am independent and strong. A strong sense of self is necessary for forgiveness to happen.

Ed Bacon says that the Habits of Love require us to take responsibility for our own state of being. I am the only one responsible for my choices. I am also not perfect. So I have to learn to forgive myself, my weaknesses and faults, first. I can choose to be a victim, whining about how someone else is responsible for my happiness. However, this is a false identity. I must be truthful to myself before I can reach out to others.

Forgiveness opens doors. It allows our creative gifts to shine forth. If we get caught in the vicious cycle of our past, we get stuck and cannot move on to a productive, happy life. We must take on the responsibility of forgiveness to ourselves and to others. Living a life of love, rather than fear, gives us the inspiration to forgive.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Gandhi

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Chicago Weekend

Posted in Slice of Life, tagged Animoto, Chicago, family vacation, Travel on July 23, 2013| 9 Comments »

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The Bean in Millennium Park.

We just got home from Chicago last night, so I wasn’t going to do a Tuesday Slice of Life. But I read Katherine Sokolowski’s blog post this morning about her day trip to Chicago, and I decided OK, I can do that! So I made an Animoto video of our weekend in Chi-town. My husband and two older daughters ran the Rock-n-Roll half-marathon on Sunday. I watched with my mother-in-law, my youngest daughter, and two boyfriends. They did great! We had a packed weekend with lots of walking and eating. Enjoy my video!