June | 2014 | Reflections on the Teche

Archive for June, 2014

Chicago Celebration

Posted in Celebration Saturday, tagged kitten rescue, School of Social Science Administration, Thresholds, University of Chicago on June 14, 2014| 10 Comments »

Ruth Ayres invites us the celebrate each week. Click over to her site Discover. Play. Build. to read more celebrations.

Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago

We are celebrating in Chicago with our three lovely daughters the success of daughter number three. Last night Martha was hooded in Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University of Chicago. She received her masters in social science administration (social work). With about 200 others, Martha walked the sacristy of the chapel to receive her hood. Martha made the decision to attend U of C because of the top level program. She worked hard for two years. She will continue this difficult work with a nonprofit known as Thresholds. She will work with mental health patients in the justice program. I admire her dedication to improving the lives of unfortunate people. Of course, as a mother, I worry. I must let go of this and allow her to move into what she was “meant to do.”

I cannot help but marvel at my daughters. How did I create such a force of three women set out to be the best they can be in a shaky world? These girls are not shaken. They are strong and determined. I celebrate them. My husband and I keep looking at each other with that look, “we did this!”

Jeff and I at Lake Michigan celebrating blue.

Last week Maggie and I rescued a kitten from our neighbor’s car. I heard the loud mew on Thursday and spent some time under the car coaxing and comforting this distraught kitten, but I could not get her to come out. On Friday morning I heard the cries again, from the same neighbor’s car. I enlisted Maggie’s help. She has scars to show for it. She reached in to the car’s hood and grabbed the kitty, hissing and thrashing. Maggie had put on gardening gloves, but parts of the car scraped her arms. Kitten saved! We set her up on a back screened porch away from the other animals.

Over the weekend, I fed her, talked to her, and eventually was able to hold her without her hissing. On Monday I took her to our vet and found out she was a healthy girl maybe 4-5 weeks old. I then set out to find her a home.

I had a lunch date with my friend Carolyn. When she arrived, I said, “I have something to show you.” Sold! Carolyn texted her daughter, and they decided to take her. Here is the happy new mama (or grandma) with the kitten. I celebrate new life, new homes, and happy mamas.

What are you celebrating this week? Blessings abound!

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Poem Movie

Posted in Creativity, Digital Learning, Poetry Friday, Writing, tagged iMovie, poem movie, Today's Little Ditty on June 13, 2014| 9 Comments »

Poetry Friday Round-up is with Catherine Johnson.

the coming of lavender

Over at Today’s Little Ditty, Michelle H Barnes is hosting a poem movie challenge issued by her guests Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong of the Poetry Friday Anthology of Science. I love a creative challenge and since I am trying to be OPEN in the year 2014, I need to learn new things. I knew nothing about using iMovie, but I have it on my computer, so I gave it a try. This is a user friendly program. If I can do it, anyone can.

I pulled out a poem I wrote for Laura Shovan’s Pantome poem project and uploaded pictures I had in my files. I must have recorded my reading 5 times or more. That was the hardest part. What is it about doing something like this that makes you feel so smart and accomplished? I will definitely try this with my students next year. Thanks, Michelle, Sylvia, and Janet for the motivation to try something new.

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Wide Open Summer

Posted in Poetry, Slice of Life, tagged Kaylie, storm poem, Thinglink on June 10, 2014| 7 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

Summer is a wide open blank canvas. I have been painting things onto this summer canvas. So many things. Too many things? One of these things is the Thinglink Teacher Challenge. I wanted to learn more about this new online platform, so I signed up for the challenge. The first week wasn’t too difficult. A How-to assignment. I used an image from blueberry picking last week and added links to my blog post, an article about the farm, and a recipe for blueberry cobbler. I enjoy being able to actively do what I will ask my students to do.

Click here to see the image in Thinglink with embedded links.

Kaylie has been keeping up summer writing. I think it may be time for her to get her own blog. Here is a link to her Slice today. It was a crazy stormy morning here. There were tornado watches and heavy rain. Kaylie captures the scary feeling in her poem,”Slicing through the Storm.”

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Balance

Posted in Digital Learning, Writing, tagged 21st Century Learning, balance, digital literacy, Peter Reynolds, the 5 Cs on June 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Photo from Mind, Body, Fitness

The balance poses in yoga are a kind of test for me. If the balance pose is tough, and I teeter and fall, I know there is something not quite right. If I can stand tall and balance with focus, I feel complete. When we talk about Digital Literacy both in our own lives and in the lives of our students, I think balance is essential.

Each day I begin my morning checking email, Facebook, and reading blog posts. The more people I connect with in this digital environment, the more time this takes. I could so easily get stuck at the computer, and sometimes I do. I have to remember my nondigital life, the one in which the pets live, and my family, and my face-to-face friends.

In my classroom, the computers are tools. They stand ready for students to publish writing, to research, and to create a presentation. They do not and will not replace the face-to-face discussion of ideas, the pen-to-paper of the journal entry, or the shelves of books. Balance.

How do you balance your digital life with your real life?

I am a follower of Peter Reynolds. He is the creator of Dot, Ish, and most recently Going Places. His artwork as well as his ideas are inspiring. I would love to print out all his posters and decorate my classroom with them. This one shows the 5 Cs of 21st Century Education: Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Critical Thinking with the addition of a very important C, Compassion.

Click on the image to download this poster.

As 21st Century educators, we can so easily get on overload. We can get caught up in the technology, social media, and the continuous flow of online apps. However, we need to remember balance, keep a focal point, and lead our students into the world of the 5Cs with or without technology.

Add your DigiLit Sunday post to Mr. Linky. Next Sunday I will not be posting. (My youngest daughter is graduating from graduate school. Woo Hoo! If you want to take on the round-up next Sunday, let me know in the comments or by email.

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Blueberry Picking

Posted in Gratitude, Poetry Friday, tagged blueberry picking, farm, St. Martinville on June 6, 2014| 16 Comments »

Join the Poetry Friday round-up at Carol’s Corner.

Blueberry Picking
with a line from Mark Doty, Verge

Some things wear their becoming,
like this blueberry, for example,
plump and perfectly indigo
surrounded by pinky-red brothers and sisters,
it boasts to be chosen
falls easily into my palm
joyfully plinks the plastic bucket.

On this dewy June morning,
I wander from bush to bush
silent in my reverie
picking, picking, picking.

The berries do not wear a costume.
They linger here in this field
waiting for the juicing of the sun’s rays,
becoming all I need
to take summer in
to hold on to the gift of life.

–Margaret Simon, all rights reserved

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Blood (or Rain) in the Cane Field

Posted in Books, Slice of Life, Writing, tagged Anne L. Simon, author, Blood in the Cane Field on June 3, 2014| 10 Comments »

Join the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.

On Sunday in the middle of a downpour, my husband, my hero, was outside digging a trench to re-route water away from the front walk. He ended up in the last few minutes placing a piece of plywood over the growing puddle and covering it with industrial rugs from his office. He saved the day. People began arriving.

They came to greet the newest author in our family, Anne L. Simon, my mother-in-law. Following a degree from Wellesley, law school at Yale, a move to Louisiana, a law degree from LSU, practicing law with her husband, raising three smart children, running a successful campaign for judge, acting as a district judge, teaching at LSU law school, and serving as an ad-hoc judge for the Louisiana Supreme Court, Anne decided she wanted to be an author. Through grit and determination, not to mention high intelligence and a gift for writing, she published her first crime novel, Blood in the Cane Field.

Anne Simon signs copies of Blood in the Cane Field

Those of you from Louisiana will love this book for its fine attention to the Louisiana landscape. You may even recognize a few of the characters. Others will enjoy the details of the process of law. And others will enjoy the relationship between John Clark, the protagonist and public defender for a mixed race boy in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Medley Butterfield, a Mississippi girl down on her luck. Whatever your reason for reading, you will not be disappointed.

The book release party was a success. Minga, our grandmother name for Anne, sold and signed over 40 books. Of course, as she says, “These were my nears and dears. They had to buy it.” My prediction is that word will spread beyond the nears and dears, beyond the bayou, and even beyond the Mississippi River. The best part of this success is that she has nearly completed book 2, Blood in the Lake. So if you get hooked on Anne Simon’s writing, there will be more. In her 80th decade, this lawyer/mother/judge/author is not close to stopping.

I was proud to greet soggy people at my door and say, “Food is to your left. The author is to your right.”

Click the image to find the book on Amazon.

Judge Lori Landry says Blood in the Cane Field is a great beach read!

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It’s Monday and I have more time to read!

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged IMWAYR, Irene Latham, Margarita Engle, poetry, The Lightning Dreamer, The Sky Between Us on June 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

Head over to Teach Mentor Texts with Jen Vincent to read more reviews from the Kidlitosphere.

I made a commitment to myself and ultimately to my students to read middle grade novels this summer. I want to channel Donalyn Miller and become a Wild reader. I am reading her second book Reading in the Wild. This is what she says about her own reading life.

I cannot imagine a day without reading in it. I am a better teacher because I read. I pass books into my students’ hands and talk with them about what they read. I model what a reading life looks like and show my students how reading enriches my life and can enrich theirs, too. –Donalyn Miller, Reading in the Wild

The Lightning Dreamer by Margarita Engle: I first met Margarita when she was featured on Caroline Starr Rose’s blog and had a bookmark giveaway. Shortly after, I received a sweet email from her asking the names of my students and sent us all a personally signed bookmark. I felt guilty, thought, because I had not read any of her books. Now I am remedying that. The Lightning Dreamer is a verse novel in the voice of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, known as Tula. Interspersed are verses from her dedicated brother and cook, her disappointed and misguided mother, and the nuns who value her independent spirit. I am intrigued that a novel written in so few words can carry along a plot and work deeply on theme. The Lightning Dreamer was full of heart and soul. It is this heart and soul that makes you feel how Gertrudis felt and come to truly understand the oppression of women and the world of slavery in Cuba in the early 1800s.

Here is a recent interview with Margarita Engle on Author Turf.

Click image for Margarita Engle’s website

Renee LaTulippe of No Water River featured selections from the novel. No Water River continues to be a wealth of poetry goodness.

Link to Irene Latham’s blog site: Live Your Poem

The Sky Between Us by Irene Latham: Irene generously contacted me to trade poetry books. I was so honored that she would want to do this. She is another wonderful cyberfriend. The connections I have made through joining this kidlit blogging world are amazingly generous and supportive.

The Sky Between Us is a collection of poems that began as a manuscript for young readers inspired by the National Park Systems Historic Places collection. From there it grew into an adult collection of Irene’s perspective on her One Little Word for 2013, “sky.” This is a collection I will share with my middle grade students. The poems are written in short free verse stanzas often using enjambment to lead the reader through the words like a canoe on a winding river.

Irene has a gift for language that makes her words roll over your tongue and into your mind where you breathe out, “Ah!” Her observance of nature resonates with me and leads me to a deeper understanding of the world and creation. I will visit her poems again and again.

Forecast

The sky between us
is stippled, layered,

anything but blue.
It storms memory

blusters
and sweeps clean–

it cannot rain
indefinitely.

It swells, tatters,
its routing broken

by days or decades.
We steeple through,

eyes on whatever
happens next: awed

by every flash
and rumble,

monarch’s migration
to their gloryland

and by the swallows
that winter over.

We share the same moon,
we light each other’s

dream of morning.

–Irene Latham, all rights reserved.

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DigiLit Sunday: Trying out Thinglink

Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged amaryllis, ekphrastic haiku, Thinglink on June 1, 2014| 7 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Have you heard about Thinglink? I’m not sure where I first heard about it, but I recently was invited by Thinglink to give it a try. From what I did so far, it looks like another presentation site based on images. When I went to the site, signed up, and logged in, I was stuck. There was no place to click to move forward. Finally after some frustration, I hit the back page button and found on the home page the button for Learn More. That took me to a page that had a button for Create. There I was able to move forward and create a page. I uploaded a picture I took on our afternoon nursery trip. Since I had previously written a poem about an amaryllis, I recorded it on Soundcloud and was able to link it to the picture. I also linked an information page about the amaryllis.

I embedded the image here, but the links do not embed. You have to click on the link to go directly to the Thinglink page to get to the links.

Thinglink allows for adding students. I am interested in trying this out with my students, perhaps on a research project or to write about a book they’ve read. Have any of you used Thinglink with students? I’d love to hear about your thoughts and ideas.