INSPIRATION FROM THE CLOUDS

Isn't it funny how a teacher's mind never stops creating?  Thinking.  Connecting.

Inspiration comes in odd ways; I've read countless memes and blogs about how lesson plans are best written in the shower.  Agreed!  I rinsed conditioner out of my hair for 14 minutes while brainstorming pre-reading activities for Harrison Bergeron.

Yesterday as I sat on my neighbor's deck enjoying the beautiful weather - 71 degrees in Chicago in August is an anomaly - I was taken back by the cloud formations.  At first I thought it was my dog Ringo's hair.  A snow white Siberian husky, Ringo leaves an amorphous blob of snowy filaments on everything from bushes to barbecue grills, or even just the air we breathe.  As a stroked his tail I gazed at the scrubbed blue sky, filled with gorgeous cumulus clouds.  And then it happened.  I spotted a lamb.

I asked my neighbor if she, too, could see the lamb.  "Grab my phone!  I have to snap this for my sophomores!" (We read Lamb to the Slaughter this week.) 

"Hurry up!" my neighbor commanded.  "It won't last long."

Will my sophomores be as excited to see my picture of a cloud lamb?  Maybe.  Some will.

Inspiration comes and goes.  No one is short of it two and a half weeks into the school year.  

"It won't last long."  

Will it?  My day starts at 9:24 and ends at 3:00 with nothing but a 20 minute lunch break.  I wonder how long my inspiration and creativity will chug along.  But for now I'll enjoy it.