Week Long Institute....where do I go from here?

I spent a week @ Teachers College Coaching Institute & now my brain has so many wonderful, stimulating ideas running through it I just don't know where to begin first. The week was jam packed with commuting to a far away school in Brooklyn that very much resembled the school I coach at. I was so excited to be doing this each day. I was so fortunate to meet wonderful woman from around the world who were just as excited as I was to be learning. Since this is my third coaching institute, I was honestly hoping for "some" new ideas, truthfully, I thought, it will be very much like last year, coach a little, lecture etc. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much it did not resemble my experience from last year. I was able to stretch myself as a coach, try many new things in coaching that I had not had the opportunity to try before. NOW, this is the hard part, what do I pick to implement with my teachers, where do I begin to sort through all the "wonderful" that this week was? I wonder if it will take me at least a week to decompress all the info! I do however, look forward to trying new things & propelling our work forward!
Hugs,

Where do we go from here?

I have not written/blogged in a couple of weeks. Life has just gotten the best of me. It just seems that we are in this strong-hold of horrible situations. Three weeks ago, my 35 year old brother-in law calls that a colonsycopy revealed two tumors, not polyps & they were going to be biopsied. My heart hurt for him, for I know what he was going through. I was there almost 3 years ago, that news just leaves you speechless & breathless. My biopsies revealed tons of pre-cancerous tumors. I was lucky, they went in & removed mine through a controversial surgery that took forever to be approved, but now looking at what my brother-in-law is facing, phew, that ordeal was NOTHING!!! His news just went from bad to worse, to down-right horrible. The tumors were indeed cancerous, horrible in and of itself, however, they found more tumors when more tests were done. These were not in the colon but on the liver & the lungs. The news there was grave. He was stage 4, the cancer was not only in his liver but in his blood as well. With each phone call, I felt more helpless. I did what you should not do in these situations, I cried my eyes out. No, not when I spoke to him or his partner or my other brother-in-law, I saved my hysterics for home, riding in the car & unfortunately, once while speaking with my poor husband! Our family is still recovering from my son's tragic accident, I'm not sure all of us have much fight or strength in us, yet, we found it, we pulled it together & have sprung into action. While we know his cancer is terminal, he has decided he will fight. He used this example, "If my nephew can fight to stay alive like he did, if he can be a miracle, so can I"! Oh boy, as I wrote everyday while my son was in a coma, while he spent 4 weeks in ICU, while he spent months in rehab, "Expect a miracle, get a miracle!" I will believe with him, I will fight with him, b/c after all, believing gives you strength to get through the really hard days. We are armed & ready to do this, to believe, to fight with him! Expect a miracle, get a miracle!
Love,

Progress...Slow...but it is progress!

On Saturday we hit 8 months, 8 months since the accident. I made it through the day without crying all day. It has been such a long, up-hill recovery for my boy! He has made remarkable progess. Recently though he hit a stand-still or even should I say, a road block & I really began to worry. He began to worry as well. This became a vicious cycle for him & I. He worried he would not make anymore progess & that life would be a constant struggle for him, that words would never come for him, that he would never be the same boy he was before the accident. I did not know how to tell him, that he would never be the same boy he was before. I didn't think that this was all bad, it just was the facts. He was different! Not a bad different, just different, he was more cautious, more reserved, more mature. I think it just happens after a life altering, tragic experience such as this. He is a miracle. He is our towns miracle, his friends miracle, his schools mircacle, my miracle. This changes you & how you look at things! He continues to make progress, but it is not as fast as the first 8 months, so it is frustrating to him. I feel so bad for him. But, I believe in him, I know he can do it! afterall, he came this far, he got through the hardest parts, he can get through these parts! Slow & steady wins the race! Keep taking those steps my boy!
Hugs,

Snow, sleet, ice, oh my!

Snow, sleet & ice was the order for today. It made for a really scary commute home from work. They closed most of the roads that led out of my school. Before I even left school, our principal asked that all of us who lived far away from the school leave now because they were closing roads, major roads, highways that would take us home. He was worried we might not get out if we did not leave now. Oh boy, that would be me. I quickly shut off the computer, grabbed what I needed for home & got out of there. I got outside needed to scrape off my car. There was about an inch of ice on my car. I quickly scrapped & got in the car. I immediately saw as soon as I left the school parking lot the lights, flares & emergency vehicles at the entrance to the highway I take home. It quickly dawned on me that I would not be able to take my usual route home. I decided to stay straight, go through town & see if I could take the next highway that would get me home. I kept driving with the death grip on the wheel. I was driving like a snail. Every few seconds another emergency vehicle went rushing past me! What in the world was going on??? I was really beginning to get nervous. I just kept inching my way slowly to the next highway entrance to only find out that it too was closed! Oh my good-ness. I then decided that I would have to go through all the towns to make my way home. It would be much longer, but perhaps safer. It turned out to not be any safer, would most likely be just as long as going on the highway because the roads were so bad. It took a little over an hour and a half to get home. When I got home I turned on the news only to find out that 4 major road ways were closed by my school due to a 10 car pile up, an over turned bus, severe ice & unsafe road conditions, & last, the road up about 5 miles from my school where our intermediate school is was closed because the crossing guard slipped in the middle of the road broke his leg. I feel so bad for him as well as all the others that were hurt trying to make it home today. I'm grateful for my principal who let me go early. He is so caring! Snow, sleet, ice, oh my, what a commute home. I really can't imagine what tomorrow will bring because the storm is still yet to come? Oh boy!
Hugs,

This made my day!

I often wonder if we really impact the lives of the children we teach as much as they touch ours! Something happened today that made me realize that perhaps we do make that impact when we least expect it. One of my third graders has been troubling me for some time. We have been working so hard to help him because academically he is struggling so much & he has gotten himself into lots of trouble outside of our school. We have suspected for sometime that he is involved with a local gang. We have done lots of interventions with him trying to help him make choices that would help him get away from the gang. It was frustrating as it seemed that he was not responding to anything we were doing and he was not really hearing what we were saying or really attaching himself to anything. I was growing more & more concerned about him. Today I entered his classroom & his face just lit up like a Christmas Tree. This just shocked me! He came right up to me, "you're here Mrs P! I was worried!" I asked him why he was worried? He then responded, he was worried that I might not be coming anymore to his class. Wow, I had found something he was latching onto. This was huge! This was so exciting! This was a breakthrough..... He was responding, he was listening & he was taking it in, he was enjoying workshop. This was a big start. Was he still out on the streets? Most likely, but I have him. We have established the starting point. We can go anywhere from here! Thank you writing workshop!!!
Hugs,

I guess we each let go in our own way!

I have trouble letting go and yet it is Dad who can't drive in a car with our children when they are learning to drive. I guess each of us have issues with letting our children grow up. I am ok with allowing the kids to learn to drive with me in the car. Dad, not so much...when it was Kyle's turn to learn to drive, I did all the teaching. I woke up when it snowed to take him out and show him how to drive in the snow, in the rain, in the dark and on the highways. Now it is our baby girls turn. I thought for sure, she is "his" princess. I really thought he would have an easier time. Nope, not one single bit. He drove with her once and almost had a melt down. His exact words were, "I can't do this, this is your area hon, sorry, I am out!" So, it seems that my husband likes all the easy stuff, taking them to pre-school, putting them on the bus the first day of school. I, I get all the hard stuff, the birds and the bees, teaching them to drive, killing all creepy crawlies in the house and oh the hardest one, I got to take our dog to be put to sleep! Poor daddy, he really is much more of softie than he wants anyone to know. Don't worry honey, I won't tell anyone....just all the people that read my blog! he, he! LOVE YA!
Hugs,

Let's Go Jets!

Today is a day to celebrate for those of us who are Jets fans! My post is not about my boy or about work or about anything profound except about being a fan of the underdog and never losing that belief! I have been a fan of theirs since I was in HS! (many, many years ago) I have been a fan in the good times and the bad times. I have been fan as well as my sister, my brothers and brother-in-law for reasons of great loyalty to an organization that gave us more than it will ever know! SO yes, it feels good to celebrate their hard work and how it has paid off for them this year! As a HS student my Marching Band was fortunate enough to each year be invited to play for opening day of the JETS! It was always an amazing experience to stand on that field to look out at that sea of people, thousands of them as we came marching onto the field! It was an experience that has never, ever left me! Some of my best experiences and memories of HS are from Marching Band and playing for Opening day of the JETS and also the METS at Shea Stadium. It truly was an experience of a lifetime that you just never ever forget and while the players and coaches may have changed, my love for the game and the team has not! Watching that last minute kick go over the goal post was quite thrilling for me. My husband, myself, brother-in-law, sister and brother cheered quite loudly as that ball was declared to win the game for the JETS! We all began screaming and it brought back those memories of those long ago times when we were all in the band together, all members of the RP Golden Eagles. So thank you NY Jets not only for yesterday, but for all those years of precious memories that have lasted me a lifetime. I am not sure that your organization knew when they invited our band each and every year to play for you how much that invite meant to a young girl and her bandmates! But I can honestly tell you that all of us, some 30 years later still talk about it and how much those memories meant to us! So thank you from all of us Golden Eagles! Our hats are off to you for more than being just a football team that won a game yesterday!
Hugs,