Two summers ago at the annual Elementary Physical Education Workshop held on the campus of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, presenter Pat Vickroy shared a wonderful journal prompt. Last week, I asked my students to respond to the prompt as part of their weekly homework packet. The prompt reads as follows: “If you could give yourself one superpower, what would it be and how would you use it?”

Last Wednesday morning, at our school’s monthly professional development meeting, each staff member was given a few minutes to solve a challenging math word problem involving fractions. One teacher, who normally pays obsessive attention to detail, misread the question and then, during the share-out, unwittingly revealed the result of this error with the group. Of course, that teacher was me, and I was a bit embarrassed at what I had done.