It is that time of year again… No, not the holidays! It is time to start thinking about the Summer Institute. (Well, truth be told, I think Gretchen thinks about it all year long! But the rest of us probably don’t!) Here is the brochure for the 2010 Summer Institute with the application form. Be sure to let good candidates for it know they can find it here!
I have been remiss in posting her lately. I am sorry! But I want to make up for it by cross-posting some of what I wrote on my blog here.
A highlight for me was, as you might expect, to hear Billy Collins read some of his poetry. If I had ever heard poetry like his when I was a kid, I would have loved poetry instead of hating it! His poems are wonderful, of course, but his deadpan delivery was hysterical. I haven’t laughed that much in a long time. …
I attended sessions on developing a web presence, on living and learning with new media, on teaching the new writing, and on language and dialect diversity in the writing classroom. All four were great. The one on teaching the new writing really made me think about how I am teaching writing — and reading and everything else. I have seen my students respond to posting on their blogs this semester. I want to do more of that next semester. But I want to move beyond that, too. After that session I went to the one on new media, where we looked at how young people use media and where learning takes place there. This got me thinking about providing my students with a way to really go deeply into a subject that they are interested in, to “geek out” as the paper we read talked about. I don’t think I can do it for spring, but I want to try to pull something together for summer. It could be very interesting. …
I really did come home refreshed and rejuvenated. And brimming with ideas for the work I do for the writing project here in New Mexico and the work I do in my classroom. I can’t wait till next year!
We had another wonderful writing adventure on Saturday at the Java Loft in Clovis. It was another small group, but we had a great time!
We wrote again to prompts from Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away. We did 3-minute writes on the following:
- a time I was in trouble in class
- how I first learned to read
- how to do something (We had to teach someone something, not talk about teaching.)
- how I feel about math
- details about an uncle or a grandfather
Our “homework” is to expand one of these writes.
We invite anyone who is interested to join us on November 14 at 10am at the Java Loft in Clovis for the next writing marathon. I guarantee you will have a good time!
We have gotten the HPWP pages up and running on the ENMU website. It is a work in progress, so please bear with us. This move from the old website at geocities was made necessary by the fact that geocities is supposed to shut down this fall. Now that the basic information has been moved the the new website, we can concentrate on filling in the gaps and making it look prettier! Stop by and check it out!
I can’t believe it has been a week already since the marathon! There were four of us, and we did a neat series of quickwrites from Natalie Goldberg’s Old Friend from Far Away. These were 3-minute rememberings. It was amazing what we could remember in such a short period of time. Fo the next marathon October 10, we ae supposed to bring one of these quickwrites expanded in some way.
If you would like to try this with us, these were the prompts:
- a memory of your mother, grandmother or aunt
- a memory of the color red (You weren’t to use the word “red” much — just write about something that is red.)
- a memory of a sound
- a memory of an elementary school teacher
- a memory of a favorite meal
- a memory of rain (It could be something that happened while it was raining. Rain doesn’t have to be the main topic.)
- a list of ten smells
This was really a lot of fun when we did it in the group. I think expanding one of these for next month will be fun, too. If you want to try it and can’t join us at the Java Loft in Clovis on Saturday 10/10 at 10am, why not upload your writing here as a comment?
The second issue of the HPWP e-zine was published today. It includes pieces by Cheryl Cunningham, Nell Jones, Nancy McKeand, Gretchen Phillips, Shelley Rubinstein, and Dee Washburn. There is also a book chapter by AZ Sandoval, pen name for an HPWP fellow who now lives in Alaska! It is quite a mixed bag this time.
After you check out the ezine, won’t you think about sending me something for the next issue? See submission guidelines on the e-zine site for details.
I hope everyone’s school year has gotten off to a good start. I just want to let everyone know some of the great things that are happening this fall:
- Writing Marathon in Clovis – Sept 12. – contact Nell
- Leadership meeting in Roswell, late because of the Labor day weekend, Sept 12.
- “Recruiting” of writing from Roswell citizens for publication on the NCTE on-line Gallery of Writing for the RoswellWrites local partner gallery, contact hhuckabee@msn.com for more info.
- Roswell Reads Kickoff Sept 15 at the Roswell Convention Center. For more information on any of the Roswell Reads events, contact Liz Boese at boese@nmmi.edu
- Book Group in Roswell, September 17 @6:30 Not of This World Cafe, contact mbalderrama@risd.k12.nm.us or sackerman@risd.k12.nm.us We are reading Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish, one of the Roswell Reads selections this year.
- Teacher Workshops integrating literacy into content area classes (part of Roswell Reads) September 26th at NMMI Daniels Center led by HPWP fellows.
- Memoir Workshops (part of Roswell Reads) Sept 26th, Oct. 3, Oct. 10. led by LTC Eva McCollaum, fellow BWP
- Open Panel Discussion over the Dust Bowl, Sept 29, at the Roswell Public Library
- Dramatic performance of a two-act play based on The Grapes of Wrath on Sunday Oct 4 at NMMI Pearson auditorium (directed by HPWP fellow Natalie Stewart-Smith).
- Movie The Grapes of Wrath shown Oct 13th, NMMI Mabee Hall, October 13, 7-9:30.
- Book Group in Roswell, October 15th, Not of This World Cafe, 6:30 PM. October’s book is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.
- Celebration of National Day of Writing October 20th, NMMI Daniels leadership center.
- New Mexico Council of Teachers of English Conference in Carlsbad, October 16 & 17.
- Annual NWP meetings in Philadelphia, November 19, 20.
I am also working through the GEAR UP program on the Roswell Campus of ENMUR to present two series of workshops (4 in Sept. at Roswell High and 4 in October at Dexter High) for teachers addressing Writing Across the Curriculum.
The leadership team has pulled together numbers for me to collate and report to our NWP site profile this month, and our graduate assistant, HPWP fellow Robin Billington, and I are working to pull together budget figures for the report due at the end of September.
We are a busy site! I hope I haven’t neglected anyone in this brief review of the fall; if so, get on-line and let us know what you are doing with HPWP fellows in your area or at your school. We want to hear from you.
Annemarie
As we talked about last week, Donald Murray thought that the rules he was taught in school about writing did not help him to write. He advocated unlearning those rules. He does not, however, blame his teachers for teaching him those rules. He says on p12 of Write to Learn:
My teachers were well-intentioned but they were readers who did not write themselves.
This brings to mind a number of topics for writing and thinking. Choose one of these and write about it this week. As always, we would love to read your thoughts, posted as a comment on this post.
- Are you a writer or a reader who does not write?
- Is it important that teachers write themselves? Why or why not?
- What would you like to do differently — either in terms of your own writing or teaching writing? What obstacles do you need to overcome?
In Write to Learn (p12), Donald Murray talks about the rules for writing he was taught in school. He says,”They were absolute, unquestioned, always followed by the writers we studied.” He says they were “guaranteed to produce ineffective and graceless writing,” and he advocates “unlearning” those rules.
What rules have you been taught about writing? What kind of writing do they produce? Maybe more importantly, what rules for writing do you teach?
Please write about this topic in the coming week. You may post your thoughts about it here as a comment if you like.
