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Happy Poetry Friday Birthday Treasures

Posted in Poetry, Poetry Friday, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on August 10, 2017| 32 Comments »

Poetry Friday posts are here today. Scroll down and click the green frog.

Welcome to my birthday poetry party.  I am a birthday triplet with Linda Mitchell and Julieanne Harmatz, both of whom I originally met through blogging.  Now they are real life writing critique friends.  Hop over to their blogs to say Happy Birthday! Julieanne

Linda

I am sharing some poetic treasures.  Joy Acey sent me a beautiful watercolor painting of an iris along with a fluttering haiku for the Summer Poetry Swap.   She also sent a blank card, so I put it into WordSwag and wrote a response haiku to Joy.

Joy wrote in her note to me that she considered this alternate third line.
Blue Dutch Irises
flutter to the wind’s command
Happy Birthday wishes!

Sea blue echoes
Ukulele birthday song
Windcall my name
–Margaret Simon

School has started.  I found on a shelf in my classroom an old copy of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.  I read to my students the chapter “Be Specific” in which she quotes William Carlos Williams, “Write what is under your nose.”  Then I read aloud River of Words by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet about the life of William Carlos Williams.  Writing prompt: Write a poem that uses something specific and ordinary and begin with “So much depends upon…” after W.C. Williams’ poem with the same first line.

I was pretty pleased with my poem about the sparkles of condensation on a glass of mint iced tea until I was absolutely blown away by my students’ writing.

So much depends upon
the warm glow of the fairy lights,
silver and golden with gems and hearts
gently pushing me to the ocean of dreams.

Drifting calmly until the waves
rock me to the land of reality,
until the fairies and their lights
send me out again.

Erin, 6th grade

 

So much depends upon
the brass uniform of a senior dragonfly
soaring past
the barking, yelling, chirping, rumbling
noises of the day.

Lynzee, 3rd grade

 

I can already tell that this is going to be an amazing year of poetry writing. Did you notice “brass uniform of a senior dragonfly?” We were all blown away by that line.

Link your Poetry Friday post below.

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#DigiLitSunday: Stamina

Posted in Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, tagged , on August 6, 2017| 4 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

 

This summer I have been nurturing myself.  I know that’s a good thing, but in doing so, I lost some of my stamina.  I always do.  During the summer months, I sleep a little later, linger a little longer, and relax into a slower pace.

When school starts back up again as it has for me this week, I have to build my stamina for getting up before the sun, going longer between meals, and being alert.  Our kids have to build their stamina, too.

 

Nurturing myself this summer included yoga classes.  Yoga is all about stamina, sustaining a pose for minutes at a time, all the while your muscles are vibrating and telling you to release.  When I stood in warrior pose on Saturday, I thought about how this relates to my school year.  The instructor said, “In warrior pose, you are both guarded and open.  Your arm shoots straight out like a drawn sword while you stand wide legged and open for attack.”

I will be a warrior for my students.  I will guard them and be open to them.  I will honor their presence and push them to new limits.

When I learned that I would be teaching some new students and different subject areas, my sword went up, and I resisted.  But once I started delving into the content, I felt my stance relax.  I got this.  My focus shifted to the thrill of planning for new learning.  I hope this will happen with my students as well.  Once they get into the swing of things, their focus will shift, their stamina will rise, and they will become warriors for their own learning.

Click on the link below to add your own DigiLitSunday post.

Don’t forget to join us Monday, August 7th at 7:30 Eastern for the new #TeachWrite chat. Questions with times are available here.

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Celebration Saturday because I need this!

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Gratitude, Teaching, tagged , , on August 5, 2017| 8 Comments »

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

I need to celebrate today.  I think the days when it is hardest are the days when celebration is needed the most.  Today I am celebrating in pictures from my phone storage.

I saw this scene as I was driving home.  I stopped, got out of my car, walked across the street to the bridge to capture the sunset.  I celebrate that every day there is beauty in the world.

This bulletin board is outside my room at one of my three schools.  This school has a Disney theme this year.  I celebrate the students who helped me create this board and I celebrate that the letters are running over the edge of the border and I’m OK with it. I had to “Let it go!” (That’s from another Disney movie, isn’t it?)

This sign was stuck to the mirror at another school.  I celebrate the positive messages I’ve received this week from colleagues and friends.  They are my rainbows.  I received this text on the first day of school: “Just thinking about you and wishing you a very good year at school.  I hope your travels to three school goes smoothly.”

Sunsets. Mermaids. Rainbows.  Positive, magical messages that make me happy.

What are some of the positive messages you’ve received this week?

 

 

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Spiritual Thursday: New Beginnings

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Teaching, tagged , on August 3, 2017| 22 Comments »

Find other posts at To Read, To Write, To Be with Julieanne

 

We had our first faculty meeting yesterday.  Our new master teacher was charged with leading an ice breaker.  She passed around a bowl of Hershey’s chocolate bars.  She told us to choose one carefully.  I chose Krackel.  The first personality she put on the board was Dark Chocolate.  I should have chosen Dark Chocolate.  I am more comfortable as an introvert.

You are a deep and complex person. You don’t let anyone get too close to you.
You stay a mystery, and you’re good at keeping secrets… especially your own.

You prefer to stay on the outside a bit and observe. You find people fascinating.
You seek to understand and appreciate the world. There is more to you than anyone will ever know.

But God had a message for me, so God made me choose Krackel.

You create a spark and leave a mark everywhere you go. You’re very bold.
Your days are full of fun and laughter. You love life, and you never take it too seriously.

You enjoy brightening someone’s mood, and you are always an optimist.
Things may not ever be perfect, but you’ll always find something to smile about.

I was caught being pessimistic.  I had to laugh at this joke.  Me?  A smiling optimist?  Full of fun and laughter?  Not at this party!  I have been anything but optimistic about this new school year.  I’ve been trying to change my attitude.  What can change your attitude better than random fortune cookie-like personality proclamations?  I am going to tape this Krackel wrapper to the front of my writing notebook.

 

On another note, but along the same topic of messages from the universe, I saw this sign on a fence in my daughter’s neighborhood.

What a great message!  I need to realize even though I am faced with a difficult schedule and new curriculum to learn, I can be better this year than I was last year.  And being better is a choice that is mine to make.

So for this new beginning, I am going to take these not so subliminal smack-me-in-the-face messages and start the new school year with optimism, a sense of humor, and determination to make it the best year ever.

 

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#DigiLitSunday: Making Impossible Possible

Posted in #TeachWrite, Digital Learning, Gifted Education, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , on July 30, 2017| 2 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Saturday morning yoga, my instructor, Susan, says “You should not tell yourself that your body can’t do something. Challenge yourself to try, and your body may just surprise you.” So when she said we were going to do head stands, I stopped the “No way,” and said, “Ok. I’ll try.” I opened myself to her knowledgeable instruction. She guided me step by step. And when I was upside down, I felt powerful, giddy, invincible.

I want to take this learning into my classroom and into my teacher-self. Our school year begins on Wednesday. Scheduling is a nightmare for anyone who has to look at a master schedule and plan for all the various pull-outs and special classes. I am one of those teachers that messes up the master schedule. This year I will be servicing three schools. Three different schools with three different schedules pulling out gifted students in 5 different grade levels. I know you must be saying by now, impossible.

Teachers, isn’t that how we roll? Turning impossible into possible. Whatever it may be, a move to a new classroom, grade level, or position, a new administrator to get to know, a crazy schedule to make work, we put on our super hero capes and take off, letting the winds of self-doubt fly past us. Flexibility is in our stride.

 

If I can do a hand stand, I can go confidently into this school year. But just in case I need a guiding mantra, I made a Canva poster out of Cornelius’s charge and my friend, Dani Burtsfield’s photo from Glacier Park in Montana.

 

 

Be sure to join me in the new #TeachWrite chat on Monday, August 7th at 7:30 EST.  For more information and a list of questions, go to #TeachWrite Chat.

 

Link up your DigiLitSunday posts below:

 

 

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Celebrate Possibilities

Posted in Celebration Saturday, Teaching, Writing, tagged on July 29, 2017| 6 Comments »

Find more celebration posts at Ruth’s blog.

Empty classrooms
echo sights and sounds
of children.

Each knickknack evokes
a memory of a child.

I move desks to their places,
reconnect computer cables,
staple border on bulletin boards,
roll out the rug,
dust shelves,
arrange books,
and wonder who
the first bell will bring.

Tall pencils in a jar,
blank notebooks in the cubbies,
sticker charts wait.

Empty classrooms
invite, inspire, invoke
a spirit of expectedness,
elasticity to expand
for new voices, new hearts,
new children to embrace.

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DigiLitSunday: The Dog ate my Homework

Posted in #cyberpd, Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged , on July 23, 2017| 1 Comment »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

Not really, but I didn’t get the DigiLitSunday post up this morning.  I have my excuses.  Don’t we all?  But the basic reason was self-doubt.  I battle this as much as anyone. Even some of my favorite authors go through this, so why would I expect anything different of myself?

I’ve been trying to keep up with #cyberPd.  This group is reading and responding to Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading by Vicki Vinton.  This week’s posts are around chapters 7 and 8.  I just now finished chapter 7, so I didn’t do all of my homework.  I was reminded by a friend that this is a self-made assignment and if I don’t want to do it, nobody will care.  That is true, but then I had to re-assess why I am reading and writing in the first place.

I want to be a better reader, a better writer, and a better teacher of both reading and writing.  I believe that I should practice what I preach.  So, for better or worse, here I am.  If you did write a digilit post, link up below.  It’s not too late.

Chapter 7, Creating Opportunities for Readers to Interpret, begins with this epigraph:

We search for patterns, you see, only to find where the patterns break.  And it’s there, in that fissure that we pitch our tents and wait.  –Nicole Krauss

Readers do not build interpretations on what is obvious in a text.  We sit in the fissure of broken patterns, wondering, questioning, testing out our theories, and peeling away the layers the author has set up for us.

I feel I have done a disservice to my gifted students in not helping them understand that we don’t always understand.  Julieanne Harmatz wrote in her reflections about Chs. 7 & 8 that we must embrace confusion as part of learning.  Vicki Vinton shows me how to honor my students’ thinking and hold onto it in order to promote engagement, a sense of agency, and ownership.  They need to understand that not knowing is part of the thinking process. And what’s wrong with going back to the text to re-read?

Have you ever had an Aha moment while reading, and turned back to say, “Oh, that’s what that was about!”?   Of course you have.  Because that is how authors grab us and make us want to read more.  By focusing on the process rather than the product (test, essay, whatever), we can mold our students into problem-solving thinkers.

Reading is a transactional act.  The text comes alive in our minds when we interact using our own interpretations and our own hearts.  Then a story becomes real and meaningful.  We can encourage this flexibility of thought within our classrooms.  Vicki Vinton helps show us how.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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#TeachWrite: Invitation to a New Twitter Chat

Posted in #TeachWrite, Teaching, Writing, tagged on July 20, 2017| 8 Comments »

 

I am so excited to announce a new collaboration.  I have joined Leigh Anne Eck, Michelle Haseltine, and Jennifer Laffin in the debut of a new Twitter chat.  Last week I led a Twitter chat with the purpose of introducing teachers in my writing institute to Twitter.  While only 3 teachers from my workshop joined, lots of other teachers who want to nurture their writer selves joined in.  The chat was a success and spurred on an interest that was already brewing with Jennifer, Leigh Anne, and Michelle.  They contacted me to join them.  I am honored.

I met these three powerhouse teachers through blogging with the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge.  There is a magic that works in cyberspace connecting people of like minds and shared passion.  We all share a passion for teaching writing.  We’ve supported each other for years by commenting on each other’s blogs and connecting on Twitter and Facebook.  With the amazing power of technology, I feel we know each other.

We want to invite you into the circle.

Do you….

Believe that teaching writing is easier when teachers are writers themselves?

Believe that our own writing lives deserve to be nurtured?

Believe that all writers grow through dedicated writing time?

Believe that all writers need support and encouragement?

Believe that writing is a messy process and the best way to learn this is through our own practice?

Believe that when teachers write, they make writing a priority in their classrooms?

Our chat will support teachers not only in their quest to become better teachers of writers, but to become better writers ourselves.

Join us the first Monday of every month for #TeachWrite, a new Twitter chat dedicated to growing teachers as writers and teachers of writers.

Our first chat is Monday, August 7th at 8PM EST with the topic of  “Writing for the JOY of It!”

Sign up for Remind on your Remind app at #Teachwrite Twitter Chat.

 

 

 

 

 

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DigiLitSunday: Problem Solving

Posted in clmooc, Digital Learning, Teaching, Writing, tagged , , , , on June 11, 2017| 12 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

I know, it’s summer and who wants to think about problems during summer?  I didn’t expect to, but I do enjoy having more time to read.  I’ve been reading Dynamic Teaching for Dynamic Reading by Vicki Vinton.  This book was chosen for the CyberPD book for July. To follow the discussions around this book, tune in to #cyberpd and Michelle Nero’s blog Literacy Learning Zone. 

In Dynamic Teaching, Vicki sets us up to think more about the complexity of and the authentic purpose for reading. She leads us into the problem solving process for students when reading.

 

It’s one thing to read theory in a professional book, but quite another to see the theory play out in your own life.  I started reading Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder.  This book is intended for middle grade students, the students I teach. Immediately in the first chapter, I have to enter into the process of solving a problem.

Jinny heard the bell.  She threw down her book, rose from the stale comfort of the old brown sofa, and scrambled to the door.  When she burst from the cabin into the evening air, Jinny ran.

I can assume from the title of the book that Jinny is an orphan.  This first paragraph makes me think she is at camp.  A bell rings, and she runs from the cabin.  As I continue to read, though, I find clues that she is not at any camp I’ve ever known.

My purpose for reading is heightened.  I have to figure out why Jinny is at this camp.  Who else is there?  What happened to her parents?  Reading only this first chapter, I am full of questions.

It is time to honor this process of problem finding and problem solving with our students.  How could I set my students up to do this?

  • What do you think is happening?
  •  What are your questions?
  • Why do you want to keep reading?

My summer reading has taken on a different dimension.  I’m not only reading for understanding, but I am reading to find the problem.  Where can I apply this problem to my teaching?  How do my students find problems?  How do I present problems that will interest them enough to solve?

I have found a problem that interests me.  In fact, it came in the mail.  I think it’s from someone in the CLMOOC postcard exchange, but that in itself is a mystery. I received a postcard with a snippet of text glued to the back.  The instructions are to create a poem out of the text, black-out style.

As you may be able to see, I’ve started underlining words in pencil.  I haven’t committed to any of them yet.  The fact that I have to black-out and send the postcard back with some sort of meaningful text selected has heightened this problem from one of mere play to a serious thoughtful process.   How can I take this experience and apply it in my classroom?  I want my students to both play with language and see the serious potential of making meaning with words.  Wouldn’t it be interesting to send a postcard to each of my students with these same instructions?

Problem seeking leads to problem finding to problem solving.  This is the way of language in reading and in writing.  I invite you to contemplate problems in your own literacy learning and teaching and link up your blog post below.

 

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DigiLitSunday: Better

Posted in Digital Learning, Teaching, tagged , , , on May 28, 2017| 4 Comments »

Please use this button on your site for DigiLit Sunday posts

My email inbox is filled with ways for me to improve myself from reading recommendations to Enneathought (how to improve my personality and spirituality) to Choice Literacy.  It was this month’s Choice Literacy email that caught my eye and my idea for this week’s DigiLit topic.

This quote from Atul Gawande was the epigraph to Matt Renwick’s letter.   Quoting from the Gawande’s book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, Matt outlines 3 ways for us to be better as teachers.

  1. Don’t complain
  2. Write something
  3. Change

These three directives immediately resonated with me.  This school year has ended, and I was having lunch with a colleague in our gifted department.  She said, “We have to do better next year.”

We then began a long discussion of how we could.  One way is we are going to meet together even if we don’t get paid.  As the years have gone by, the education budget has gotten smaller and smaller.  We were once able to meet weekly to plan for the next year and get a stipend.  Does the stipend matter?  Not when we are talking about doing our best for the kids.  We will meet anyway.

I am reading Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading by Vicki Vinton.  Vicki challenges our current thinking about the teaching of reading.  She calls for a change to embrace reading as the complex act that it is and teach the whole child-reader. I am convinced this book will not only improve my teaching, it will improve me.

The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. –Alan Watts

Summer break is a time to rejuvenate and renew what we believe about our own lives as well as our selves as teachers.  This year was my thirtieth year in education. Yet, I’m not best yet.  I continue to talk, write, and change to meet my own needs and those of my students.  Won’t you join me in doing the same?

Please add your links below.  Click to see more posts about Better.

 

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