#DBCBookBlogs

#DBCBookBlogs: Sanctuaries

/ Alicia Ray / 1 Comment

Book 60. Let’s just take a minute. Be still. Silent. Slow down and appreciate the fact that this organic publishing company, born from a single book, has revolutionized educational professional development to its core. SIXTY books, y’all. And they’re not obscure books. They’re best-sellers. They are inspirational. Many are being used similar to textbooks in preservice teaching courses! And they are real books, about real educators, doing real things… so yeah, just take a minute. Respect. Dave & Shelley, I am blown away. Congratulations on book 60! I’m betting we’ll see book 100 in 2019! I can’t wait to see who will have that honor!!!

So let’s get down to it! Who had the honor of being book 60? The same amazingly relaxed, zen-like educator who authored book 8 The Zen Teacher! Dan Tricarico brings us book 60 and it dropped at the perfect time of year; a time when most teachers are on break! Sanctuaries is a stunningly beautiful book and is full of incredible strategies to give ourselves the same kind of care we’d give others.

Sanctuaries

I’m always up for a dose of irony. Are you? So, I received this book before Christmas. It is now a week later and I’m just getting to sit down and read the book. Holidays. Whew! What a crazy hectic time of year! In fact, we were on our way down to my in-laws to celebrate Christmas and I used the commute time to read (I was a passenger; no worries about I-77 travel in NC, other than the usual). It didn’t take long to start laughing out loud; I love Dan’s sense of humor.

When we got home, I was dying to finish reading it, so I holed up in my bed, opened up to the last page I was on before it got too dark to read in the van (we’re Sienna people – if you’ve read Teach Like A Pirate, you know that the Burgess clan and I disagree here), I got out my blue highlighter and dug in. As I’m reading, trying to be as immersed as I can, my daughters are playing with some (insanely loud) robots/cars/toys they got for Christmas, my husband is “watching” Mythbusters while really watching Facebook videos at the highest volume possible (maybe not, but it seemed that way), the dog is snoring, and the whir of the ceiling fan somehow started echoing in my ears… Guess which chapter I was reading at that very moment…

Y’all… I can’t make that up. I even tried to get the audio for you so you could get the full effect, but the 7,168 images and the apps saved on my phone caused my recording to not save.

So here’s the deal. When I read & blogged about The Zen Teacher back in early July, I was a bit hard on Dan. “I was not excited. Period. I tried to be… really, I tried so hard! I gave myself a big pep talk before I even opened it.” – yeah, I said that… that was me. This was not the case with Sanctuaries! (Also, I ended up LOVING every minute of that book once I started it. So I knew that Sanctuaries would be just as epic!) Dan has been such an amazing asset since reading his first book! I have taken two of his online courses and have had several fantastic conversations with him. I was chomping at the bits to get Sanctuaries started! As he states in the introduction,

“If The Zen Teacher reminds you to take care of yourself, Sanctuaries shows you how.”

I love the practicality of Sanctuaries! There are so many implementations possible from my reading! My highlighter was working overtime! Dan even leaves space in the book to work out your own Sanctuary Plan and that got filled up quick in my book! You’ll definitely want to buy your own copy and not borrow this one from a friend. (Truly, friends likely won’t even loan this one because they will have written their own self-care plan in it.)

By the time I was on page 100, I was just itching to grab my computer and blog! I’m glad I didn’t though, because I came across more goodness in the next 68 pages!

I could write for hours about how great this book was and how timely the message is, but then I’d essentially rewrite his book and he does a MUCH better job than I ever could at telling this story. Just trust me when I say it’s worth your time! Make your first act of self-care to be purchasing this book for yourself. If you don’t believe self-care is important, I challenge you to purchase The Zen Teacher (Pro Tip: Go ahead and purchase both at the same time so you can have Sanctuaries ready to go because then you’ll realize how important self-care really is. Just sayin’)

My implementation is directly from the book. Sometimes I choose something totally off the wall based on what meaning I found from the book, but this one – it’s pretty much taken straight from the words of Dan himself. Dan talks about the Five S’s – these are imperative to our self-care. I need each of these in my life, intentionally and radically (he talks about this early on, too).

Silence

Mama needs silence, y’all. I’ve got to find time in my day, those fast breaks, where I can relish in the silence. These moments are rare, but I will find ways to purposefully seek out silence more often – even if it means silencing headphones. No lie.

Stillness

One of my very favorite Bible verses is Psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God. There is so much power in just being still. Being still requires trust and reverence for the moment. So many people revel in busyness – constantly running here or there, but Dan urges us just to stop. Be still. Take it all in. Use our senses to appreciate the stillness.

Subtraction

This is the big time y’all. It’s the end of 2018. What have you not used this year? Why is it still in your home? I’m obviously talking to myself too. If you could see my daughters’ playroom right now… I’m legitimately looking right at it and it looks like I could have self-funded ToysRUs before they went out of business. Tomorrow, they’ll be figuring out what they can subtract from that room. I’ll be going onto my bookshelves and determining what I can subtract from it (don’t worry; the DBC books are safe, y’all). I need to open my fridge and figure out what can be subtracted there. My closet. The pantry. Our [outdated] movie collection. The bathroom vanity drawers. Medicine cabinet. I’ll be subtracting like a wild woman.

I also need to subtract from our calendar. We need to free up some space there, too. Over this holiday break, my family has watched three movies. This isn’t anything new; we watch movies all the time. What’s new is that we watched them …(wait for it)… as a family. On the TV. In the living room. Not Bailey watching one on her new Chromebook, Sophie watching one on her iPad, Chris watching one on his iPad, and me binge-watching The Office on Netflix (yes, I read that part, Danny). We watched each of them together. It was wonderful.

Space

It’s important to clear mental, physical, spiritual space and I need to do more of that. Once I’ve subtracted, I believe the space will abound. I am a minimalist by nature. I only have curtains and pictures on the walls because my husband picked them out and hung the frames – seriously. In the media center, there are no books on display atop the shelves. I know that’s a cardinal sin of libraries and there are amazing media friends of mine who will likely be trying to hold an intervention, but I don’t like it. I feel like it looks cluttered. I like artwork on our shelves.

Slowing Down

I need to do this. In my car. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being a passenger while I drive, you likely suffer from white knuckle syndrome. I have a bit of a lead foot. I need to single-task as Dan discusses in the book. Devote myself to one task at a time, finish it, then move to the next one. It seems counter-productive at first, but now I won’t need to go back and fix my errors that I likely made while multi-tasking.

I loved this book. You will, too. Well done, Dan Tricarico. The 60th book from the DBC, Inc line continues to uphold the tradition of excellence. Go now and grab your copy and prepare to take care of yourself. We are in a profession that is about giving and giving and giving. Take some time to give to yourself. Give yourself the gift of self-care. You deserve it!

The flipgrid is available! You’ll definitely want to check this one out! Thanks to Andrea Paulakovich for this tremendous idea & offering to allow me to copilot the space with her when #DBC50Summer first started!

Oh, and in case you were wondering… there is an acronym. It’s solid stuff.

Time Tracker Test

/ Alicia Ray / Leave a comment

RainbowUmbrellaMJ

Last night I really struggled with some internal battles. I should have been on cloud nine as this has been an incredibly fulfilling week. My school rocked our first Teach Like A Pirate Day (more on that in a separate blog later), our Community Game Night was a success, and I got to co-facilitate two terrific #BreakoutEDU games, one for every 7th grade science class and the other for every 6th grade social studies class!

There were a few setbacks; I felt pretty rough Monday night and Tuesday and my youngest daughter had the stomach bug Thursday night. My daughters are excited about Christmas which means they are a bit wild(er than normal). Combine that with getting less than ideal amounts of sleep, I was operating on a short fuse at home.

However, none of that was enough to make me feel as melancholy as I was feeling last night. I even tweeted about it – which I VERY rarely do. Typically my tweets are insanely positive, but last night, I just couldn’t help myself. I had to share my thoughts.

Of course, my amazing PLN responded with love and kindness.

I just kept trying to figure out what was getting under my skin though. Reflecting on the week, I began thinking about self-care and balance. That’s when I remembered that my Balance Like A Pirate implementation for #DBCBookBlogs was to track what I did every 30-60 minutes and determine which quadrant (professional, personal, passion, and positional) those activities belonged in.

I may have cheated a bit because I didn’t do this throughout the week as I had intended, but by thinking backward through my week I was able to account for each of the major things I did this week. I used this spreadsheet to write down my activities (feel free to make a copy of your own). The results were pretty much what I expected.

Out of the 168 hours in a week, I spent a little over 50 hours sleeping. Subtracting that time, because it doesn’t really fit into one of the quadrants as it’s a necessity, I was left with roughly 115 waking hours this week.

Positional

My Positional responsibilities ate up over half of this time this week. The Positional quadrant includes my role at my job; it’s what “pays the bills”, as the authors of Balance Like A Pirate, Sarah, Jessica and Jessica say. This doesn’t always take up over half of my week. This coming week, for example, I am blessed to be able to spend the week with my family for Christmas break. However, in the past week, I spent over 52 hours physically at work, over 7 hours working from home, approximately 10 hours commuting (including running my daughters to practice, etc) and nearly 7 hours showering and getting ready for work. If I did the math right, that leaves me with less than 40 hours in my week. (This is easily an example of why teachers advocate for a higher salary and summers off. I worked over 60 hours this week.)

Professional

Our professional responsibilities are how we continue to learn and grow in our ability to serve our students and staff. This week, I spent less time in this quadrant than usual. Normally, I spend over an hour on Twitter chats nightly, connecting with educators from across the globe to improve my practices and revisit my educational philosophies. I also did not read a professional book this week (odd, I know!) and this is my only blog post this week. I was able to connect with my PLN on Sunday night for two of my favorite chats, #teachpos and #BeKindEDU, Monday night was an incredible #tlap conversation, and this morning I enjoyed the #LeadLAP chat. I have also been taking an online course and spent some time today revisiting and learning about self-care from the one and only, Dan Tricarico (author of The Zen Teacher AND nearly released Sanctuaries).

I highly recommend diving into Dan’s courses, in addition to his books. I finished his first course, which is an introduction of sorts to self-care called Self-Care Starter Kit. I am currently nearing the halfway point of another of his courses, Self-Care 101, and am enjoying the breathing exercises and mantras he takes you through. I really appreciate that he gives us permission to take care of ourselves. Dan reminds us that it’s okay to be idle; we must schedule this time for ourselves. He says that self-care isn’ t meant to be something extra, something added to your schedule. It’s actually about subtracting, about taking things away to make time for yourself. Carve out some time in your schedule to go through one of Dan’s courses! You can go to zenprocourses.com for more information. He breaks the courses into 5-7 minute videos, so it’s easy to take bite-sized pieces. Trust me, it’s good stuff. This week I’ve spent around 9 hours in the professional quadrant.

Personal

So the personal quadrant is all about who you are outside of your job. It’s about all of the others titles you hold. For me, these include Believer, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, niece, aunt, cousin, nursery volunteer, dog mom to our almost 11 year old shih-tzu, etc. Some of the personal quadrant is a joy. Others, however, are not so much fun. I spent nearly 10 hours this week doing “chores” (I miss getting an allowance for these things, don’t you?!). We do a ridiculous amount of laundry, and with our youngest daughter being a newly-diagnosed type 1 diabetic, we spend a lot of time packing lunch and counting carbohydrates as we continue to get used to managing her blood sugar.

Checking homework and cleaning the house and the car are also among chores I don’t enjoy. Finally, with both my youngest daughter and I being sick this week, I didn’t waste any time taking the trash off. We had to do some last minute shopping this week for the holidays  in addition to our normal grocery store visit.

However, there are many parts of my personal quadrant that I greatly enjoy! These are times when my daughters and I are laughing together doing karaoke in the car line at school, or when our family enjoys Christmas movies lounging on one another on our sectional. (We got two movies in this week!) We spent about 7 hours eating meals as a family this week, while other meal times were spent at work/school or on demand. Throughout the week, we spent about an hour tucking our kids in bed. We spent a little over 2 hours at church on Sunday. I am a volunteer in our church nursery, so I loved on the babies during one service and attended the next one. During that service, our oldest daughter Bailey was baptized based on her profession of faith, which was a huge celebration in our family.

The last few hours (only about five hours this week) were spent reflecting as I lay in bed at night before I fall asleep, playing games on my phone, watching TV, and just relaxing.

Passion

So where does that leave room for my quadrant of passion? According to Balance Like A Pirate, our passion quadrant includes that which gets us out of bed every morning. I am incredibly lucky in that my profession, my position, and my family are all passions of mine. Sure there are parts of my position that I’m not passionate about, and those chores I don’t enjoy. However, I typically can find joy in most of what I do.

So why was I have such a tough night last night? Why did I feel as if the rainbow on the umbrella in the image drawn by my student (isn’t it beautiful?!?!) was being erased rather than being exposed?

I’m still not sure, to be honest. Part of those same feelings from last night are still lingering today, but blogging is really helping. I am in the middle of writing my story, my implementation from Stories from Webb and Run Like A Pirate. I wasn’t able to take any time this week to write part of that, so perhaps that is what is bothering me. I am expecting to finish the writing of my story during Christmas break, so hopefully that will lift a weight off my shoulders. It’s been on my mind incessantly since this spring, so having it “out of my head” and “onto paper” (errrr, Google Doc) should free up some headspace. (Possibly? I’ve never done this before so we’ll see if that really happens, ha!)

So back to my Balance Like A Pirate implementation. Passion is embedded within my other three quadrants, so based on this week my positional quadrant took two-thirds of my waking hours, while the personal quadrant was given about 25% of my waking hours. The remainder (less than 10%) was spent in the professional quadrant. I was surprised to see the professional quadrant being so limited, and perhaps that is the real reason I felt so off-kilter last night. I have devoted so much time to professional growth in 2018, that maybe I felt as if I was neglecting that this week.

Either way, the most important thing to remember is that there is no such thing as perfect balance. It’s just not going to happen. Instead, we will constantly fluctuate between our quadrants based on our needs that week, that day, even within that hour. It’s about finding joy and having an attitude of gratitude. It’s about making the time to take care of ourselves and acknowledging those moments like I had last night. I truly feel like it’s important to share those moments with others, because we all have them. It’s equally as important to pick yourself back up and move forward, so others can see perseverance and determination. I’m picking myself back up and am determined to have a tremendous week with my family during this holiday season.

 

#DBCBookBlogs: Stop. Right. Now.

/ Alicia Ray / 1 Comment

It’s been a minute and I have missed writing #DBCBookBlogs posts! I am so thankful that book 59 was released last week and mine came in quicker than I expected. As soon as I received my Amazon notification that it was delivered, I knew what I’d be doing tonight! Dave Burgess, President of Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc, best-selling author of Teach Like A Pirate, and co-author (with his wife and fellow educator, Shelley) of P is for Pirate, tweeted earlier today:

Boy, was he right!!! My toes were stepped on, I questioned some of the things the authors suggest to stop, and I whole-heartedly agreed with others! My feathers got ruffled a few times. I’ll be the first to say that I don’t agree with every word in this book; however, I put my big girl undies on and enjoyed reading the educational conversation about each point. With that being said, you don’t have to agree with everything they share to find something that you have within your power to Stop. Right. Now. Jump in with Jimmy Casas and Jeff Zoul (co-authors of Start. Right. Now. with Todd Whitaker) to discover the 39 things they believe we should stop in order to make schools better.

stoprightnow

Here’s my completely raw, wide-open, honest, I-just-finished-this-book reflection. I had several moments where my toes were stepped on and I was convicted because I knew I did those things. I also had several moments where I literally said out loud, “Do whaaat? Oh, no, they didn’t!” There were moments that I would love to watch people with WAY more educational experience and research-based statistics go head to head arguing about the merit of that particular stop… all while I pull up a big bowl of kettle corn (way better than popcorn anyday) and a Big Gulp of Sprite! It would be the ultimate version of Celebrity Death Match minus the whole death part (yeah, I used to watch that on MTV – embarrassing).

With all of that bias and judgment in mind, this book was another incredible addition to the Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc line. Even the stops I didn’t agree with were met with valuable explanations of their opinions. I could follow their line of thought. There were some that I eventually joined their line of thought even though I was vehemently against it when I read the title of that chapter. There were FAR more stops that I agree with than those I didn’t agree with, and making those stops (ahem, right now, ahem) will certainly change education for the better!

The book is organized by stops written as chapters. I loved that each chapter was written in the same format. I knew what to expect. They started with what “it” was that we needed to stop, why we need to stop doing it, and how we can do better as educators. Each of the stops can be put into one (or more) of five areas. Each area begins with a P – Practices, Programs, Processes, Philosophies, and People. These stops are not organized in any order throughout the book, but I’m an organizer (it’s a blessing and a curse), so I created a quick graphic with the stops under the most prominent category (understanding that some stops easily lend themselves to more than one area).

StopRightNow (1)

Click here for StopRightNow PDF.

A few that stood out to me were Saying I Hate Change, Preparing Students for the Next Level, and Relying on the Same People to Lead.

I am 110% guilty of saying that I hate change. The reality is that I don’t really hate change, but I hate feeling out of control. If I am in control of whatever the change is, I wonder what the problem is of those who aren’t getting on board. Ironic, right? I should know exactly what their problem is, because it’s my problem every time I’m in their shoes. I tend to get a bit bent out of shape when I don’t know what’s coming. Many times, change goes hand-in-hand with the unknown. So rather than saying I hate change, I should be confronting what’s really bothering me… a lack of control and the unknown.

I taught fifth grade for over seven years before beginning my role as a media coordinator. Every year around Christmas, I would stop checking planners for students. I expected the students to bring me notes from home if they had one. What was my defense every time a parent complained that their child didn’t have their homework written down or that I didn’t receive their note? I’m getting them ready for middle school. Looking back, what a ridiculous thought that was. They weren’t ready for me to release that responsibility to them all at once. I needed to focus on preparing them for right then.

I was reading a blog post from Dave Burgess earlier today very similar to this very thing!  In it, he says he “gets a bit confrontational when asked, ‘Don’t you worry about the fact that you are making school so engaging and fun that when they get to their college classes or to a real job they won’t be prepared?’

His response:

“So what people are saying when they ask this is basically, ‘Okay…since life is going to suck for these kids later, shouldn’t we make it suck now, too, so they’ll be ready for it?’ I don’t buy it, at all.”

My middle schoolers are middle schoolers. Just because my eighth graders will be freshmen next year doesn’t mean that I should treat them like freshmen now. They are still eighth graders! What’s ironic about this whole thing is that when our sixth graders come to us in the fall, we commonly say, “Well, they’re really still just like fifth graders”… the irony is that those fifth grade teachers have been trying to get them ready to be sixth graders (I know, because I was one of those teachers). I love Jeff & Jimmy’s thoughts on this so much that I created a graphic for it and tweeted it this evening. “Prepare them thoroughly at their current level,” they say.

There is so much truth to that! If we prepare them for RIGHT NOW, they will be prepared for the next level coming at them by default.

Finally, selecting the same people to lead stood out to me. It did so because I’ve been on both sides of this argument. I was the one who desperately wanted to go to our state technology conference. The only way we were able to attend was to be chosen by our district OR to submit a proposal and be accepted to present. Well, I wasn’t about to submit a proposal – I wanted to learn, not teach! I didn’t feel “ready” to present at a state conference when I had never even presented within my own school or district! I was never chosen by my district as it was the same people always asked to attend and I was so frustrated by that! The professional jealousy was real, y’all. Now, I’m completely on the other side; I’m asked to do so much that I’m stretched too thin as times. Thankfully my director has been preaching this exact same thing for years, so he really makes it a point to purposefully select others to step up and he builds leadership capacity in them. This has allowed me to step back into my role at my school, as well as have time to do things like #DBC50Summer and create my own professional growth opportunities. I’ve gotten over the insecurities that went with not being chosen for this conference or that event or this committee. It’s awfully nice to have that weight lifted; I’ve got to be perfectly honest about that.

My implementation? I’m going to focus on the Gots rather than the Nots! What are people doing rather than what they are not doing! It’s so easy to get pulled into the frustration and negativity when I’m busting my tail to be the very best educator I can be and do all I can do for my students and teachers while seeing others run in the school at the last minute and dash out the door the second they can leave. Instead of being aggravated, I choose to focus on the positive. I will assume the best of others and focus on what the strengths of others are, rather than breathing life into the things that drive me crazy.

There is so much to love about Stop. Right. Now! As I type, it’s the number 1 new release in Experimental Education Methods on Amazon and for good reason. Even the parts I didn’t agree with, I enjoyed reading and I love that it challenged my thinking as I read. Now I’m reconsidering some of my own philosophies, which can only strengthen my educational practices! I love books and conversations that make me do that! This was one of those books that made me wonder how I even felt about a topic so I could form an opinion before continuing the chapter. I had no idea how I felt about professional dress code; I’d never even stopped to consider it. Now, I have a philosophy on dress code (and no worries, Jeff and Jimmy – I won’t be complaining about it).

Definitely take the time to grab a copy of the latest addition to the DBC collection! Book 59 won’t disappoint! It’s a pretty quick read and is full of thought-provoking conversation starters! Be sure to hop on over the Flipgrid (it’s still available) to share your thoughts! The question relates to school calendar, but feel free to share any reflections you have on the book! Check out the amazing website for DBC to find information about each of the Pirate Authors and how to connect with them on social media. The book says to use #StopRightNow to discuss ideas from the book, but I’ve also seen (and used) #StopRightNow39 as a way to differentiate between the book and the popular phrase.

I’m so excited to see which books ends up being Book 60. Several folks are posting on social media about upcoming books with DBC including Dan Tricarico‘s Sanctuaries, Tamara Letter‘s A Passion for Kindness, and Lisa Johnson‘s book Creatively Productive. It looks like 2019 is going to be another amazing year for DBC, which means tons of #DBCBookBlogs posts! I can’t wait to see what the new year has in store for us!

Rumor has it… Teach Like A Pirate will be out on audiobook soon!!! And BONUS: it’s read by the Captain himself! <squeeee> How do I know that? Easy! I’m signed up for the DBC eNewsletter! With that I get the #SundaySeven with tidbits from DBC and their authors and a monthly newsletter that lets the DBC readers know what’s coming up soon! If you aren’t signed up, click the link here and sign up where it says Subscribe to the DBCI eNews on the side!