5...4...3...2...1...Puppy!

This post is different that the others because it's being written with a puppy next to me. We got a new puppy on Tuesday. This was all timed perfectly, of course. We had just spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday moving our kids into their college dorms and I started the school year on Tuesday. So sure, add an infant dog into the mix, that won't get in the way of anything.

Timing aside, I'm happy to have a dog again. We'd had one for 15 years that died in December, and it seemed like the right time to get another one, now in our second year as empty nesters. Meanwhile, of course, our kids are wanting to come home a lot to visit her. Not us really, just the dog.

This kind of topped off a headlong rush into the year. The crammed in craziness of it punctuated by an overscheduled in-service that kept us in meetings for three quarters of the first day and more than half of the second day. That prevented us, or me at least, from preparing for the first day of school to the extent I wanted to, and unfortunately, where once I could get a lot done in the mornings, now mornings are puppy PUPPY PUPPY! I think of all the dislocations, that's the hardest for me to deal with. Even when we had little kids, early morning was a quiet time for me. It was alone time. Not any more. I can get some alone time, but only after a couple of hours of puppy morning energy burst.

And then there's back to school. I wouldn't say that the in-service stuff was worthless, but it wasn't of tremendous value to me personally. The first day, we did a very nice, if 50% too long, exercise in listening. This is admirable, and I'm hopeful that it was useful for some people. Less so for me, for two resons. First, I'm always right, so what's the point?

But more seriously, this is a lesson already well-learned for me. I learned how to do active listening almost 20 years ago, and it's fully integrated into every part of my life, especially teaching. My whole classroom style is predicated on my listening to and understanding what the students are saying. But it's what I do all the time now anyway, regardless of the situation.

The next day was about how to deal with stressed out kids. That's fine, though I think it's far more important for the kids to learn how to deal with their own stress than to have us do it for them. I'm kind of tired of hearing about how the students are all stressed out, especially by their homework. Life is stress and school is a great place to learn how to deal with it.

More on this and the puppy later