One More!

I usually post about education things on this blog, however, I have been wanting to share my journey and felt like this was the right place to do it. I mean, I am after all educating you about cancer, chemo, and all of the unknowns that go along with it.

One. More.

It is finally here. March 23 seems like so long ago. 15 chemotherapy treatments done. 1 more to go.

Here is an inside look at a treatment day... Vitals checked (temp, weight, blood pressure, pulse oxygen, heart rate), access my port, draw blood work and then wait and wait some more. Once blood work comes back, they determine if you get treatment that day or not. If yes, then they put in your orders to the pharmacy (this means even more waiting). First up is your pre-treatment medications. For me, this includes anti-nausea meds, Pepcid, steroids, fluids, and Benadryl. After you get all of these, then is time for your chemo bag(s). Each bag typically drips anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour and half. After the chemo is done, sometimes you get more fluids for another 15-45 minutes. Another vitals check, then they take out the needle from your port. My first 4 treatments took about 4-5 hours, my weekly treatments take about 2.5-3 hours.

This process started off very slow (probably because I started off with a harsher chemo drug, was getting 2 bags of chemo per treatment day, and had a week off.) However, the past 11 weeks have flown by.

I don't know if it has been my positive attitude, my younger age, a relatively healthy body, or a combination of all of them, but I tell everyone that I have been very lucky with this process. I have had very few side effects compared to the laundry list of things that COULD happen that I received in my chemotherapy class.

Speaking of side effects... they are weird. And as I have met different people throughout my journey, it is crazy how the same exact drug affects people so differently. 

I lost my hair after the second treatment. No big shocker there, pretty much everyone does at some point. What is weird is that I have not finished my treatment yet and it is already starting to grow back.

Most people have to take medications to help with nausea, aren't able to eat because they feel so sick to their stomach, and tend to lose weight, which is not always a good thing when your body is taking in these very serious drugs. I have not had to deal with any of this and for that I am VERY thankful.

Another weird side effect, is my fingernails have turned rigid, hard, and are attempting to fall off. You don't realize how much you use your thumbs, until your fingernail is in a lot of pain and it hurts to use them.

Fatigue. Yes, chemotherapy makes you very tired. Especially when you are getting it every week. Your body doesn't have as much time to recover between treatments, so the fatigue seems to build up. However, fun fact, on treatment days I get a bag of steroids. My body loves to become wired when given steroids. So while I am exhausted on Tuesdays, my body is like let's go, I'm wide awake!

One thing that not many people tell you about is the emotional/mental side of chemotherapy. I try to live my life as I normally would, but some days it is hard. The kids don't fully understand what all I am going through, so they don't always get it when mommy is tired. I am not always the best at asking for help or communicating my feelings, so I have had to focus on explaining to people how I feel or if I need help. Some days I just feel like doing absolutely nothing and others I feel perfectly normal. I have tried reading and some days it is hard. It is like my brain just can't handle it.

Every week I sit in a room with 3-5 other patients. I listen to their stories. I have seen people get frustrated because their blood count, platelets, etc. are too low and they can't receive treatment that day. I've seen people have to get blood transfusions rather than their chemo treatment because their numbers are too low. I have learned a lot about blood work and all of the different things that they measure. Again, I am so fortunate with this journey. My numbers have always been great. There have been weeks where my white blood count may be low, but the other numbers are high enough that it doesn't affect my treatment. I had a couple of weeks where one of my liver enzymes was high, but never enough that it prevented me from getting treatment. I am a checklist person. I loved being able to go each week and mark off another treatment. I can't imagine showing up and then finding out that you can't get treated.

On top of all of this is getting cancer in the middle of a pandemic. This means no visitors. Not only are you going to sit at a treatment center from anywhere to 3-8 hours, you have to do so by yourself. Luckily the nurses are absolutely amazing and make you feel like home, but it gets lonely. Many of us just choose to sleep or read or play on our phones. The people that I truly feel sorry for are those that need people there to help them understand the process, or what it means when things don't go as planned.

While I am SO thankful that I am going to be finished, I am going to miss all of the nurses and patients that I have made connections with over the past 4 months.

My chemotherapy journey is coming to an end, but I am not quite done yet. 

Next up is radiation therapy. 6 weeks, 1 session per day for a total of 30 sessions. Stay tuned!

5th Grade I CAN Statements

It's about that time. I have hit that point in my summer break where I am ready to start looking ahead to next school year. I will say that it is hitting a little later this year than normal, which is absolutely needed after this past year.

I revamped these I CAN statements to use in my room in place of putting up the standards. I like the direct statement that the students can read and say, "I can" do this!

I tried to make them appealing to the eye by adding a visual of some sort to help them understand what is expected. I also used bold and underline formatting to help identify key words in the statement.

These are all mostly in black and white, because let's be honest, who has access to a color printer at their school (*rolls eyes*). However, I do like to use colorful paper to print them on and make them pop in the classroom.

Click on the images below to get your FREE copy!

Proud.

The year is winding down. It felt like the beginning of the year was flying by and then man the last 3 months felt like an eternity. 

This year was weird. It was an adventure. It was full of unknowns, new things, changing the way we look at education, the way we teach, the way the students learn. Some kids thrived. Some didn't. 

Personally, this school year was full of challenges. From learning how to teach 100% online, something that even I struggled with no matter how comfortable I am using technology. To trying to engage students and build relationships, again something that I put first in my teaching, but struggled with this year. To my personal health issues that began in January.

However, as I look back and there is one word that sticks out. Proud. 

I am proud of my students who overcame the challenges of learning from home, those who adapted to hybrid learning, those who were taking care of siblings or other children in the house while also trying to keep up their own education.

I am proud of my school and coworkers who came together to get through a challenging year. We shared resources and ideas to help us master virtual learning and then we making our school a fun and safe place to be once hybrid learning began.

But mostly I am proud of myself. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in January. Had surgery in February. Started chemotherapy in March. I started off with a positive mindset that I wanted to finish the year, but I also made sure to put my health first. I took off the days that I needed to take off, or days that I just didn't feel good. I fought to get my accommodations approved so that I could work from home. As much as I wanted to be in the school building, I knew that the safest place for me to be is at home.

I am proud of myself for putting ME first. I learned to say no. I learned to stand up for myself when I knew I couldn't handle something. I took a break from the "extra" stuff, like creating resources and blogging. I knew that I needed to focus on me and my students. 

I am proud of me for getting through this year. And I am proud of ALL the teachers out there that persevered through ALL of the challenges that this year threw at us. While I am excited to get back to normal next year, I think it is also important that we don't go back to the previous "normal". There are a lot of things that this year taught us about the education world and we as educators much make sure that we are ready to face even more challenges as we push forward.

I hope that you all are doing well!

Patience, Flexibility, Forgiveness, and Empathy

I wrote this blog post during the spring of 2020 as we first began our adventure with distance learning. I wanted to share it again because these four words are still so true during my virtual learning experience.

It is easy to want to jump back into the normal routine of school. Curriculum, assignments, attendance, grades, tests... the list can go on and on, but one thing we have to remember is that this is not normal. What we are dealing with while trying to virtually from home or the school building, or teaching in a hybrid format with some kids at home and others in the building is something that we have never been through before.

Yes, it is important that we continue to teach the curriculum and assess the students throughout the year to see what they are learning, we also have to do it with patience, flexibility, forgiveness, and empathy. We don't know what all these kids are having to deal with at home while they are also trying to complete school on the computer. I have had students tell me, I will be back I need to help my sister get logged into class or I will be back I need to get a bottle for my baby sister, or hold on I need to help my mom with something. These kids (especially my 5th graders) are now not able to just focus on school like they would in the building, oftentimes they are still taking care of things in their household WHILE going to school.

On the flipside of this, I am home trying to teach my classes, while my daughter attends kindergarten virtually on the computer. Honestly, she has done amazing, but then I also hear other parents sitting next to their kindergarteners helping them navigate this unknown world of virtual school and i feel guilty that I can't be there next to her. Luckily her teacher has these four words down, because there will be weeks where we will do all of her assignments on the weekend because at the end of the day when I can finally help her, she is exhausted and doesn't want to do anything school related. And you know what, what is ok with me.

While I have been preaching to have patience, flexibility, forgiveness, and empathy with our students, it is also SO important to have these four things for YOURSELF as well. 

Have patience with yourself, whether you are working and trying to help your kids with school or you are teacher trying to teach in a virtual or hybrid setting, please know that you have not done this before. It won't be perfect, but if you have patience it just may work out.

Have flexibility with yourself. Those dishes sitting in the sink after a long day will still be there the next day. The laundry that is piling up, it will get done eventually. Again, we are not living in normal times right now. The day-to-day things we were used to doing are going to look different right now.

Forgive yourself. Especially look at your moms. Mom guilt can feel so strongly right now. I already mentioned that I feel guilty I can't help my daughter more with her school, but you know what, her teacher knows our situation and completely understands. Some nights my kids don't have the best dinners or get a bath, but it's ok. They are happy and healthy and that is all that matters.

Lastly, have empathy for yourself. We are living in times that we would never have predicted a year ago. Celebrate the little things. Made it through the day? Cheers! Cooked dinner for the family? Success! Took a shower and got dressed in regular clothes? Pour another glass of wine! :-)

Patience. Flexibility. Forgiveness. Empathy.

We will make it!

Cafe Board and Interesting Word Collector

The second part of The Daily Five is the Cafe. This is a set of strategies that are broken into the four components of reading. (To learn more about them, check out www.thedailycafe.com/cafe)

For my Cafe board I decided to make strips that have the strategies listed on them and then once we have gone over one of the strategies we add it to the Cafe board.  Also, I use the mini-Post-It note pads and have one for each student and put their sticky note under the exact strategy they are working on rather than at the top of each column.

Here is the Cafe board in my classroom:

Here are my resources:

• PDF of Cafe Strategies
• CAFE menu headings

The Interesting Word Collector is as a word wall. Throughout the school year we will add words to this wall that we come across in reading or writing.

Here is the Interesting Word Collector in my classroom:

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Embrace the Mess

We live in a world where everyone is trying to live their best life, which means that we tend to share all of the good parts with our friends and family, especially on social media. We post the pictures of our kids when they are smiling and getting along. We post pictures about vacations and cookouts with friends. We talk about the latest and greatest thing we have tried or the food we've cooked. All the positive stuff, which is great. But what does this do to us mentally? It can be draining. We begin to compare our lives to others. We try to live up to other peoples' standards. We get frustrated when things don't go right. We begin to wonder why.

But guess what... it's time to embrace the mess and keep living your life.

This is something that I am learning to do. Before kids, I was the person that always had my house together. The kitchen was always clean, the living room was always picked up. After kids (especially once the second one came around), I often felt a lot of anxiety when the house was a mess. I would get frustrated, sometimes at the kids. I didn't like that I was blaming the kids for feeling this way. Then I realized that the mess means they are playing and having fun. The dishes piled up in the sink and the laundry on the floor means that I am spending more time playing with them. I had to come to the realization that having a "messy" house was going to be the norm for years to come as the kids grow and instead of constantly living with the anxiety about the mess, I am learning to embrace it.

It's ok to come home and there be toys all over the floor, to have dishes piled in the sink, to have clothes that need to be washed or put away (let me be honest, I absolutely HATE putting clothes away so more often than not we just look through the piles of clean clothes to find something to wear every day). :-)

There is so much pressure on us to live this perfect life, but it doesn't have to be that way. When your friends post a perfect picture of their kids, just know it took them at least 10 tries to get that perfect shot. When you see those picture perfect clean kitchens on Pinterest or in magazines, just know that they probably don't even get used. Stop comparing yourself to others and be grateful for the life you live.

I am learning to love my messy, sometimes unorganized, crazy life and you should learn to love yours too.

A few tricks and tips:

• Create a cleaning schedule; I've used two options. 
• Option 1 - assign a small task each night of the week. For example, Mondays - vacuum, Tuesdays - dust, Wednesday - bathrooms. I also did one load of laundry per night, as needed.
• Option 2 - pick one day of the week and set aside an hour to get through all of your cleaning. Stick to the one day so in your mind you know, Wednesday evenings is my cleaning night. With this option, I tend to do laundry all throughout the day on Saturday (one of my days off)
• Sometimes it is ok to not be organized
• My kids have a playroom where they have all of their toys. Each toy has a specific bin it goes in when we clean up, but some days (especially if the kids want to help) we just throw things in whatever bin we see and ta-da we can see the floor again!
• I also have that one room that if I know we are having guests come over I will throw all the odds and ends that I don't feel like putting away into the room just to get it out of sight.
• Ask for help!
• I tend to do most of the cleaning and laundry around the house because I am home so much right now with virtual learning, whereas my husband gets home later in the evening and his days off vary. However, I have learned that when things are getting backed up or if we are having people come over, all I have to do is ask him to do something he will always do it. (now if I could just get the kids to help out more) :-)

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The Daily Five Check-Ins

Originally when I was having the students make a decision as to which Daily 5 choice they were going to do, I would call their name and have them tell me which one they were going to do and then once all 28 kids were done I would release them to begin. Now I use this nifty creation to have the kids put their picture next to the choice they want to do and then get started right away on the activity. This process went from being 10 minutes to now taking about 3-5 minutes.

Here is a picture of the choice board: 

I used those student stickers that they give us every year and glued them on a magnet. Don't get them? You can print out their name or take a picture and print it out and then glue it on a magnet.

I allow the students to keep track of what they have chosen throughout the week because I want them to have some choice, but I also encourage them to get to all of them each week.

This presentation has some student check-in sheets, as well as, an electronic check-in that can be displayed on an interactive whiteboard:

The Daily Five Student Check-Ins

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