Sonnet XIX - To Hibernate
An update on life and writing, and a new sonnet for the winter season.
Greetings, friends, family, and readers.
It’s been a while since I’ve written here. This school year has been busy for me - more busy than usual. Besides the busyness of raising up four children, and helping over 100 teenagers with their English language arts skills (aka the job), two things have been occupying my free time: learning Spanish (mostly through Duolingo, at this point), and working on getting an ESOL endorsement added on to my teaching certificate.
I have been enjoying my activities this school year; even my job has been enjoyable. One reason for this is that before the school year started, I participated in a week-long professional development that focused on training in instructional conversations. Instructional conversations is a strategy that involves getting students to talk and work together in small groups in order to learn about, and produce something related to, the class content. Receiving training in this strategy has been an answer to a long-time groaning prayer of my heart concerning my job.
I have, for a long time, understood the benefit of getting students talking and engaging with one another and the teacher, and how it promotes learning and growth, and have tried strategies of my own making. But, for various unmentionable reasons, I had not been successful in getting students to talk productively about language arts content with each other, and so eventually I gave up trying. The training, though, provided many tools, that when consistently and patiently implemented, actually get students talking and engaged. I have been implementing the strategy since the beginning of the semester, and although it hasn’t been perfect, it has been fun. Also, it is a strategy supported by the administration, seeing especially that they paid for me and others to receive the training, and so I feel like I can fully run with and implement it.
Another reason my job has been enjoyable this year has been because of the many new support staff that have been hired in our school to help us with behavioral and emotional issues. Though we certainly could use even more support in our school, the help that we have had this year has made it to be the best year - out of eight - of teaching for me so far. It still hasn’t been the best the best, and I think the best is yet to come, but it has been pretty good and has made the caseload a bit more bearable, though still not doable to the level of performance that I desire.
Anyhow, besides all the technical teacher jargon, another thing that has been enjoyable to me this school year is simply all the new learning that I’ve experienced. I’m learning Spanish and am able at times to try out some with my majority Spanish speaking student population, and at times am able to hear what they are talking about. And secondly, in my ESOL endorsement program, I am learning how to think better and more deeply about my immigrant, multilingual students; how to capitalize on their assets in order to help them more easily learn content; and also how to better include supports and accommodations into my instruction in order to get across content ideas to multilingual learners.
I confess that this past school semester has not afforded me time to pay extra attention to my own four kiddos, but I’ve been enjoying them too as much as I can. Many exciting opportunities are imminent for them, and I’m grateful that I get to witness these things and support them.
Concerning my writing projects: well, I haven’t had much time or energy to write. I have been working sporadically on a short story that I may or may not finish. If I do finish it, I may never share it. And also, well, I’ve written the below sonnet just in the past few days. The sonnet reflects my experiences with “hibernation”, and also my current seasonal longing and encouragement to myself. It’s kind of an awkward sonnet, because it alludes to beekeeping, which really has nothing to do with hibernation, and which I only have experience with by watching my husband. But, the bees and the keeping of them, in this sonnet, are a metaphor.
Will you be doing something this winter to “hibernate”? If so, I do want to encourage you that when you are in those quiet, screenless, restful moments, and your thoughts begin to pop up and “sting” you, to allow yourself to have those thoughts - have them in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As you do, he will surely help you and heal you.
Sonnet XIX - To Hibernate
It's time to hibernate - to curl up warm in fur, and take my place inside a cove. It's time for thoughts inside my head to swarm and buzz around, confused, stinging my soul. Combat the stinging with smoke screens briefly. But when the screens are gone where will I turn? Listless, I'll put the screens away from me, and face these thoughts to see what I will learn. The buzz and sting are mostly all nonsense. When I hold still and focus on the gold, it gets inside of me and brings me peace. This honey soothes my thoughts and heals my soul. When I slow down to rest through winter's cold, I have to first pass through the mind's stronghold.
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