#EveryDayinMay - Living in the Moment

Go check out Crystal's post on New Orleans streetcars today!

Tonight's post was supposed to be all about my exciting date night in the woods, hiking in my fancy new boots for the first time.

Supposed is a funny sort of word, isn't it?

The day started out just as intended. A meeting with cherished North Star of Texas friends to discuss the upcoming year of Professional Development. Helping Dos prepare for his prom night. Delighting in a little mini-photography session with Dos and the girlfriend.

Afterwards, The Husband and I had planned a simple evening -- a trip to REI so he could check out their shoes, I could grab some nifty long wool socks, and we could take a quick peek at their sleeping pads. Apparently there is more to think about when it comes to sleeping in the woods after days of hiking than I originally anticipated.

By the time we were headed to REI, I already knew the hiking trip was beyond our reach. Traffic had been touch and go, the photo session took longer than anticipated, and I knew once we entered the store, we'd have a difficult time getting back out quickly.

I looked over at The Husband as we sped away to the store and smiled. Hiking trip or not, the rest of the night was ours. I was happy to simply sit in the moment and enjoy it.

So plans have been made. The boy is off dancing the night away. I have nifty long wool socks (with purple toes!). We grabbed some barbecue, rented a movie, and eased into the evening. No rushing about, no worries, no stress.

I'm perfectly thankful for what is, even if it's not what was supposed to be.

Read Across America: A Seussified Day!

Today I sat back and watched my class fall into reading all over again.

We read the new pop-up version of The Lorax.

They loved it!

We watched the old version of the cartoon....

Many happy children!

We shared our favorite Dr. Seuss books to our First Grade buddies...

Then we drew our favorite part of the books and helped our buddies write their thoughts...

And everyone had a great time working together!

Suddenly it was time to go home, so we packed up our books, gave out some hugs and high fives, and promised to read through the weekend.

All in all, not a bad Friday.

And on Monday? On Monday, I get to tell my kids that they'll be skyping with author Navjot Kaur for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES on Wednesday!!  I am super hyped and I know they will be too!! I am so glad we got involved for World Read Aloud Day -- can't wait to share this special time with them.

new test, no fear

This year I keep hearing the same things over again:
Standards have changed!
The new STAAR test is more rigorous!
Writing must happen across the curriculum!
There's no time for the fluff writing that used to happen!
FEAR! BLAME! GUILT! WORRY!

Uh, okay... so my 4th grade students have the unique experience of being the first to take this new, highly rigorous writing assessment at the end of the year.

So they are expected to write two short pieces instead of one longer piece.

And one of these compositions will be an expository piece.

Oh, and don't forget the stamp across every thing we're told this year, "No. Fantasy. Writing. At. All. Period. No. Matter. What."

At district meetings, there is nail biting and fretting and eyes filled with horror.

At faculty meetings we look at graphs and bullet points and pie charts on the importance of rigor and excellence and content area writing.

And at each meeting, I grit my teeth and swallow down the words I want to say. No, let's amend that. I swallow down the words I want to scream:

Who cares?!

I mean, in all seriousness, why should this test alter what we've already been doing? My students write what they want, how they want, and whenever they want. Along the way I offer them learning experiences that hone their skills and broaden their craft.

The point is, if you lead your students to love learning, it doesn't matter what tests get thrown at them. A master learner has no reason to fear being asked to show what they know. We're delighted to share our knowledge.

We have already been writing expository pieces, to explain our learning across the curriculum, persuasive pieces, letters, poems, narratives, and God forbid, the poor stepchild of the 2011 writing year, fantasy. When they have free time, they'd rather write than read or even draw. When I offer writing opportunities outside of school, many of them jump at the chance to participate.

If we are already doing what is best for students, the introduction of a new rigorous state test is not a reason to freak out and board the windows against the demons of free thought.

Let the STAAR come, I say, and we'll show it what we're made of.

slice of life tuesday: and we're off!

This morning I rushed up the stairs to my classroom, eager to begin the day. It didn't matter that I was a few minutes later than I planned or that I was dangerously close to losing the juggling match with my latte, cellphone, and room key. It didn't matter that the lumpy, oversized bag slung over my shoulder was banging against my hip with each bound towards my room.

I had to get to class.

Rounding the corner I found one of my favorite early birds waiting by my door. She practically bubbled over with giggles when she saw me.

"You're here! We can write! Are you ready?!"

With a quick hug, I stumbled into the room, tossed my cache of goods into a corner of the room, and fell onto the floor with my journal and a pencil.

"Ready," I grinned.

As we opened our notebooks and started comparing ideas, three of my students from last year walked in, waving their journals at me. Without waiting, they grabbed a chair or a spot on the rug and opened their notebooks.

And a few more friends trickled in... and a few more, until there were 10 of us gathered around the room, talking about characters and plots and plans as we wrote and shared and laughed.

I glanced up at the clock to find we'd already spent 25 minutes together. Our time was almost up. Students began filing into my room, preparing for our day. I had to smile as they came in. We had talked about today; I had warned them to be respectful of the writers when they arrived.

They took a few steps into the room, stopped short, nodded as if they had just remembered something important, and silently put their things into their lockers and got to work.

My crew of NaNoWriMo warriors said goodbye and promised to be back tomorrow. We exchanged a few hugs and of course I was obliged to read some of their work before they left. They left, it seems, walking a littler taller than when they came in. All through the rest of the day I heard chatter of novels and listened to the sound of passion taking root.

And tomorrow, I get to do it all over again. Who knows, this may just begin a year long writing club. I can't think of any better way to start each day.

love, and a bit with a dog

This is a post about NaNoWriMo and creativity.

This is a post about NaNoWriMo and creativity I began writing about an hour ago.

This is a post about NaNoWriMo and creativity I began writing about an hour ago before restarting because I had toppled hopelessly off topic.

This is a post about NaNoWriMo and creativity I began writing about an hour ago before restarting because I had toppled hopelessly off topic when the words dragged me off on an adventure.

And so we shall adventure on.

In the words of Phillip Henslowe from Shakespeare in Love, "Let us have pirates, clowns, and a happy ending! Love, and a bit with a dog. That's what they want."

30 days. 50,000 words. A lot of coffee,  a little insanity, and a fully wandering plot.

What better adventure than the one you write yourself?

nanowrimo: ready to write

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner, and I find my creative wheels spinning as I rev up for this year's challenge. Last year, I brought my class into the mix by spending November teaching about story development as we worked together to finish our own novels. The energy in the room was contagious -- kids from all over the campus wanted to know more about what we were doing.

So this year I've decided to open my doors to more students. Instead of writing our novels during class time, I'm hosting a before school club just for NaNoWriMo's Young Writer's Program. Every day in November, students are invited to come write from the time school doors open until 5 minutes before the bell rings. This will give us roughly 30 minutes of writing time every day.

I've passed out flyers, given information to be posted on our school FaceBook page, and created a short video teaser that our librarian is showing to all her 4th and 5th grade classes this week. I've visited as many of my students from last year as I could track down and pumped them full of info and excitement as I can. Several of them say they will be there.

I don't know who will show up at my door on November 1st. If I'm lucky, I'll have a classroom crowded with little bodies lying all over the room creating their own stories. My dream version has so many kids show up that we have to overtake the library for our 30 day journey. Of course, I may see just a sprinkling of kids from one day to the next. Either way, the amount of kids that come to write doesn't really matter. Whoever is there is meant to be there, and we will spend our mornings writing, sharing, laughing, and sometimes banging our heads on stories that move more slowly than we like.

I have ideas to try a write-in for the area and a special event for all our writer's to have a reading when we're done. And we can't forget an after-party on December 1!

Regardless of the number of participants or events we celebrate throughout the month, I'll be there writing along side them.

November can't get here soon enough.

new year, new plan

Each new school year is a mystery waiting to be unraveled. It doesn't matter that the children come in at the same age, or that they learned the same skills last year as they do every year. Their unifying features may make them look the same: boys and girls in uniforms with big smiles and bigger voices.

Sure, there are typically some things that remain the same from year to year. A puzzling lack of math fact retention, a need for security in a routine, a great desire for recess to arrive. But for the most part, when that door opens on the first day of school and the children pour into your room, you really have no idea what to expect.

This year, I have some interesting challenges. Although my new batch of students are soaring above my expectations academically, they are struggling by the minute to control their actions. I don't expect perfection. Hardly. It's never been my desire to create a room filled with compliant drones. Still, some order is necessary.

Typically, I fill my room with music and fun and chanting and cheers and general awesomeness. General awesomeness is a little difficult to achieve right now. I feel more like a drill sergeant than a master of funtime-learning. It makes my heart a little sad.

So, time to make some plans. Thankfully I'm rockin' some new knowledge on patterns and changes within systems with my new pals at Human Systems Dynamics, so I can lean heavily on what I've learned there so far in order to work through my classroom conundrum.

I'm working through the process now, and will post more soon. I plan to spend this weekend focusing on putting together my first plan of action. It's good to have a goal and an idea of how to get there!

Slice of Life Tuesday: my cup runneth over

This school year marks the fifth anniversary of my move from private school director to public school teacher.

After five years you'd think I would have a stockpile of lessons I've perfected. You'd think I would be well into an established routine, drifting easily from one year to the next.

I know plenty of teachers that teach the same thing each year. They have files for each unit, plans ready to go, and waltz into each new year unfrazzled and organized. Sure, they modify to meet the needs of their new students, but for the most part the big stuff stays the same.

I am not that teacher. Sometimes this makes me feel I chose the wrong profession. Each year I am unsettled with the results of the previous year, and spend my summer searching for new ways to teach the skills my kids need to learn. If anything, I'm getting better at scrutinizing the worth of a lesson. But still, I worry that my constant hunt and experimentation does more harm than good. 

Last year I uprooted my writing. The things I learned at Summer Institute with the North Star of Texas Writing Project confirmed my beliefs and I knew it was the right thing to do. I also attempted a new spelling and vocabulary program, because the standard 20 word study and weekly test just doesn't mesh with my beliefs. I learned a lot about what not to do, feel that I was more successful than I had been in previous years, but still felt I had a long way to go.

This year, spelling gets another facelift, writing has been modified to better meet the needs of the students, and just to keep things interesting, I decided to add math to the mix of modifications. I wanted to switch to a workshop based style of teaching math before and wasn't able to get it up and running. So now it's up and sort of shuffling along more than running. But it's progress.

At least, I hope it's progress. With so many new things juggled above my head, I have to wonder why I can't just stick with what I've done in the past. It would certainly be easier.

But I have to believe, as I keep tossing more plates up to join the mix, that although I haven't perfected my lesson plans, I am constantly growing. I've always believed if you're not growing, you're dying. So maybe that means I am on the right track afterall.

Slice of Life Tuesday(ish)

Today was a swirling, ride the waves til you're home again sort of day.
Surrounded by my sister, nieces, nephews, sunshine and splashing.
Swerving through traffic and chatting with a dear friend along the way.
Learning and sharing with my favorite NWP peeps.
More swerving, more traffic, but first -- lunch and shopping!
Cupcakes and planning with an eager team of teachers.
And finally, home and snuggled behind a laptop for -- what? More planning.

This is proving to be a very busy summer!

In the Wee Hours: Day 4

Mentor text: If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff and Twilight Comes Twice by Ralph Fletcher (taken from Corbett Harrison)

Poem formula: start & stop poem (first and last lines are the same)

Inspiration: Our wee hours of the night road trip from Iowa to Illinois

In the wee hours of the night,
a long white van filled with precious cargo
bounces down the road.
Music blurs with words, shared by
a yawning boy, a babbling girl,
and five snoring little ones;
moon gazes from her cloud-blanketed perch,
casts shifting shadows across
weary travellers,
in the wee hours of the night.


More student examples: www.writingfix.com

(And now, 37 hours later, I sleep.  Illinois is lovely, I'm ever so happy to be here, but I'm not even sure what I just wrote, and my fingers do not have a very good command of these keys.  Sleep, it seems, is nonnegotiable.)

Napping, Day 3

Today was a lazy day. While everyone played at the park, I stole a moment for myself to read, which ended in a cozy nap. So today's poem is about a nap, inspired by the rain poem in The Important Book.

Mentor text: The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown
The important thing about rain is
that it is wet.
It falls out of the sky,
and it sounds like rain,
and it makes things shiny,
and it does not taste like anything,
and is the color of air.

But the important thing about rain
is that it is wet.

My poem:
The important thing about a nap is
that it is quiet.
It creeps up like a mouse,
and sounds like a mother's lullaby,
and it holds you like a warm hug,
and tastes like sea-salt air under the sun,
and is colored with dreams, big and small.

But the important thing about a nap
is that it is quiet.

Mentor text: House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

This was actually an older SI teaching demo from North Star. Since I decided to use mentor texts AFTER leaving for vacation, I've had to get creative!

I think this will be fun for my kids; there's a lot of opportunity for interesting descriptions here.

So, I give you Grandmama's House:

Northwood homes have personality.
An A-frame with windows like a chapel,
or a fat and lazy dog with his slow wagging tail
that thrums against a seasonal porch
as you walk down the flower lined steet.
Some have gardens with plump green tomatoes,
others are tall and skinny white skeletons,
paint peeling away with age.

But Grandmama's house,
Grandmama's house like rich toffee,
like hot maple syrup drizzled over sweet pancakes
all comfort and peace because she's filled it with love
wrapped her arms around you with hand-stitched quilts,
and steaming pastries, homemade cocoa
sipped from a collection of flower speckled china.

Grandmama's house
bubbles over with her laugh,
like the Fourth of July --
all jazz and warmth and brilliance.
And you can't help but snuggle deep
into Grandmama's home
embraced by the familiar creak of floorboards,
the pillows like marshmallows beneath your head,
the kitchen, where something scrumptious is
always just moments from your taste buds.

The pastries, the quilts, and Grandmama's laughter like the Fourth of July.

Poem from the Road & Mentor Texts

It occurred to me that I didn't explain the inspiration for yesterday's Poem from the Road.  I've decided to multi-task, since the new school year is pressing in fast.  So each poem I write is modeled after a mentor text I can use in class.

This strategy is two-fold: one, it gives me a no-fail way to come up with something to write each day (huzzah!) and two, I gain some experience playing with the text, which will (hopefully) help me model it with a little more effectively.

Grandpa Mogk's Farm was actually inspired by a teaching demo during Summer Institute.  One of the fellows used a sentence from To Kill a Mockingbird to show us how to use mentor texts to share great writing with our students and help them integrate these same skills into their own writing.

Hopefully, after this experiment, I'll have several good examples to share with my own students.  In the future, I'll try to remember to put a short blurb about the mentor text with the poem for the day

Poems on the Road, Day One

While driving last night I was thinking about a teaching demo on poetry at Summer Institute. We talked about the book Locomotion and looked at a list poem from the book to create our own list poems. In the book, the main character writes a poem that describes himself.

And that's how today's poem came about.

One big white van,
pushing forward.
Seven adventurers;
three grown boys,
two little darlings,
one gum-chewing navigator
and her Monster-swigging captain.
Some sleeping, some snacking,
all eager
for sunrise,
and fourteen hours
to slip by
quickly.

Share n' Scare

I really have to wonder who the heck came up with the whole "sharing is caring" slogan.  Definitely not the emotionally stunted people I grew up around.  "Sharing is Scary" is a much more apropos slogan.  Even kids know the real deal.  How many kids have you ever seen that waltz right up to someone, hand over their favorite Barbie, Hot Wheel, or video game, and say, "Hey man, I care, therefore I share."

Nope.  Not one.  And you wanna know why?

Because kids don't say "therefore" dude.  Seriously?  Sharing is scary.

Granted, the time with my unbelievably awesome new friends with the National Writing Project made sharing much easier.  But I'm not sure even they understood how gargantuan a thing it was for me to share with them.

The first time I read something I had written, I could feel my heart beating in my eyeballs, for Pete's sake.  My. Eyeballs.  I lost my breath a couple times and had to stop reading.  Okay, I know, I'm just more than a little insanely freaked out about talking in front of people and even moreso when it comes to talking about something so personal as words I've strung together into some semblance of a poem or story.

In fact, reading to my NWP peeps was the first time in all of my odd little adventures through adulthood that I had ever read my work to a group of adults.  Kids?  No sweat.  My classroom is a completely different story (harhar).  I can write down just about anything and they're ooh'ing and ahh'ing as if I just completed a Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece.  And we have fun.  We play with words, we're all learning together, I tell them.  I make it a point to create an environment where risk-taking is looked forward to, because we're learning.  We're growing.

But outside the eternal experimental playground that is my classroom?  No dice.  I've just never been very good at opening up and letting people see what's on the inside.

A few writerly friends have seen the things I deem worthy of sharing, mostly pieces that have zero autobiographical influence.  This was much easier when I wrote nothing but fantasy.  It's hard for people to pick out the veins of your own life that color a story when it's smothered in fairies and magic and folk song.  But the personal stuff?  The --I just bled my heart onto this paper and it's full of demons and disasters so please respond KINDLY, Dear Lord, whatever you do, or I may have an aneurism and die right here in front of you-- that stuff?  Yeah.  That doesn't typically make it to anyone else.  Safer to keep the boogey man tucked away from innocent eyes.

There is one exception to this rule: The Husband.  I have no idea how I lucked out in this department, but this man knows me inside out and upside down and somehow, he still adores me.  I absolutely don't deserve it, he's much better at the whole marriage thing than I could ever dream to be, yet I keep working at it, thinking that eventually I'll somehow be able to show him how much he means to me.  And since he knows me, and isn't (hugely) freaked out by all my fun little neurotic issues, he is the one person in the world I can trust, no questions asked.

So he gets to hear (lucky him!) all the writing that I would typically save for myself.  The crazy, wound-up, gut-wrenching, painful stuff.  The hopeful, romantic, dreamy, mushy stuff.  And everything in between.

You'd really think he'd stop responding so well in hopes that maybe I'd stop reading to him so constantly.

But each time, he listens, he advices, he laughs (and sometimes, I actually catch him a little teary eyed -- we're just going to pretend that it's from great emotional response and not bad writing), and most of all, he inspires.  He motivates.  He pushes me to keep going, to keep trying, to just get it all out on paper.

I've never had that before.  A champion.  Someone in my court, no matter what, come what may, all in, no looking back.

So pardon me if I gush.  Forgive me for my sentimentality.  Excuse, if just this once, that I'm all googly eyed and giggly.

Because everyone should be this fortunate.  Everyone should have someone that will stand right next to them, pick out all the thorns, rub away the pain, and nudge them to keep moving forward.

I hope you do.  You deserve it.

The Hardest Part

How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. 
In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?
How about love? 
How about love?
How about love? 
Measure in love. 
Seasons of love.
(RENT)


We sat in a tight circle.  Twenty women strengthened by one shared moment.  Words that once came in nervous clips of laughter (and tears), now flowed freely, fluttering in the space between us to kiss our ears, touch our hearts.


This was our last day.


The final story began, and we sank into the rich cadence of our leader (though she would not label herself, we knew it to be true) as the words rolled off her tongue with a bold rhythm.  As one body, we basked in the final embers from the fire, leaned forward to soak in the warmth.


Twenty women listened as the last word sparked, glowed, and faded away until we sat hushed in our own uncertainty.


"This is always the hardest part," came the answer to our unasked question.  Somehow these words released us, gave us permission to move. One by one, my friends, my family, my mentors, stood, shared a hug, and whispered away.


Their empty chairs glared back at me, like the empty space left as people begin to filter away from a gravesite. All that remains is the love you've just buried in the ground.  A chapter closes.  All that remains is to stand, and move forward.  A chapter begins.


So I stood. I breathed in the last moments, gave and received hugs, and made my way to the door, with promises of new adventures to soothe the ache from saying goodbye.


On the drive home, a tiny grasshopper landed hard on my windshield.  He somehow clung to the glass, bright and green and impossibly small, quivering wildly as I sped down the freeway.  For one instant, this strange survivor seemed to stare at me, puffed up with victory as he hitchhiked his way to new places.  When I merged onto the final stretch home, he shakily crept down the windshield,  stood firmly on the wiper blade, and hopped into the crevice where hood meets glass.  And there he sat until I pulled my car into the driveway.


I had to laugh.  It isn't often that I act as insect taxi.  Yet there he remained, small and seemingly weak, but triumphant and ready to bound off into the future.


My grasshopper friend was an unlikely reminder of how fragile I felt when I entered the doors of the Summer Institute.  Having just finished a school year that left me questioning my abilities as a teacher, I wasn't even sure I deserved to be surrounded by so many incredibly amazing women.  Day by day, their words healed parts of me that I didn't realize were broken.  I entered feeling useless, I left believing in myself as a teacher, a writer, a person.


Today, I listened to the story of how such deep gratitude feels impossible to pay back, but you can certainly pay it forward.  The last four weeks of my life were immeasurably rich because of the women that held my hand and helped mold me into a stronger version of myself.  Paying that back would be an endless mountain to climb, but paying it forward is a joy I plan to capture daily.


Because of them, I can stand solid in the chaos of the coming school year, a trick I learned from a seemingly unimportant small green friend with a big message.

Writing, in three voices

Tonight I am busily-happily-sleepily-weepily working on my pieces for the multigenre project I'm putting together for my NWP research on boys and literacy.  Tonight's major goal was to finish the two-voice poem I had planned to write between a boy and his teacher.

Instead, I ended up with three voices: boy, writing expert, and teacher.  Here's the first draft.

What do you think?

Boy:	Writing Expert:	Teacher:
I am a	I am a	I am a
boy
		teacher
	writer
I write because	I write because	I write because
	I love words.
I’m forced to.
		I’m teaching you.
I’m searching for	I’m searching for	I’m searching for
		a way to reach you.
	creative expression
a way to be myself.
But you don’t listen to me!		But you don’t listen to me!
	Listen to me.
Words are	Words are	Words are
a prison
	an open road
		the path to your future
Listen to me!	Listen to me!	Listen to me!
	Boys need
freedom to choose
		I’m listening.
Boys need	Boys need
action!
	adventure!
technology!
	praise!
the chance to succeed
	a teacher to hear them
Boys need acceptance	Boys need acceptance
		acceptance.
Do you see me?
	Do you see?
		I see you now.
		Boys need a teacher who sees with the heart of an adventurer.
	An explorer.
A boy.
	A writer.
		A teacher.

Inspiration for three voices, and this particular style came from Kevin's Meandering Mind

Celebrate Your Muchness.

I finished the draft of the (rockin awesome) proposal to my principal in hopes of inspiring her to let me teach a boys writing class twice a week this year.  Dude, that's a really long, terrible sentence, but I am tired and that's just how it's going to stay.  My apologies.  Sort of.

Writing this letter brought up so many hopes and fears for the upcoming school year.  Being a part of the National Writing Project has (drumroll for the oncoming cliche, please!) been a life changing experience.  Like, clouds parting, sunbeams streaming down, Hallelujah angels singing, and all that jazz.

I'm stoked.

We're toppling into July, I haven't had one summer-ish day in all of June, and all I can think about is the many exciting new things I'm eager to try out in my classroom come August.

I want to take all this knowledge, all this affirmation, all this ALLNESS from the past month and wear it like armor into the oncoming school year.

Because, although annoyingly optimistic, I'm not stupid.

I know what is likely to happen upon settling back into my classroom.  I can hear the, "You want to do what??" and "Why are you causing so much extra work for yourself?" and all the other darts that will be thrown my way, popping little holes in my puffed up "But this is how it's supposed to be!" perfect world dreamland.

And sure, I've always been the one to head upstream, vigilantly shouting, "Let's try it this way!" when everyone is staring at me like I'm wearing the Emperor's New Clothes.  I get it.  I'm the girl with the crazy ideas that are sure to fail...

Only, they don't fail.  And when they do, I revamp, and come at it from a new direction.  My excitement makes my kids excited.  They can't even help themselves.  They're uber-peppy by association.  I love to read, they love to read.  I love to write, they love to write.  I love to do jumping jacks, they spring out of their seats and cheer like I just announced we're going to Disney World.

It's an interesting thing, attitude.

So I'll cling to my realization that --wow-- there are so many other teachers out there that think the way I do, and I'll stand firm on my belief that what kids need is a teacher dedicated to toughing out the hard parts with them and cheering with them in every victorious moment --no matter how small-- and sometimes, just sometimes, when I'm verging on forgetting what's important, in the face of TAKS tests and standards and assessments and paperwork and meetings and insane schedules and seemingly impossible and annoyingly unnecessary hurdles, I'll close my eyes and remember 16 women writing quietly together every morning, sharing through tears, learning new ways to climb mountains, and above all, celebrating in each other's "muchness".

(How's THAT for long and rambling sentences that spread out before you like a road untravelled?)

Wherein I Scatter Proper Nouns Hither and Yon

Today was an amazing day filled with poetry, and naturally, that made me very happy.  At NWP we talked about how to let kids use today's lyrics to get inspired for poetry.  We read poetry.  About dogs. (Completely unrelated to the discussion on lyrics!)  Poetry and cute little cuddly puppies!  C'mon, that's fun!

I know, I know.  The Husband often looks at me that way too.

This week, I need to finish eight (EIGHT) of my multigenre pieces, slap down a piece of writing I think is suitable for the anthology, and say goodbye to all my wonderful new friends from Summer Institute.  Not looking forward to any of that.  Well, the writing part wouldn't be so bad if I had half a second to think clearly and finish it.  Oh, and let's not forget the goal of sparing a minimum of 30 minutes a day on my WIP.

Tomorrow is our Open House (this is the post of many proper nouns!), in which I get to show off the amazingness that is Summer Institute to The Husband and friends.  Also, I will meet Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer!  I am so excited!  I certainly hope I don't do anything stupid, like say, babble incoherently and come off as a complete nincompoop.  Sadly, I can see both in my future.

And this is a particularly ridiculous thing!  I am a grown woman.  I am a teacher.  I am moderately intelligent.  She is also all these things.  What separates us?  A book.  A published book.

Oh, and the fact that she is quite obviously a teaching genius.  My rockin' awesone teacher status is yet to be seen.

Regardless, I'll be sure to take pictures, and attempt witty conversation.

I'll let you know how it goes.