After I finished my first year as a 2nd grade teacher, I realized that I had failed the kids. I was a terrible teacher of writing. My students definitely did writing that year, but I failed to teach them to write. That summer, I made a promise to myself that I would do better. I immersed myself in books about writing. I read and sticky noted tons of children's books, mentor texts, so that I could use them to help teach my students. But probably the most important thing that I did that summer...I made myself become a writer. How did I do that? I opened up a notebook and started writing. Many days I wasn't a good writer and some days I stared at a blank page. Those days definitely helped me empathize with my students. For many of us the blank page or the blank screen is very intimidating. A few years ago I found a network of teachers who were committed to becoming writers so that they could be better teachers of writing for their students. It's called Teach Write. And they were kind enough to let me join them, even though I had joined "the dark side" aka administration. Sometimes they offer workshops, sometimes they do virtual open mic nights where people share their writing, but the best thing they offer is time to come together virtually...we were doing it before virtual meetings were a thing...where we simply write and hold each other accountable for devoting time to write. During the month of October, Teach Write shares a challenge with educators, Teachwriteober. We challenge each other to write every day of the month of October. It doesn't have to be much, just putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard on each of the 31 days of the month. I signed up! And I wanted to share this challenge with all of you in case anyone is interested in joining me. Here's the link to sign up! What I love about this is that there can be all kinds of writing that you do. Sometimes my writing with the group is simply writing a grocery list or writing a thank you note. Sometimes it is writing this post or writing an article. Sometimes it's writing a journal entry. Any and all writing counts as long as you are doing some sort of writing every day. And I will share a little secret with you...if a day goes by and you don't write...it's not the end of the world. When I began doing these writing challenges, there were days I missed or days when I would stay up late to try to make sure and get some sort of writing done before midnight. It didn't matter, the bigger goal was accomplished, I was writing more than I had written the previous month. And I was holding myself accountable and I had others helping to hold me accountable. I have attended lots of trainings about teaching writing. I have read numerous books about writing and about teaching writing. (I have even been trying to write my own book about teaching writing.) But I believe the most powerful thing that I have done for my students was to simply start writing. Practicing what I preach. Writing is the one area that I feel like the curriculum programs get wrong all the time. As teachers (and administrators), we are left to figure it out on our own. What often happens is we do what I did years ago with that first group of 2nd graders I taught. We do writing, we assign prompts, we tell them to write, but we fail to actually teach them how to write. By writing ourselves and by sharing the writing of others and noticing writing in mentor texts, we can do more than just assign writing to our students. We can teach them the process of writing and watch them become writers alongside us! Will you join me during Teachwriteober? Check out this great graphic about writing I discovered this weekend...love the thought of not just writing words, but writing music. I might have made a visit to my favorite place, An Unlikely Story Bookstore in Plainville. And I might have purchased some new books. Yes, it's a problem I have, but there are worst things to be addicted to! I am excited that I got the beautiful new picture book title Patchwork. The book celebrates the "endless possibilities of each child." From the dancer to the athlete to the kid who is "perpetually in time-out." Thinking I will record a read aloud of it, but you are welcome to borrow it if you want to read it to your class. I love reading memoirs and I bought one that will probably hit too close to home, but I am looking forward to a good cry as a read this one: Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains. And I was excited to get a book in the mail written by an educator I met on Twitter. Emily Francis write a book called If You Only Know: Letters from an Immigrant Teacher. She tells about her story of growing up in Guatemala and then journeying to the US to eventually become a teacher; she tells this story through a series of letters she writes to eight immigrant students in whom she sees pieces of herself. And check out this great infographic I found about how audio promotes literacy...we need to be reading aloud to our kids every day!
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I saw this graphic and had to share it with all of you. I know that as educators we are making so many decisions all day every day. But to see the numbers there...1500 educational decisions on average every day...I suddenly feel educationally exhausted. But we know it's true. You are making so many important decisions in your classrooms. And these decisions have an impact on the students in front of you. Some decisions are easy, some not so much. Some decisions have to do with your pre-planning and some have to do with your in the moment planning and shifting gears on the fly. Some decisions are focused on the class as a whole and some are for specific students. The song line "ABC, easy as 123" popped into my head, hence the title of this post. But I know that all of the decision making you do is far from easy. I read Swim Team on Sunday, a graphic novel that tells a story of a girl moving to a new school. But what I loved was that the author embedded some important history about segregation into it. I also started reading a new book that a friend of mine wrote called Leading the Whole Teacher: Strategies for Supporting the Educators in Your School. Love that the author recognizes that teachers have a lot of emotional and psychological needs and have been traumatized over the last few years...her book is about hope for the future of education. I am also super excited to dive into a new book that came in the mail... The Commonsense Guide to Your Classroom Library!
Did you know that this Thursday is International Dot Day?! What does that mean? Several years ago, one teacher decided to share Peter Reynolds' book The Dot and celebrate the themes of bravery, creativity and self expression. And now people all over the world celebrate International Dot Day in many different ways! So how should we celebrate Dot Day? Well, if you ask Peter himself, he says, "“Spread the word… On International Dot Day, read The Dot, wear dots, eat dots, draw dots, frame dots, connect the dots, splurge on art supplies, try a new medium — a new instrument, write a poem, rearrange your furniture, reconnect the dots with an old friend, make something, or make something with a friend. Share your creativity with the world.” You can also visit this site to learn more about Dot Day as well as find links to so many other ideas and ways to celebrate creativity: https://www.internationaldotday.org/ This year, on Thursday at 1:00 Peter Reynolds and his twin brother will be hosting a special livestream event with Flip. Your classrooms can virtually join in the celebration that will be taking place live from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. You will get to see live performances of songs from the upcoming new musical that is based on several of Peter Reynold's books about creativity. Being a reading fan and a Peter Reynolds fan, I do love that Dot Day happens during one of the first weeks of school. But more than just appreciating his book and his creativity, I think it's extremely important for us to think about the message of this day. Over the last several years, our students' development took a hit, especially in the areas of collaboration and creativity and play. Our kids spent a lot of time at home, isolated, not able to create or work together with peers. Dot Day is the perfect reminder that we need to be creating all sorts of opportunities for students to design, build, collaborate, create, make their mark! I would also say that over the past several years, our development as educators took a hit. We were forced backwards to the time of desks in rows, no collaboration, more going through the teacher motions with whoever was in front of us behind a mask. We as educators need Dot Day to remind us to get creative in our teaching. We need to take advantage of the ability to collaborate with our peers again, to design lessons and activities that push us and our students to think out of the box. It's time for us to step forward and away from the pandemic teaching of the last several years. It's time for us as educators to make our mark and see where it takes us! Yes, Dot Day is just one day and we could simply read Peter's book and make some colorful dots and wear our dots with pride, but I challenge you to let Dot Day be the catalyst for a full year of collaboration and creativity. How will you make your mark this year as an educator? I can't wait to see! I started a new book this weekend called The Boy At the Back of the Class. It takes place in England and tells the story of a refugee from a child's perspective, focusing on the importance of friendship and kindness. I also read a new picture book called Paletero Man. It's a book about ice pops and kindness and the true meaning of being part of a community. There is also a song that goes along with it! I am starting a new graphic novel called Swim Team, looking forward to reading this one and sharing it with students.
Lara will be sharing The Dot during library time this week, and I hope to pop in and read it to some classes with her. You can also find many versions of this book being read aloud online. Here is one reading done in Spanish. Back to school! And just like that summer has ended and we are off and running with the start of the school year. I am so excited to begin this new adventure with all of you. When we gathered in the library on Monday, it certainly felt like the room was full of joy. To me, that is what school should always feel like, a place full of joy. I think at the beginning of the year, it's much easier to keep that joyful feeling going. Keep all that summer joy that you experienced and collected, keep it and let it roll right into the school year with you. Hopefully you tucked some away to pull out of your pocket later on in the school year. The summer joy I tucked away is the beach joy that I collected with my family when we were in Virginia Beach. Not the seashells and sand, although there was a lot of that collected and left on the floor of our rental car! No, I am talking about the jumping-the-waves-beach-squeal joy. The digging-giant-holes-in-the-sand joy. The splishy-splashy-belly-flopping joy. The sun-kissed-sounds-of-the-ocean joy. I made sure that when I was experiencing those joyful moments, I saved some of those moments and slipped into my pockets to pull out and help me if I start to forget the joy at school. I hope you all had a chance to experience some summer joy. Was your summer joy in a car on a road trip? Or was it in your garden in your backyard? Maybe your summer joy was also at a beach or maybe a lake or at a campsite? Or maybe your summer joy simply happened around the dinner table with your family? Or during lunch with a friend or during those quiet moments sipping your first cup of coffee in the morning? Hold onto those joyful moments. We tend to have more time in the summer to experience them and to enjoy them. Hopefully we all have enough joyful moments banked so that we can cash them in when we need this school year. But we also have the chance to create more joyful moments during the school year. When we set off confetti cannons on the first day of school, did you see the excitement and joy on the faces of our students (and staff?!)? I caught several students grabbing some pieces of confetti to save...that's them tucking some actual physical joy into their pockets! I love poetry. In fact, I was an English major in college and my concentration was poetry. I always love to share poems with staff and students. One of my favorites is called "House of Joy." My hope for Clough is that our school is a "house of joy." It helps that we have so many great kids that will be coming to school every day. They are all little bundles of joy. (Even though some days they might not seem like that!). We have the best job in the world. We get to mold future minds. It truly is magical. When educators and students are engaged in the learning process in a joyful way...it's just about the best thing ever to witness! I can't wait to see how you all help create the Clough "house of joy." Some days it will be easy to create joyful moments for your students. Other days, you might need to dig deep into your pockets and find that first-day-of-school-confetti joy or that summer joy that you bottled up and tucked away. Hopefully you found time to build up those joy reserves this weekend. I know we sure did in the Garden house! We packed in the fun and now I have some slip-sliding-twisting-and-turning-water-slide joy saved. I also have some peanuts-and-pitching-and-play-ball joy. (Super fun Woo Sox game where I ran into a Clough family!). And I even managed to gather some hands-in-the-air-wild-hair-rollercoaster-scare joy. What kind of joy will you fill your classrooms and our school with this year? Something else that I like to share each week with staff is what I am currently reading. You will learn quickly if you haven't already...I am a book addict! I will share titles with you. Some titles will be professional development books, some will be children's literature, some will be fun reading. I love to read and I love to recommend books! And often they will be books that I own and you can borrow. I also love book recommendations so let me know if you have any good titles that I should read! I just finished reading the book Free Lunch by Rex Ogle. This book is for middle school and up, but it's also an important read for any educator. It's basically a memoir of the author's childhood, growing up in poverty and having to be a student who is part of the free lunch program. I also just got some new picture books that I hope to read aloud in classrooms. The first one is called The Magical Yet and the other one is called My Wild First Day of School. The one is about the power of yet and is a great book to read and discuss growth mindset. And the author is a MA resident! The other book is actually written by a social media friend of mine named Dennis Matthew. He is an SLP who started publishing children's books. This funny book features all different animals talking about how they are going to be themselves and celebrate their strengths on the first day of school. This weekend I started reading a great book full of stories about connecting with others called Nice Bike.
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