Category Archive

I found a treasure as I was sorting through my kids’ school work. Tucked among a pile of papers was a note from my daughter. In her careful handwriting, my 5-year-old had written, “The best thing about Mommy is that she quit her job.” That’s a keeper.

I read with a first grader at my kids’ school last week. He told me he has the same name as his grandpa. And that both his father and his grandfather are in heaven. We read a book about a kid whose father works in an automobile factory. As we read, the boy confidently identified the different makes of cars. “That’s a Ford,” he said, “That’s a Honda.” On the last page of the book, the protagonist talks about how proud …

The librarian had laryngitis and I got goosebumps. Twenty-five first graders were lined up in their classroom, ready for their weekly trip to the school library. They were looking at me expectantly to lead the way. So I set off. The wrong way down the hall. “That’s the wrong way,” the little girl in the lead said in an appalled whisper, like I’d just peed in the corner. “Which way is it?” I whispered back conspiratorially. “I don’t know where …

My 7-year-old was up all night puking. It made me think of my dad. When I puked as a kid, my dad would hold my hair out of my face and press a cold washcloth over my forehead. I remember feeling so miserable, and so loved. As I sat on the bathroom floor at 3:30 this morning, rubbing a miserable little boy’s back as he dry heaved into the toilet, I was thinking about Dad. He died on March 30, …

A first-grader at my children’s school was sitting by herself at the playground. When I volunteered in her classroom recently, everyone told me that she is very shy. She apparently doesn’t say a single word all day long. When she and I were reading together, every child walking past would assure me that “She’s really shy.” I asked her if she likes it when people say she’s shy. Slow shake of her head. I asked her what she would like …

I got a compliment the other day and a gremlin fell off my shoulder. In coaching language, gremlins are the little negative voices that whisper in your ear and remind you that you’re not good enough – smart enough – that you don’t have anything worth saying so you’d better keep quiet – that you better not risk it because you might fail. Recognize any of those? I had just had lunch with a former co-worker. As we were walking …

I made a bunch of new friends yesterday.  They’re 6 or 7 years old. They call me Ms. Kathryn. I’ve started volunteering in their kindergarten classroom. I worked with pairs of students on letter recognition and numbers. I discovered that I LOVE working on letter recognition and numbers with kindergarteners! Over the course of the morning we developed a game that got them off their chairs and sprawled on the floor in the hallway. They had to put a bunch …

I just got my lucky break. Actors wait tables in Hollywood for years, hoping for their lucky break. Mine happened yesterday. I was volunteering in my son’s 3rd-grade classroom, putting my MBA to work by cutting out strips of paper. The students had written compliments to each other on the paper (“I compliment you on your epic awesomeness”) for Valentine’s Day. The teacher was reading aloud from a book but stopped to figure out how to bind the strips of …