Saying Adiós to the 2024 School Year

 

A sweet note from one of my amazing maestras invitadas

The wind down to the end of the 2023/2024 school year is bittersweet. I am signing yearbooks and packing away school supplies and posters, and while I am looking forward to the rest and rejuvenation that summer brings I will miss these kids. Last year I discovered the power of positive phone calls which helped me get my groove back and fall in love with teaching again. This year I continued that practice. I planted seeds of positive calls in the fall and winter and by spring most of those seeds had blossomed into the fruit of mutually respectful relationships. 

I also implemented two new strategies this year which have contributed greatly to those healthy relationships. The first strategy was instituting a password the kids had to to tell me before they could enter the classroom.  I began with a password to help me learn their names. I stood in the hall outside my door and asked each student ¿Cómo se llama? and they had to say Me llamo and their name before they could come inside. Using this strategy I learned every name in one week. That is the fastest I've ever learned all the names of my students plus I learned what they liked to be called and how to pronounce it correctly. Then I changed the question to ¿Qué es tu appellido? (What is your last name?) Asking this as my password allowed me to quickly learn the correct pronunciation for the last names as well.

Every few weeks I change up the password. But what I noticed was that seeing and speaking to each student in a way that required us to interact and to look each other in the eye was a great way to develop relationship with that student. Interestingly, I did not do this with my Advisory class and I never felt that I developed the relationships with those kids that I did with my Spanish classes. Next year I plan to do a similar activity with each Advisory student and see what difference that makes.

The second strategy I implemented was a way to make lemonade out of lemons. I have been sick more this year than any other year since I've been a teacher. I decided to create maestros invitados (invited teachers) using students to run the first ten minutes of class. I invited and trained students from each class to run the class through our opening routines and first few slides of our daily slideshow. 

Each day's opening task is a daily question the kids have to copy down and answer. I then call 3 or 4 students to answer the question, paying them a paper peso when they answer.  I read through the plans for the day and the daily objective. Next they study their flashcards for two minutes and write the number they know on their monthly calendars. Then I tell them the weather and temperatures in Fahrenheit and Celsius to practice numbers, which they also write on their calendars. 

These routines are not complicated but are hard to explain to a non Spanish speaking substitute. Now I leave the names of my maestros invitados as part of my sub lesson plans and they run the whole class through those routines. The maestros invitados are allowed to pick someone else in the class to help them and that has worked amazingly well.

I started doing this in April after I caught pink eye the first time. When I caught it again three weeks later I had the maestros invitados trained and they were able to help the substitutes. It worked well when I had to leave early for track meets and a non Spanish speaking colleague covered for me. And when I got food poisoning last week and was out unexpectedly for two days I knew that the kids would know what to do.

Interestingly, one of my best maestros invitados is a boy I wrote a referral on earlier in the year because of poor behavior for a substitute. But giving him a job and making him the ally of the substitute completely changed his behavior! No more bad sub reports. Now that is a win win!

The Northern Lights

"We are supposed to be able to see the Northern Lights tonight between 1-3am," my husband informs me before bed. "Do you want to set your alarm?"

"I don't need to set an alarm, I'll just tell myself I want to wake up at 1:00am and I'll wake up," I tell him.

He seems confounded by this reply and I ask, "Can't you tell yourself when you want to wake up and then do it?" 

"No," he replies. I am slightly surprised. I thought everyone could do this but I guess not.

I jolt awake in the middle of the night and look at the clock and it says 1:11am. Since the clock is about 10 minutes fast, it was almost 1:00am exactly. I lay there trying to decide if it is really worth leaving the cozy warmth of my bed to go outside. I look out the window and I do not see colors but the sky is oddly bright and it shouldn't be. There was a new moon a few nights ago and the sky should be brilliant with stars against a moonless dark backdrop. Instead it is full moon bright so I pull my bathrobe on and pad downstairs, taking my phone from the charger as I go outside. 

Everything looks black and white but there are some odd bright streaks across the sky and I decide to take some photos. I remember hearing that you can sometimes photograph the Northern Lights even when you can not see them with your eyes. I make sure the flash is off, point my camera at the sky and slowly the camera takes a picture.

And I can see the lights! Purples, pinks and greens dance across my screen. I gaze in wonder at the sky. I still only see in black and white but now I realize that there is a very faint pink as well. It is like seeing something from the corner of your eye and second guessing yourself if you really saw what you think you did. In my black and white vision I watch the lights streak across the sky, fading and reappearing and swirling.

I run upstairs and try to get John to come see the lights but he is asleep and when I finally wake him up he has no interest in getting up. Later he regrets that decision when he sees all the pictures that people post about the Northern Lights. 

It is cold outside but I am so captivated that I throw back the lid of the hot tub and sit in the hot tub with my camera, continuing to take pictures for almost an hour. This is one of the coolest experiences of my life. There is a surprising amount of people driving around and I assume they are searching for a good place to see the lights. 

Just above the huge madrona tree in our yard is the Big Dipper and I get a good picture of the lights swirling in front of the constellation. It is so bright that only the brightest constellations and stars can be seen.

As I sit in the hot tub gazing up at the sky I realize that this must be what heaven is like. There is a verse that says, "We see through a glass darkly but then face to face." I look at the sky with my eyes and I can see brightness but everything is black and white with just the faintest tinge of pink. When I look through the camera I can see the vivid colors. Surely that is what heaven must be like, like going from black and white to color. The color is there but we are not equipped to see it unless we see in a different way.

I think of the verse, "The heavens declare the glory of God," and tonight the heavens are shouting and singing in a way I've never experienced. Around the world people are gasping in wonder as they see the colorful brilliance of the heavens above. 

Eventually I pull myself out of the hot tub and go back to bed. I have seen the Northern Lights and it was a mystical and amazing experience that I will never forget.