Celebrating MRA!! - SOL, March 15

Since this is a celebration, I will be cross-posting to Celebrate Saturday and Slice of Life Challenge today.

I am soooo celebrating my decision to come to MRA this year for many reasons, of which I will share some snippets.

1.  #CarPD just never gets old.  Even when stuck in a traffic jam that had us creep 4 miles in 1 hour, the conversations in the car pushed my thinking about life and the profession I love.

2.  Starting the day with Jeff Anderson, author of 10 Things Every Writer Should Know.  If you have never heard Jeff present, you are missing an action-packed ride full of music, humor, grammar instruction, and a passion for teaching children.  Who knew commas could be such a riveting topic?!

3. Our Keynote speaker today was R.J. Palacio, the brilliant author of Wonder.  First she talked about the seeds for Wonder, and then she brought the crowd to tears by sharing all the ways the concept of "choose kind" has spread across the globe.  What an incredible woman and book!

4. Listening to the brilliance of Troy Hicks just never gets old.  Today, he had with him the co-author of their latest book, Create, Compose Connect - Jeremy Hyler.  A fascinating look at persuasion, argument, and summary writing using digital tools.  Will be investigating mindmeister.com closely soon - its synchronicity to Google Docs is amazing.

5. The last session of today was with Kristin Ziemke, coauthor of Connecting Comprehension and Technology.  As she shared the work she is doing with thinking, reading, writing, composing, and communicating using technology with 33 first grade students and no aide, I was in awe.  She shared many things that would work wonderfully in our 5th grade classroom as well.

6.  There is a cute boutique in our hotel.  After that last session, there were a few fun purchases made by all of us.  Retail therapy when you don't need the therapy is the best kind of all!

7. As soon as I am done typing, I am headed to a Nerdy Book Club dinner, followed by a Nerdy Book Club party.  I will be surrounded by people who came to a conference to refine their teaching and want to talk books.  As Donalyn Miller would say, "These are my people!"

Head on over to Two Writing Teachers blog to read other slices.  Thanks to that incredible team for hosting the Slice of Life Challenge this month.

And for more celebrations, head over to Ruth's blog to celebrate!!