I turned 44 today. Birthdays are always a bit of a reflective time. And for me, being that I still feel there’s a bit of wax left in my candle (or so I hope) I find it pretty important to take a look at my habits.

I’ve read it a zillion times before and I do agree with the statement: people are quite often creatures of habit.

Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny. – George Boardman

As people, we like rhythm. We like continuity. We find solace in repetition and regularity. The seasons have rhythms. Mother Nature has rhythms. Why we should expect human beings to also not be cut from this very same cloth?

However, as human beings we get, in many ways, the opportunity to self-determine our own patterns. This means that reflection can give us a chance to take stock, adjust and improve our circumstances. If the patterns and habits we have set in motion for ourselves – or our students, or our children – are functioning well and flowing in a manner which we feel good about, then often we find ourselves in situations we enjoy. Circumstances that are meaningful. We taste happiness now and then. And if not, then we’re often frustrated (if not downright angry, bitter, cynical and jaded).

But our attitudes are our own choice.

I don’t know if I have become my own best friend in this world, but at this age I certain have halted the war I once waged against myself whereas I was pretty much my own worst adversary. It’s something which age has delivered – and WOW, am I thankful. The demons of youth have lost their hold on my soul… but that only happened as a result of me changing the manners by which I conducted myself in this world. I changed my daily habits and often when I look around at the reasons why so many people feel vexed, I see that they are often self-sabatuers. It’s not that we really need to do more to improve our lives; often if we did less of that which is hurting us, we’d make great strides.

My own experience has directed me towards this belief. It was the things I gave up, the things I stopped doing which opened the doorways. Kinda zen-like, I’ve found.

However, other times we must do more, too. Especially when we are doing less of one thing, we find space which requires filling. So what do you do? What habits shape your day, your week, your month, your year, your decade, your life?

Look, some people get up and jog at 5:00 am. Some do not. Some get up and write at 5:00 am. Some do not. Some people get up and pray, some get up and surf, and some do not get up at 5:00 a.m. at all. Ever.
Choice gets you up once. Habits get you up at this hour 6 days a week.

Covey talks at length about habits. (And he’s shaped my own thinking a lot.) So being that my tooth has lengthened that much more I must recognize the fact that my life is now in its patterned motion for what might very well be the most instrumental years of my life. That means my day to day choices – my habits and patterns – matter a lot. For example, if I want to feel good about my body, exercising and making good food choices have to now be a day in and day out reality for me… or else they stand a good chance of becoming be an empty pipe dream that “one day I’ll be in shape”.

If I want to write that next book (or a first book on a new subjecy) is my butt in a chair actually writing a book? These are the days in which it better.

If I want to be in a sound financial situation, am spending and earning and saving in a manner which can actually build wealth?

Perhaps I want to learn Portuguese. Am I underway? (BTW, I don’t.)

Perhaps, I want to be a more involved parent? Do my current actions demonstrate a dedication to this desire? (I hope they do.)

We’re all creatures of habit, provided with the dual-edged gift/sword of freedom of choice. (For the most part, that is. Life will still happen to us, complete with its elations and sadness, hopefulness and heartbreaks.) But not to choose to pursue that which you really want is to choose to not have that which you really want. I think I’ve learned that, too.

Yep, I am 44 today. (Please, thanks for the well-wishes but sending me a note when I hope to take the day off from checking the computer is just gonna clog the ol’ pipes… I’m playing hookey and heading to Disneyland with my family.)

But I do recognize that the patterns in motion now will be the ink that etches my life’s pages.

And how many pages do any of really get anyway?

Mortality… deliberating it is what sends me to Disneyland. A few rides, a ton of smiles and a bunch of yummy treats feel like a “just what the doctor ordered” type of prescription for me today.

Be well!

Who are your allies in your quest to get that which you really, really want?

Who are the people who actually want for you what you want for you?

And who are those that stand in your way?

Why do they stand in your way? Why do you permit them to stand in your way? Do you know anyone who stands in your way but presents themself to you as if they are really an ally? (Goodness, I can’t stand that.)

True allies are there… but they are a tad bit rare. Best way to find them, I have discovered, is to be one to someone else. That’s because the world of allies is built on reciprocal relationships. And in a world of me, me, me many, many people are concerned with them, them, them.

So if you are still seeking your true allies on this journey, you now know where to start: in the mirror.

It’s easy to be negative and unmotivated but it takes some work to be positive and motivated. While there is no “off button” for those relentless tapes, there are things that you can do to turn down the volume and shift your focus from the negative to the positive. –Donna Cardillo

Stumbling across the above quote recently gave me pause. Why? Because I think that as of late I have slipped a bit in terms of focusing on the negative.

Now sure, I can justify it because almost all of the major media I mentally ingest has been focused that which is wrong with our schools. That which stinks. That which is abysmal, inexcusable and horrific.

And when I blog about these easy-to-spot elements of our schools, I can’t help but cop to the fact that I am feeding the fire. Which is ironic in a way because I genuinely believe I am working really, really hard to bring about positive, good things for kids, teachers and public education at large (albeit, in my own small way). Bringing positive, energetic, exciting and uplifting solutions to our challenges in schools – particularly as it relates to books and literacy – is the core focus of my career.

And I am convinced that it will only be through positivity that our schools will evolve into the kind of places we wish for them to be.

Of course, because I come at so many of this issues through a tone of “righteous anger” (my own description; other people might give it another name, something that is filled with four-letter words) it would be easy for me to try and rationalize my bloggish attention to these negative elements because hey, at least in my own head, I am wearing the white hat, right? Yet I think, when I reflect, I can do a better job of talking about what’s right, what’s good, what’s commendable and what’s deserving of celebration today.

Cause there’s a lot of it.

Sure, schmucks abound. But for every bozo about whom I can blog there’s at least an even amount of noteworthy folks who are doing good stuff day in and day out, right?

I mean that’s my biggest problem with NCLB anyway. So much energy is focused on what is wrong and so little celebrates that which is right.

So this month I am going to try and do better. I can’t promise permanent reform because roasting the butt heads is 1) a lot of fun and 2) a way that helps me stay sane in the midst of their onslaught of insanity.

But I do feel the airwaves are jammed right now with the negative so I am gonna move over to “a frequency less traveled”, a higher, more positive vibe.

Hey, I’m in California anyway, a land where pre-school teachers have nose piercings and eating granola isn’t considered good enough unless one is eating organic granola. Geography, I believe, is on my side.

Summer vacation has started and while I am not at school it doesn’t really yet feel like summer vakay.

But it will. (I am determined to make that happen.)

However, right now it just feels like I have a Monday off… but one where I am looking over my shoulder waiting for someone to say to me, “Back to the Salt Mines, Buster! And this time, we’re doubling the importance of the bubble tests!”

Irrational fears always surface when you are coming down off of such a long bender of bubble test mania, no?

Truth is, it usually takes me a bit to detox. I am still all-too-wrapped-up in the stuff I was wrapped up in for the past 10 months when the truth is, those 10 months are now over and I have 2 months to prepare for the 10 months that will follow (you know, the time when Fall will rear its never-ending, marathon-esque head).

Summer, however, is a time to break out of some patterns, reflect on some of the directions I want to take, grab a bit of more human-like sleep, eat some good food, indulge in some oh-so-awesome family time, and try to regain a sense of balance in life.

Cause when you are a teacher, you lose those. From sleep to diet, stress level to family time, being a teacher takes a lot from a lot of different parts of your life in a lot of different ways.

A good novel always helps as well. I’ve currently got 8 books sitting by my bed, 3 in my iPad, and still it feels as if I don’t have anything to read.

Don’t ya just hate that?

Indeed, I will be writing a new book. (Actually, I am working on two of them at the same time right now… while doing some copyedits on two others and cranking out more BookJams… but such is my professional writing life and this is what I love so I ain’t complaining at all.) And when I look at the schedule ahead, I realize how busy my summer schedule actually is.

But in feeling this “to do” pressure (you know, the kind where you spend a lot of time thinking about all your “to do” lists) I am reminded of something I once heard a cruise ship tour guide tell me. (FYI, yes, I love cruises. Matter of fact, might I propose an ECN ning cruise right now? We can take over an entire boat to the Mediterranean and go visit Greece before it defaults on its loans and gets sealed off and turned into a debtor’s prison. Anyway, the cruise guy said to me…)

“You tourist folks come in on Mondays tense about your dinner reservations and walking around with all your agendas… then by Thursday, you don’t give a damn about anything more minor than our captain hitting icebergs. Happens every time we set sail.”

That’s kind of me right now. I start off summer tense and knotted and in the world of “to do” and then in three weeks I am Mr. Friendly neighbor having impromptu Tuesday night bbq’s.

The school year has a cycle… but so does summer vakay: tension followed by a release of tension.

Let that journey begin!

I am going to take a break from blogging for a bit. Getting spit on last week hurt and the truth is, it kinda all goes back to grandma’s old rule: if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

With pink slips flying all around my school district – heck, all around our state – and our district preparing to hire me back next year at a pay cut of up to 12% (on top of the 3% we already took this year)… and I am one of the lucky ones cause a host of folks are being “chopped” from their positions… and the dragon of NCLB allowing the tests from ETS to be the tail that wags our entire institutional dog, well… I need to pause.

Will I rise like a phoenix from the ashes? Of course. My life is GREAT and I wouldn’t trade it for anyone’s. I love teaching, I love writing, I love working with teachers and students and I get paid to do it. My avocation is my vocation and how many people can really say that?

Yet, before the Phoenix rises from the ashes, well… people forget the part about what it’s like to descend and be mired in the ashes. There is a period of gestation when one is down and to blog my way through it, well… I just sense it could be a little ugly, cynical, jaded and dark.

Like our profession really needs that kind of energy right now.

BTW, it’s not like I don’t have some other writing to do. I am under contract for another new book of YA fiction for Disney, another new book of YA fiction for Penguin, the BookJams are just roaring right now (best teaching I have ever done) and I already have 2 new books for kids in the hopper due to be released in the next 12 months (meaning 4 in the next 24 months on top of the new BookJams as well).

So essentially, yes, I will be writing like a fiend and yes, I might return to blog sooner than I think (I feel a bit like an addict being that I have become so prolific over the past 14 months as a blogger) but, well… it all goes back to grandma’s rule.

I don’t really have a lot of nice things to say right now about school/education so I am not going to say them. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t a heck of a lot of nice things that ought to be said.

But getting spit on was the straw that broke this camel’s back and right now, I am in a funk that requires a bit of time to sharpen the saw and figure out a few things.

Thanks for being a reader/responder/supporter/compadre… more to come… eventually.

For the first time ever, I got me some hate mail. It was in response to my blog post the other day about Alabama on October 12th and re-segregation.

I’d copy and paste the message here but I think protocol would dictate that I remove all the profanity — and if I remove all the profanity from the email, there really would be any message left to copy and paste.

Let’s just say it was elegant, simple, direct and remarkably blunt. Truth be told, it was a model of concise writing. Though only 7 words, the message about who I was and what I should go do with myself was unmistakably clear.

(Good to see that in the land of the almost hyper-politically correct America in which we now reside, this gentleman from Alabama didn’t seem too worried about being nuanced or opinionated. Bravo, I say. Though I must admit, I don’t think I am limber enough to actually perform the act he instructed me to perform on myself.)

I can’t say I am all-together shocked by getting a bit of push-back from a few folks in Alabama based on what I wrote. However, when I see that some new NAEP test scores have just come out and point to an obvious and troubling racial achievement gap I realize that even if I was a bit harsh on the folks down South, it’s not just me who finds some of the by-products of racial disparity troubling.

As this article says…

While 4th grade scores among the nation’s white, black, Hispanic, and Asian students all have improved since 1990, they remained flat from 2007 to 2009. The gap separating black and white students’ scores, and that between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, also stayed the same—a discrepancy that has not narrowed in recent testing cycles.

• Is gerry-mandering the school district zones going to help?
• Is America as a country better when certain racial groups out-perform other racial groups?
• Am I some sort of turncoat for raising the issue?

Students are apparently making some progress on the NAEP tests but, according to the folks who study this data, it’s not enough and the racial disparity is a troubling element which needs to be eradicated in order for our country to climb to the next level of scholastic achievement.

Yep, I got me some hate mail. All I can say is, though I tried to be fair, “Don’t shoot the messenger.”