Slice of Life 6 – Yoke or Joke? #sol24

6 March 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

 

When I was in São Paulo last month, we went to church one Sunday, and the pastor preached on this passage from Matthew 11, where Jesus says:

28 Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

We had an interpreter who was really good, and explained everything well without mistake, except for one. Throughout the sermon, the yoke of Jesus became the “joke of Jesus.” It was funny to hear at first. There was no way to explain the mistake to him, and in context we knew what he was saying, so we just got used to it. But in a whole sermon about taking the yoke of Jesus upon us, we heard that word joke a lot. Later at lunch, one of us asked him about the sounds of Y and J in Portuguese words; they wondered if that’s why he got it mixed up, but he didn’t make the connection at first. It wasn’t until later when he realized he had gotten the two words mixed up, he hit his forehead, laughed and said, “That’s why you were asking me about the sounds of the letters!”

Isn’t it a miracle that people learn new languages with so many words, when one letter or sound change can make the words totally different? Language learning is such a marvel. Anyway, I wrote this little #50preciouswords story about a similar mix up with yolk and joke.

A New School
By Denise Krebs

Sara moved from São Paulo last year. I moved from Fresno. She’s learning English. I like her.
“I have a yoke for you,” she tells me today.
“Egg yolk?”
“No, silly. A funny story yoke.”
“Ok. Tell me your joke,” I say.
Sara gives me hope for this new school.


And now some photos of Joshua trees especially for Glenda and all of you:

These Joshua trees are growing in my yard. I feel so blessed.

 

Slice of Life 5 – Ryan’s Mountain #sol24

5 March 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

Come with me on a hike. It is just a 3-mile round trip hike up Ryan’s Mountain and back, in Joshua Tree National Park.

Before the hike we need to enjoy some tea or coffee. I had my everyday tea latte with soy milk. (This is what I get for trying to empty the soy milk carton today before it was ready to be finished.)
On the way up the mountain

This is the first time I’ve seen a Desert Bighorn sheep in nature.
We made it to the top of Ryan Mountain, elevation 5457. My husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law.

Mt. San Jacinto
Mt. San Gorgonio

The views at the top are lovely.

There were so many rock stairs to walk up and now down; I am thankful for my hiking sticks.

Slice of Life 3 – A Junk Journal Day #sol24

3 March 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

It was a junk journal sort of day. We are going to visit our niece and her three daughters next week, so this morning after breakfast, I took over the whole table to make junk journals for each of them. I didn’t clean up until 9:30 p.m. That is why I had not visited any Slicers today until late tonight. The junk journals were really my whole day! My husband even brought me food.

I’m new at junk journals, for sure. I’ve been following Natasha at Treasure Books to learn what I’ve learned. She is the only one I will watch now. I’ve become spoiled watching her great videos. She is kind and practical and thrifty. She is a great “junk journal” shopper. She is both meticulous and artistic. I’m barely either, but I’m trying.

This was my work table for 12 hours today!
These are four junk journals at various stages of getting ready to gift my nieces next week.

 

Slice of Life 1 – Jury Duty #sol24

1 March 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

The last two days I’ve had jury duty. In our state, there is a one day or one trial jury process. If the first day you are not put in a courtroom for jury selection, you are finished with your service. I was chosen to go through the jury selection process; this process took two days. It was so very fascinating. I wrote about it here. There was something so amazing about being a mostly anonymous community member (we were called by numbers in the courtroom, never our names), gathered together for only one purpose–to provide a fair trial for one of our peers. We weren’t supposed to use our phones in the courtroom, so I was texting my husband on a break:

I thought he might read that last comment sarcastically. But I truly meant it–“I love sitting here with all my peers waiting…”

Not that it wasn’t boring, but it was satisfying to be a significant part of providing justice. Bonus: I did have a chance to read about 20% of my really long book, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in the many breaks we were given. For me, jury duty only lasted two days, for the jury was confirmed by the end of the second day, and the rest of us were excused, while they will continue with a three-week trial.

Slice of Life – A Name Joke Lost in Translation

27 February 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

“Minha sobrinha é Denise.”

I recognized Muriel’s Portuguese. We had just been talking about my name. The difference in the way it sounds in Brazil and America. Dee-nee-zee in Brazil. Slow and lyrical. (I think I like it better.)

Then I heard Muriel say sobrinha…and I knew in Spanish sobrina means niece, so I recognized what she was saying. It was such a funny surprise to be discussing in another language Denise and niece. I can’t count the many times in my life I’ve heard the conversation-starting, unrealistic joke about the one who had to name his sister’s twins because she was unconscious after childbirth. When she came around, he told her the names he picked. Denise for the girl. “Okay, that’s not so bad,” she said. “And what did you name my son?” Denephew. Haha.

But in Portuguese there is no rhyming of sobrinha and Dee-nee-zee. This was a true niece named Denise. I should have just appreciated the bit of communication that we were able to have without knowing each other’s languages. Instead, I attempted to tell her that sobrinha in English is niece and sounds like Denise. (But it doesn’t sound like Dee-nee-zee.) At that point, someone came by and was able to translate my little word play. Muriel laughed and we hugged and said tchau tchau, both off to our next activities.

I was reminded again from this exchange how important and complicated and beautiful language is in all its varieties. And how often the heart comes through even without words.

sobrinha or niece
some things lost in translation
but sweet love comes through

Spanish was very helpful while reading and trying to communicate in Portuguese. However, the pronunciations were so different, and there is more new vocabulary in Portuguese than familiar Spanish cognates, so I quickly learned that Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers do not naturally understand each other. Like this word no in Portuguese. It means in (and a lot of other important prepositions). It’s pronounced nu. (The English no is não and pronounced more like English and Spanish.)

In love there is no fear
In my father’s house are many dwelling places – (Na is the feminine “in” here.)

Slice of Life – Paying Attention this Year

23 January 2024 TwoWritingTeachers.org

I’ve missed this community the last few weeks, and I am glad you are here faithfully each week. This year my special word of the year is cherish. (I wrote about it here and here.) I want to pay attention to the joys and sorrows and slices of life that I so often miss. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to write these Slice of Life posts on Tuesdays.

Anyway, I have joined The Stafford Challenge this year. Kim Stafford, poet and son of William Stafford, suggested a daily writing practice where you include the date, a diary (boring prose of the day), an aphorism, and a poem. Every single day. He said when people suggest his father was a genius and they couldn’t do what he did. (Write a poem every day for decades–he wrote over 20,000 poems from during WWII until his death.) Kim said he responds that maybe his father had a genius process that all of us can use. Look at all the healing with poetry that could happen if more people would take up this genius process. Anyway, that’s what I am trying in 2024.

Here’s today’s writing page. A mess, but that’s what they tend to look like for me.

Today’s poem…

The first thing I noticed about you is that
most of your words and actions show how
important and smart you seem to think you are…yet
part of me sees myself in you. I have a fear
of giving myself too. Being vulnerable in my/
(your need) is not easy for me (and you.) It’s been our
life. My fear
is masquerading as pride. You didn’t know just
ahead of you was something you needed help holding–a fear
of your son’s health–he was sick, living in his car, with guns–
you worried. Where is his dog? He’s
not well, you knew, but his next message was garbled. He’s
behind on his prescriptions. We let go.
You cried and we held each other and prayed.


A golden shovel from a David Brooks’ quote “The most important part of your life is ahead of you, not behind you.”

Slice of Life – NCTE Reflections

28 November 2023 TwoWritingTeachers.org

I guess “Reflections” in my title is a bit of a stretch because I didn’t actually take time to reflect much yet. Instead, I wanted to get some thoughts down and share some photos. There is so much more to say about the whole NCTE experience, but for now here are some of my delighted, though surfacy, highlights.

Highlights

  • Having presentations to attend where I knew presenters, like fellow Slice of Life writers–Glenda, Sally, Margaret and Trish.
Sally and I with Glenda at her round table discussion on “Planning with Purpose”
Trish inspiring us at “English Language Arts and the Climate Crisis”
  • Presenting and rooming with Mo and Jennifer
Sarah Donovan was the lead presenter, but sadly we took no photos of her.
  • Hearing Jacqueline Woodson and Tom Hanks

Serendipities

This beautiful mural in the Convention Center with my favorite word
That yellow book on the top shelf is one I wrote with Gallit Zvi, and there it was on display in the exhibit hall.
I had several opportunities to write poetry. It is such a peaceful practice during a busy conference. I bought some new Poetry Spark cards–examples on lower left (moon, echo, distant)
We went to the Scholastic brunch and heard these four authors and received their books–Alan Gratz, Joanna Ho, Ali Terese, and Ann E. Burg.
My return flight was on Southwest, so I was able to check a bag and a suitcase full of books I received from the conference. Free books and free transport for them. They will do a lot of good in my community.
The fall leaves were gorgeous, as was the neighborhood Airbnb we stayed in together

New Connections

  • Meeting Victoria Pasquantonio, a fun and passionate educator who is now the education producer at PBS NewsHour Classroom.
  • Meeting Dr. Luz Carime Bersh from Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Carime used a kaleidoscope as a beautiful metaphor for the multiple layers of identity.

Delicious Food

  • Restaurants at the Short North Arts District on High Street in Columbus were a definite high–but I didn’t take any photos! My favorite was Brassica, where we ate dinner two nights in a row.

Slice of Life – NCTE and more biking

14 November 2023 TwoWritingTeachers.org

A few weeks ago we met a new friend at Starbucks. He’s a fellow bike rider and lives in the town of Joshua Tree. He has literally ridden every highway and road–paved and dirt–as well as all the trails. He helped us find a new shortcut to Joshua Tree on a three-mile trail to his house. Now, he has taken us on several adventures seeing the landscape and sites. This week we went on two 20-mile rides. Just some of the sites we saw were beehive homes, a split rock, a suspiciously-not-really-contaminated “high energy microwave field”, a mirrored egg embedded on a mountain, a train museum (where the train has never passed through) and more. He estimates it will take two more months to finish seeing the sites he has to show us. Here are some photos of our last two bike rides.

Those are full-sized train cars in the background. In the foreground are tracks for a narrow-gauge train that goes around the grounds.
Is this warning sign really something? There was no fence around the area, and “Security by Julia.” Do you see the egg-shaped light in the background?
Here is the egg up close. I’m wondering if the warning is to protect this beauty.
How do you suppose this rock split?
A working fire hydrant in the desert (There was a house behind me)
These little cabins are made with socks of dirt with cement powder arranged in concentric circles.
My husband riding up ahead
We made it home just in time for the sun to fully set

 

 

I’m working on my own personal schedule from the NCTE Conexiones schedule. Have I missed any that you are leading or that you are attending?

Sessions

Thursday
A
B
C
D

Friday
7:00 a.m. – One Line Coffee with Ethical ELA friends
E
F.14 – “Building Networks: Bringing Together Teachers, Researchers, Families, and Communities to Explore, Expand, and Interrogate Writing Instruction” with Sarah Donohue and Margaret Simon and others
G
H.10 – “Acts of Assemblage: Bringing Art, Science, and History Together in the Storytelling Classroom” with Glenda Funk and others
I.18 – “Connecting English Language Arts and the Climate Crisis” with Trish Emerson and others

Saturday
J
K.19 – “Authors are Real People: Connecting Students to Children’s Book Creators” with Margaret Simon, Sally Donnelly, Mary Lee Hahn, Heidi Mordhorst, Amy Ludwig VanDerWater, Laura Shoven, and Laura Purdie Salas and others.
L.29 – “Relational Poetic Practice: How Poetic Thinking Empowers Teachers to Author Their Own PD” with Sarah Donohue, Mo Daley, Jennifer Guyor Jowett, and me, Denise Krebs
M.34 – “Planning with Purpose: Nuts and Bolts for New College Classroom Teachers” with Anna J. Small Roseboro, Glenda Funk, and others and 4:00-4:30 – Laura Purdie Salas signing Finding Family
N

Sunday
O
P.11 – “Connections within Research in Young Adult Literature” with Leilya Pitre and others