Author Archives: Kimberly Moritz

Focused On Learning. . . Please

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Here’s the thing about working with kids. It’s not like managing employees where we can talk about separating one’s personal life from one’s professional life. It’s all mixed in together and sometimes it’s messy.

Take today for example. It’s only Monday and I spent a good portion of the day talking to students and parents about everything but academics. We have relationship issues, kids who were living at home when they left for the weekend and now are not, ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend disasters, Prom ticket sales, and kids expressing their individuality a bit too much. I swear I don’t solicit it and sometimes I wish I weren’t so approachable.

It seems there’s so much “stuff” coming through the door that I wonder how we teach kids anything. Better said, I wonder how they retain anything we teach. How do they even notice us?

I honestly would like to just stop everything and say “I don’t want to hear one more word about what he said/she said or what color your hair is today—let’s talk about your social studies class or what you’re learning in Science!”

But then I know it’s about connecting with every kid. Helping them as a whole child to deal with growing up. I know that kids are sometimes self-centered and that how they express themselves is the most important thing to them, now.

I just want to maintain focus. I want to remind every kid who’s hung up on whatever of our purpose, our mission, our academic goals. It’s my job to maintain this focus for everyone, to keep our eyes on the prize. I just don’t have it figured out yet, how to be supportive and at the same time, say “okay, enough support, let’s get focused on learning now!” Maybe I say just that more often?

G-Town students, someone, anyone, please have a meaningful conversation with me tomorrow about something that you’re learning. . . any subject will do.

Reader/Referer Experiment

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted about Jeff Archer, who’s doing an article about this blog for Education Week. One of the things that Jeff and I talked about was the number of “referers” to the blog each day. This is the way stats are shown on edublogs.

Jeff’s colleague, Jeanne, contacted James Farmer at edublogs.org and asked about the referers statistics. Apparently, most blogs follow page views rather than hits or referers. James Farmer responded as follows,

“I think it’s fair to say that hits, in the manner of her site (given theme choice), would correlate roughly to be divisible by 2-3 to page views”

I suppose this means that on April 15, when I had 3019 referers, I can estimate that there were 1000-2000 page views. I also wonder if this means that there were 1000-2000 readers?

More important, it makes me wonder who the readers of G-Town are. I know who some readers are through their comments or through the address listed as the referring URL. But I wonder who’s reading, from where.

So I thought we’d try a little experiment. If you’ve stuck with my post this far, please post a comment to this blog. Right here, right now. Even if you’ve never commented before, it’s really very easy. If you are reading this, post a comment that just tells your name or initials, where you’re reading from, and if possible, what you do. That’s all. For example, I would post a comment that says “ksm from Gowanda, high school principal and parent”. Nothing more is needed, but will tell an interesting picture of who our G-Town readers really are. Audience is important for any writer and I’d love a better view of who you are–your comments will be more valuable than any other stats.

Thank you for participating!

Positive Energy

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So about fifteen minutes after my arrival today, a colleague saw me about an issue on which he was clearly unhappy. Normally, I may have reacted to him differently, but today I just looked at him and thought “how unfortunate that he’s this upset.” I didn’t take in any of his negative energy, didn’t react, just calmly answered his questions.

I really wish I could manage from that perspective 100% of the time. My “business” is working with people who come with as many different attitudes, issues, and emotions as there are minutes in the day. It felt really great to maintain my own energy and attitude without taking in any of his.  I found that I was refreshingly calm, cool, and collected.

This was a great reminder that everyone needs a little time away to gain perspective. Coming back from a ten day student tour, I know it was a success because I feel ready to handle anything that comes my way. I’m reminded that this is the perfect job for me, and most important, that spending real time with our students (as I got to on this trip) is the secret to my own happiness and success.

Blog Becomes Travelogue

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I’ve been putting things away, doing laundry, and cleaning up all day long. Well, not all day, I just woke up from a brief nap, which was much needed. Our flight from Philadelphia to Buffalo was cancelled, but we did get on a later flight. I hit my bed at 12:45 this morning, after about 29 hours of travel.

As I read through the entries over the past ten days, I realize that this G-Town Talks blog took on a different focus and served another purpose for parents and readers. Unfortunately, I also realize that my writing is better when I take the time to edit and rethink at the end of drafting a post. This was time I just didn’t have on the trip.

As I reconnected with my family today, it was actually easier because of the blog. I didn’t have to recall as many details to fill them in on our adventure. It saved some time. With 8 loads of laundry and a dining room table filled with mail, that was time I was glad to have. Some might argue that it’s more worthwhile to talk it all through. But really, who wants to listen to every detail anyway? It’s like the relative who wants to show all of her vacation videos or photos. This blog gave a snapshot every day, sort of the way it’s better when your colleague brings only 5-10 of his favorite vacation photos to share instead of asking you to look through 950 of them.

I’ve been writing about G-Town on this blog for ten months and it’s consistently been about our students and school management. This trip travelogue allowed a glimpse into just one more aspect of student and in this case, principal, life.

Thanks for joining us for our journey. It was a privilege and a pleasure to bring you along.

The Long Way Home

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Here we are in Frankfurt, Germany waiting for the connection to Philadelphia. We have a four hour layover. Having left the hotel at 3:45 this morning and facing about 24 hours of travel, our small group of nine is surprisingly upbeat, though anxious to be home with our families. It hit me yesterday, missing my husband and daughter, but perhaps it was just the anticipation. I truly cannot wait to see them tonight.

We finished our trip with churros con chocolate, a delicious thick creamy chocolate served with long donut type churros. Some of the students stayed up all night, I assume to make the trip last a bit longer. Mrs. Dempsey and the rest of the group were leaving for the hotel at 8:00 am, we wish them safe travel. We have been such a connected group of 22 for these past 10 days, I am not sure I can walk without looking behind me and counting heads.

For my techie readers, you can see I found easy access to the Internet on our trip, 10 minutes for 1 pound in London, 7 euros for 30 minutes in Paris, and for free in Spain. The keyboards have been a bit of a challenge. For example, here in Germany, I keep hitting the z key where our y usually sits.

As is often said about travel, one of the things that is so nice about going away is the coming home part. Hopefully, we will all appreciate our families a little bit more, be a little more tolerant and try to be a lot more tolerable. 

Going away and seeing some of the other places we could have landed on this planet is “nice, very nice”, but it also makes me happy to have landed in G-Town. On our way home, cannot wait to see everyone.  I’m Gypsy Mama  just a bit longer.

EF Tours

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It´s the last morning of our ten day trip, other than the final travel day home. I woke up early, I suppose it´s because I´m excited about the day. When I called Tallon´s room to wake them up for the trip to the flea market, they elected to sleep, but I tried to be convincing that they shouldn´t miss a thing. I´m hoping to see them at breakfast. We can sleep when we´re dead. Speaking of sleep, I´m a girl who likes 7-8 hours per night and I´m finding 5 works fine here. Maybe it´s the fantastic Spanish coffee!

I want to mention how terrific this trip has been as a bit of an endorsement for EF Tours. I traveled with them in the mid-90´s as a teacher and a couple of things have improved. Our hotel in London was very good, the one in Madrid excellent. The one in Paris is another story, but since it´s my only complaint, I´ll leave that for the evaluation. The food is much improved since my previous tours, I´ve really enjoyed every meal.

When we lead a student tour, one of the things that EF provides is a tour guide who´s with us the whole way. Ours on this trip has been Alexandra L. and she´s been absolutely fabulous. Her sunny attitude and easy spirit have helped set a good atmosphere. She´s also very accomodating and I never get the feeling like she wants to rush away when we have free time. In fact, she most often spends it with us. The thing I like best about her is that she really listens to our students and takes a sincere interest in them. Sounds like the same thing that makes for a good teacher, doesn´t it?

I think it´s a very good sign that we´re all talking about where we want to go in 2009 (Italy!), and we would definitely travel with EF Tours again. I´ve said it many times in these posts, this has been a non-stop, exhausting in a wonderful way, trip. I´m privileged to have come to know some of our students much better.

Gypsy Mama

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Yes, that´s what I´m known as now, the Gypsy Mama. Mrs. Dempsey is the Gypsy Queen. Otis, John, Tallon, and Jimmy have developed a strange fascination with the gypsies. When they come home speaking like Borat, please fix them.

John says it´s ¨crazy, crazy¨ here. They are helping me with this post, so it should be interesting. Pope is happy about the Sabres and hoping tonight is their second win.

For the first time ever, John is wearing a belt due to an unfortunate experience on the subway in which he felt violated and now keeps his back to the wall at all times. Must say the rest of us find it hilarious.

We are in Madrid, having taken the night train which was ¨crazy, crazy¨ since I roomed with Courtney, John ¨the King Gypsy¨and Tallon ¨the Gypsy Hobo¨. I´m sure none of this makes sense, but the kids certainly find it funny. Spain is much more relaxed than France, we are appreciating the end to our trip.

Tomorrow is the last day and we´re going to a huge flea market in the morning then a side trip to Toledo in the afternoon. No worries about the credit cards for all of us, none of the visas worked in Paris on the last day but everyone but my husband will be happy to hear that they´re working here in Madrid. Must have been something with the system.

Our hotel is gorgeous, the kids are figuring out bidets for the first time. We can´t believe it´s the end of the trip for which we waited so long. Some are homesick and anxious to return, but overall, it´s been an amazing trip. I´ve traveled four times previously with groups, but none better than this one. The students are extremely respectful and easy to get along with and the chaperones terrific. Court and John even recovered his camera at the Eiffel Tower when they left it on the bench, truly a miracle. Otherwise, there have been absolutely no mishaps. The weather is perfect.

The best part of the trip for me has been the opportunity to spend time with students and to really listen to them. So often now, unlike when I was teaching, I have limited time to talk with any one student and to get to know them. I´ve had the chance to do that again on this trip and really enjoyed every second of it.

We head home at 4:00 in the morning Tuesday, I´ll try to write again tomorrow but if not, this blog, and the rest of us, return to business as usual in G-Town. An adventure such as ours is nice, but coming home to the family and friends who we love is even better. Love to all from España. Adios Gypsies.

LV and the Eiffel Tower

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We returned to the hotel at 1:40 this morning, so if you expected a phone call and did not get one–that is why. We saw so many wonderful things yesterday, but Allison crying in amazement at the top of the Eiffel Tower was probably the best. Sometimes I wonder if they get it–then something like that happens and I know that they do.

Today is the Louvre and shopping in the afternoon on the Champs Elysses. Since someone already bought something in the Louis Vuitton store yesterday, maybe that is a dangerous stop! Love to all as we head to Spain tonight.

Viva La France

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Good Grief. 7 euros for 30 minutes and a French keyboard, I must be dedicated to this blogging gig. Yesterday, we traveled by train to France and then visited Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur. My favorite part of France is the artist square and I purchased a wonderful trio of paintings there to remember my trip by. Our students learned tolerance with the gypsies trying to tie bracelets on their wrists and then charge them–which no one fell for, but some tolerated better than others. Then the sketch artists hit and some thought they were just being sketched for the heck of it– only Otis told the guy forget about it, I am not paying for that!

We had fun at dinner, the students have really bonded, laughing and having a great time. But none more fun than on the stroll to the bus after dinner; through the Red Light district to the Moulin Rouge. Thought I might lose John or Tallon for good there! It was all in good humor and since my son is by far the youngest at 14, I am sure they will all survive it–Jimmy says he is definitely coming back to Paris now.

Today is going to be really terrific. We have a guided tour of the city, followed by Versailles, and tonight–a river ride followed by a trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It will be one of the most exciting days of the tour.

The days are very long, the students excellent, and the trip well worth the time and money. Know that we are safe; getting along fantastically; and missing you all. My traveling companions are wonderful, Mrs. Dempsey and Mr. Schindler excellent to work with. Love to you all, from Paris. Kimberly 

Paris in the Morning

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We leave for Paris via the Eurotrain at 7:15 tomorrow morning. What a day we had today! We tried hard to please everyone in the group for at least part of the day and I’ve no idea if we succeeded.

We began the morning with a tour of Westminster Abbey for most of us. This was my second tour of the Abbey and I found it just as overwhelming as my last visit, 12 years ago. It is absolutely amazing to walk through this 1000 year old building where kings and queens are buried, where knights have walked, where rest such incredible historic figures as Winston Churchill, Chaucer, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and many more. It literally brings tears to my eyes, there’s just no explaining it.

Our visit to the changing of the guard at the Buckingham Palace was very cool and most of our group followed up with a ride on the London Eye, a magnificent enclosed ferris wheel with a stunning view of the city. Afterwards our group chose different tours, with some at the Tower of London, most shopping in Piccadilly Circus, and my personal favorite, six of us ventured to Harrod’s. While I did NOT purchase the £1045 pound Dior bag, I did pick up some perfume. It’s a funny thing here, despite the fact that they speak English, I swear I can’t hear them when they tell me the total price. Can’t recall at all what that cashmere pashmina cost. 🙂

A terrific dinner where we savored curry, yes, your kids are trying all sorts of new things. A bit more shopping for some of us and back to the hotel for the others. We are positively locals on the tube now, no guide needed.

Will write in Paris if possible. Our love and best to all. Linda, because I know you’re reading, will you please phone Derek and Bryna to tell them that my phone card numbers don’t work at all, but that we love and miss them? Also, please let them know that I’m writing on the blog so that they can keep in touch a bit. Thank you!