I Wasn't Going to Blog Today, But...

It was a long second day of school. My students were doing their reading MAP test all day, so as I monitored, I also worked on checking in beginning of the year paperwork, and read some picture books I'm considering using in class later this year so I could assess how they might fit in, and I got to know my students better by reading their responses to the first day of school questionnaire I gave them (thank you so much for sharing, Katherine!), and I started inputting data on my overview sheet so I could get a quick glance of summer growth or slide. That was pretty much my day. And then I had to stop at the grocery store on the way home to get a few items to get us through the rest of this week (this is what happens when I don't go on the weekend). Sidenote: It's really time for me to get back into the school year routine.

Anyhow...by the time I sat down and could look at my computer, I was exhausted. And I'd had a headache since I woke up. And I'm hungry. And I figured I'd just skip blogging today. I mean, it's not like I made a committed declaration to blog every day. It's not like I have to blog. It's not like anything major happened to write about. . . . . .and there's the crux of it. See, now that I started this teaching/writing blog thing, I realize throughout my day there are moments when I think I could blog about that tonight. There are times during the day when I think Hmmm, maybe I could figure out my thinking about this by "talking" it through in writing. And the fact that I didn't want to write? It probably meant that I should. Why? Because how many times will I have a student in my classroom who doesn't want to write? Spoiler alert: Every. Single. Day. So many times my students probably feel like I do tonight. They're tired. They don't want to write. They have other things on their mind. They don't feel great. They don't have any idea what to write about because nothing happened. And there it is again. That crux thing. If I can't figure out what to write about when I don't have anything to write about, how will I ever be able to help my students through the same thing?

And then I remembered that lesson on small moments and how easily they can be made into something to write about. So I opened up my blogger window and started to write. Because I know I need to model for my students. And I bet I'll come back to this post sometime as an example of what happens when you just start writing even if you think you have nothing to write about. And you know what? This post kind of wrote itself as I worked through my thinking. I was going to talk about how much better I got to know my students through the questionnaire (what a great use of testing time for me!) and that I have a book recommendation for each of my new students jotted down and ready to go. I was also thinking I could share with you the most joyful moment of my day - it was when...oh, wait, maybe I'll save that seed to write about another day when I feel like I have no idea what to write about because, you know what? Somehow in writing about why I didn't want to write today, I have a blog post written.

Lesson of the day: