Sun Rising on the Cabins: A Slice of Life

Writing teachers need to write themselves.

I am participating in the Slice of Life 2015 Challenge, 

where I attempt to write stories and narratives about moments in my life.

I apologize if this blog post veers off the informative "literacy lens" I usually write through.

This month I am pretending to be a writer, for my students' benefit (and my own).

Writers write. 

#SOL15

     Last week, we had an incredible amount of fog in the mornings.  The day it cleared, I was driving up the big hill by my mom's after dropping my children off at her house, when the sun overtook my windshield.  Overtook is the word I choose, because it really did seem to fill the sky with its massiveness.  It was a giant orange ball of a sun, just glowing like it was on fire.  I couldn't take my eyes off it.  So, as I turned at the top of the hill, I kept looking off to my right to look at it.  That's when I saw the log cabins.

     I have grown up my whole life in this stretch of streets, and I have to say I was a little surprised to see two log cabins in front of me.  I always knew there was one preserved there in this little stretch of trees, but I guess I didn't realize there were a pair of them.  And today, there was a giant sun rising out of the trees behind them.  I made a fast left, went back through the old neighborhood, up the big hill again, and this time parked my car.

     All I had with me was my iPad, so I pulled it out and got out of the car.  I spent a few minutes taking some pictures of the cabins, because our 5th grade is studying the Civil War and Abe Lincoln, and our 3rd grade is moving on to Pioneers next.  I guess you can say that my mind is in the past.  I think using images like these can help give our students a picture of what the setting of the time period might look like, and perhaps what it wouldn't look like.  There are definitely some modern footprints in the images, too.

     I spent the whole day driving to work that day energized, and possible lessons raced through my head.  I saw something new that might have been staring at me for quite some time.  I guess all I needed to do was take the time to notice it.