The landmarks are the same

at Two Writing Teachers!

Saturday morning, at a time I would usually be in bed, I found myself sitting in my old high school auditorium, wondering if Penny Kittle could see the tears pouring down my cheeks as she peered out from the stage.

She had just showed us a video of Sarah Kay's "Montauk", asking us to choose a line that spoke to us and write from it. Immediately, I knew I had to write to "The landmarks are the same."

When she asked us to stop a few minutes later, I wanted to keep going. (As she noted, that's exactly the goal of quick-writes -- to make student writers hungry to write more!) Then she asked us to spend a couple of minutes to improve what we'd written. Although I continually revise as I write (I do NOT tend to follow the rules of quick-writing well!), I still enjoyed the opportunity to look back at what I'd written and make a few changes. (I'd never heard of incorporating revision after quick-writing, but it's definitely something I want to implement with my students! Penny said this is a new idea she's tried since writing Write Beside Them.)

This is what I got:

I was fine until she told us to share with someone near us. My mom was beside me, and I knew she'd cry. I couldn't even read my work -- I just said "Marietta" and we sat there crying, alone together in the midst of the busy hum of sharing. Crying for old memories that can't be recreated. Crying for the way a familiar place can feel so empty even though it hasn't changed. Crying for a town that's not the same with my grandparents gone and my cousins moved away.

At least I can capture it in writing.

After the winding drive down through the hills, the landmarks are the same: The rushing river spanned by the angled strength of its steel bridge. The charming riverboat-era hotel filled with memories of grandeur. The rusty streetcar rails running down uneven brick streets, past antique storefronts still emblazoned with echoes of the past. The hauntingly steadfast Hopewell mound that towers over the small marble stones marking generations of slumbering history: Putnam, Whipple, Stacy, Dawes. 

And on the corner of 7th and Wooster, the house is still the same too. The squirrel feeder that made my cousins and me erupt in fits of laughter still spins in the front yard. The pewter eagle still surveys the sidewalk from its perch above the doorway. The noisy air conditioners that never put out quite enough cold air still hang from the upstairs windows. The deck my dad helped build still hangs precariously out toward the holler. The same maroon shutters. The same vertical blinds. The same astroturf-covered porch. If I walked up those stairs, could I just open the door and walk in to the sound of a John Wayne movie? Would Granddaddy be sprawled in his easy chair, his cane leaning against a TV tray? Would Nannie walk in with a fresh bag of iced cookies from Big Bear? Would my cousins arrive any minute, throwing the house into a chaotic frenzy?

But now, when we park in front of the house, we walk up broken bricks and around the corner towards the ancient mound. We notice those venerable old names and look for new ones. We wipe the leaves off the cold stone, put out new decorations, straighten the flags, and remember. 

Then we walk back over the upheaved sidewalks, back through the quaint streets, back past the huge holly hedges that now nearly obscure the house. We drive downtown to stroll through the shops and look out over the levee. "When you're down by the river, drop in!" Granddaddy's words come out of Mommy's mouth. But there's nowhere to drop in to anymore. So we savor memories over creamy Broughton's ice cream and head back out onto the highway, over the hills, and into the present.

The landmarks are the same, but the heartbeat is gone.

The Delta Queen leaving after its last voyage to Marietta, a few summers ago.

Authentic Reading and Writing Communities

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to not only attend, but also present at the amazing Dublin Literacy Conference (#dublit13).  While I've presented twice at the Central Ohio Technology Summit and organized informal SMARTboard and Moodle sessions with colleagues, this was by far my most "official" event.

COTS is free, very local, and very low-key (yet still very wonderful!), while teachers drive for hours and pay a substantial registration fee for the Lit Conference.  Moreover, there are incredible keynote speakers (Ralph Fletcher & Louise Borden this year, and Donalyn Miller & Sharon Draper last year!), as well as other sessions with other famous teachers and authors!  (Husband made fun of me when I said there were "famous teachers," but it's true!)

Consequently, I woke up on Saturday morning with almost as much energy as I have on a Christmas morning and started sweating buckets as soon as I arrived at the conference.  This might sound like I was nervous, and I was a little, but mostly I was excited. I know some people don't really enjoy presenting, but I love it!  I love to share my ideas and help people find new strategies to improve their teaching, because I love learning so much.  I also think it's really fun to meet other teachers and connect with them.

Since this was a fancy conference, I even got my very own "presenter" ribbon.  I'll admit that I felt pretty proud of myself wearing it around all day!  Best part: when I was getting Ralph Fletcher to sign my classroom copy of Guy Write for my students, he noticed my "presenter" ribbon and said "Oh, I see you're a fellow presenter!"  A fellow presenter! I almost died!  My tiny little session didn't exactly compare to your keynote speech, Ralph!

Anyway, I had a wonderful time sharing ideas about engaging my ELLs with authentic reading and writing communities.  In addition to discussing how I use Goodreads and Kidblog with my students, I showed some examples from our reading and writing workshop discussion forums on Moodle. I also shared some of the resources I provide to engage my students as readers and writers, like  RSS feeds and widgets with news articles and the "writing inspiration" page I created.



To me, the most important evidence that these tools are effective is the fact that students use them voluntarily outside of school.  When I give a book talk and my students are adding the book to the "to-read" lists on Goodreads from their phones and iPads, that's authentic engagement.  When I visit my school Goodreads account or go to our blog and find that someone has voluntarily used them after school, that's the best feeling in the world.

After all, I want my students to learn while they're in my class, but I really want them to keep learning after they leave my class.

The Good Old Days (Ralph Fletcher)

at Two Writing Teachers!

Last weekend, I got to attend the Dublin Literacy Conference, an incredible day of professional learning organized by my district.  I'm so proud that I teach (and that I graduated from) a district that puts on such an exceptional event that people come across Ohio (and even from other states!!!) to attend.  (You may have seen the tweets at #dublit13!)

Last year, I was blown away by the amazing learning I came away with (and the fact that I got to meet Ruth Ayres!)  This year, the highlight was an inspiring keynote from Ralph Fletcher.  My favorite part was that he provided an opportunity for us to experience what it's like to write with a mentor text.  He showed us one of his poems, "The Good Old Days," and then gave us a few minutes to write our own poem, using the first and last stanzas of his.

Since I loved to write poetry, it was really easy for me to create a poem with the same structure and a similar feel.  This is what I came up with: (remember, the first and last stanzas are Ralph's!)

Sometimes I remember

the good old days

tromping through the creek,

muddy and laughing.

Baseball in the backyard

with my daddy's sure pitches,

barefoot in the garden,

my small rake in time with his.

Cutting tomatoes for spaghetti sauce,

my mom's smile hovering over my shoulder.

I still can't imagine 

anything better than that.

Helping Daddy in our old backyard!

After we wrote, Ralph called on a few volunteers to share their poems.  It was so much fun to hear how other people had used the same structure and themes to create something new.  Ralph pointed out how different people borrow different elements of a mentor text depending on who they are as readers and writers.  For example, some writers might just borrow the specified lines, while others might borrow the structure, the tone, the way the lines begin, and even the topics of some of the stanzas (i.e. a "mom" memory in the same place).  I don't think I would have realized that if he hadn't pointed it out, and it's an important idea to keep in mind when we use mentor texts with students!

I can't wait to "see" you all for the March Challenge!!!

In Person

at Two Writing Teachers!

As someone who grew up an avid reader and writer, I've always felt strongly about the ability of writing to connect people. (My one little word for this year!)  I dive so deeply into books that I wind up feeling like I truly know the writer and characters, as if they're my friends.  (I also wind up completely oblivious to the world around me, but that's another story!)  And being a writer as well, I know from the other end the way that writing expresses the true self.  Words flow up from out of this deep place in my soul and tumble out of my head onto the paper.  I read and change and read and change in a flurry of thoughts and feelings.  Then, where once was nothing, there is a little piece of me.  Sometimes messy, sometimes pretty, but always ME.

Blogging has taken this connection to a new level -- now, I can share my connections with the writer and my readers can leave their thoughts and feelings for me!  Nowhere is this more true than the Slice of Life community.  After reading the same people's snippets of life week after week and engaging in dialogue with them about our writing and our lives, I really do know them.  (Husband makes fun of me for talking about you all like you're really my friends. However, I know you are!)  Actually, due to the power of writing, I'm sure I  know some "slicers" much better than many of the people I see every day in "real life".

This past weekend at the Dublin Literacy Conference, I was fortunate enough to turn a blogging connection into "real-life".  I got to meet the incredible Ruth Ayres in person!  Not only that, but I got to learn from her firsthand at two breakout sessions.  This was a huge deal, since she's basically my blogging hero.  I wouldn't even have a blog if I hadn't been inspired by Two Writing Teachers last summer!  Moreover, I have grown so much as a writer and teacher due to the Slice of Life community.

One of the highlights of my day was when Ruth asked during one of the sessions if anybody had participated in Slices of Life. When I spoke up, she asked about my blog and said she remembered it, right in front of everyone!  Knowing there would be an autograph session at lunch, I had printed out the green SOLS logo at home.  I was a little embarrassed to ask Ruth to sign it instead of her book, but she liked it!

As soon as I get a frame, it's going up on the wall of our computer room to inspire me on those hard days!

Dublin Lit Conference

Yesterday I was fortunate to attend the Dublin Literacy Conference for the first time.  (I was also completely worn out and wanted to go to bed by 8:00, but a nice, happy kind of worn out!)

When the alarm went off at 7:00, I was wondering why I signed up to do this on a Saturday during the school year.  However, by 8:30, while I was singing "I love my white shoes" with Eric Litwin and James Dean (and an auditorium full of excited teachers), I was already glad I had come.  (I'll admit, I thought that part was going to be silly at first, but by halfway through Pete the Cat, I was entranced.)

 Next, we were treated to an amazing keynote speech by Donalyn Miller, the Book Whisperer.  It was one of the most energizing presentations I've heard in a long time.  You can view her presentation here, but I'll share some of my favorite highlights from her talk:

• "Boys want the same thing every reader wants -- to find themselves in books." (Donalyn) -- This seemed so profound because there is so much talk about trying to get boys to read, as if boys naturally don't want to read.  It's not that they don't want to, it's just that they don't want to read girly books that aren't interesting to them!  I bet if all the "classic" books were about war, monsters, and robots, we'd be moaning that girls didn't want to read!
• Seating kids according to the kind of books they like to read will help create reading communities where they naturally share & encourage each other to try new books.  -- I had never thought of this, and it seems so simple!  What an easy, natural way to get kids excited about reading!
• Set high expectations -- she wants her kids to read 40 books a year! Many exceed that, and the ones that don't get there still read way more than they ever have before.  -- The numbers of books her students read were ASTOUNDING, and then I thought back to how I'd read over a hundred books every summer as a kid.  Why do teachers expect kids to read so few books during the school year, when reading is so essential to learning?  This definitely made me re-think how I'd approach reading with my students if I ever teach ESL.
• She shared TONS of great suggestions for making kids WANT to read, including:
•  making reading the social norm by giving kids lots of time to read in class -- This seems like such a basic thing to do, and yet it seems like it would be so easy to say there's not enough class time to have kids spend it on reading.  I can definitely see how kids would want to read more if they see that's what everyone is doing!
• lots of different ways to have peers recommend books to each other -- I had heard and thought of many of these, but there were a few new ideas and it was really neat to see them in action and hear how they had really worked for her students.
• "Reading is the inhale, writing is the exhale." (Donalyn) -- I especially loved this statement because I have lived it personally.  I know I would not be the writer I am today if I had not been such an avid reader.

Later in the day, I got to attend not one, but TWO breakout sessions with the amazing Ruth Ayres from Two Writing Teachers!  In the first one, she shared some great thoughts about celebrating writers by focusing on the student writer, not the piece of writing itself.  I definitely got a new perspective on celebrating more often and helping students encourage each other.  In the second, she showed us how to create and implement effective mini-lessons, with several great videos of her own mini-lessons as examples!  I think the biggest revelation for me was to pull the kids into a meeting area for mini-lessons, even with older kids, to get the feeling of "coach to team" or "writer-to-writer".  I'm thinking about trying this even with my Spanish classes, when I do mini-lessons with them.  The practical steps and video examples she shared were so helpful and inspiring.  (Plus, I got to meet my blogging hero in person!)

The afternoon keynote was author Sharon Draper, who was extremely dynamic and passionate about her books. She shared some parts of her books with us, as well as some sweet, funny, and heartbreaking emails from young readers about her books.  My favorite part of her speech was a story about how she visited another country and talked with a man who commented that we Americans sure test our students a lot.  He told her, “If we want an elephant to grow, we feed it.  We don’t measure it.”