Temps will be in the eighties all week

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Teaching.

The first full week of school and temps will be in the eighties all week. The fast pace of the year has started and I find myself keeping up and standing back, mouth agape, wishing I had one more day to read all day, one more morning to spend in my pajamas writing until noon.

It’s the pace that gets me, though I take to it with the timing of a cook. My co-teacher is always getting behind, wondering how I’ve managed to get through all we so optimistically planned for that day.

Yesterday I laid down some propositions about reading to my seniors. Among those propositions: Reading can change your life. Several nodded. One kid looked at me like I’d said something challengeable and another’s hand shot up. Were these my propositions he wanted to know or did I get them from the approved curriculum?

Eighty percent of my freshmen indicated in the Google Survey I gave them that they will write if they have to. Many also indicated their top reading goal: read faster.

When I stand back, as I am doing right now, I look forward most of all to reading days and creative writing prompts like It was a dark and stormy night or In that moment, she realized.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.