I am building a muscle memory

I've found myself, several weeks out from teaching, feeling a bit disconnected, bereft.

I was mainly a stay-at-home mom for a recent number of years, though I did and do run a press, have written and published books, have taught as an adjunct and as an online workshop instructor, but none of it was full-time, or rather, none of it was paid in a sustainable way, and thus, not formally full-time or easily given as a job title at those elusive cocktail parties. (So. What do you do?)

This year was the first year I didn't want summer vacation to begin. This year was the first year I didn't feel massive relief as the last students walked out the door, knowing I could sleep in and read what I wanted and be quiet inside for just a few minutes. This year was the first I felt an absolute pang--the first year I felt so deeply invested in my students that I continually called them "my crew," that I felt as if I were walking into my home when I walked into my cottage.

So what does a girl do when she hits that ridiculous wall and begins to mourn one's students dispersing, whom she'll see again, no worries, in a few months?

She scrambles around for something else to satisfy that giant, hungry hole, even if training is looming ahead like a giant organic monster of deafening proportions. One needs movement, after all. One's brain cannot stagnate and gather ye mosquitos while ye may.

I've decided to fill this little hole by keeping a reader's journal, and I absolutely have adored this first half-month of it. I used to just write down title, author, date in this thick spiral-bound notebook with creamy pages, and after that, I discovered Good Reads, which I still use, but I have become acutely aware, as my name becomes connected to books in the world--not just my own, but those that I publish--and when one is so public about one's opinions, there can be a ripple effect. I want to be brutally honest, but I'm also hyper-aware that living authors read these strange notes from amateurs, can take them personally, and as a person who has been on the receiving end, I'd rather not be a part of it.

I already more closely see how I read in this expanded form. I copy quotes as I read: snippets I love, or examples of what is not working for me, and there I have evidence to support any declarations I make, no matter how clumsy, and I've begun to practice stronger, bolder statements. I'm coming out of my shell a little, and admitting my faults as a reader, as a human who reads. I'm saying the things I couldn't say on any public page: here's where I'm afraid I'm missing the boat and I don't want to miss it any more but I don't know how to stop. And since I am writing this by hand, in ink, on pages that now ripple a little from the soap bubbles my daughter spilled on them, I am building a muscle memory of how it is that I am as a reader.

In the fall, I plan to bring my journal in to show my students. I won't let them read through all the entries, but I might show them a few examples, ones that are medium-vulnerable, and show them how I tracked those changes. I'll invite them to join me, the ones who really want to anyway, and we can meet and talk about what we've read.

I also plan to start asking them to assign me books to read. I have started having a little book club with my Upper Elementary and the first few books I picked, but I hope to make it a little more diplomatic in the next school year. In the afternoons, I read aloud from a chapter book to the entire class and at first, I picked them all: The Witches, A Christmas Carol. Then they asked if they could pick, and this is the beautiful thing about my job, this specific job in this specific school: how easy it is to say, Why not? So they each wrote a title on a slip and I drew one from the hat, and we began to read books they wanted me to read. Julie's Wolf Pack led to so many days in the woods in which many of them pretended to be wolves, and I'd hear them running about, shouting, Rabies! Rabies! They asked questions: wait, what does it mean that the wolves protect themselves? Why won't they let humans do it? Why won't they let the leader back in? We let that lead us to research on wolves, on other predators, discussions of ecosystems and respect and conservation.

By keeping this journal, I mean to give myself permission to slow down and focus a little more. I miss teaching literature incredibly fiercely--it's my academic passion, after all--though I fully respect so many other realms and ways of learning. This is why I love the fluidity of a Montessori classroom, where disciplines are not boxed in, but flexible, where one moment we are reading a book aloud and the next moment we are looking in biology guides for answers about caribou migration patterns. We aren't just teaching disciplines but styles of learning. My own just so happens to come with a herringbone Moleskine.