Lenten Reflection - 40 Bags in 40 Days

I was raised a Southern Baptist and changed denominations to Presbyterian as an adult.  As a result, the tradition of Lent is something that I have slowly come to embrace.  I think it has been a slow process as well because I am disturbed by the idea of "giving something up" for just 40 days.  Shouldn't it be about more transformative change?  If the purpose of the season is to come closer to God and grow spiritually, then the concept of denying something to yourself for only 40 days makes me think you don't want continuing closeness.  I prefer the idea of changing habits to proactively do something that you don't normally do, but should.  I always have difficulty deciding what that "something" should be.

However, I read a woman's blog post earlier this week about decluttering your life in order to clear yourself to focus on what is truly important.  That resonated within me, both because it is more proactive and also because I have lots of clutter in my life!  You can read her blog post here.

So, here is my accountability record.  I am going to work toward making this happen!

Because the first day of Lent resulted in only about an hour of my day spent at home if I wasn't sleeping, I focused on something that could be decluttered from anywhere...

Yep, the inbox.  My Gmail account had about 5000 emails in it.  Have you experienced that kind of clutter?  You don't immediately clean up and so all the social media notifications, emails trying to sell you something, etc. just keep piling in.  And of course they are intermingled with the important things, so you are afraid to just go through and start deleting.

I started by creating a few folders for the things I would want to keep - then I searched for the oldest emails to see what I had held onto.  They were from 2010!  All of them lacked importance anymore - although I do see why I didn't immediately delete them back in 2010.  I went through the past several months, moving important mail into folders first.  Then, I just clicked a button to highlight all of the mail and hit the trash can icon!  

Checking email this morning was so much more relaxing....and it all got deleted after reading!  Some of it got deleted without reading.  I already feel like I have accomplished something toward freeing my life of the distractions that keep me from focusing more fully on God and my family.

Now, to figure out what I will clear out today.

One step back

I have taken lots of steps forward in my health odyssey this fall, so one step back shouldn't frustrate me as much as it is.  While I was at PT on Friday evening, I suddenly had my right calf muscle cramp up and immobilize me. I was doing an exercise I have done other visits with no problem, and actually thought I had been moving at a snail's pace that session.  We immediately stopped that particular exercise, and they rushed to fill up a plastic teaspoon with yellow mustard which they had me swallow with a water chaser....now, I actually really like mustard. As a child, I routinely got my burgers "mustard only." I've never ate it without a piece of protein or in something yummy like potato salad before though. While not hideous, I'd rather not repeat it. I posted something on Facebook and one of my high school classmates explained the effect-he's now a doctor. Apparently, it helps muscle cramps because of the acetic acid which does something with the production of acetylcholine in the body and helps ease muscle cramps. I'm happy to learn something new every day. 😁 Unfortunately, the muscle cramp has not eased as the weekend has progressed. As a result, I'm now slathering on Ben-Gay and limping a bit. The limping motion has made my right hip ache and I just feel like I have lost so much ground. It's kind of depressing. I just want to move forward more quickly than I am and this is frustrating.  

It does speed up my search for a home TENS unit as well.  My doctor wrote me a prescription last week so I can use my FSA account to pay for one. For my readers who don't know what a TENS it is, it stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation.  At the end of each therapy session, they hook me up to one of these units, slap a massive ice pack over my back and hips and let it him along for about 15 minutes. It is probably the second best part of each session...I'm going to have to rank the personal massage as the best part each time.  After my initial 15 sessions of PT, my doctor ordered 12 more and insurance only approved 8. I view that as a sign that they want to wean me soon, so I figured it would be good to have one of these available at home. I've been doing research online and just can't make up my mind.  The best site to help me that I've found is http://www.tensunitreviews.net.  There are just too many choices! While the costs are reasonable for one unit, they lose reasonableness if you pick wrong and have to buy another!

I am choosing between a unit from LGMedSupply, a Healthmate Forever unit or one which isn't rated on this site but has terrific customer service reviews on Amazon.  I need to quit suffering from analysis paralysis and just purchase! That is my goal this week....beyond work related goals like finalizing grades and curriculum planning!

Wild and crazy weekend....well, not really

I spent this weekend working on curriculum planning and grading.  I will be the first to admit that I like lesson planning a whole lot more than I like grading, but then, everyone has parts of their job that they prefer to others. For me, the best part of my job is getting to work with young people and learn with them.  My love for that aspect of education even spills over into my choice of where to get my hair cut. I go to Aveda and let beauty students cut my hair...partly because it's a great deal monetarily, partly because I love having my scalp massaged while they wash my hair, but mostly because I love being part of helping someone master skills..if they make a mistake? It's just hair - it will grow back!

So, how does all of this relate to my weekend? I spent HOURS on both Saturday and Sunday working. Over the last week, I have developed a unit for my regular classes that I'm really excited about. I have researched a technique called the layered curriculum...once I knew there was a "term" for what I wanted to do, it made finding examples and research a lot easier!  We will start the unit on Tuesday and they will have two weeks to master the content related to federalism. Each student will have control over how they choose to learn the content and prove their learning from within a framework of choices.  The curriculum layers up from the bottom two levels of Blooms Taxonomy to the very top of the taxonomy. If students are content to stay at remembering and comprehending, their grade will reflect that they only have minimal mastery which translates to a C. If they want to master through application and analysis, they will earn a B. If they want to show mastery through evaluation and creation of new learning products, they can earn an A.  On Saturday, I finalized putting all of the assignments and links to resources in Moodle.  I then created several flipped lectures for the unit...watching lecture and taking notes is a choice in the bottom of the pyramid.  The most important part of this process is the face to face conversation that students will be required to have with me as they finish each lesson. It's going to be labor intensive, but also rewarding. I hope they like this unit as much as I do!

I spent the afternoon today catching up on reading my AP student blogs. It was really interesting to see what they chose to write about. I am gaining quite a few insights into their personalities through this assignment and I am watching them grow as political thinkers...it is quite fun.  The less fun part is assessing their writing. Oh, how I wish students could be motivated to work without grades!  Actually, some of them could be I think, but I'm not in a position to test that theory.

On a personal level, I am slowly making progress in physical therapy. They are bumping up the activities a little bit each time. As a result, I come home wiped out, and sometimes uncomfortable. I have a second epidural block scheduled for this Wednesday afternoon. I need to write out my questions about it before that appointment. After the first block, the pain eased quite a bit and my mobility and ability to proceed with therapy improved dramatically.  However, the sciatica on my right side returned. I need to ask whether we should direct the second shot to the right or elsewhere. I just want all of the pain to ease so I can get back to normal sooner. I'm thankful to have the insurance to do this....no complaints.

Progress Report

I really need to add "update blog" to my calendar. I'd add it to my to-do list, but that wouldn't necessarily get it done!

We are halfway through the first nine weeks of school now, which means 25% through the AP Government class...when I think of it that way, it is a bit stressful.  We are on track with last year though, so I feel o.k. about our pace.  We are acclimated to each other now and into the groove. I'm enjoying all of the students, and especially enjoying reading their blogs. A few of them have expressed to me that they are also enjoying this assignment...I'll take that as a win since many of them were really reluctant at first.  I'm getting some good ideas from them as well...maybe my own writing style will improve and my "voice" will get more engaging.

For now, a recap of my week:

It's homecoming week, and it's been fun seeing the kids dress up. The only day that appealed to me was Monday which was pajama day. As luck would have it, though, I was leaving campus for a professional meeting so I didn't get to dress in my comfy PJ's that day. Sad face!

The professional meeting was an opportunity to go and hear Jon Bergman, one of the authors of a flip classroom book and host of some flipped class websites/communities on the web. He was speaking at the University of Montevallo to education majors and the head of the department let our administrators know about it. I was lucky to be able to attend. He inspired me to push harder toward a mastery classroom in my regular classroom. I'm going to do some flipped elements with them, but plan to introduce a layered curriculum model with them. My goal is to have elements of that model prepared for every unit by next fall.

I have been to physical therapy twice so far this week, with another session planned for tomorrow afternoon.  As I grow a bit stronger, they are adding more exercises each time. This means I'm there longer and I'm tireder each time, but I'm so pleased to be improving that I have no complaints.  A bag of frozen popcorn as an ice pack before bed, and a pain pill at the end of a long day allow me to sleep and refresh for the next day.

Tuesday was Constitution Day and we had a birthday party for the Constitution in every class.  I offered a few bonus points if they could connect their edible contribution to the Constitution or the government. I look forward to reading those this weekend as well.  My favorite of the day had to be these from the first class period of the day.

We watched episodes of "Constitution USA with Peter Sagal" in my classes and then discussed it. Thank you PBS for streaming the series. It's got so many great current examples. The kids appreciated that too!

Today was a long day. Amelia wanted to go to dance, and Olivia had mock trial team practice.  Since the family is still driving me everywhere and Will was working, I just stayed at school for 13 hours. Yes, as I type this, I just took a pain pill and have that popcorn at my back!  It was a productive day. I knocked out a good rough draft of a layered curriculum unit for my regular classes on the next unit. I look forward to reviewing it with a colleague tomorrow. After work, we ran to Joann's to buy Amelia some fabric for her toga tomorrow...senior tradition. I got a good laugh when she described a project assignment she has due tomorrow. I applaud my colleague's attempt at creativity, but it it is hard to do a fake social media profile on an object rather than a person....I had a good belly laugh coming up with slightly ridiculous examples of status updates she could include! We were both crying...that's some good laughter!

Eleanor is coming home tomorrow for a long weekend...she's staying until Monday this time since she has a dentist appointment on Monday morning. I look forward to visiting with her. I'm hoping she hasn't been scheduled to work on Saturday. Amelia has the homecoming dance on Saturday night and Olivia wants to spend the night at a friend's house. That would let us have a little mother-daughter time.  We haven't had that in awhile.

My goals for this weekend include laundry and catching up all my grading...I'm terribly behind on assessing blogs and still need to grade the last test for AP... Grocery shopping would probably be good too, and it's time to pay bills this month. Oy vey!  It just never stops!

P.S.  Awesome feedback from former AP students this week...had tweets from two. One liked the candy bar above and wanted one...I managed to snag him one. Another said he used our supplemental reader for a public forum at his private college for Constitution Day--score one for me and Lanahan. Then, I got a news story tweeted to me telling me that perhaps I could use the story in AP...thanks, I think I will!  On a more humorous note, Amelia's boyfriend met one of my former regular students in a class. He moaned about how hard I was and asked how Conner knew me...she's my girlfriend's mother was probably a bit of a shocker for him! :)

Into the Swing of Things

The first two weeks of school are so important to get everyone acclimated and ready to work again.  I've had a great first two weeks this year!  My students are respectful and are working hard.  My AP class not only grew from 1 section to 2 sections, but the numbers exceed double last year's total enrollment.  While this does present the challenge of more to grade, it also gives the blessing of many more young minds who are engaged in the process of learning about civics and participation willingly!

Overall, all of my students are much more engaged than last year's classes and we are mostly acclimated to the procedures and platforms that I am using for their work.  I hope the experience is just as enjoyable for them as it is for me.

On a personal note, I had an epidural block last week and the pain has dissipated enough for me to move around more freely and have a hope that physical therapy will begin working more effectively for me.  One of these days, it is my hope that my family will allow me to drive again.  I did drive a little bit this weekend, and they are right about taking it easy while they are willing to chauffeur me around.  Driving does present stresses on the spine that you don't notice unless you hurt yourself.  I spent the long weekend catching up on my grading and I'm moving forward in a "caught up" position today.  That changes quickly though, so I better get back on it.

My next challenge is lesson planning for 9-11.  I have been perusing lessons plans and ideas on the web and I find myself tearing up as I preview videos, slideshows and interviews with survivors or the families of those who lost their lives that day.  I'm wondering how I will ever make it through a solid day of lessons - it's still a bit too close for me.  It's important though and we will mark the day with appropriate solemnity.

Update on my medical condition

I had an MRI today....while I am very thankful for the medical technology that allows for that diagnostic, and I am very thankful that my insurance company finally approved the test (and paid for it 100%), I have to say that it is a very unpleasant test.  The chamber you are put into is very small and cramped and yes, claustrophobic.  The noises that the machine emits are painfully loud (they give you earplugs but if you have good hearing, they don't block enough sound).  And, when you have disc degeneration in your L3 through L5, laying flat on the machine for 30 minutes is excruciatingly painful - especially when you are already inflamed and in pain.  I'm glad it's over.  I'm glad I have a diagnosis.  I'm thankful that I can go to physical therapy, although they can't schedule me until Monday unfortunately.  I am thankful for medications that might make this whole process less painful, although they aren't doing much to touch it so far since I refuse to take narcotics (they make me too nauseated).

I put out feelers among my friends today to see if anyone has a wheelchair I can borrow and I'm following up some leads on that.  I am DETERMINED that I will not miss the first day (or week) of school!  I have spent entirely too much time confined to my bedroom and this house and the first day and week sets the tone for the entire year.  Besides, I don't have any days to spare in AP Gov - we have to make them all count!  Since I'm a pro at sitting still and stable, I can always teach that way if I can just find one to use.

Final note - found a GREAT substitute for a bag of frozen peas as your ice bag...popcorn!  Not the microwave bags - a good, old fashioned bag of kernels.  Freeze the bag and use it as an ice pack.  It conforms to your body like a bag of frozen peas or corn will, but it doesn't become mushy and melty like the softer veggies do.  Thanks to my cousin Karen for giving me that tip - it's a keeper!

End of summer update

I have done a very poor job of keeping up with this blog over the summer!  My last post was, I think, from Princeton, NJ which was in late June.  So, what have I been doing since then?

In July, I taught summer school.  I used it as a time to experiment with some activities that I had not tried during the regular school year, including some online games.  While I thought some of the games were pretty elementary, the students did seem to gain value from playing them, so I will probably leave them in the line-up for the regular school year.

I read the book "Teach Like a Pirate" as part of a book study with some of my colleagues.  I did take away a few ideas from the book and will be concentrating a bit more on "hooks" in my class, and trying to make sure my passion is transparent and obvious to my students.  I also read the book "Who Owns the Learning" which gave me some ideas about making my classroom more student-centric - a goal that has become more and more important to me over the past year.

I have thought a lot in the past couple of weeks about the importance of taking time for myself and family.  We went to stay at my husband's Aunt's lake house the last week in July and I aggravated a condition that I didn't know I had.  I had been dealing with some sciatica this summer and had even seen my doctor for it.  His recommendation had been to exercise.  At my oldest daughter's urging, I did create the habit this summer of going to the YMCA and exercising - which anyone who knows me knows is a HUGE lifestyle change!  I was regularly walking 2 miles on the treadmill and doing a few strength training machines on a regular basis - at least 4 times per week.  While at the lake, I wasn't able to continue this regime.  I played a little "Goldilocks" at the lake - this bed is too hard, this bed is too soft, etc.  I never found the "just right" choice and by the end of our week, my back had me incapacitated.

I spent a week balancing some professional development teaching commitments last week with bed rest and finally went to the doctor last Friday afternoon.  First, the urgent care facility took x-rays and told me to consult the ER or my regular doctor.  They gave me some oral steroids and offered more pain pills/muscle relaxers, but I refused the extras because I already had prescriptions for those from my regular doctor.  On Saturday, the pain was so debilitating that my left leg would give out within 3 steps if I tried to maneuver around, so I went to the ER.  All in all, that visit was satisfactory because they did a CT scan and gave me a double shot (steroids and anti-inflammatory) that made me feel almost normal for about 24 hours.  They also called my GP and made an appointment for Monday morning first thing.

On Monday morning, my doctor examined me and talked with me and put in a request with my insurance company to approve an MRI.  The CT scan showed a bulging disc in the L5 region, arthritis and degenerative disc disease.  The one of those that disturbed me the most was the "A" word since there isn't much treatment you can do for arthritis in my experience.  The others can be resolved with physical therapy and strengthening my core.  He told me I had to stay home until I had the MRI done because PT without it could complicate the injury - this is where it gets complicated.  I was supposed to go back to work on Monday for teacher development days.  It is Tuesday evening and here I sit - getting some work done on my online course materials, but taking sick days and hearing nothing back from insurance at all.

I am extremely grateful that I've never been at the mercy of the bureaucracy of a health care organization to approve medical tests that my doctor deems necessary before, but I'm certainly not enjoying the experience now!  The insurance company still hasn't approved my MRI and I can't start physical therapy until after I have that test.  Since students come to my classroom on Monday, I am getting more and more frustrated by the delay!  I'm ready to feel better and to do what's necessary to make that happen....

This cartoon was funnier before I felt like I was prey to the system....it's from 2007 and highlighted the debate of that presidential election.  I've always been a little dispassionate about the argument since one of the blessings of being a teacher in Alabama has been good health care coverage.  Even with "good" healthcare coverage though, I'm now dealing with this major frustration.  There is definitely something wrong with a system that requires me to get "sicker" or hurt more before someone in an office decides to look at my physician's request and grant me testing that will help me get better!  Enough on that soapbox....I'm sure it's just my pain speaking.

Speaking optimistically, I'm hopeful that I will get a call early tomorrow, a test, a diagnosis and physical therapy started....pray with me for that result!

What have I learned on a personal level from all of this?  I need to take time to take care of myself!  I often let myself get caught up in taking care of everyone else except me.  I need to be the first priority for awhile so that I can take care of others too.