Stress Eating

This is the list of books I read this summer for graduate school and in preparation for my new job:

The Accidental Teacher by Eric Mandel
Drive by Daniel Pink
Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
Everyday Teacher Leadership: Taking Action Where You Are by Michelle Collay
Effective Supervision: Supporting the Art and Science of Teaching by Robert Marzano
Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of the Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools by David Kirp
Multiplication is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit
Reframing the Path to School Leadership: A Guide for Teachers and Principals by Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal
Interactions: Collaboration Skills for School Professionals by Marilyn Friend and Lynn Cook
The Essential Conversation: What Parents and Teachers Can Learn from Each Other by Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Purposeful Co-Teaching: Real Cases and Effective Strategies by Gregory Conderman, Mary V. Bresnahan, and Theresa Pedersen


(A side note for nursing moms: download the Kindle app on your iPhone. Load all required reading onto said app. If you're nursing 6 times a day for roughly 15 minutes each time, you have just gained 90 minutes of quiet reading time. Make sure you make an eye appointment, however, as it is guaranteed that your vision will deteriorate at a more rapid rate thanks to the constant eye strain.)

 A stack (or in my case, a Kindle home screen full) of books can provide useful tools to these important conversations.

But sometimes working together for a common goal can be difficult. I'm learning how to communicate a shared vision and support and serve teachers in a new capacity, but I'm only a few weeks in. I struggle with hoping I'm doing a good job. I'm not sure if this is people pleasing or being a reflective learner, but either way, it can lead to one eating one's own weight in candy corn. Not me, of course. It's just a possibility of which one should be aware.

This evening, as I sit tensely on my couch enjoying the fermented fruits of California while I pray my daughter will settle herself to sleep and thus my blood pressure will return to a healthier level, I am thankful for the opportunity to grow.

As I coached my students, no one has yet arrived. In my classroom, I attempted to create a safe environment in which mistakes were accepted and viewed as springboards for change. But that advice can be hard to swallow. The vulnerability required to humbly grow is challenging. I hope I can work to create the safe environment that allows for meaningful change.

Balancing Act

Well, friends, for those of you following along at home, we have just completed month one of my New Job.

I spent six wonderful and challenging years as a classroom teacher, but this year, I was given the opportunity to work four days a week and coordinate our magnet  program and also work with intervention.

There's thankful, and then there's thankful. And that is how I feel about this new opportunity.

I love teaching, and my heart will always be in the classroom. But this is also my thesis year, and my girl will only be this little once, and I needed to take a break. The thing about classroom teaching, as I'm sure you all know, is that it is rarely confined to the hours of 8 am to 3:30 pm. The hours spent on parent conferences, extra duties, lesson planning, grading papers, writing report cards, and general worry for each child can be exhausting.

Friends, I can't tell you how good it does my heart to have time. 

This weekend, I met a friend at a park. I bought bread and sweet potatoes at the Farmer's Market. We went on three walks and played on the swings in the backyard and also made two batches of pumpkin muffins. I did not grade a single paper or plan a single lesson.

 It wasn't all sunshine. I had to wake up two hours before my family on Sunday to do my grad school work. There is still a huge pile of laundry that is not folded, it's just relocated.  This little one was super fussy. The darling hubs and I had an argument. But we had time to connect with her and work out our conflict and go to bed Sunday evening with peaceful hearts (and a mountain of laundry that has yet to be folded).

There are seasons of life, I know (thanks Ecclesiastes and the Byrds), and I'm hoping that this is one of balance.

Why I am The Rookie

My sweet husband believes I should not dub myself as the Rookie.

The more I learn, the more I do, the more I experience, the more I realize how little I know.

As I begin my 7th year as a professional educator, I am leaving the classroom that I love in order to pursue three things:

1) More time at home.  I will be working 4 days out of the week, leaving one sweet extra day to play with my little girl.
2) Time to complete my thesis year of graduate school. I'm extremely excited about the ideas swirling around my head in this arena!
3) An opportunity to grow professionally as a magnet coordinator and intervention specialist.

While I have years of classroom experience, I am a new mom. I am new to this job. And while I am anxiously excited, I am ready to start a new journey! It seems, however, that I've been "starting a new journey" every year for the past 10 or so. And thus, regardless of my station in life, I hope I remain the Rookie.

 This year. Work during nap time with toys in the background.... It's crazy and I love it.

We pause from our regularly scheduled deep thoughts to bring you...

The much requested post about my freezer meals since returning to work.


I am a graduate student, full-time teacher, and mommy. I used to be busy. Now I'm just crazed. I'm also doing this thing where I'm trying to lose the last eight pounds of the fifty I put on with the Sweet Potato, so in addition to doing the Bikini Body Mommy workouts (found here), I'm trying to eat at home more.

*as I type this, I'm eating from a pint of dark chocolate gelato. it has antioxidants, right?*

I get home around 4, just in time for Sweet Tater's last nap of the day. No way on this green earth am I going to bang around pots at pans at this time, or I will face the wrath of a Grumpy Baby and ain't nobody got time for that.

She wakes up around 5:30, and I wash out her bottles from the day, workout next to her while she tummy-times-it-up, nurse her, bathe her, and put her to bed. At this point, I lesson plan or do homework and pass out at 8:30. So yeah, cooking is low on the totem pole of priorities.

We're over a month into this new system, and here is what has worked. Twice now I have had a marathon cooking session wherein I destroy my kitchen and stock my freezer.

A few notes:
1) I don't have recipes for everything. I'll link to the ones I have, but mostly, the meals are easy and made up.
2) I use a lot of cheap and quick ingredients. Russet potatoes instead of red, fresh kale, jasmine rice instead of brown (cooks faster), and ground beef instead of stew beef. I also buy canned beans like they're going out of style, even though dry are cheaper. But not faster. You catching my drift?
3) I bought those foil tins from the Dollar Tree and also some gallon freezer bags. Bags of soup sounds gross but it is what it is.
4) Sides include Jiffy cornbread (can't beat 33 cents a box), sweet potatoes (sounds eerie now, eh?), and bagged salads if they're on sale.

Round one 

Buy the huge tube (ew) of ground beef and brown it all. Divide into half lb or 3/4 lb portions. Whatever you don't use can be frozen and used for a quick pasta and meat sauce dinner. I ended up with 6 bags from a 3 pound tube (ew). I also buy the bags of frozen chicken. They honestly gross me out unless I put them in the crock pot and they're cooked to shreds. Then I used them for the chili and tamale pie. Roasted red peppers are super easy, so when bell peppers are on sale I buy a ton. Then I throw them in pretty much every recipe.

White chicken chili (3 bags)

Black bean pie (I added a little ground beef)

Beef chili (Three bags)

Tamale pie (I made two)

The Pioneer Woman's Mac and cheese (This was more to satisfy a craving...it took a little too long, but I made three pans)
Baked Ziti
Chili pie (basically the small amount of chili I had left in a pie crust with cheese on top)
Oatmeal breakfast bars *
Roasted red pepper quiche**

*I've made these a few times and am obsessed. They're really cheap and easy. Unlike me. Ha. I mash up 3 bananas, throw in oats, a little sugar, 2 eggs, and whatever random baking ingredients I have (chocolate chips, coconut, cranberries, etc). I ran out of vanilla so I used almond extract. And, because I'm nursing, I added four tablespoons of brewer's yeast and a few tablespoons wheat germ. It makes them kinda bitter, but I can smear peanut butter on them in the morning and for about 350 calories, I have a pretty filling breakfast.
**Quiche is one of those catch-alls. I just throw my leftover veggies, meat, and cheese in with four eggs and about a cup of milk and pour it in a pie crust. So I don't really have a recipe, but I make it all the time.
Sometimes I make extra filling and bake it in muffin tins, sans the pie crust. It's a quick breakfast that way.

Total for groceries was about $180, including our breakfast and lunch stuff.

Round Two

Chicken pot pie (2)

Bacon and Red Pepper Quiche (2)

Potato and kale soup with bacon (if you puree boiled potatoes with chicken broth in the blender it turns out like a creamy soup!)
Beef stroganoff (2)

Beef and rice casserole (3) (made from leftover rice, veggies, and ground beef)

Chicken and dressing casserole (3)
Chicken Pesto Alfredo Pasta (4 pans!)

I came home from grocery shopping ready to tackle round two of freezer meal cooking. It was a little hectic, but here's what I did:
-In the oven, I put bacon, cornbread, red peppers, and chicken breasts to bake. It was a little crowded in there!
-In the crockpot, I added a bag of that frozen chicken.
-I browned 3 lbs of beef,  boiled two boxes of pasta, and boiled a bunch of potatoes.
-When I had room on the stove top, I made stove top stuffing, sauteed celery and a bag of chopped onions, made rice andd two bags of mixed veggies.

As things finished, I put them in large ziplocs or tupperware in the fridge. The next day, I threw the components  together. For example, the pot pie is basically chicken, mixed veggies, celery, and a cream of chicken soup.  The pasta was some mushrooms and tomatoes (I didn't even cook them...), chicken, pasta, a jar of pesto and a jar of alfredo, and some shredded cheese. 

I labeled the tins and threw it all in the freezer. I'm amazed if you stuck with me this far!
Here's your prize: a picture of my freezer:

Happy cooking!

on becoming type a

i have a wonderful husband. he is loving and helpful and caring.

he also has a massive case of add. like, lots of ritalin add.

up until about a year ago, i would not have described myself as an organized or efficient individual.

i have heard of cases in which a person loses one important sense (like vision) and their hearing becomes so much stronger in order to compensate. because i have chosen to tie my life to this man in such a way that the two become one, his sweet, (mostly) endearing lack of organization has created a multitasking monster in me.

this afternoon, i pumped while unpacking groceries. i regularly grade papers while eating lunch, plan curriculum at recess, and clean the kitchen while cooking dinner.

life is a bit crazy for us. i am now a mom. a parent. i have a daughter. (can you tell it still sounds new to me?) my daughter is beautiful and sweet. she has emerged from the “fourth trimester” just in time for me to return to my regularly scheduled job as a third-grade teacher and graduate student.

i became pregnant last year just as i had decided to return to graduate school full-time in addition to my teaching career and working in the afterschool program. yes, i am crazy. yes, it was hard, but to be completely honest, i’m extremely thankful for that time. i learned how to do fourteen things at once. i learned how to manage my time, prioritize the important things, and say no to everything outside of the important. i also learned my limits. i pushed myself too hard sometimes, and had to learn to rest.

when i am at work, these new skills are invaluable. i used to be the last one done with any task, and now i’m much more efficient. but when i come home to my sweet baby girl, i had a learn a new skill.

i am learning to breathe.

these are things i tell myself often: 

it’s ok that there are toys all over the floor (and my daughter can’t even put them there). 

it’s ok that there is clean and dirty laundry in literally every room in our house. 

it’s ok that our yard is the only one in the neighborhood that isn’t raked. like ever.

my new type a self is learning (read: has not yet mastered the concept) it’s more than ok.

my beautiful sweet potato is asleep on my chest. i fight daily that anxiety to run around and get things done. she has caused me to stop and slow down because i literally cannot get up when she is sleeping. i can stare at the dirty floor or my daughter's chubby cheeks. that floor isn't going anywhere, but soon my sweet potato will.