Hitting the Pause Button for Colon Cancer

On September 19, 2019, I woke up thinking the worst part of my day would be having a liquid diet while doing lunch duty. I went to work, had a great day with my agents, and told them I would see them Monday. Many friends wished me luck for the colonoscopy I was having the next day for what we all thought was confirmation of what doctors felt was mild colitis. My bloodwork was stellar. My lower CT scans were good, though the second one I had showed inflammation in the colon. 48 hours later life had changed abruptly. I had to make calls I never thought I would make. I created two Facebook groups to bring together my community. 72 hours later my Superintendent kindly drove me to school on a Sunday to help me prepare for the unknown for our agents. Three weeks later I began the third clean out of my body in preparation for what I thought would be the biggest surgery I have had to date. Three weeks later it was me being virtually brought into the classroom.

Having colon cancer has meant life has made some unexpected plans for me. Someone once said to me not long ago that she could never imagine me just stopping my work schedule as I am so passionate about it. Something I learned through this is when life causes you to hit the pause button you dive in. I needed to rest, have a stent put in, and drain myself of toxins I had been carrying around for a long time. I dropped 16 pounds in less than 2 weeks because my mass had been blocking my entire colon. Once the stent was put in it did its job. Positivity and my people have carried me through on some dark days where I thought I would have to move into the bathroom.

Though no one ever really wants a situation in life to truly learn who stands with them I have been humbled by the outreach from friends all over the country and the Mansfield community. The messages, posts, check ins, texts, cards, and positive signs have helped me each day. I am glad I have a large network who stands with me. My colleagues at work, MassCUE, and my PLN from afar have stepped up in a time I needed them the most. The friendship and love I have felt from everyone have been appreciated every day. I will forever be grateful for the woman who stood in front of our agents each day, teaching them and bonding with them so I could take care of myself and have zero worries about our students. My sister had shown up every weekend she could to be with me, even for less than 24 hours. My parents have shown unwavering strength even when I am sure we all want to crumble. Falling apart has not been an option. I had a fabulous medical team at the Brigham, so I was in good hands.

My former agent 13, Colleen, was there every step of the way. She was my nurse the first week post surgery and was there to check in on me when I ended up needing emergency surgery for an obstructed bowel and hernia. As we walked around the Brigham sharing stories she would often remind me of life advice I gave her in the 3^rd grade. You never know the power of your reach, but our kids need us! Trust me.

Building relationships with students is something I pride myself in. The night before I went in for my initial surgery 20 years of agents and families sent me #postivesignthursday photos. It was those faces I carried into the operating room with me. I knew I had to get back to our classroom. So, on January 2 I walked back into our classroom part time. My co-teacher and I discussed with the students what was going on with me, shared my schedule, talked about cells and cancer, and created a stronger classroom community in that moment together. We referred to my chemo days (as I will be going through early May) as medicine days I will be out. Then we jumped right back into learning. The heartbeat of a classroom lives on no matter what. Our students carry that torch!

I know I have colon cancer. I had surgery to remove part of my colon where a tumor had been living for too long. The recovery was not easy, but I had people surrounding me to cheer me on. I saw the value in social media used for good throughout this experience. Dana Farber is studying me due to my age since we are the fastest growing group to get this kind of cancer, and they do not know why. My team is still unsure if my food allergies were actually caused by the colon cancer. The unknowns in this journey have far outweighed the knowns, which is a bit scary. But I knew I had love coming from all over the place, and that was enough for me. Thank you to everyone for being part of this journey. We got this. I am doing my job. I am on to my 4^th round of chemo. We are all in this together. And I encourage anyone reading this to remember to take care of yourself and consider checking your colon. Sometimes we need to take a deeper look at things, even if it means putting things on hold. Hitting that pause button is important. 

The Bothering Box: A Way to Build a Positive Classroom Culture for Students

Running a student led classroom can mean that sometimes the best laid plans for the school day fall by the wayside. Prioritizing what is important when building relationships with individual students and a classroom community can often pause the academic day. Our ELA block got cut short this past week due to a note that was left in our bothering box. A student happened to mention he or she felt excluded from a few of the other students in our classroom.

At the start of the school year I observed classmates gravitating towards other students from a previous classroom, sports, or other after school activities. The exclusion was not intentional, but the student’s feelings became the priority for me. If the student wanted me to talk to him or her, he or she needed to sign his or her note left in the bothering box. If he or she wanted me to be aware of a bother happening in his or her life, he or she could drop the bother in the box and walk away. There was no name on this bothering box slip.

This one note drove the class meeting we had instead of working on vocabulary. Discussing what it meant to have an inclusive classroom was our topic for our class meeting. I wanted to show students what you put the box does get addressed, building trust between students and teacher.

I started the discussion asking what inclusion of others meant. Students had a range of valid ideas. We also discussed when you try to include someone, how to handle when the other person wants to be alone. This is a reality for our students. I dove into an analogy that students could relate to. I shared that when you do not pay attention to your surroundings and do not give another person a good chance you might miss out on the opportunity to learn and grow from someone new. This is similar in their world to not giving a book a good chance. They could miss the opportunity to go on an adventure, learning something new, or disappear into a world so different than their own.

To build a collaborative and inclusive culture I surprised students by breaking them up into random groups to play indoor recess games. We had Connect Four, Headbandz, Jenga, Chutes and Ladders, Uno, and Guess Who going on all at the same time. I heard a lot of laughter and conversation happening between students who had not really spoken to each other yet this school year.

In these moments we all flourish as a classroom community. We took a break from our academic day to play and have fun with each other. This experience helped our class be ready the rest of the week to take on challenges together. I even noticed different partnerships forming and students sitting near new friends. We, as educators, need to take more cues from our students. I will forever be grateful for the bothering box that has helped me delve into the social emotional needs of our classroom community. The next note left in the bothering box was this experience made a student think about the time he or she had to end a friendship. That will be a conversation for next week!

How Was Your #Dotday?

September 15^th is an International celebration of creativity, courage, and collaboration. International Dot Day took our classroom by storm on Friday the 13^th to celebrate and honor students where they are at. It gave us an opportunity to chat about growth mindset, failing forward, and trying new things.  

We kicked off our celebration with a Dot Day Breakout EDU. Creativity and drawing paper got locked in a box, and students had to decipher clues to open up several locks. Sadly, no group was able to successfully open the box, but they all tried and worked together. A few groups had one lock left when the 45 minutes was up!

Our next Dot Day activity happened over Twitter. The town neighboring ours happened to post they were looking for some cross-district collaboration, so I tweeted back our class would love to connect with another 5^th grade class. Voila! We had a match within mere seconds. Thanks to Karen Winsper for helping make the connection and to Jenifer Carline for her quick planning with me. Together we created an activity for our students. Children worked on a collaborative dot drawing in Google slides! Our students created their dot of interests on the left side while Ms. Carline’s students took over the right side of the dot. Students loved watching other students in another town create something with them! We are going to meet our new friends face to face in a Google hangout on Monday, continuing on the Dot Day festivities.

Dot Day continued after lunch with a Dot Day interactive activity! We learned about famous failures and discussed the following question: If a person continues to try to achieve something even after they have not achieved something the first or second time around, is their lack of achievement failure? Why or Why not? We used padlet as a tool to answer this question, and some of our new friends from Norton surprised us by also answering the question! We heard Peter Reynold’s story, The Dot, discussing growth mindset.

Students shared that they appreciated our Dot Day extravaganza during our closing circle. I am thrilled our students were engaged in creative activities today that called for courage and collaboration!