#mindfulmentor

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Home From The War l Sam Heyman l Spoken Word

I wrote this poem over my holiday break. It’s about my college experience. I’ve been trying to think of a way to reignite my spark with this blog. Here’s what I came up with.

[thegamefulguru]

Pandemic Pedagogy: Taking Up The “Mentor” Mantle Once More

It’s really hit the fan, hasn’t it?

Novel coronavirus (COVID19) has impacted all of us in a variety of ways, from the advent of “social distancing” to the mass closure of businesses, educational institutions and public amenities the world over. For me, I have had to start reimagining the last quarter of my year through the lens of ‘pandemic pedagogy;’ envisioning what it means for me to be teaching students during an era characterized by frustration, confusion and institutional madness.

I want to continue in the path I’ve been on, but I’ve decided that I (and my students) need to feel license to care about our health a little more than usual. The way I want to do this is by returning to the root of my Year of Teaching Adventurously: the resilience principles of SuperBetter.

On this “Resilience Guide” there are several lines drawn to give students (and teachers) space to plan their ways of engaging in the 5 areas of health that I encourage all of us to engage in: physical, mental, social, emotional and holistic health.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B97RxZeAaD5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The vocabulary that is key to understand are Power Ups, Quests, Bad Guys and Allies. I’ve covered each of these terms at length in my previous blog project, The Gameful Guru, but some of them bear clarification.

I want to focus on Power Ups and Quests, because they comprise the greater portion of this document. Power Ups are categories of adaptive and supportive activities, tasks or items of consumption that can help you get stronger, more focused, happier and/or more connected with your social circle. They fall into four main categories, each relating to the four forms of resilience.

I want to provide examples that you can share with your students (or your fellow teachers):

Physical: Drink a Glass of Water (self explanatory) Sit Up, Stand Up (Get out of your seat at least once every hour and do 10 sit ups) Sing At The Top of Your Lungs (improve respiratory control and mood by singing a favorite song at full voice) Mental: Read a Book, Undistracted (Set a timer for X minutes and read a book without stopping; turn off your phone and read until the time is up) Snap to It (Snap your fingers exactly 50 times) Countdown (Count backwards from 100 by a number other than 5) Emotional: Cute Animal Overload (For five minutes, look at pictures of baby animals) Good Vibes Only (Listen to an upbeat song that you like; shoot for a positive mood) Do Something Fun (Set a timer for X minutes and do any leisure activity you enjoy! Give yourself permission to enjoy yourself) Social: Giving Gratitude (Send a text to three different friends thanking them for some aspect of their friendship with you) Future Boost (Make plans to communicate or see two people sometime in the near future; use this to give yourself something to look forward to) Mutual Aid (Make an Ally by sharing your Quest with another person; Offer to be an Ally for them in their goals)

Power Ups are important for all aspects of life, but they’re especially important when you have a specific Quest you are pursuing, or an Epic Win you are working toward. Sometimes Quests are things other people write for you, and other times, they are tasks you take on for yourself. Quests can be just another way of framing your daily to-dos, but if you add a fun factor, an unnecessary obstacle to overcome, or a social element, suddenly Quests become something gameful to behold!

A Physical Quest would be Hydrate or Die-Drate! (Drink 5 glasses of water in 3 hours; maintain healthy habits of hydration and exercise!) A Mental Quest would be Be Your Own Taskmaster! (Choose three items on your To Do List and set 25 minute Pomodoro estimates for how long it would take to complete them in their entirety; test your estimates by taking on one item and racing against the clock to complete them faster than your estimated time!)

An Emotional Quest would be 1:1, One On One (Improve your Positive to Negative emotion ratio by spending one on one time with a trusted friend; choose two emotional power ups each to activate with each other’s help!)

A Social Quest would be Allies, Assemble! (Practice social connectivity by choosing two friends of yours to share in your resilience-based Questing; exchange Power Up ideas and help each other take on at least 1 Bad Guy)

I came up with all of these quests in less than 10 minutes, and you can too!

Here is your first Quest from me: Come up with two ways for you to engage with each of the four forms of resilience (Power Ups) that does not require you to endanger yourself medically. Message me with what you come up with! Until next time, Life Will Pass Through, Keep Being You!

Sincerely, MM

[laylolife]

“It” doesn’t have to be a big thing to still be everything. One shift, one a-ha, one ‘I’ll try again’ is courage. #thedivorcestrategist #layloyoga #divorce #yoga #yogateacher #coach #mentor #mindfulmentor #kindnesstochaos #wellness #fitness #noworries #noassumptions #simplicity

[perfectlybejmarie]

Loving the nee styles and this must in 10 new outfits @jeneamarie28 I really love and so pumped to share! 😘💥🌟💯 Looking for new styles! @dress_by_us @acuslingshopes @acuwears @pinkpineapple.love @limitlessflairshop.31 @palmpe.official and I have a special deal for all who are looking to spice up their swin wear, dresses, rompers jewelry Collection and so much more! I'll be there for you when the rain starts to pour... friends is to date my favorite show only if I had some during moving my parent condo, into my new home from floor 3 in 90+ heat but I am so glad I have 3 Magical Beans that have a great way to boost my mood energy daily plus with my brain Booster coffee keeping my anxious mind cool, focused and Powerful! #vitalityforlife #summerlife #manifestingmama #freespirit #besolutionary #newwardrobe #vacationescapes #mindfulplayfulgrateful #photooftheday #familyphotography #instantintentions Tonight is final steps for new launch bit.ly/PowerMover or book@ Successfully Social Movements Mindful Marketer Mentor Magic! #mindfulmentor #transformation #happyhealthyhumble #booknow #designerlife Finally finding your Clarity confidence creativity daily as you share your story of purpose filled success stories towards creating your own inner ambitions that shine brightly upon Raising awareness for Celebrating Vision Attraction Marketing with Laws of Attraction Mix so that you can to have the time to make your own life truly desired by Design... #socialmediasuccess #clarityguidesme #standoutnow #elevateyourlife 💯🌟💥😘🎙 Elevation Celebrations #movementmakermama #lifestyleguide Who wants to be guided by art to Transformational Breakthroughs start with presence end Mastery Courage Access your innermost thoughts remove all beliefs that hold you back to be a go to person who is Manifesting Miracles showing up every day! #limitless #milliondollarday #onelifetolive❤️https://jeneamariesuccessfulsolutions.ck.page/perfect-u https://jeneaw33.attractionmarketingresults.net (at Successfully Social New England) https://www.instagram.com/p/CDZ1VBmpl2E/?igshid=d0ve7iyn5772

[thebarefootgoddessau-blog]

Stepping back into the magic of divinely lit light, giving to the world that feels pain through mental and physical symptoms today and everyday! As I lay out in the sun sipping on my santa vittoria water on this glorious sunny Boxing Day, I can feel the inspiration of my 2018 “live retreats” downloading so much crucial information for millions of women globally! If you want 2018 to be your gateway from the darkness to light well then you have come to the right space! I see millions surrounding me from January 1 of the new year and it’s you, yes you that I see particularly! Message me here or email me at harmonishakti@gmail.com and lock in a discovery call where I will give you a spiritually charged reading of why it’s you that I see with me in the new year finding the light through distressing invisible illness. I am here for you, more than you know because I am just like you. 💋 #thebarefootgoddess #sun #santavittoria #journaling #spirituallycharged #advocate #speaker #mindfulmentor #energyalchemist #lightworker #invisibleillness #mentalhealth #2018 #divinelight #live #retreats #liveretreats (at The Barefoot Goddess)

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Here We Are In The Future: A Few Words About My Week (And Steven Universe The Movie)

So I’ve got good news and better news.

The good news is: I *did* finish reading An Unquiet Mind (on Monday).

The better news is: I also got to watch the premiere of Steven Universe The Movie!

A few words, right off the bat: It was delightful.

A few more words:

Steven Universe is one of my favorite shows on television. Since roughly the end of its first season, I’ve been a diehard fan of this magical and musical adventure, for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s incredibly sweet. Centering itself on the adventures of an unconventional family of superpowered beings known as the Crystal Gems, Steven Universe is a show that is first and foremost about love, in its many forms. For another thing, it is emotionally intelligent in a way that few shows of any genre can match. Its characters deal with hardship, inter- (and intra-personal) conflict, feelings of alienation, loss and self-doubt and solve more of their problems through talking than through punching.

The last and probably hugest factor contributing to my love of the show is the music. Whether we’re talking the varied orchestrations of Aivi and Surasshu or the lyrical works of showrunner Rebecca Sugar, Steven Universe is a show that lives and dies (but mostly lives) by its music. After 5 seasons of occasionally, but not indulgently breaking into song, Steven and his friends finally got a chance to live out a full-fledged movie musical.

Steven Universe The Movie, in addition to being an elegant and enjoyable next step in Steven’s journey, is in many ways an homage to the many great musicals that have graced the silver screen across the ages. From its opening, expository credits sequence--sung angelically by the former members of the Diamond Authority (Christine Ebersole, Lisa Hannigan and Patti LuPone)--to its forays into a myriad of musical genres, the soundtrack to Steven Universe The Movie has something for just about every emotion and taste. 

The sounds are well complimented by the visuals, which benefit from a cinematic budget in more ways than one. An early sequence, featuring probably the stand-out number in a film filled with stand-out numbers, sees the Gems facing off against the film’s antagonist, and the resulting battle flows at an expressively break-neck pace that no episode of the show has been able to match. In true Steven tradition, the film’s primary thrust is not the seeking of escalating violent conflict, but when a fight does break out, the animation team does an excellent job of bringing the boarders’ visions to life.

The trouble with many musicals is that when you take away the music, you are left with very little story to speak of. The writers of Steven Universe are used to using dialogue to good effect, and not every scene needs song and dance to convey its message or solve its conflict. However, many key moments in the film’s story are amplified by the musical number at its heart. “Independent Together,” which punctuates probably the biggest fan-service moment of the film, is one example. “Other Friends,” performed by newcomer Sarah Stiles, is another, serving as a character introduction, a villain song and a powerful engine for one of my favorite scenes.

Episodes of the show are, for the most part, only eleven minutes long, so Sugar and her song-writing collaborators are used to packing a lot of story into relatively small musical packages. Given they have a run time of a feature film to work with, one would think more songs would be the length of lead single “True Kinda Love” or energetic opener, “Happily Ever After,” but some of the movie’s most memorable and poignant tunes are only a minute or so long. An intimate number late in the film, “Found,” is over nearly as soon as it begins, but it sticks in the heart so easily that when it is reprised at the film’s conclusion, one can’t help but crack a smile. 

There are a few mysterious elements left even after repeat viewings that are less theoretical in nature and more nit-picky--how to explain the speed of the antagonist’s arrival to Earth and the method she used to procure her most threatening weapon among them--but the film, like the show, is less about mechanics and more about “truth,” emotional and otherwise. And the truth is, Steven Universe The Movie is more than many fans could have asked for. It doesn’t do the messy work of showing Steven take the Diamonds to task for their tyrannical actions in the past, nor does it take time to visit every tertiary character in the show’s history--but it is made with such artistry, love and heart that you can’t begrudge it for staying focused on what matters. In the case of Steven Universe, what matters is that the characters we’ve known and loved are still just as precious as we remember them, not because they’ve remained static, but because they’ve grown and changed. And as for the character’s we’re just getting to know, it seems they’re on their way to doing the same.

More on my students later this week.

Life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Week 1 Check In: Titles, Mottos and Goals

Hello all!

It’s Sunday and teachers across the country are deep breathing and deep in denial about the coming week. I almost fell into the “Sunday Scaries” trap, as my roommate would put it, and put off my preparation for Monday, but then I remembered that the Mindful Mentor is stronger than his adversaries, and flung myself back into the planning fray I left on Friday.

Here’s the situation: At the time of this writing, I have a fairly solid plan for Monday’s classes, though my character sheet predicament has not yet been resolved. Much of tomorrow’s class centers around the character sheet, discussing its parts, its coded language and what I plan on doing with it this year. There are a few To Dos, a few deliverables that my students will be responsible for producing, but in proper teaching form, I will model those deliverables first.

There are three things that will at least be discussed tomorrow, though they might not be final:

1. The Heroic Title and Motto 2. The Personal Pursuit 3. The Growth Goal

My Heroic Title, my Secret Identity, is the Mindful Mentor. This name was chosen because it connects to the Personal Pursuits and Growth Goals that I have come up with for myself. 

First, my Personal Pursuit: I’ve recently been encouraged to take up mindfulness meditation as a way of managing my anxiety and helping me to become better at overcoming mental blocks. I want to become more regular and practiced with mindfulness, so I’ve given myself a trackable goal of ten minutes of guided meditation a day, to be completed each week. 

Next, my Growth Goal: Beneath the surface of this project is a desire to make progress in my writing projects as well as reading for pleasure. Good, regular writing comes from good, regular reading—I know this maxim well. In order to be a good role model and mentor for my students who are engaged in a similar growth process, I commit myself to 30 minutes of regular reading or writing each day, for projects unrelated to school (and to this blog).

My Motto, up to this point, has been borrowed from the Gameful Guru: Suffer Less, Grow More. I don’t think I can get away with recycling that credo for much longer, so I’ve decided to come up with a new one. The question is, what kind of motto will it be?

“Suffer less, grow more” was a wish, a hope, a goal I had for myself and for my readers. And that’s all well and good—but the mindfulness tradition seems to be less about destinations or progress forward and more about processing and appreciating the present moment. In meditating so far, I’ve focused on themes like body awareness, acceptance and overcoming resistance. I think what I want to accomplish for myself in making mindfulness a solid habit is the ability to let an unpleasant thought or emotion pass through me without leaving a trace. That doesn’t mean that I’m always going to be happy or untroubled. It merely means that I’m not going to be ruled by my emotions in the way I have been in the past.

I mentioned the “Sunday Scaries” earlier for a reason. It’s a useful name to identify one of my Bad Guys of recent months. Any educator or person employed in a high-responsibility profession like teaching can relate with, I think. The “Sunday Scaries” manifest when I have a task I’ve been avoiding over the weekend that suddenly comes screaming into focus the day before (and even the day of). 

“I’m not prepared!” “I don’t know what I’m doing!” “I don’t know how to do the things I need to do!” 

These unpleasant thoughts and feelings surround me and I retreat, into leisure activities and distractions that rarely do much to actually alleviate my stress. I inevitably end up doing very little with the amount of time I have available, and it usually leads to some kind of meltdown in front of an audience of family members.

Thankfully, the summer has been mostly light on visits from the “Scaries,” and I am determined to not let them be a chronically intrusive presence in my school year. A little bit of nervousness isn’t bad—nervousness, as you will often hear me say, is just excitement interpreted negatively—but when it becomes paralyzing, it’s officially a problem. Like the Gameful Guru, the Mindful Mentor is a problem solver, but ideally, he is a proactive one. That means, he is aware of the challenges he usually faces, and rather than being surprised or unsettled when they surface, he has plans in place for dealing with them.

I’ll write more about this subject as it becomes relevant—and it will—but I still need to settle on my motto and lay out my goals for the week. So here’s what I’ve come up with:

“Life Will Pass Through, Keep Being You”

Rhyming is by no means a requirement of a motto, but here we are. Now for the goals:

1. Use Headspace to complete 10 minutes (minimum) of guided meditation each day this week. 2. Complete at least 30 minutes of pleasure reading or personal writing each day this week. 3. Complete each teaching day’s planning prior to the day itself.

That’s about it for now on that front. I will be continuing to update this blog on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday rotation, with Sundays being my day to realign or update goals and check in on weekend planning. I’m excited to see where this week takes me, and how my students react to my adventurous take on English.

Until next time, remember:

Life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[thegamefulguru]

This is the character sheet I made (by hand!) for my Gateway students this year. We're going to use this to track growth and progress with personal goals in and out of the classroom. This is one way I'm trying to be #gameful and adventurous in my teaching practice this year! #teaching #education #gamifylearning #sufferlessgrowmore #mindfulmentor https://www.instagram.com/p/B1FJw2vgWR7/?igshid=ci1u2vpuwhcu

[thegamefulguru]

Taking A Level In Sentence Structure: Returning to the Training Grounds

So far this week, I’ve made good on my commitments; I’ve meditated, read my book and implemented writing intensive lessons into my students’ class periods. It feels good to be reaching my goals, and I’m hoping it has a positive impact on my students.

Today, each of my students received the same basic Training Grounds lesson, putting a name to something that, for most of them, had gone unnoticed. With the exception of my Swordplay-based grammar exercises with the Relentless Wordsmith, my Training Grounds focus has been less explicit and more covertly deployed. I started by creating Lore Keeping organizers for The Advisor and The Studious Scholar, and frankly, I didn’t get enough momentum with Readstyreo to really implement Training Grounds lessons. Some weeks have gone by, with last week being abbreviated and thus lacking in the usual structure in some places, but I’ve returned to the full four-day structure of before. 

The Training Grounds lesson of the day came courtesy of The Art of Styling Sentences, a textbook used, once upon a time, by my 7th/8th grade English, Ethics II and Senior Comp teacher, Mr. Bart Allen. I used this book myself last year with my English I student, who was very interested in advanced uses of punctuation, such as the semicolon. I found it a really great way of getting at novel uses of sentence structure in an approachable, digestible way, and so I decided to bring it back to Gateway this year. Judging from how today went, I think it will be a good tool for improving my students’ writing bit by bit throughout the year.

The sentence pattern we went over connected two independent clauses with a semicolon and no conjunction. If that sounds like a lot of grammatical gobbledy-gook, fear not! It looks a lot simpler than it sounds.

My students are all writing essays this week; I anxiously await their ideas coming to fruition.

To write an outline is one thing; to write an essay is another thing entirely.

Setting sub-deadlines is a good idea; making sure students know about these deadlines is a better idea.

See? We use this kind of sentence all the time when we speak. Knowing how to properly punctuate them in our writing makes for more impactful, connected sentences. 

Anyway, I just wanted to flex my writing muscles for y’all. Tomorrow two of my students should be more than halfway done with their rough drafts, while the third has an outline and a thesis statement due.

Until then, life will pass through. Keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Another Week, Another Check-In

After a few weeks of steady climbing, we’ve reached something of a valley in the current Adventure.

This past week was a short one for me, but by the end of it, I managed to get two of my three active Gateway students--The Studious Scholar and The Relentless Wordsmith--to the tail end of their current units: a culminating writing assignment. The Heckish Health Advisor--whose heroic identity seems to be in flux following a loss of his cat--smoothly transitioned from Unit 1 to 2, and should be done with Unit 2 by the end of this week. Readstyreo (I’m not sure either of us has decided on the proper spelling) is still out, but my tutoring schedule is ramping up to make up for his absence.

Because a lot of what my students will be working on this week is largely independent work, I want to make sure I don’t let myself rest on my laurels. For Scholar and Wordsmith, I will commit to spending a portion of each day’s class period doing some kind of short writing intensive lesson, meant to zero in on some part of the writing process that is relevant to the day. If I want them to finish their rough drafts by Thursday, some brisk pacing is going to be necessary on both of our parts, but I think we can do it.

The Advisor only has about two days worth of content left in this unit (We’ll be reading some portions of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and doing a quiz on Point of View, Character and Voice, and the unit’s two main texts by the end of the week) so I want to make sure we can do something creative before the close of the unit, likely on Wednesday. Our next unit will see him reading more fiction with a mind to write his own original short story, and I want to make sure he knocks it out of the park.

As for my personal goals, I did finish An Unquiet Mind, and I started to get back into a book I had shelved a few months back, the charming YA romance, What If It’s Us by Becky Albertalli (of Love, Simon fame) and Adam Silvera. So far I’ve only done one reading session for it, but I was able to make solid progress. I’ll be jumping back in tonight. I hope to also continue making progress on the writing front, and I’m glad that people liked my SU:TM review! More reviews of mine will likely hit this blog in the future.

With mindfulness, I started out the week fairly strong, managing to do one meditation on Monday and two mindfulness sessions on Tuesday, but the rest of the week got a little more challenging, until Thursday, where I didn’t meditate at all. I’m going to pick right back up where I left off tomorrow, making sure I get out of the house early enough to meditate and prepare for the day’s lessons.

I’ll maintain and add to my goals from last week:

2 daily mindfulness meditation sessions (10-20 mins total)

30 minutes of reading or writing per night

One writing intensive sub-lesson per day for my essayists.

I want to write more midweek posts this week, so currently I’m looking to publish a review for An Unquiet Mind at some point this week, and at least one lesson planning check-in.

Until next time, life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Best Laid Plans: Finding Flexibility

The tricky thing about planning things out is that life has a way of disrupting your flow. More accurately, other people’s lives. 

So far this school year, as I’ve written, I’ve had to deal with a few student absences. Last week it was Readstyerio; this week, the Studious Scholar. I’m still showing up for my remaining classes, more or less prepared, but when it comes to the flow of my units (and the quizzability of my students) things are turning out differently than how I envisioned them.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that Tuesdays were Training Grounds days and Thursdays were Quiz and Revision days. Mondays are when we set goals for the week, and Thursdays are when we check in on those goals. Wednesdays ordinarily don’t have a formal identity, though I have generally tried to emphasize writing on these days, assigning passage response reflections and other extended responses. All of this seems like a good structure for a 4-day school week. And it has been, for students who are consistently present.

The thing I’m trying to work on, besides planning in advance and being adequately prepared for my lessons, is being open to changing direction or modifying pace if necessary. I’m not going to rush through units or stretch them out so Quizzes and Tests always fall on Thursdays, but I’m going to be willing to meet students where they are, rather than where I want them to be.

I also am trying to meet myself where I am, rather than where I want myself to be at any given moment, when it comes to my goals. So far this week I have been getting my meditation minutes logged, and I started out the week strong on the reading front, but I’ve had a few nights where I haven’t had the strength to set my reading timer and log my half hour of reading. An Unquiet Mind remains unfinished, though I’m very close to the end. When I’m done with it, I plan to write a short review for the blog so I can air out some thoughts and feelings before moving onto my next reading project.

In the words of the Headspace narrator (my mindfulness app of choice): “Sometimes you’re going to miss a day. ... Just be sure to start back up tomorrow.” Letting go of disappointment and shame is something we can all struggle with, but it’s something worth pursuing. 

Two more days remain in my school week, and this weekend I’ll be turning my attention toward Unit 2 for some of my students, while finishing things up with Unit 1 for others.

Life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM.

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Full Steam Ahead! New Week, New Goals

It’s time for me to recenter myself for the new week, and get ready to accomplish some new goals.

Weekends are as weekends do, and with the exception of some reading on Thursday night, I haven’t been attending to most of my weekly goals since the weekend started. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up, however. The Commander 2019 decks have dropped, so I spent some time (and money) attending to a new deck for a chunk of this weekend. So while it’s not exactly an excuse, it’s at least an explanation.

I’m proud of the progress I’ve made on my reading and writing goals in the past week, but I’m determined not to rest on my laurels. While I plan on maintaining my 30 minute reading/writing goal from previous weeks, I am going to turn up the heat on that front to accomplish the secondary goal of finishing An Unquiet Mind by the end of the week.

A goal I’ve had with mindfulness this past week is to do a mix of guided and unguided meditation. I have trouble maintaining focus sometimes with the directive’s I’m given, but if I give myself a timed period to actually practice the techniques I’m being taught (such as noting when my mind wanders and recentering it) I think i’ll be able to get more out of my sessions.

On the teaching/planning front, I have unit outlines up and running for Unit 1 and I’m adding to them every day. Currently I have a solid plan for tomorrow and will continue adding to them as I progress, holding onto my goal of planning at least a day in advance.

Something I want to add to the list of goals is one For Fun objective. In honor of the upcoming Steven Universe movie approaching on September 2nd, I want to watch at least 5 Season 2 episodes with my roommate between now and Sunday. We’re in the beginning of the Peridemption Arc and I’m excited to see him watch that “angry little slice of pie” come into her own as a part of the cast.

In summary my goals are:

30-45 minutes of nightly reading of An Unquiet Mind or personal writing

10-20 minutes daily of guided/unguided mindfulness meditation

Regular nightly planning for teaching

5 episodes of Steven Universe S2 with roommate.

Looking forward to a great week!

Life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Training Grounds: Unit 1 and Growth Goal Fun

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to rhyme.

Week 3 is off to a good start, with three of my adventurers beginning their first formal Units of the year and one of my adventurers nearing the end of Unit 0. This semester will be my first time teaching primarily out of the Elements of Literature textbooks that my school has provided—this summer’s classes could be characterized as having a heavily Internet search based syllabus—but so far things have gone smoothly on that front. It takes some preparation to pick and choose what elements I focus on of the margin-note-style teacher guidance it gives me, but at least most of the texts recommended in our curriculum can be found without much trouble.

When I was outlining Unit 0, I had the idea that each school day of the week would have a predictable class procedure tied to it. Because I’m a nerd, I wanted to do something vaguely alliterative if possible, so I dubbed Tuesdays “Training Grounds” days��days of our school week dedicated to focusing on the areas set aside as growth goals by my students. Each Training Grounds lesson can be seamlessly integrated into whatever we happen to be focusing on at the time, such as an extension of a Lore-based homework assignment or the creation of a Lore-Keeping graphic organizer to be used as an aid during a reading, or they can be a separate activity, meant to put focus on an area that is otherwise difficult to integrate, such as grammar and sentence structure review.

Tomorrow, I have four students to introduce the Training Grounds concept to, and at the moment I think I have a solid concept for each.

The Relentless Wordsmith, whose Growth Goal is to improve his grammar and overall writing skills, will be getting some review on commonly misused words (There, their, they’re, your and you’re) and will practice proper use as well as catching mistakes in pieces of writing. His current unit is focusing on Anglo-Saxon literature and history, culminating in a reading of Beowulf.

The Studious Scholar, whose Growth Goal focus is in improving Lore retention and general study skills, will be getting an extension opportunity for his most recent homework assignment and a short lesson about the three levels of questioning, enabling him to write better study questions for himself and others. So far we have begun taking notes on developments in colonial America as a part of a unit on early American literature, rhetorical devices and persuasive writing.

The Heckish Health Advisor, whose Growth Goal is to get more experience with note-taking, will be reading The Most Dangerous Game aided by a Lore-Keeping Graphic Organizer tracing the story’s plot structure from Exposition to Resolution. We will be discussing plot, structure, and theme as it relates to two short stories in this unit.

Readstyerio, whose Growth Goal involves some all-around improvement of his skills in English, and especially reading, will be getting more focused instruction regarding his first Passage Response Reflection. I gave him an enhanced version of the explanation I had given my other adventurers last week, but we will be spending a portion of class making sure he knows the proper formatting and structure of the reflection. His Unit 0 assessment will wrap up the class period.

I feel re-energized after a weekend of more or less floundering on the planning front. Interacting with my students and working through the material feels good, and I have to remember that, even as my workload increases. I’ll report back on how this targeted skill building goes later this week.

Until then, remember: life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Unit 0 Begins! Character Sheets and “The Book of Lore”

This week has been off to a solid start! Unit 0 is all about mindset and the way we look at ourselves, our skills and our world. I want my students to think of themselves as capable of getting better at the skills they have in English, of developing as people this year, and of setting concrete goals for themselves. We started the week by coming up with growth goals, personal pursuits and heroic titles, and so far, most of my students have been successful in at least coming up with categories of areas they want to work on. The concrete goal setting will come later.

My aforementioned Warriors of Light are:

The Heckish Health Advisor (8th grade), with a growth goal of making gains in analytical skills and note taking and a personal pursuit to get more exercise and spend more time with his dog.

Readsterio (a mix of Reading and Mysterio from Spider-Man) (10th grade), with a growth goal of improving retention of material and skills related to note-taking, and a personal pursuit of doing more independent reading in his spare time, as well as regular joke writing.

The Studious Scholar (11th grade), whose goals are less specific and need a little bit of tightening, but whose general focus is on improving in-class focus and out-of-class study habits.

and The Relentless Wordsmith (12th grade), with a growth goal of improving his writing and grammar skills and a personal pursuit of overcoming prior academic setbacks and finding acceptance for past failures.

They’re really a great group, and it’s been interesting seeing how each of them interprets and responds to our class material. This week is fairly uniform across the board. Students complete the same activities surrounding the same content and are responsible for completing similar kinds of work, with some modifications in process (Readsterio has dysgraphia, so he completed his Lore-Keeping 101 Guided Notes on his laptop).

I posted an image of the character sheet I created for my students, and we’ve just started to begin filling it out. As time goes on, I will post and periodically update my students’ attribute scores so you can see what areas we’re focusing on and the kinds of exercises and activities that I devise to help them grow. The first step we’ve taken in that respect has been adding an item to their inventory: a shared document I’m calling “The Book of Lore.”

“The Book of Lore” is my chosen name for how we’ll turn in class note-taking (Lore Keeping) and discussion into processed knowledge and understanding. As we move through the material, watching videos, reading articles, stories and poems, it will become important for students to take an active role in showing me what they know and understand.

In most cases, I’m going to ask them comprehension and knowledge-based questions (Lore), questions meant to challenge them to perform tasks along Bloom’s Taxonomy. For example, after watching Jane McGonigal’s excellent TED Talk on the health benefits of videogames, I asked students to “Define post-traumatic growth in their own words” and to “Summarize each form of resilience in their own words.” Pretty straight-forward, right?

Sometimes, I will also ask them reflection questions, questions meant to make them think about the relevance of their new knowledge to their own life and prior experiences. It’s generally teaching best practice to connect what you teach to the real world, as this aids students with the ‘transfer’ component of learning, when they can take what you’ve taught them and bring it into other subject areas or even just their lived experience. I asked students to answer self-evaluative questions like, “Which form of resilience do you think you exercise the most? How do you do it?” and bigger picture questions like, “Do you think games help people lived more fulfilled lives? How or how not?”

Something that I think I didn’t do as well with last year is assessment. I didn’t give very many quizzes and tests, and when it came to the objectives I set out for myself in a given unit, most of my most concretely accomplished goals were those I could see visibly in the projects and papers that students completed. It’s important to me that each week, if not also each day, I make some kind of assessment of my students’ understanding of the material. This seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes it can feel unclear what it is that I’m really trying to teach my students. I don’t want there to be ambiguity, for me or for my students, about what it is I want them to know or understand about what we work on. Part of this comes from regular lesson planning, and unit planning done in advance.

This summer, my students and I read a lot of poems. With any given poem, I could have focused on vocabulary, syntax, historical context, imagery, theme, sound devices, figurative language—and often, I would try to do a combination of all of these things! But part of being able to focus on all of these areas is prior knowledge and experience with each individual category of study. In the beginning of the year, before I know what my students know and before I know what they are capable of, I want to lay down a foundation of class skills that they can rely on moving forward.

Lore-Keeping and Lore were my first two areas of focus. Next, we’ll be learning more about growth mindset, as described by Carol Dweck, and thinking critically about our own mindsets. Do we believe our abilities are fixed, or do we believe they can change—and improve—over time? Are we maybe somewhere in the middle? My goal is to nudge each of my students a little closer to a growth mindset, not just regarding literacy, but their other abilities as well.

Will I be successful in my mission? Stay tuned to find out.

Remember, Life Will Pass Through, Keep Being You.

Sincerely, MM

P.S. A Goals Check In!

2/2 Days of Meditation 1/2 Days of Personal Reading/Writing (the night is young!) 2/2 Days of Regular Planning

[sufferlessgrowmore]

Secret Identities: My New Moniker

Hello all!

This blog’s description gives a hint that I’m not completely cold on the whole ‘gameful’ blogging idea. I wanted to come back to blogging because I had goals, but also because I felt that I’m most successful at accomplishing my goals when I have a creative, purposeful mindset. That’s what gamefulness gave me: a structure, a framework, a way of making the mundane things in my life seem epic, important, fun. The lesson I tried to teach, and tried to learn for myself, was that building healthy habits, starting new projects and grinding toward your goals were worthwhile things to spend time on, and that you didn’t have to do it alone.

The tricky thing is, as exciting as making and taking on a souped up To Do List may be, it can also set a person like me up for crushing disappointment and shame—two things I really can’t afford to get caught up in more than I already do (zing! Adulting is hard).

So I begin this new journey with a new end in mind—and a new secret identity to match. Making a Secret Identity does not mean I’m going to be whipping off my glasses and opening my shirt to reveal the emblem of the house of El any time soon. Creating a Secret Identity is a gameful way of practicing cognitive self-distancing, which enables you to get distance from your own perspective to view your experiences, positive and negative, through what is often a more forgiving lens. Your Secret Identity is your ‘avatar’ through which you act out your personal goals. I’ve already told you a little about The Gameful Guru’s goals—now it’s time to introduce you to my new moniker, my aspirational alter ego I plan to develop over the next year: The Mindful Mentor.

In name, The Mindful Mentor encapsulates two major goals of mine in this current moment in time: to become more in control of my thoughts and emotions, thus enabling me to be more a creatively fulfilled and professionally engaged person; and to be a prime example to my students of the kind of person, teacher and learner that they could one day become. It’s not everything I want to be and do, but it’s more than enough for now. In this blogging project, I’m determined to dig into what’s really important to me. Things like regular exercise, improved diet, better management of time and money—you know, the stuff of epic heroes. Becoming a Mindful Mentor entails I improve myself in a variety of ways, but it starts with realigning my habits and committing to building new ones.

You may have also noticed my blog title: “A Year of Teaching Adventurously.” What does it mean to teach ‘adventurously’? And what does it have to do with being mindful? Well, it comes a lot more from gamefulness than mindfulness, but my theory is, if I can get a handle on mindfulness, I can make enough headspace for me to do something truly ambitious:

I want to approach teaching—with everything from lesson and unit planning to the actual management of my classroom—in a gameful way. I think that when I think of teaching as something to get past, as something I’m scraping by to complete on a day to day basis, I don’t actually get to enjoy or grow from it. And my students are worse off for it. I had a lot of positive experiences last year, but plenty of negative ones that were, in the end, pretty avoidable. This year, the main change in approach is that I want to start with the end in mind, and a stronger sense of the road map to get there. On the curriculum side, that means planning further out, and knowing where I’m headed from the start. When it comes to what I actually do differently with my students, well, there are a few things I need to get down first.

I need to know who my students are, and what their goals are, both in school and in life. Some of them are going to be fairly limited in their capacity to answer the big questions about themselves, but when we get talking about their journeys, where they are and where they want to go, I think the resulting conversation—and learning experience—will be pretty great.

The project of this blog is to explore the what and how of my teaching year, while also tracking the progress I’m making with my various secondary goals. I want to be healthier, happier, more productive and more successful in my pursuits, while also helping my students learn and grow as much as possible. I want to become the Mindful Mentor.

We’ll see what this adventure holds for me.

Until next time, suffer less, and grow more.

[sufferlessgrowmore]

A New Year, A Sweet Year

Shana Tova, Good Yontif and Happy Monday to all the Goyim in the audience - It’s time to talk about the week that was, the week that is and the way I’m feeling heading into the (Jewish) New Year!

Let’s start with last week. Last week, as I wrote previously, I did have a sick day, which set me back a good chunk of hours with my students. However, I feel like on the whole the week went well. I handled my new student additions relatively well, and I think I’m going to enjoy going back through Unit 0 with them.

Speaking of new students, welcome The Nutritious Napper and the Bodacious Bookwork to the fold! These two adventurers took up their mantles on Thursday and began their first Adventure today, without me, due to Rosh Hashanah Shanah-negans.

As for the week that is, well, it’s already in progress. I was not in school today because I performed in my synagogue’s choir during Rosh Hashanah services. The High Holy Days have always been an interesting time for me. For many Jews, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can be sobering reminders of a year’s trials and tribulations, the priorities that have drifted and the ways in which we have not measured up. The past few years, for me, the September-October season has generally brought some form of realignment; Last year I had quit my first big-boy teacher job to preserve my own integrity and to find a better path; three years before that, I discovered SuperBetter, sending me off on a journey toward growth and self-discovery.

The point is, this time of year isn’t always uplifting, but it generally presents an opportunity for change -- and that’s exactly what I’ve been needing. As the general tone of my past few posts might have indicated, I’ve been feeling less than exemplary lately, and the winds in the sails of my year of teaching adventurously have entered a waning period. However, as I learned over the summer, the main stressors I have when it comes to teaching are not found in the teaching itself, but in the preparation. When I’m not prepared, and more importantly, when I’m intimidated by the process of preparation, my anxiety flares up. In those moments, it doesn’t really matter how much mindfulness meditation I practice, or how much regular reading I do (though I did finish What If It’s Us this weekend, which felt good). The issue I need to address first is just doing the dang thing.

Today, that’s what I resolved to do, and it came after a very close call. As I mentioned, I did not teach today, but I did write my sub plans and the quizzes some of my students had to complete. However, the trouble was, I wrote all of those sub plans and each of those quizzes... today. This morning, in fact.

I could make excuses, I could go into detail about my emotional state on Sunday, or the social time I had on Saturday, but really, what happened was due to an accumulation of factors, weeks in the making. The simple fact is, my Fridays have not been as productive as they’ve needed to be, and it has put a lot of pressure on my Sundays. It’s okay to enjoy a day off, but eventually, something’s gotta give, and as I’ve learned, when I leave everything to Sunday, it sometimes just doesn’t happen. I roll in early on a Monday, frazzled and scrambling to get something ready for the day--and that is my least favorite way to start a Monday. I’ve told myself I want to make my Friday’s useful and productive, but try as I have, my best laid Friday morning plans have so far gone awry.

I need to change this particular part of my habits, so I can enjoy my Friday evenings and Saturdays in good conscience. I need to do this so I can avoid feeling the way that I felt this morning. At 7:30am, I was awake in bed, paralyzed with fear-based lethargy. It took a serious effort to get out of bed, and once I did, the reality of how much I had to do set in. “I don’t have enough time. I can’t do this. Oh god, what if I can’t do this?” I alternately catastrophised aloud and typed out my plans. I was getting picked up at 8:15 for choir. The plans needed to be in by 9, and if I left at 8:15 there was no way I’d finish by then, even if I brought my laptop. I told my dad that I’d drive separately, almost sputtering with panic, and hustled back into my house to finish the job. And I did finish the job, more than an hour later, just in time to head to choir and make it to my seat five minutes before the service began.

When I saw my dad, he was in good spirits, happy that I had made it. As for me, I was in tears, reeling from the fact that I almost didn’t. Upset with myself for putting my job at risk, frustrated that I hadn’t put forth enough effort on the front end to prevent this kind of thing from happening. My dad did what he could to get me in better spirits and to smile through the tears. My choir neighbor grabbed me some napkins to use as tissues. We sang our songs, chanted our prayers and ushered in the new year.

The day ended up being a good one. I knocked out my outstanding Notes Home in one fell swoop before my single Monday tutoring client, and I did a fair amount of the legwork to make grading for the past few weeks a breeze. Now that I’m getting to process my experiences in words, I’m feeling a lot better about how things are going and how they should continue to go this week, if I stay vigilant, and stop shirking my responsibilities. My days may be longer, but they won’t feel long if I’m more prepared and can get the drop on them.

Now it’s time to talk goals.

This week I will continue to do 10-20 minutes of meditation a day (today I watched two videos on Headspace in lieu of a formal meditation, but I will meditate tomorrow morning.), I will begin another book (I’m between Turtles All The Way Down by John Green or All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders currently) and I will do my planning, grading and notes home on a nightly basis.

Tomorrow might be a long day, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. It’s the first new day of a sweet new year.

Life will pass through, keep being you.

Sincerely, MM