2013 Year in Review

This picture has nothing to do with this post. It's just a funny shot of
Kiara reading Goodnight Bush and making a face about Dick Cheney.

Well, 2013 has been my most prolific year as a blogger with this being my 51st post. The 52 poems project definitely kept me going. I loved returning to a few of my favorite poets: Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, and Lucille Clifton, but I also discovered how much I love other poets like Seamus Heaney, Richard Blanco, and Naomi Shihab Nye. My poetry posts were not so widely read, though. I don't know how much these stats really tell me. I mean, as of now, my Dukes of Hazzard excerpt is my all-time most read which just shows the power of the label in a search engine. Apparently more people search for 80s tv shows than for poems about forgetting and remembering life.

Still, these were the three posts which got the most hits in 2013. Thanks for reading along and here's to another year of reading, writing, blogging, and living.

Scout!

The third most visited post was titled Conception after a poem in Reflections of Motherhood. I decided to share this after we decided to try to grow our family again. No luck yet, but we're still hopeful!

The next most-read post was about the new year's wishes my students made and some wishes of my own. It surprises me that this was so widely read, but I'm glad for it and I do plan on writing more about my teaching and the state of public education this coming year.

But for 2013, the posts which resonated most was Love that Dog about our family's decision to re-home our dog. I still tear up reading it and still miss Scout. It was tough not hanging her stocking this holiday season and if anyone is in need of a dog stocking, let me know.

See you in 2014!

Back to School Wishes for 2013

We started the second semester today and after a restful winter break it was good to be back. I really enjoy my job and my students. So, to start class today we wrote some of our wishes for the new year. My students wrote about superpowers, season tickets on Hawaiian Airlines, and dates with Justin Bieber.

I wrote along with them, as I always do, and during third period I wished an anonymous donor would make-over our school giving us a turf field, a new gym, and clean classrooms with working heat and air conditioning. I reread this and felt so sad. This was not a wish. These basics are things our school should have right now.

I also wished that Obama would say, "Forget all this testing. Let's make learning fun again." But I don't need Obama to do that. Despite the number of days we are required to spend taking district and state mandated tests (about three weeks) I know my students and I are having fun and we're learning.

There is so much talk about testing and achievement in our schools. There is even more talk about reform and how our schools have to change. I've been an educator for over 15 years and despite the bleak picture many paint of public education in the US, I know in classrooms and schools everywhere, despite all of the noise, teachers are teaching, students are learning, and it's going to be a good year.