Thoughts From the West

Twenty five of us arrive at varying times prior to 8:30 a.m. and find our seats at round tables.  We introduce ourselves to each other and discuss breakfast and coffee and the location of the nearest Starbucks.  I arrive promptly at 8:20 a.m. and prep my space.  My computer is open to the advance material sent out last week.  I have my pen and journal in my lap.  My phone is on silent. I slept well. I'm ready to learn about a topic of interest and a topic of need to my development as a teacher. The presenter places a large pile of handouts in the middle of the table.  There are three and one is stapled and quite thick.  We have two hours together so I begin to wonder what is ahead.  I leaf through the handouts and I'm surprised to see how dense they are.  These are set aside for later reading. The presenter begins at 8:31 a.m.  Good, he's prompt and serious about following the schedule.  He puts up his first slide.  It is w...

We all do it---Lament the scarcity of time.  I have been feeling the crunch lately with being away from home and off of a normal schedule.  I lug bags of books and notebooks with me everywhere and then I get busy with the tasks at hand and don't even look at them.  I have a project looming and I try to squeeze in a few minutes here and there lately to keep my momentum.  I've been really beating myself up lately for not using my time wisely. Today I sat in an airport with time on my hands as I waited to board a flight for Texas for a conference.  I chose to take that time to reflect.  I decided I have to cut myself slack.  I've been using my time lately for working with my writing family and my leadership team on our summer invitational leadership institute.  I've been using my time to hike and listen to podcasts and I've learned so much about the world around me through them.  Yesterday I spent the day with my husband and attended a concert...

This week's Wyoming Writing Project adventures have brought us to Evanston, Wyoming. Our institute work today centered on the assessment of writing.  The elementary teaching participants are reading Joy Write by Ralph Fletcher.  We all long for what he calls "greenbelt writing" in our teaching spaces.  It's writing that goes off the path and is wild and free.  We want to gift our students with this type of writing and allow it to build their confidence and creativity.  In our romantic notions we hope they discover an inner author and fall in love with the written word.  In our reality we hope we at least demonstrate to them the power of words and the need for clear written communication in life. We talk often about building in daily free writing time, privileging all types of writing in our classrooms, journaling, sharing, conferencing, talking about and with authors, publishing creative works, integrating content area writing, and modeling our own writing...

I am in Wheatland, Wyoming, with my writing family.  Today we had difficult deep discussions about motivation and assessment and what makes Professional Development for teachers valuable and not so valuable.  We started the day writing a poem guided by the digits in our phone number.  We ended the day with a writing marathon and a meal together.  Tomorrow we will welcome teachers for a day of professional development offered by teachers for teachers.  No "sit and get"- this is down and dirty PD with practical application to take back to the classroom.  Tomorrow some of our participants will present PD to their colleagues for the very first time.  I love watching that happen.  Tomorrow our future teacher leaders are born. Wheatland is home to me.  I moved to Wyoming at the beginning of eighth grade.  It's where i met my dearest friend.  It's where I met my husband.  It holds so many memories.   Most of these memories are ...

This week I met the newest members of my writing family.  We spent two days in Casper, Wyoming, getting acquainted as the Wyoming Writing Project Invitational Leadership Institute kicked off for Summer 2017.  This is the third summer I've spent learning more about myself as a writer and pondering ways to improve teaching writing in classrooms.  It is not work though I suppose it is technically part of my position as Co-Director.  It feels very much like a retreat with friends. Last year we tried a new approach to the Invitational Institute.  Normally, these institute activities are three weeks of face to face professional development with K-12 teachers.  Wyoming is a vast geographical area and our top notch teachers wanting to improve writing instruction are also those who work on so many other summer things for both work and family.  Asking them to be on campus in Laramie is difficult and not cost effective.  We decided to plan a hybrid institu...