Writing away the summer

This has been an exciting week as new the director of Warner's Genesee Valley Writing Project. I didn't know what to expect when I walked in on Tuesday. Having missed the June meeting, I worried a bit that the group had started to form and I was out of sync. MR and Jen have a lot of experience and they knew the majority of the fellows from last year. I had a combination of nervousness about meeting new people and excitement about getting back to my roots in writing. 

Wednesday I felt like I was more myself and that sense of self impacted my new and deepening relationship with the teachers. They are an interesting group of experienced professionals. All are committed to students and to high quality writing. I got really excited when we brainstormed their research projects. I loved seeing the intellectual excitement build as the possibilities opened up while we talked. We decided on three groups: 1) invention to production (sentence level composition); 2) a combination of students' lack of interest in writing and the future of literacy/digital literacies; and, 3) developing authentic, school-wide assessment. Trish came up with the "invention to production" phrase and we dubbed her our catch phrase expert. She came up with a similarly cool phrase during Tom's Haiku presentation yesterday.

I completely enjoyed the time to write. What a luxury! I decided earlier this year that I wanted to write a book about my son Marcus and our adventure together from diagnosis to residential placement to discharge. I planned to spend as much time as possible writing the various "episodes" of our story. I did write one episode but realized afterward that the emotion it takes to write this story has deeper consequences than I realized. Not sure where this journey will take me.

By Thursday, we had seen three demonstration lessons and gotten a sense of what lessons the fellows would do. MR, Jen, and I met with three fellows we thought would be ready to start next week. We were right. We spent over an hour discussing their ideas as a group and I got really excited. Sometimes working with novice teachers I forget how fun teaching can be when you have such expert colleagues with whom to brainstorm. I can't wait to see what they end up with!

My nervous excitement has been transformed to childish anticipation. I can't wait to get to the institute the next morning (in spite of the fact that I am NOT a morning person!) to see what amazing things we can do together.