Circling Forward

Spring Break wrapped up really nicely. It turned out that being on a meditation retreat for the last few days of break was really nice. I have done this in the past and found the transition to be quite jarring. I think this felt different because of the content of the retreat and because I prioritized being fully prepped for the first day back before heading off for the retreat. I also set the intention of taking it really easy the first day back to give my students and myself an opportunity to transition with as little stress and pressure as possible. The topic of the retreat was integrating attachment theory into meditation practice, and the teachings drew extensively from the work of Dan Brown (attachment) and John Makransky (field of care practices). I found the practices to be really impactful and healing, and I left the retreat with a sense of ease with myself that I don't think I've ever experienced. Returning to the classroom this week, I was happy (and honestly surpris...

It is so nice to have a two week Spring Break. I’ve gotten to the point where I have to think about what day it is, I’m sleeping more, and I’m in a much more relaxed rhythm. Week 1 was just really nice.  Monday and Tuesday I did do some lesson planning, but it was nice to have big chunks of uninterrupted time, and I spent a lot of it with my grade level colleague getting ahead. We have the rest of the year mapped out, and I’m excited about what we’re doing. For math we will keep plugging along with the self paced work using Eureka Squared as our based. For our humanities block we are going to do an SEL based mini-unit on communication followed by a short health that our school counselor co-leads with us, and finally we will wrap up the year with a unit on neurodiversity. Through all of it, we are really focusing on writing skills and development using Writing Revolution 2.0  and self-pacing as our anchors. I’ve been a fan of Judith Hochman for some time but haven’t dived into ...

Spring Break is here! My school has a two week March Break instead of a week each in February and April, and I really like it. I have a good lineup for Spring Break planned. A few days at home (with my daughter still at daycare!), a trip to visit family with my daughter while my husband stays home and has some solo time, and finally a meditation retreat for the last few days that I'm really looking forward to. It feels like a good balance of things, and I'm excited to do some projects around the house for the first few days of break. I'm currently at the Verizon store getting my tech in order, which is something I definitely wouldn't have the patience to take on during an ordinary weekend.  I talked to my grade level colleague about the schedule shift, and she was very enthusiastic. We shifted our schedule so all of our core content is wrapped by lunch, and we realized that allows us to do flexible grouping for word study and independent reading conferences across class...

Perhaps the single thing that has positively impacted my teaching the most in recent years has been receiving my own ADHD diagnosis. I was seeking support with depression a few years ago during a period of significant stress. My husband, then 9 month old daughter, and I moved across the country in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. A couple years after that I was still adjusting to life as a newish parent, my students had more needs than ever as we returned to school after the disaster that was remote learning, and I was still very getting used to life in Boston. I was so lucky to work with a mental health professional who recognized my ADHD traits and suggested that I get a neuropsych evaluation, which eventually happened in the summer of 2023. The evaluation gave me language around my strengths and relative weaknesses, and it put me on a path to better understand myself. For the past few years, I've heard the term masking quite a lot, but it hasn't resonated. My focus has be...

I wrote last week about my intention to follow my boss's advice and focus my attention on my "must do" list for work in an effort to work fewer hours and have weekends off. And, I was able to do it this week. I got to school a bit earlier each day, but the main factors were having my must do list as well as shaking up my time management approach a little bit. I've been reading Timeboxing  by Marc Zao-Sanders, and it is helping me bring a lot more intentionality to my time. Each day either right before bed or first thing while the coffee is brewing I take about 15 minutes to go through my to-do list and calendar, decide what's most important, and make a plan for the day. A few things that have been great about this: Prioritization : I'm in relationship with the constraints of time, and it's helping me prioritize. I know I can't do it all, and taking the time to think about my priorities and goals (i.e. not working on the weekend) really helps me make mo...

This week at school was a bit of a ride emotionally. As I have been focusing more on maintaining routines and being consistent with our schedule, I'm finding that there is much more of a feeling of stability in the classroom, and I also got to a place where I was feeling some burnout and mounting frustration this week. Luckily, I was able to talk through the emotional side of it with my therapist and the tactical side of it with my manager and grade-level colleague, and that led to some productive shifts. First, what went well this week?  It has been helpful to set aside this time and space for weekly reflection. It's interesting to come back to what I wrote last week and see that the intentions I set largely came to pass. We are on a great trajectory with Growth Mindset and a process orientation. After practicing in math journals for a week, I'm seeing that students are much more focused on their mindset, math practices, and the actual math they are learning. I'm no l...

This felt like more of a typical week. We stuck with the schedule, and having those boundaries is really helpful at the moment; we are all starting to build some muscle memory around the routines for arrival, dismissal, independent reading, and word study. Aside from being consistent with the schedule, I also rolled out revised class jobs this week and had students complete a survey indicating interest and availability, and that has been going quite well. I was sure to choose arrival and dismissal captains who could really support with keeping the routines on track, and that has been a great help. Other things that went well this week: We are in the midst of a unit on Greek Mythology. It has been really fun, and students are getting a lot better at reading closely. Our summaries are starting to feel less like retells, they are getting better at determining theme and finding all the key details to support their theme, and we have been reflecting on who would be a good audience for an ad...

 Oh geez, this was a week. My husband and I went to a fantastic meditation workshop on Sunday all about "radiating metta," or lovingkindness. At the end of the day I was feeling very relaxed, and I was maybe even radiating some metta, when the teacher casually mentioned that we should look out because metta practice often also brings out its opposite as well. Monday hit me like a ton of bricks. My schedule is such that on Monday and Wednesday I get a 25 minute lunch break, and then my prep is last period at 2:00, and other than that I'm on with kids. I have a lot of preps on Tuesday and Thursday, so that makes up for it, but given the way my ADHD tends to operate and teaching a new grade level, I find that I get overwhelmed and overstimulated on Mondays. On this particular Monday, it felt amped up, and I was feeling a lot of agitation. On Tuesday and Wednesday we were giving the MAP test, so we were out of our routine, then Thursday I had meetings during all of my plannin...

We returned to school from winter break on January 6, and I was resolved to do some things very differently. Before the break, we had been working on a math unit on multiplication and division, and it was going pretty poorly. Each lesson seemed to be a fit for about 4 out of 16 kids. For everyone else it was too easy or too hard. And, in hindsight, I didn't know the math well enough myself. This is my first year in fourth grade, and our curriculum doesn't clearly align with how I think about the continuum of strategies from concrete and less efficient to abstract and more efficient.  Over break, while stewing about how math felt for nearly everyone involved, I stumbled (again) on the Modern Classrooms Project . I had seen their content before, but had dismissed it because I really don't care for a lot of technology in the elementary classroom. I slowed down to learn more this time, and got excited about the idea of blended learning where teachers create their own videos. I ...

January 2025 Hi! I'm Matt, an educator looking to document my teaching journey starting now, in my twentieth year. I've taught all grades between K-4 and I've worked in elementary and middle school leadership. I'm back in the classroom now, teaching fourth grade at a small school in Boston.  These days, I'm exploring and learning more about: Project Based Learning Mindfulness in Schools Mastery Based Learning Supporting Neurodivergent Learners Why Circling Forward? It's a combination of circling back and moving forward, and I think it sounds kind of catchy!  Circling back … to the classroom after some years in school leadership to practices I learned and loved early in my career, moved on from, and want to bring back into my practice in some way to knowledge and skills to ensure that all students truly master the content Moving forward ...  learning and implementing new practices that support more effective learning and community building finding balance in the ...