When to Sleep, When to Write - #SOL March 5

It's March and time for the Slice of Life Challenge! Thanks so much to the entire crew at Two Writing Teachers for organizing and hosting this massive event! You are all rock stars!

I'm excited to be part of the Challenge again this year. As I continue to tap into "joy" as the motivation for my writing, I am also tracking the territories about which I tend to write (and sometimes intertwine). Current writing territories are teaching, family, friends, travel, working with a personal trainer. Today my territory is about the quirks of being me. ;)

So many friends have posted during this Challenge how they get up early in the morning to do their writing while no one else is around. By getting up early, it appeared that their houses were quiet, and they had their words and thoughts all to themselves as they composed for the day. 

The descriptions of peaceful writing (some even had posted pictures) - this was too good to pass up. I wanted to try to create the same writing atmosphere for myself that existed for others. Something I already knew about myself as a writer is that I need a quiet space for thinking, writing, and contemplation. I can't write with lots of other activity or noise in the house. Early mornings might just be the answer.

With that in mind, this past Wednesday, I set my alarm an hour earlier than usual: 

Alarm blares; my hand tries to smack it into submission

Roll out of bed

Stumble to the bathroom to find my robe

Eyes are only opened to slits

Hair sticks up every which way

Decide it's not worth trying to tame

Drool marks on both sides of my chin

Head downstairs

Open my laptop

Settle into my comfy writing corner

Begin to type

Startled awake when I hear a toilet flush upstairs

Realize there is fresh drool on my keyboard

and 15 minutes have passed since I came downstairs

Only a title for my #SOL and 1 word in the body

(did I mention some drool on the keyboard, too?)

Groggily shake my head

and begin to type again

A few paragraphs and ideas emerge

but at a start and stop, start and stop rate

And the clock tells me it's time to get ready for school

Reread my draft during my lunch break

and begin to laugh

Have to revise - basically rewrite the entire thing

Boy, am I glad I got up so early!

Moral of story: Embrace who you are as a writer. Also, try not to drool on your keyboard when typing.

A Really Good Workout - #SOL March 3

Wow! Another March, another Slice of Life Challenge! Thanks so much to the entire crew at Two Writing Teachers for organizing and hosting this massive event! You are all rock stars!

I'm excited to be part of the Challenge again this year. As I continue to tap into "joy" as the motivation for my writing, I am also tracking the territories about which I tend to write (and sometimes intertwine). Current writing territories are teaching, family, friends, travel. Today is a new writing territory for me I'm beginning to explore -- working with a personal trainer.


I love my time with my personal trainer, Tami. Though I did tell her recently, if we only did the 'stuff' I truly enjoy, we could be done in about 10 - 15 minutes as opposed to the 75 minutes of our typical session. After her initial burst of laughter, Tami told me she considered that comment a compliment, and was a good indicator she was really doing her job.

In all seriousness, I know that to be a stronger, more fit person, I will have to do some things that are uncomfortable along the way, as some of my muscles have not had a really good workout in years. For most workouts, the training is arduous at times, but two weeks ago, everything I was asked to do really just flowed. I was able to attack each repetition with arms, legs, and core muscles with power and energy. More weight was added and more repetitions were accomplished. My workout was lifted to a new level.

"I love the strength you are showing today, Karen. I always know when someone is having a breakthrough workout when working with them really makes me want to attack my own workout."

What powerful words to say to someone trying hard to achieve some personal health goals, and that statement has stuck with me. In fact, I have actually considered Tami's words in my job as a literacy coach. Once in a while, when it is the move that would help scaffold learning and instruction, I will take colleagues to visit some of the collaborative classrooms in our district. The visits allow us to observe workshop components, conferring and questioning practices, formative assessment, the community of the classroom, and much more.

Since Tami spoke those words to me, I have facilitated two classroom visitations with different groups of colleagues. On both occasions, I experienced the same emotion Tami mentioned after watching these reflective teachers at work with their community of students. In both instances, I left wanting to jump back in the classroom and try some of the things I had observed with my own students. The reality is that I do not have my own classroom, however the feeling of wanting to try out some new learning and reflecting was strong.

Tami is right - when there is a 'breakthrough session', whether in personal training or a reading workshop visitation, it leaves you with a strong craving to reproduce the same thing.

And so it begins! (#SOL Challenge 2016)

Wow! Another March, another Slice of Life Challenge! Thanks so much to the entire crew at Two Writing Teachers for organizing and hosting this massive event! You are all rock stars!

As the Slice of Life Challenge begins for 2016, I am working toward a slightly different challenge this month than many of the participants. It is not my goal to write each and every day. Rather, it is my goal to write posts that are meaningful to me, posts that give me joy, or have caused me to be reflective about a topic.

My writing group met at my house a week ago today, and I had been dreading it. Our group originally  organized after attending a writing retreat together several years ago; we were so excited about the community of writing, sharing, and reflection we had created at the retreat, we decided to try and replicate that energy once we got home.

And so our writing group took root. As with many lofty plans, we had several stops and starts before finally getting off the ground on a regular basis in the last 18 months. But, even though the group was gathering, and I loved the company of these smart writers and thinkers, I just couldn't get inspired about any specific piece that I might want to write and submit for publication. So, while others were quite industrious, I tried to come prepared with a plan for writing, but lost steam part-way through the writing time. Uninspired might be too kind of a word for my writing.

That is, until last week. Prior to that writing group, I reflected a great deal on who I was as a writer, and realized that, because I was so busy trying to write something that someone else would like and then publish, I had lost my voice. Changes needed to happen.

During my reflection, I asked myself the million dollar question: "Why do I write?" And I realized the answer was to please others, not myself. So, last week I spent my time at writers' group doing the following two things for myself:

1. Took the time to go to Slicers' posts and responded thoughtfully on at least 15 of them / became part of that community again.
2. Started a new writer's notebook, where with my favorite #2 Ticonderoga pencil, I began to sketch out possible topics for the Slice of Life Challenge.

With these two goals, the darnedest thing happened! The joy of writing came back, and words and ideas began to flow onto the pages of my writer's notebook and into my commenting. I felt happy, and that feeling proceeded to lift up my words and ideas.

After about 30 minutes of brainstorming, the next breakthrough happened. The writer's block because I thought I had lost my voice - it disappeared! Out came my professional writing notebook, and more ideas flowed into that notebook.

Joy - that was the missing piece, and once the joy was back in my writing, the block lifted and words appeared. I can't wait to see what's next for me as a writer!

I am hoping that many of you feel joy as you work through the Challenge this March. Best of luck to all!

#IMWAYR - Feb. 29

A huge thanks to Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers for hosting us for the kidlit version of #IMWAYR!!

Every Day Birds by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater is a lovely and informational book about birds Amy notices every day. I was fortunate enough to pick this up a week ago at the Dublin Literacy Conference, a few days before its "official" birthday. I am mesmerized by both its colorfulness and its simplicity. Every Day Birds will be a great mentor text for young writers - choosing something you see every day, and expanding thinking around it. The words Amy chooses are lyrical, and though not positioned in a way that the reader can see, if they pay attention to the "sound" of the words, the reader will notice the rhyming pattern. I love how Amy put the words and lines altogether in the back  of the book so that the reader can visualize the rhyming pattern and see the individual pages as belonging together as one poem.

Another purchase on the day of the Dublin Literacy Conference was Egg: Nature's Perfect Package by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. I love everything on which this husband/wife team choose to collaborate. Egg is no exception! Another great mentor text to have in the classroom. It is a wonderful book for students who love life science and animals. It is a great mentor for main idea, key details, informational text features, and informational text structures, just to name a few. I love this book, because just like many others they have written for children, I find that I learn many new things about animals myself!!

I'm glad to be back in the reading community on Mondays. Really looking forward to what others are reading! 

#Celebrate! - Feb. 27, 2016

How fortunate we are to have this community of celebration on Saturdays. Thanks so much to Ruth at Ruth Ayres Writes for hosting our celebrations each week!

I am celebrating several things this week:

Last Saturday was the 2016 Dublin Literacy Conference. There was much new and revised learning to process from Kylene Beers, Bob Probst, Kristin Ziemke, and Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, to mention just a few. All of that learning, and revision of learning, has really helped move my art of teaching and coaching as I worked beside teachers this week, and that is a celebration.

Another huge part of the conference for me was the session in which I presented. We spoke to a packed house of 100+ educators, but my real celebration surrounds the two teachers that presented with me - Brittany and Nikki. Our group shared about formative assessment in the reading workshop, and they brought a wide variety of real-life classroom examples that showed the ease of daily formative assessment, as well as telling the stories of how that real-time data helped guide their instruction. They were pros and I am so delighted to be their colleague/coach!

This past Tuesday night, my writing group met at my house. There were six of us present this week. We have a rhythm for our meetings, and this week was no different. We gathered in the kitchen until almost everyone was present. Then, we gathered at the dining room table to eat, catch up on lives, reflect on #Dublit16, and converse around a wide variety of topics. We finished our meal and conversation and proceeded to savor whatever mystery dessert our group baker, Mandy, had decided to bring. This week, she made a delicious chess pie. Finally, after the well-satisfied moans and groans from the delicious dessert, we all scattered, and found our nooks and crannies where we chose to write for a period of time. Our final gathering occurred to celebrate the writing we had done, and also ask for feedback. What a celebration to be with these incredibly smart educators who also happen to write and be reflective!

Finally I am celebrating that this is a typical Saturday, which means in 30 minutes, I will be leaving to work with my personal trainer, Tami. Our time together is generally 75 minutes; sixty of those minutes are spent on strength training of various body parts as well as light cardio. The last minutes are spent with Tami doing some static stretches of my legs and chest, and then she follows that with a head, neck, or leg message (and yes, it is as wonderful as it sounds!). I always leave Tami feeling stronger, more powerful, and more centered. Most definitely a celebration I don't take for granted!

I hope you have had some celebrations this week as well. Happy weekend!

Connections and Community - #SOL 2/23/16

A huge thank you to all the contributors for Two Writing Teachers for continually supporting a community of writers, by encouraging us to share a slice of our lives each and every Tuesday throughout the year (and pretty soon, each day of March)!!

Community -- I think this is a word I will exploring for quite some time. I feel like it is going to become one of my new "writing territories."

This past weekend, I was blessed to be part of a community of learners at the Dublin Literacy Conference. All the energy and learning that took place that day was phenomenal (but that is a post for another day)!!

One of the many highlights of the #DubLit16 was gathering with friends for book browsing and dinner after the conference. Both Central Ohio friends, as well as friends who had traveled from Maine, New Jersey, and Tennessee gathered at a wonderful local restaurant for great food and stimulating conversation. We were seated at a long table, and I found myself sitting across from Tara Smith and Julie Johnson.

Our conversation was lively, hitting on many topics. But at one point, the conversation came around to Slice of Life, and with that conversation came a big "Aha!" moment for me. As Julie and Tara talked, it became vividly apparent that the two of them knew other slicers quite well. Over many weeks and years of reading their slices, these ladies were invested in others' life stories and their well-being.

And there was the "Aha!" for me -- they knew these stories so well because they were active participants in the community. For people who belong to any type of community, this will probably not be as big a surprise to you as it was for me. What you get from a community is only as rich as what you contribute. Ohhhhhh.....

This was the piece I was missing.  I would contribute to Slice of Life Tuesdays on a very irregular basis, and then found it easy to drop when life got in the way. But... if I became a more active participant in this community - not just sharing my post, but reading and responding to others - I might realize as Julie and Tara already have, that this community is one in which I want to fully participate and be a good citizen.

So, beginning today, I will begin posting Slices again. And, I will be reading others' slices and leaving comments for them.  As the March Slice of Life Challenge approaches, my challenge to myself is not to post each and every day, but to do so more often, and not just wait for people to come to me and leave comments, but to reach out to others as well.

Community will take on a new meaning for me.

Celebrate! - Jan. 2, 2016

Thanks so much to Ruth for creating a community that celebrates together (even if some of us only show up sporadically).

The past 13 months, have been an emotional roller coaster for me. Losing Mom last December and Dad dying just this past July. One daughter flying from the central Ohio nest to live in Nashville, the other daughter finding her way back to central Ohio. An amazing family trip to Jackson, Wyoming this summer that allowed me to indulge in some old memories of when I lived there for a year and create a whole bunch of new memories with my family. A lovely trip to Hilton Head in the spring with my husband. An incredibly rejuvenating trip to NCTE in Minneapolis.

It's been a year of ups and downs, and sometimes, just finding myself unaware of what was coming next.

So, with that thought in mind, I have decided on my #OLW for 2016 - savor.

I plan to savor the expected, and unexpected moments around me this year:
family, friends, professional learning opportunities, trips and vacations, food,  books,  exercise.

I realize that life itself is meant to be savored, so I could continue with this list.  But, for now, I am planning to savor the company of old friends this evening and spending time with my oldest daughter this afternoon. My hope that living in the moment and savoring the expected, and unexpected, allows for 2016 to be a year I lead with my heart.

Happy New Year to all!