Day 21 Slice of Life – Happy Mother’s Day

Denise Krebs10 Comments

It’s Mother’s Day in the Middle East and northern Africa. This unofficial holiday started in 1956, introduced by Mustafa Amin, Egyptian journalist, and was gradually adopted in about twenty other countries. It coincides with the beginning of spring, which I think is an appropriate day to celebrate birth and motherhood.

This year, in celebration of Mother’s Day, there will be no large assembly, no cards made in art, poems written in English and Arabic, and no flowers passed out to those sweet moms in the audience.

This year, in celebration of Mother’s Day, our sweet moms are home with their children–teaching, entertaining, feeding, and caring for them. Many of these moms are also still going to work.

In 2020, they really need a day to honor and bless them. I hope my students do so. God bless them!

Day 20 Slice of Life – Monster Cookies

Denise Krebs14 Comments

“I need to bake cookies,” I told my husband. It’s Friday, a day for rest and baking.

“Make some for the nurses. They are overworked these days,” said my husband. He’s the chaplain at the hospital.

I had all the ingredients for monster cookies, plus two liters of Baskin-Robbins ice cream in the freezer. We were supposed to have a small dinner party tonight (well under the ten-person suggested limit for gatherings here), but it got cancelled in an abundance of caution.

Cookie dough

When the dinner was cancelled, having recently started Weight Watchers, I was in a quandary about what to do with all these sweets! Do I bake these cookies and risk eating five of them today? (That’s my modus operandi when there are freshly-baked cookies around.) Or do I make another plan?

“Perfect!” I told my husband. “That’s what I’ll do.” I hope it’s safe! Good God, we are in new territory. I’ll wear gloves when I package them.

Anyway, that’s what I did. My husband delivered cookies to several departments.

And I only ate one for five WW points.

Monster Cookies
1 stick butter
1¾ cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 2/3 c. peanut butter
1 T. vanilla
4 ½ cups oatmeal
2 t. soda
¾ cup M&Ms
¾ cup chocolate chips
4 ounces nuts (optional)

Cream butter, brown sugar and white sugar. Add and blend eggs, peanut butter, and vanilla. Add oatmeal and soda. Then add M&Ms and chocolate chips. Add nuts, if desired.

Bake at 350⁰ for 10-12 minutes.

Packaged cookies to take to the employees

Day 19 Slice of Life – Birthday Wishes

Denise Krebs4 Comments

Before we left on our Corona distancing holiday, the teachers and admin chipped in money for a birthday celebration for our vice principal. Then about a week before her birthday, we had to leave school. We celebrated during a virtual meeting and sent her with a virtual birthday card on her special day. But today, we surprised her with the gift we had bought for her last month.

The few supervisors, coordinators, and teachers who were on campus gathered in the room next door. Then we went into her room singing, “Happy Birthday.”  We were all spread out around the room, no hugs, no kisses, no cake. Just a VP who was touched and thankful for the gold necklace we got for her.

Everyone said goodbye and filed out of the room.

Celebrating in our new way.

Day 18 Slice of Life – Poignant Uncertainty

Denise Krebs

Today I finally found a few minutes to get to a pile of notebooks, neglected since January 29.  These are our dialogue journals, and the students and I write back and forth to each other weekly. Until January 29, that is.

So much happened in February. We had a field trip cancelled and rescheduled. We went on the rescheduled trip. We spent a week reading all around the school in what we called the Reading Marathon. We started a big project of writing 120 stories about people at Al Raja School, and we were trying to finish writing our novels. Since I only have seven periods a week with the children, it might not be surprising that we neglected our dialogue journals for three weeks. Then during the fourth week, on February 25, school was cancelled to help stop the Coronavirus spread here in Bahrain.

This morning as I sat with each book, I would see the face of the child, wonder when I would see her again, say a prayer for her and the family at home, and write a serious letter back to the child. I wrote things like, “I look forward to seeing you again.” Instead of what I would normally write, “Have a great weekend! See you Sunday.” I couldn’t even write, “I look forward to seeing you again next month when we get back from our Coronavirus holiday.” Chances are there will be no school next month either.

I felt the weight of the leaden pages as I thumbed through the emptiness of the back half of a boy’s notebook. His last entry had ended with making a challenge to fill the whole hundred-page dialogue journal before summer, “I’m sure we’ll be able to fill up this notebook with our letters this year,” he enthusiastically wrote.  Not likely, Mohammed.

We are living in an unsettled time now, to be sure, a time of sadness and uncertainty.  There were poignant times when I felt this loss today, like the examples above. However, the entries were also fun and playful and silly at times, because that’s what they had written to me, so I answered their queries and listened and responded and celebrated with them about what they had chosen to tell me–a Captain Underpants book review, a detailed game in Roblox, a description of the lunch at sports day, a child who was able to score from a high pass during the sports day soccer tournament and much more.

What better way to spend these days than doing what I love most? Teaching, helping, encouraging, and giving hope and comfort to children. 

They are giving me the same.

Day 17 Slice of Life – Too Much Computer

Denise Krebs5 Comments

I am exhausted, and my eyes are crossing. I thought I would have more time to do the Slice of Life this March because school was called off on February 25. I expected to have some quiet.  Unbelievably, I thought maybe some boring times. Instead, I feel I am sitting every waking minute at the computer.

Today I was reminded to turn in a report about the project my students did this year. I needed to send the rubric, the unit plan description and photos. For the life of me, I couldn’t even remember what quarter we did it (there was just 1 and 2), what the project was or if I had taken any photos. The project is 100 points and we spend a good chunk of time with it. Finally, I had to look at my year plan to remember anything about it.

That is really, really unlike me. It is time to take rest!

Day 16 Slice of Life – Clean Up Complete

Denise Krebs2 Comments

I went to my classroom today for the second day with only one mission in mind. To organize, file, and clean up the piles that have accumulated since September. (Actually, I had one basket I found that was from last summer that never was completed.) I have been thinking about what would happen if the Coronavirus makes even the teachers have to leave school for a while. I didn’t take a before picture, but suffice it to say, my desk area–top, bottom and sides–was a fire trap.

When  I was cleaning up papers and items from many months ago, it was so much easier to be ruthless. “I’ll never use this again.” “Finished with that!” “Why did I save this?” Not only did I file and put a lot of things away in my room, I also ended up with a large pile of scratch paper and three bags of garbage. But along with that, I also for a few treasures that I thought I lost.

Why do I do this? For 25 years I have taught, and I never seem to be able to keep my room in order. However, for today, it is ready to go.

 

Day 15 Slice of Life – Al Raja School: 120 Years Old

Denise Krebs13 Comments

Our school is 120 years old this year. Al Raja School was the first private school in the Kingdom of Bahrain. We’ve been using the 120 years as a theme throughout the school year in celebration of this milestone. Today, though, it just was a sad reminder that the students are not in school.

We were going to have a carnival two weeks ago, and one of the activities I was responsible for was the 120 Museum. We had a little room that would be decorated with collections of 120 items. The students were just bringing in items when school was cancelled for a month due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Today as I was spring cleaning in my classroom, I looked at all the items and took a few pictures. Recently we got word that the carnival will be cancelled altogether this year.

Some of the items that would have been in our 120 Museum.

I posted a video explaining today’s lesson on what would have been our 120th day of school, a day we had planned to celebrate. I wore my shirt that had 120 ponytail holders sewn on, but the day wasn’t celebratory at all. I was a bit sad and lonely in my classroom.

The lesson today was about our project 120 ARS Stories, a book we are writing. Students are turning interviews into stories today, at home. They had done the interviews of siblings, relatives, teachers, and others affiliated with our school.

Can you see my 120 ponytail holder shirt?

I cleaned off our bulletin board, removing students One Words for 2020. Now the bulletin board is ready for new creations that they will bring back after our break. I can’t wait!

 

 

Day 14 Slice of Life – Experimenting with a New Theme

Denise Krebs23 Comments

So, it’s been a week since my comment section stopped working. It is a glitch on that theme from Edublogs, but they are working on it. 

It was unfortunate timing to come during the Slice of Life. My blogging over the past few years has been really sporadic, so there were many weeks and months when I wouldn’t have noticed a problem with commenting. This month, however, my sweet new friends in the Slice of Life challenge noticed right away and let me know. It is good to be back to blogging and trying Slice of Life with you all. 

Today I tried a different theme, something that will allow the comments to work. I haven’t changed the theme for years, so it was probably a good thing to explore.

I changed it, but I think I liked the Before theme better. However, I’ll live with the After theme for a bit and see if it grows on me.

Hopefully, the commenting works better on this one!

Do you have an opinion about which theme you like better?

Before
After