Modeling Health & Fitness

My Fitness (and mental health) goal is to complete the EA Active Sports 30 Day Fitness Challenge on my Wii.  I know that I start the day more energized and in a better frame of mind if I exercise first.  I will not wait until I "have time".  This challenge will now be a priority.  In my head, I am making it a homework requirement.  That boosts my ability to make time for exercise above housework, marketing work, etc.  I am starting tomorrow morning.  Yes, Sunday, July 27th!  There are rest days built into the program.  I would like to use those days for running.  Running is not just exercise for me.  It's not mind-clearing either, instead it seems to be a time for a rush of ideas and mental organization.  I equate running with clear thinking. 

I will continue to log my food and will actually begin tracking my weight (ugh!).  But, I know that if I stick with it, I will have positive results.  The food logging is still making me think about everything I eat.  It doesn't always change what I eat.  Let's face it, I have to eat whatever is available when I have low blood sugar.  It's not really a time to assess the health benefits of the next thing that I pop into my mouth, except for "will this have enough carbs to keep me from passing out" and "does it have enough protein and fiber to keep be from crashing again in 20-30 minutes?"  Meals are much better and more balanced when I have time to plan, shop, and cook.  Those days will come again.

I'm looking forward to dusting off the Wii tomorrow and listening to my kids giggle while I try to reacquaint myself with the timing required to shoot baskets, perform jumps on the skateboard ramp, and whatever other fun challenges the game throws my way.

Feel the burn

More than the fire in my chest from pushing myself to run at my training pace from 2 years ago, more than the pain in my hip from an old running injury, I felt the burn of the glare I received from the other lady at the track today.  I could feel her disgust when after slowing down to find out why my daughter was running across the field to me crying, I responded with "Sweetheart, I'm sorry that I was running too fast for you, I didn't know you were trying to keep up with me.  Remember that we talked before I started my run.  You were going to play on the playground or run or ride bikes with your sisters."  To which she said "Mom, I just wanted to be by you."  Ouch.  And yet, I still said "Maria, I just need this one half hour out of the whole weekend to do something important for Mommy.  And that means that I'm going to try to run fast, Okay?"  She nodded and walked with her older sister to the playground.  Maria seemed to have instantly forgiven me.  The lady walking past apparently did not.  I started running again.  I was frustrated because I really had a great pace going and I had lost my momentum.  I had just passed that running wall and found my stride, when bam!, I had to stop.  I kept running, trying to regain my rhythm.  I looked back frequently to see what my girls were doing.  Every time I looked, I could feel my track mate's disgust at my selfish desire to run 3 miles without interruption.  I don't have any idea if the lady even noticed the interaction between my child and I.  It is possible that she had earphones on and hadn't heard a single syllable of our conversation.  It's possible that the disdain was purely imagined, due to the guilt I was feeling for not slowing down to run with my child.  But I still felt it while I was finishing my run.  I have to let go of what other people might think.  I have to be okay with the decisions I make for myself and my family.  I want to be healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally for me and for them.  Right now, regaining that healthy state requires me to run, to push myself.  Hopefully I am setting a good example of the importance of fitness and taking time for yourself.

I come from a mixed family

My father has been teaching Taekwon Do for over 40 years.  He is one of those people that nearly everyone wants to be around.  He just makes you feel good about yourself.  When I read the excerpt from Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., I realized that my dad is our John Wooden.  He has high expectations for all of his students.  He does not expect perfection from anyone, but he does expect your best effort.  He has always recognized that "best effort" is as individual as the student.  He tells his students that our competitions are opportunities to improve, any trophies that you may take home are simply a bonus.  When we are in class he encourages everyone to work hard, but reminds them that they are not in the class to impress him, they are there to impress themselves.  His attitude and confidence in all of his students makes them all want to work harder and be better.

My mother has always told us that we can do anything that we put our mind to.  We just have to work hard enough.  Despite her best intentions and her constant attempts to motivate us to, I would have to place her in the fixed mindset category.  My most distinct memories of advice from my mother are specific references to people who did something better than me, if I worked harder I could be more like them.  So, I was left with the feeling that I was working pretty hard, and doing very well, but it was never quite enough.  Don't get me wrong, I don't feel that I am scarred or damaged in any way.  I have been instilled will a very strong work ethic and I truly appreciate that.

I was introduced to this concept in my first Math for Elementary Teachers course.  Our professor warned us against telling our students how smart they were, especially girls.  He wanted us to remember to recognize hard work.  Students who found math relatively easy in their early grades and were told how smart they were would start to feel that they were not smart enough when the math started to get more complicated.  I really appreciated having this theory expanded in the Mindset reading. 

I am beginning to see some of the growth mindset in myself, finally.  Particularly with regard to Art.  I have moved from feeling that I have not an artistic bone in my body to believing that I am capable, with a willingness to learn and a lot (I MEAN A LOT!) of practice.  The New Learning project assigned my Jean Eisele was so important for me.  Even in only a few weeks I realized that I was capable of doing something that I had considered near impossible before.  I couldn't expect myself to be Picasso at first, or ever, for that matter.  But, I could learn how to draw.  It was a perfect lead in to the Art course that we are now taking with Maria.  I try to approach each new project thinking, "I can do this", no one is expecting greatness, they are expecting me to make an effort and learn something.  I still find myself feeling somewhat satisfied with my creations and then looking around and seeing my classmates work and thinking "SHOOT!"  I am so impressed at what they have done.  I feel like mine just pales in comparison.  They are black belts in Art and I am simply a beginner.  I will not diminish their work by saying "Well, they have natural talent.  It just comes easy to them".  I have heard that enough in my 40+ years of Taekwon Do to know how utterly frustrating that can be.

A list of activities does not a lesson plan make

Today was one of those AHA! days for me.  The ideas seemed so obvious, and yet they had not occurred to me before.  There have been so many days over the last four years of teaching Sunday School where I wondered what the kids had learned in the short 55 minutes they spent with me.  I had written a lesson plan, I read all of the material, I tried to provide several opportunities for interaction, allowing the children to share their personal connections to the theme for the day.  And yet, when they left, I felt something had been missing.  What had I wanted them to learn?  And there it is, the answer.  I had not set clear, simple expectations of what I wanted them to learn/experience/discover.  My "lesson plan" was written from my point of view, the teacher.  It was simply a list of all of the activities from my perspective.  I was thorough and listed what I would read, all of the materials needed for the crafts, what songs I would sing, what I needed the volunteers to do to ensure smooth transitions between activities, but there were no clear learning objectives for the children.  AHA!

I did have a moment where I wondered if what we were trying to accomplish meshed with the idea of creating objectives that were less task oriented and more geared toward discovery and exploration.  But, there is no conflict.  It is a matter of simplification, breaking the goals down in to singular expectations. describing how the objectives would be assessed, and how to gather evidence that the objectives have been met.  The idea seems so straightforward, so simple.  The execution, well that remains to be seen.

Inspiration or just a kick in the . . .

I have been very frustrated by my change in lifestyle since I went back to school.  I hardly exercise.  I average less than 6 hours of sleep every night. I have lost control of my blood sugar because I'm eating prepared food or whatever is fastest out of the fridge.  I'm used to a regular routine of Taekwon Do, running, and some yoga.  Usually, I cook all of my food from scratch so I know exactly what I'm eating and I can be certain that my family is getting balanced meals.  When life is particularly stressful I have always had the outlet of a really intense workout where I get to beat up a bunch of imaginary bad guys.  That is my stress management.  When I am frustrated I fall back on two things, Taekwon Do and cooking.  Those are two things that I know I can do well.  Right now, during one of the more stressful times of my life, at least as far as time management is concerned, I feel like I can't fall back on either of them.  Since I started this journey to become I teacher, I have gained the "Freshman 15".  Something has to change.  In addition to gaining weight, when I don't have regular exercise I am very cranky, depressed and anxious.  My three children and my husband are not particularly fond of this change in my attitude.  SOMETHING has to CHANGE.

As hard as it is to log food, not because of the work involved, but because of the honesty, this is a great project for me.  I think it is just exactly the proverbial kick in the . . . that I need.  I am now determined to carve out time to exercise.  I know that getting that oxygen pumped to my brain will help me to retain more of what I read, sleep better, smile more, and quite literally, be lighter on my feet.  That will be great for increasing the height of my jumping kicks!  Because of the concept mapping that we did today in class, I was reminded of the importance of not just taking time, but making time, to take care of myself.  I feel a little less guilty about wanting to go for a run instead of washing the dishes.  Off I go.

Teaching is like . . .

A maturing tree with deep, deep roots

The students with their bright, shiny faces, their inquisitive nature, and their eagerness to learn are looking to us to nurture them and promote future healthy, well-rounded growth.  We will be most successful if we remember to look below the surface and take care of the whole student.  Their roots were developed long before they arrived in our classroom.  We need to remember that those roots are the source of their strength, what literally holds them up.  The student’s roots are hidden to us; we will have to ask them to share them with us and with the rest of the class.  Think about what a strong forest we would have with all of those intertwined roots.

The first year teacher, maybe feeling more like a sapling than a tree, will still have that strong base from their teaching education and their student teaching experiences.  If they look for them, they will find supports to hold them up in strong winds within their cohort, their new school, or maybe even in a teacher forum online.  They will be able to reach down into their own root system to hopefully find shared experiences with their students.  As they learn from their students, their successes and failures, their continued research for better curriculum and better classroom projects, and their constant conversations with their peers, the branches will grow stronger and their leaves will become abundant.

The classroom will only provide a good growing environment if the teacher(s) and the students work together to make it rich with experience and safe for everyone.  Imagine how strong and comfortable that tree would be with everyone working to keep it alive.  I can just see groups of children feeling free to explore; some sitting in the shade reading, some digging in the dirt and discovering what critters live there, some trying to determine how many leaves there are without having to count them all, some high in the branches making their own world of castles or spaceships, and some lying in the dappled sunlight below the tree, dreaming and imagining the next big thing that will change life as we know it.

One Hour

I was inspired by the one minute and 20 seconds that was “1000 hours” from Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams.  That one small chapter made me reflect on my own life and my own proclaimed love of learning.  What more can I be doing to really learn something new each day.  Something that is worthwhile and might possibly make me a better person, at the very least, a better educated one.  I realized that I was already making an attempt to do this for my children.  On our drive from school to dance lessons I asked them to think silently about inventions.  If they could invent one thing that could help one person or maybe everyone to have a better life, what would it be?  I told them that a better life could be had by helping their person(s) do something that they needed to do every day.  It could be simply bringing a little more happiness into their person(s) life.  My six-year-old immediately wanted to share her idea.  I very much wanted to let her blurt it out, but encouraged her to just keep thinking about it silently.  I promised that when we arrived at dance class she could share her idea in my ear.  I know this quiet reflection time is necessary for my oldest daughter.  It’s just the way she works.  I explained that sometimes sharing her ideas out loud could narrow what her sisters might be imagining.  She said, “Okay, but listening to my sisters usually just makes me think of even more things”.  My second daughter asked if she could use sticks.  I told her that they could use any materials they could think of, even things that didn’t exist.  In a burst of excitement, she announced that she was making a magic broom.  I heard a sigh from my quiet girl and asked my magic broom maker if she could keep thinking silently about how she would make it and what it would do.  I quickly realized that I should have let them get out their little notebooks so they could jot down their ideas and make drawings.  How could I accommodate my three very different girls to express their ideas without trampling over one another?  Oh well, this wasn’t a lesson plan.  I was just trying to spark some creativity in my girls. 

As soon as we walked into the dressing room at the dance school, my youngest daughter came over and whispered in my ear that she was going to “make a wheelchair that had arms for people to pick stuff up who couldn’t pick stuff up with their own arms”.  I was touched by her thoughtfulness, but not surprised.  I can’t wait to see her ideas written out and her drawings!  When we arrived at home, my second daughter rushed through her after school chores so she could start drawing a picture of her magic broom.  So far, it looks very complicated.  She is labeling the different parts and describing the materials that will be used.  As soon as my oldest daughter and I were alone in the kitchen together, she came over and started describing a doll that would be made out of blue flowers and tied with a special grass.  I can’t even begin to imagine what she has pictured in her mind, but I am certain that it is truly beautiful.  Nothing concrete came from this little activity.  It was just meant to be thinking for thinking’s sake.  It was meant to allow them to be creative with no boundaries.  I think we are off to an excellent start.  Thinking back on that time earlier today I realized that maybe the most important thing I can do right now  is to spend my hour per day of learning something new, something worthwhile, learning excitement, creativity, and unlimited imagination from my children.