Kelsey Francis

Fixed it.

Sadly not this year. 🙁

I’m saying this with great love and care as a parent of 3 and 25 year veteran high school English teacher: Please let your high school kids read banned books. Those books are *preparing* them for life, not harming them for life.

Shopping for dorm stuff for my firstborn going to college in 2 weeks is wildly similar to how I felt shopping for baby stuff at 38 weeks pregnant. Like, how are we going to do this?!?

Pile of snow in front of sign for Lake Placid that reads, “It’s no miracle—it’s real snow!”

So much is shitty right now, but one thing that isn’t is how my town has made believing in miracles, like snow in July, their whole identity. I love this about where I live. ❄️

If you’re a teacher in New York, this first sunset of summer with no Sunday Scaries is for you. ❤️

Today was my last day of year 25 of teaching high school seniors and tonight my first born graduates from high school. What a week. 🥹🫠🤯😢😊🥳😵‍💫🤪🤩

editing AI "drafts" and calling it your own makes all your work inauthentic. read books. go places. think. feel. talk to other humans. write. then edit. the process IS the art. if AI is the process, your product cannot be art.

If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be the mysterious melted blob on the floor of my classroom.

In case anyone wants to know, in NY we still have one week left of school before summer break AND the days start getting shorter tomorrow. 🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

If this incessant rain ever ends, no one better lock me in a closet like Margot in Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day.”

Lake Placid senior is going the distance and giving back LAKE PLACID — Colin Francis is one of the fastest high school distance runners in the Tri-Lakes region. He picked up the sport at just 5-years-old, when he ran his first 5K, and hasn’t looked back. He...

I am so proud of this kid. Every step, every mile, is a miracle. ❤️ www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local-n...

Best Teacher Appreciation week thank you note of my 25 year career from a kid who has been homeschooled until his senior year: “Thank you for being the best English teacher I’ve ever had. And that’s saying a lot because my only other English teacher was my grandma.” 😊

F*cking snow on deck and grass and chairs

More snow on April 16th is just offensive.

Oh, don’t mind me over here giving into the maternal urge to scroll through my firstborn’s baby photos at 4 am on the day he turns 18. How did we both get this old? 🥺

Reminder for high school teachers in the throes of March: Got an email from a former student saying they referenced something from my class in one of their college classes & their professor said, “You must’ve had a great teacher in high school.”

Sometimes they’ll remember what you taught them. 😊

Tim Walz surrounded by school children as he signs legislation making school lunches free for kids.

Donald Trump surrounded by school children as he signed an EO dismantling the Department of Education.

Lesson Plan: What do you notice? What do you wonder?

In David Attenborough voice: As the Adirondack yard glacier begins to recede, a small mammal explores what the newly exposed strata reveals.

Nothing Stands Between Us Teachers and the Brainwashing of America’s Children, Except This Beef Jerky in the Pencil Sharpener I know many Americans are fearful about the state of democracy, but let me be the first educator to say: Don’t worry. We teachers are almost finish...

"Right now, every public school student in America awaits our instructions for a coordinated leftist insurrection, which we’ll deliver just as soon as we get this beef jerky out of the pencil sharpener."

After 25 years, my opinion has not changed: Being a teacher is incredibly hard & infinitely complicated work.

I don’t know how any parent survives this college app/college wait/college $OMFG$ “aid”/scholarship app/scholarship wait year/season 🫠🫠🫠

Yellow note that reads: You smell very niche.

Spotted on a wall of compliments at school.

What’s a lovely random thing you observed this week while you were out and about?

POEM

This is fantastic, Kate! 💗

Try Hard by Kate Doyle — Terrazzo Editions Kate Doyle is the author of the short story collection I Meant It Once, published by Algonquin Books in the US and Corsair in the UK and longlisted for The Story Prize in 2024. Her work appears in No ...

A small piece of a longer work in progress — a little story from what I hope will be a larger whole. Thanks to Gina Nutt and Terrazzo Editions 🩵 www.terrazzoeditions.com/terrazzomag/...

Friends over 40, I say this with love and fresh experience: never forget that you’re just one sneeze away from a pulled back muscle.

I don’t think she could handle that! 🤣

a man in a space suit is standing on the moon in front of a mtv logo . ALT: a man in a space suit is standing on the moon in front of a mtv logo .

My 13 yo: Can you imagine if there was a TV channel where you could watch the best music videos all day?

Me: I’m going to tell you something that will blow your mind. . .

There is no work more chronically humbling than teaching. All the planning in the world, & all the years of experience & training will not protect you from the absolute destruction when you think you say something funny & a teenager responds with “skip” like you’re a bad song on a playlist.