Write About the Chocolate

October 11, 2016

#sol- Write About the Chocolate

“Does it have to be about teaching? Just write about the chocolate, how it was just what we needed,” my friend (and colleague), Ellen, suggested when I asked for ideas about what to write today.

It’s true. Today is the second day back after a glorious break and as usual we have hit the ground running. We have already worked on reading and writing unit preassessments, a math chackpoint, with the social studies unit test still to go in the first day and a half back. During our planning time just before lunch we found out that the rubric we thought we were to use was not the right one (after Ellen had already eagerly completed most of hers). Ugh- some time “wasted” there.

We took a break for lunch and sat together and chatted, joined by two other teachers on our team. As Ellen ate a disappointing canteen meal I crunched my way through an endless salad. We laughed about the adjustment after break to eating on a schedule again and always feeling hungry.

As we finished up, Ellen said, “Well, what I really need to finish this meal is just a little bit of chocolate,” and away I ran. I scurried into my classroom, opened the closet and raided the “emergency drawer”. I ran back with this:

Jamie asked, “Do you have a magic closet in there?” I laughed, but do appreciate the magic of a little something sweet at just the right time.

As we savored a square each we noticed the generous size of the portion, the slight saltiness enhancing the rich chocolate. In spite of our contentment, before too long we were passing it around for a second square each-ahhh! Luckily we knew when to quit- and we left the last two squares behind ( I later passed these on to a colleague who was not eating with us- turns out he had just been wishing he had some chocolate). As our lunch break was drawing to a close we were comparing notes about what our afternoon looked like. I suddenly remembered it was Tuesday, so my day to slice and wondered aloud what I could slice about, which is where the opening line for this post came from. Sometimes a bit of chocolate is just what I need, for writing and to get me through the day and chocolate shared with friends is even sweeter!