Workshop in Portales

Back in October Annemarie brought up the idea of doing a workshop in Portales. Before Nell and I got home from Roswell that day, we had most of it planned! We were excited!

Well, February 19th was the magic day. We had arranged to hold it in Victory Life Coffee House in Portales. We invited Portales teachers and, when they did not fill all the spots we had available, we extended it to Floyd and Tucumcari.

The day consisted of three presentations:

• Writing to Read: Reading the Research
• What Does Writing Look Like Today?
• What Can I Do on Monday?

I admit to doing the first presentation on research.  I tried to follow the Writing Project model and had participants read and discuss and write about the Carnegie Corporation report Writing to Read.  It went pretty well, I think.  I had more activities than time, I’m afraid.

Leslie and Cynthia made the second presentation, and they did a great job.   Their enthusiasm for writing and getting students to write, coupled with the examples of student work and the activities they had us engage in, really got people excited.   We drew shells and wrote poems and had a great time!

Dee made the final presentation, and it was especially meaningful to the teachers because she is one of their own.  She knows the curriculum they are forced to teach, and she was able to provide real insights into how to incorporate more writing into any  class — in spite of the curriculum but not in opposition to it.

There were not as many people present as we had anticipated or hoped, but it was a wonderful day nonetheless.  My thanks to Annemarie for making it possible and to Nell and the other presenters for making it a truly memorable day!

 

Reading its own reward?

That’s what Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer said in her address to the NWP Annual Meeting.  I meant to write about this earlier, but it wasn’t until I read Bud Hunt’s post here that I remembered it.

Bud writes:

Donalyn was asked about her students’ reading. “Your students,” the inquirer asked, “read fifty books a year without any rewards or incentives?”

Donalyn replied, “Isn’t reading its own reward?”

Bud goes on to say something very important:

Yes. It is. The reading of the book, the mastering of the text, the enjoyment of the story. #

That’s the reward. That’s the prize. That’s the incentive. That’s what gets folks to put down one book, and pick up the next one. #

We don’t need stickers, or points, or prizes. Just good books, thoughtful people who know their students to read and recommend to them, and students willing to explore the world through writing. #

So let’s spend less time with systems that add to the mess, and distract from the books. Okay? #

What else is there to say?

If you don’t read Bud’s blog, you should.  He is a Writing Project person from Colorado with a lot of good things to say.

 

 

Greetings from the Annual Meeting!

It has, as always, been a wonderful trip to the annual meeting.  We all attended wonderful sessions and got many new ideas for how to improve our practice and our site.

I hope we will have little reports here from those of us who attended once we get home and have a chance to  process it all.  For now, though, just know that we wish you could have been here and learned from all the wonderful writing project teachers we did. It is a wonderful experience!

 

 

Writing in Portales

A group of us are getting together every Monday at Victory Life Coffee Shop on 18th Street to write and talk about our writing.  We hope to work on real writing projects, both writing them and getting feedback.  If you don’t have any writing you are currently writing on, we can give you some ideas to get you going.

We plan to meet from about 3:30 to 5:00 or so.  Feel free to come late or leave early if your schedule demands it.

Won’t you join us?

 

Thinking ahead

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!

 

Annual Meeting

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!

 

Busy fall schedules

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

 

Writing marathon in Clovis

We had a wonderful day of writing in Clovis today.  The turnout was small (four adults and one young man), but it was wonderful to get together and write.  The day started with a gathering at the Java Loft in Clovis.  There was a lot of excitement because there was a job fair in the little shopping area that houses Java Loft, and one of the radio station was covering that. We managed to write and read in spite of all the commotion!

After writing there, we moved on to a watercolor exhibit at Clovis Community College.  Nell had arranged for them, to open the gallery for us.  The exhibit contained many paintings of trains and the men who work on trains.  There were other subjects as well, of course, butI was partial to the trains!  We looked around and then wrote, spending about 50 minutes there in all.

Next stop was the Model Train Museum in Clovis.  This was an interesting place to go.  While there wasn’t really any place for us to sit and write, it provided us with plenty to write about when we went to lunch.

We wrote and then ate.  We talked and read what we had written.  And then, of course, we talked some more!

We would invite you to join us next month on July 11th when we will hold the next marathon.  We are thinking about going to the zoo to write!