It is always the darkest before the light.

There are so many changes happening here in the district. I think this uncertainty will be with us for the next two or three years. That is a very long time to be living on the edge.

I was just about to start a session with some teachers and the sky caught my eye.

There were times in my life that I spent many hours outside. It was always the coldest and darkest just before the Sun started to rise.

I took another picture a few minutes later. While it was still pretty cold the colors began to really emerge.

While it is always darkest before the light, the light always comes. Sometimes not right away, sometimes not exactly how you imaged it but it comes.

Maybe the survival tactic is being the light for those who can’t see the light, those who don’t remember that the light always shines again.

Then again maybe it the old idea of some see the glass as half empty and some see it as half full. Did you know that there is a lesser known third option? That same exact glass is simply refillable.

Spent hours on one lesson

Never volunteer for anything, that is one life lesson taught to me in the Corps.

Well… this year I volunteered to teach a one hour class to a group of 5th graders in one building.. This was my 10th year out of the classroom. It is not like riding a bike! While the class sizes were larger than I anticipated, about 32, I’m making some progress.

I’m doing a pilot for the elementary version of PLTW. Some of the science has been difficult for the kids. I can empathize the teachers who only get 47 minutes to teach a subject before the kids leave for the next subject. Some days it feels like I don’t get anywhere before the bell.

I spent much of today reviewing, testing and creating a lesson that might take a billion years or two hours to complete.

Finding the balance – is now a good time to get out of the way?

I spend many of my days helping teachers. Most of the time we are focused on educational technology. Today we took a risk and tried an experiment.

This was session seven of seven, we will not meet again until next year. I’m pretty confident that the group does not need any new ideas, they have been idead to death. we give them ideas, the buildings and teams give them ideas, they read about ideas online. Idea overload.

We built a session that mirrored the 20% time/genius hour idea. They had time to figure out what to work on, shared that idea verbally and then they got to work.

Sometimes I struggle with figuring out when to help and when to let the struggle happen.

The picture above is a great example of learning to back off and let ideas flow. One teacher is helping the other with creating a pretty great project using Google Sites. While I could jump in I think I would kill the conversation and flow of ideas.

I know I struggled with this in the classroom. I heard someone say that the kids should do most of the talking, they are the ones who should go home exhausted. That is sometimes hard to do because if I am not talking am I doing my job?

The secondary pain is time. While many PD opportunities just load content and ideas they don’t leave time to think and create. Finding that balance, thinking/creation time, is very difficult. When is it too much or not enough?

What makes a family?

Once a week for two and a half years I spent with a small cohort of people. Some I can’t recall their names and the faces are fading from memory but others remain intact. It is like a few of those people became like family and when you see them it is like reuniting with that long lost cousin.

Today was one of those reunions. My friend Mel stopped by to just say hello. She dropped off this bottle of water and some cookies. I’m pretty sure this water got us through some of those super long nights sitting in classrooms after spending all day in classrooms.

I sometimes wonder why I ever went back to school.

45 things to remember.

Life can be stressful. Picking the kids up and shuttling them off to random practices. Rushing home to eat dinner, do homework and ushering them bed is never easy on the best days. Yesterday was one of those stressful days that things just didn’t go right. The day did not end on a good note. I’m sure you can relate.

Today I keep finding these little pieces of paper. Some were stuffed into my laptop bag, others taped to various parts of my lunch. Forty-five of these with unique memories written on each one. Some written by my wife, memories going back to our undergrad years and others by the kids with things that happened a few weeks back.

One memory to represent each year I have been alive. While the day will bring presents and cakes (you just can’t celebrate with one cake!) these bits of paper are especially important to me.

While it is super easy to get bogged down on the day to day, making memories is what I should be focused on.

Someone once told me that dirty dishes in the sink and crumbs on the floor are a sign of what is actually important, spending time with the people in your life. I’m not sure this is exactly how it went but you can pick up on the overall meaning.

How many memories will you make today?

Sometimes it is too late.

I was stuck behind this bus for a while today. Usually I don’t mind but today the fumes hit me hard. I’m not sure if it was the uneasiness and unknown outcomes of a meeting today or the music we were playing but it transported me back to a time long ago.

The diesel fumes always remind me of ship. While stuck in the tank deck with all the tracks fired up you choked on the fumes. I can still feel the burning in my throat and stinging in my eyes. Here are the guys just before we splashed to make our way to a position just south of Mogadishu. Much of your military life is filled with equal part of total boredom and anticipation, that day was no different.

A few years ago I began searching for some of the guys on social media. Johnson, Recor and Sgt. Sowers were found pretty quickly but I couldn’t find Rothfus.

It took a while but then I found this and was pretty devastated. He was gone and there was no second chances, no time to tell him how much I appreciated him, how much we all loved his gallows humor. (Pretty much all humor in the military is pretty dark.)

Sometimes people like to say that it’s never too late, there is time, etc. I’m not so sure.

While all this starts to eat at me there is something I can do. I’ve got a rough list of who I need to thank, talk to and just catch up. I need to do this before it is actually too late.