Now What?

So what now? The Eastern Michigan Writing Project summer institute comes to an end on Friday. By lunch time today, our ePortfolios will be completed. Tomorrow we celebrate our accomplishments during the institute with administrators from our districts over lunch. On Friday we pack up our space at the Student Center on the campus of Eastern Michigan University, where we have lived as a learning and writing community for the last 5 weeks. Then we will head to a local pub to share our writing and how we have evolved as Teacher-Writers, Teacher-Consultants, Teacher-Researchers, and friends. I predict that there will be much hugging, blubbering, and loud laughing. Actually, I started the waterworks last week. It isn't that I mourn the end of the institute because there is no way I could maintain the level of intense learning for too much longer.  My tearing up is more about catharsis. I was carrying around more baggage about myself as a learner and a professional than I ever realized. I will also miss seeing my friends' faces and hearing their laughter and stories everyday. The summer institute opened me up to new possibilities that fed my brain and my teacher soul and will be able to help sustain me professionally and personally for many years to come. I'm not ready to quit teaching yet. I wouldn't have said that a month ago.

Poem-ify

As part of my demonstration lesson on "Hand" Writing last Thursday, I asked the observing teachers at the EMWP Summer Institute to fill out a reflection chart based on a draft of their own "hand" writing that they had produced during the session. They were asked to write their favorite sentence, phrase, and word from their draft and also a possible title for their piece on the chart. I wanted to experiment with ways to create poetry with their "hand" writing snippets. I printed their words from the charts onto business cards. Then I attached the printed business cards onto adhesive backed business card magnets. The words, phrases, and stanzas were cut apart and placed on a large magnetic white board. Then I began to play with the arrangement and spacing of the words. My thought was that it would be an interesting way to show revision as the adding, taking away, or rearranging of text. I'm also thinking about how I might use this process to poem-ify content area texts. I plan on sharing this idea with my colleagues at EMWP on Monday.

Writing In My Head

Images collected from the
Writing Marathon.

I'm trying to process why the EMWP Writing Marathon on Friday won't leave my brain. Why was it so powerful? At each stop along our journey, my course was the same: walking, looking, snapping pictures, then writing. I didn't write a tremendous amount. I had lists, paragraphs, thoughts, words, and noticings. After trekking across Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, my group met our other EMWP compatriots for food and sharing at a local pub. At that point I became aware of my mental and physical fatigue. After all, I had just finished a marathon, right? As I ate, I was aware of the layers of conversation around me and felt comfortable just listening. I was struck by how the intensity of the experience had bonded us together as a community. When the group gathered to share a piece of their writing from the day, I listened. I didn't share anything, which is unusual for me. I kept thinking about writer's workshop in classrooms I've worked in and remembering those kids who chose not to share. But why didn't I share? I could blame it on tiredness, which was authentic, but there was something else. Was that something else the same feeling that kids experience when they don't want to share? I learned much about myself on Friday. One clear insight was the amount of writing I do in my head before I put words on   paper--much more than I ever realized.

Field Trip!

The first day of the EMWP summer institute felt right. My brain was exhausted and my heart inspired. Today we will be writing all day around the immediate area of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. I have my teacher-writer bag packed with essentials: mechanical pencils, pens, paper, sticky notes, writer's notebook, iPad, digital camera, Clif Bars, and coffee money. I'm also bringing along Carl Anderson, Peter Johnston, and Jeff Anderson--not the actual people, but wouldn't that be amazing? I'm bringing, How's it Going?, Choice Words, and Mechanically Inclined. Partly because they aren't terribly heavy and partly because as I was building my demonstration lesson, I noticed the heavy influence of these teacher-writers on my own thinking and teaching. During this day of writing, I plan to spend time reading, reflecting, and writing to find the connections between their work and my work. I feel goofy like a 3rd grader all geeked-up for a school field trip.

Demonstration Lesson Worries

This Thursday marks the first day of the Eastern Michigan Writing Project Summer Institute 2013. Since I present my demonstration lesson on June 27th, I've been spending many hours. building and revising my lesson. Even though I have presented in front of teachers countless times, this feels different. Most of my presenting has been with elementary teachers. Looking through the participant list, the institute teachers and facilitators are primarily middle school, high school, and college. There are only three other people, other than me that teach in elementary. And of those three, only two focus on lower elementary grades.  I'm not sure if any of the participants are special educators either. Being a speech therapist, I am a complete oddball. I am finding it hard to put myself in the shoes of my audience. The lesson that I am drawing my demonstration from was taught to K-2 children with speech and language impairments. I have no guess as to how my audience will respond. Will they be able to relate to my students or what it takes to support kids with writing at this age?

Going with Weebly

Audience and purpose. Audience and purpose. Audience and purpose. As I repeat those words in my head, I continue to wrestle with my demonstration lesson for EMWP. And I volunteered to present during the first week of class! Deadline, audience and purpose--and form, oh, geez, form. My EMWP group is not primarily elementary teachers (audience). These professionals come from KG through college (more audience). I need a way for this diverse group to see and hear my students--to hear what I hear when I teach. I am concerned that middle school, high school, and college level teachers may have difficulty visualizing how very young writers, writers with speech and language difficulties, navigate the writing process (audience and purpose). I also want to create a demonstration lesson presentation that is meaningful and useful for me (more purpose). I decided to go digital and create a Weebly site to house all of my information, references, audio clips, and photographs of student artifacts (form). I considered creating a PowerPoint and also played with Movie Maker and may include these pieces on the Weebly site as I continue my learning throughout this experience.

Screen shot of my Weebly site. Still in process but has to be ready soon!

Putting the Pieces Together

School was over last Friday. I am proud that I survived--barely. As I wrapped up my year with a flourish of IEP's and Medicaid billing, I also worked at creating and implementing a lesson that I could use as the required demonstration lesson for the Eastern Michigan Writing Project summer institute. With three weeks left in the school year, panic set in. What was I thinking? I was no longer a coach and I wasn't working in classrooms during writing workshop. I talked to a colleague who was more than willing to allow me to visit her class to teach some lessons, but I would have to cancel or reschedule my speech students. I might have been able to justify it if I had speech students in her classroom, but I didn't. For me to cancel students with IEP's to work with other children would be inappropriate and unprofessional. Rescheduling would have been a nightmare. Also, I knew I wanted to use bits and pieces of a previous lesson using "hands" as a topic for writing but my thinking about it was all over the place.  I had to find another way. I decided to teach the lessons to several speech and language impaired students on my caseload.  I'm not sure why I didn't think of it sooner.  The goals of the lesson matched nicely with many of my students' IEP objectives. One of the primary reasons I wanted to be a literacy coach was to assist children with language learning challenges to be successful in their classrooms. I wanted to study the oral language-reading-writing connection in the classroom rather than a therapy room. Now that I am back in speech, I have this opportunity to use my experiences with reading and writing workshops and my passion for literacy and apply that learning to how I provided speech and language therapy. It makes my brain both wired and tired trying to put the pieces together.

It's In My Blood

"I should be a teacher."

(silence)

"Oh, okay. How come?"

"Today in chemistry, I helped some kids understand some stuff. I explained how I think about the problems then showed them step-by-step. They took their quiz and Ace'd it. I mean, I know it would be harder with a bunch of kids but it felt good to help them. I mean, I really helped them do better on their quiz."

"It does feel good to make a difference, doesn't it? Yunno . . . if you want to help other people, there are lots of ways to do that, honey. You could be an engineer and help other people too."

"Yeah, but if I was a teacher, then I could coach too and help kids in and out of class."

"Yes, you could but you could be an engineer and be a coach."

"You sound like you don't want me to be a teacher. I know you work a lot Mom, but you always said that whatever I wanted to do when I grew up, I should find a way to help other people, right? Besides, teaching is in my blood."

He smirked at me like he had won an argument then opened the pantry looking for food. I watched my 16-year-old son locate an open bag of tortilla chips and retreat to the computer room. I didn't know if I should take his comments about becoming a teacher seriously or not. The week before, we had visited a college with a respected engineering program. As the professor described the various engineering majors, he also mentioned that they have a new teacher education program focused on STEM. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something flash over his face. I dismissed it at the time. Now mixed feelings of pride and dread swirled in my stomach. I hated feeling this way about my own profession. I would never discourage my son from pursuing his passion, if teaching became his passion, but . . . things are so different now.

Beat the Problem

I spent my spring break this year traveling to four different college campuses in three different states. We visited schools with mechanical engineering programs that were within driving distance of our home in southeast Michigan. As part of every visit, we got to peer inside classrooms. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see actual students learning from actual professors.  As we tromped through the buildings, I was struck by how many classrooms were intentionally designed to foster group collaboration. One institution had classrooms with microphones suspended above the group tables so that questions and problems could be monitored by the instructor and shared with the rest of the class. A flipped model of instruction was used whereby homework included 20 minute lectures and classwork was reserved for discussion and problem-solving. I wish I could have seen it all in action. What I kept hearing over and over was that in engineering, it was about trying to "beat the problem". And once you figured out how to beat one problem, you tried to beat another one. According to the professors, industry had communicated to the universities that what was needed in the world of a professional engineer was being able to effectively solve problems in a group.

I was thinking about what all of this had to do with teaching and assisting children who, for whatever reason, were struggling with reading, writing, and communicating. If I think of a learning objective as a problem to beat, this problem would have to be clearly identified along with the desired outcome. A deadline would be needed. Depending on the class, the students might have decided what problems that wanted to try to beat. The problem would need an authentic purpose. As part of the learning process, there would be demonstrations and presentations where process and learning were shared with others. To me, what I witnessed at the college level felt like a workshop model of instruction. It made me wonder about my own use of learning targets. Are the learning targets I use clear and measurable? Do these targets have an authentic purpose? Have I established a clear path for achieving the targets? Do my students have a choice about ways to achieve a target? It also made me think about how teachers work in teams to beat problems.

Thinking About Tomatoes

Spending the last few days navigating icy roads and lake effect snow in the Upper Peninsula has me thinking about tomatoes. Springtime below the bridge is coming soon. The wind is crisp but the sky is bright and blue. No buds in the yard to speak of and the grass is brown but at least it isn't covered in white. I'm not a real gardener--not like my dad. Anything that happens to survive in my patch of dirt is a bonus. I started out fairly dedicated last year but I ended up distracted by other responsibilities. Even though I neglected them terribly, my tomatoes grew in abundance.

Land of Snow

Happy Easter from Up North! When I first moved to Michigan from Ohio, I had no idea where "up north" was. I remember the kids at the school I worked at talked about going up north for the weekend. I had friends at work who had family cottages up north. Over the years I grew to understand what up north meant, at least I thought I did until we arrived in the land of snow, better known as Houghton, Michigan. There is still snow up to the first story windows of our motel. Supposedly, the Northern Lights can be seen most evenings. I've never been a fan of snow, mostly because I hate driving in it. But on our way here, drivers weren't in a hurry and didn't drive crazy like they do at home. Of course there isn't much traffic. I'm beginning to sense that the pace of life may be a bit different here than in suburban Detroit.

View from the first floor windows.

Posted with Blogsy

Spring Break Up North

Some people head south in search of warmth during spring break. The weather report for my vacation destination is 25 degrees, wind, and 50% chance of snow showers. My suitcase is packed with long underwear and wool sweaters. Since we haven't had many days over 40 degrees this spring, more wind and snow doesn't feel that much different. Seems like we don't even have much of spring any more. Temps hover around 40 and 50 degrees until May. Sometimes even Mother's Day is cold. Of course, I didn't grow up in Southeast Michigan. I grew up in Northwest Ohio. We had spring where I grew up. Little girls wore pastel dresses on Easter Sunday with just a sweater. We didn't have Easter egg hunts bundled up in parkas. In high school, I remember laying out in the sun during spring break. Maybe my spring break memories are simply selective.

Reflection Friday

First day of my spring break. Only a few more days left of the TWT 2013 SOL challenge. This is my third year participating and each year has been different. Every March brought different roadblocks. Most of the bumps were related to time. My writing process for posting has evolved in three years. I still have days when only paper and pencil will do to help me get going. Other times, I just lay down the words in a draft post in Blogger then let them alone for a while. I tend to keep numerous in-process posts. The one thing that hasn't change is my interest in adding images to posts. Images are important to me. I usually create my own. I still enjoy playing and editing my photos and if I use my own, I don't have to worry that I am violating copy write laws. My favorite editing tools are currently Picasa, Ribbet, PicMonkey, and BeFunky.

My Rotini Girl image was edited with BeFunky. 

Thankful Thursday

Not Rejected

I found myself checking my email every time I heard it ding today. The message I was waiting for came at 1:18 this afternoon. I got accepted to attend the Eastern Michigan Writing Project Summer Institute and I couldn't be happier. After I applied, I only told one friend at school. I didn't want to feel like a dork, in case I got rejected.  I wonder if they have ever had a speech-language pathologist as a participant before. The more I think about it, the more excited I get. I really needed this.

@emwptc Looking forward to the Summer Institute! #EMWP
— Diana Martin (@diana1litcoach) March 27, 2013

Tech Tuesday: 200 Tweets

This year, after I post and link to the Two Writing Teachers blog, I tweet my post using the hashtag #slice2013. I've been slowly learning how to use Twitter since last year. For the first six months I had a Twitter account, I just understand it. I didn't know what to tweet or who to follow or why I should even want to follow anyone. Little by little I started following authors and other teachers and professional organizations I was interested in. I also found other teachers from the Two Writing Teachers community and started following them. Stacey wrote a while ago that she reached over 1000 tweets. I'm not even close to that. For me, 200 felt like a major milestone. I anticipate that I will be using Twitter more and more. My favorite thing to do is follow hashtags associated with conferences. For example, ASCD recently had a conference in Chicago. The hastag for tweets was #ascd13. I wasn't able to go to the conference but many of the teachers I follow attended and tweeted their new learning or inspiring quotes from sessions. Some presenters even tweeted their PowerPoints and presentation packets. One of the speakers at ASCD was Maya Angelou. Through Nicholas Provenzano @thenerdyteacher, I was able to get a taste of what it must have been like to hear her tell a story. I think that is pretty neat.

We need more storytellers in the classroom. thenerdyteacher.com/2013/03/storyt… #ASCD13 #MACUL13
— Nicholas Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher) March 20, 2013

Picture Book Addiction

I wasn't going to do it but I couldn't resist. I told myself I didn't need more books but walking by the book fair at school numerous times a day was more than I could take. One of the books I purchased was, My Brave Year of Firsts by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell. I read the opening page and I was hooked.

The first time I rode a two-wheeler alone,
I crashed and my mom filmed it on her iPhone.
I crashed and I crashed. Dad ran out of steam.
He let go, I went straight.
Mom filmed as she screamed.

As I read, I laughed and memories of teaching my own kids to ride a bike flooded my head. As the title suggests, each page is a memory of a first time experience told from a child's point of view. I think this would be a great mentor text to spur writing from students of all grade levels. Below is my attempt at writing a "first" of my own using this book as a mentor text. Curtis and Cornell used rhyme throughout their book but I chose not to in my draft.

The first time I walked to school alone, I looked both ways before crossing at the corner. I stayed on the sidewalk, swinging my plaid Aladdin lunchbox the whole way. At the school entrance, I turned and waved to my mom as she crawled by in our station wagon.

Just Received My Spring Break Agenda

Can you tell that my husband is a
former Secret Service Agent? He still
gets a thrill out of planning logistics.

It is springtime in Michigan. The mornings are still frosty and the forecast for Monday includes three inches of snow. Normally a spring snow prediction would depress me but not this year. Snow or not, I just want a break. Even though we are not scheduled for vacation until the week following Easter, my husband has our time together all planned out. I received a typed copy of the itinerary yesterday. He gave me Good Friday off. Wasn't that nice of him? Then on Saturday we will begin our snowy trek to the Upper Peninsula to visit Michigan Tech, a college my son is considering attending. Church on Easter Sunday, followed by brunch. After our first college visit on Monday, we head to Ferris State. Our ETA (estimated time of arrival) back home will be late Tuesday. Wednesday is reserved for medical appointments. Thursday we travel to Indiana to visit Rose-Hulman then to Ohio Northern University on Friday. At each college visit, my husband has appointments arranged with football and track coaches. Normally I would recoil at the thought of spending days trapped in an SUV navigating the unpredictable spring weather in this area of the county. Not this time. I'm looking forward to spending this time with my son. The week after next will be a rare opportunity to stoke his excitement for the future and to quell fears about the unknown.

Song and Dance

Two hours and forty-five minutes of music, dance, drama, comedy, and costumes. I had never seen The Merry Widow before. I didn't expect to like it because it was an operetta. I was wrong. I am still humming the music and thinking about the powerful voices. Although my daughter did not perform, she choreographed the production. She began studying The Merry Widow in the fall, researching other productions and learning the story and the music. In January, rehearsals were in full swing. She used her young lifetime of training and experience to make everyone on stage look professional and natural. As I sat in my seat, taking in this wonderful experience, I could see evidence of my daughter's creative mark in scene after scene. She amazes me.

Reflection Friday

I used to think I looked pretty good in teal blue but evidently that is up for debate. I had three people yesterday ask me if I was feeling well. Was it my face, my eyes, or the way I was standing? Did I remember to put make-up on that morning? I thought I did. I'm long overdue for a dye job, that is for sure. I have gray threads popping up all over my part. I tried to get my teenage son to pluck some out the other day and after removing six silver springs, he handed me the tweezers and told me there were too many and he didn't have all day. I've tried to yank them myself but I couldn't see them to get a hold of them. It is time to look in the mirror, step back on the scale, and take a walk on the treadmill. Some new glasses wouldn't hurt either. Why is it so hard to make time to take care of myself?