What is this? It’s the first week of summer vacation, and my graphic is a little schoolhouse?

Yep. Today I attended a professional development class teaching the Avid program’s strategies for critical reading. It was a worthwhile investment of seven hours, and I actually look forward to going back tomorrow.

Was there anything new and revolutionary in the instructional strategies introduced today? Not really. I have encountered various pieces of the mosaic in other contexts, in on-the-job professional development classes like Student Owned Strategies for Reading, in my own reading–Jim Burke’s Reading Reminders is still one of my favorite resources, in articles from the various National Council of Teachers of English publications, and even tips from my mentor teacher when I earned my MAT and teaching license over ten years ago.

Did I mind that every idea was not new and fresh? Not really. In our setting we had teachers teaching teachers. Each time a different person presents an idea or piece of information you get a unique new spin on it simply because each individual instructor is unique. Also, this information was presented in the context of a classroom of about forty middle and high school teachers, and plenty of opportunity was provided for talk.

I think the most important issue discussed by the end of the day was the question of thinking. How do we encourage our students to think? How do we show them we value thinking over the simple regurgitation of  ”correct” answers. How do we convince them that there are some questions for which there is no academically right or wrong answer and that its okay to pick sides and take a stance? How do we help them value the time it takes to read actively and formulate an understanding for the material read? And how do we make time for them to do this in our classrooms?

These were big questions for teachers whose students have to take content-area, standardized, multiple-choice tests. And they are important questions.

As a Language Arts teacher, I felt blessed that critical reading, active thinking, and clear communication are actually the mission of my subject area. I value my students’ thinking, and am humbled by the openness with which they share their inner selves.

What do you think? How do you communicate the value you place on thinking, and how do you provide opportunities for your students to practice it?

Even as I packed up my desk and turned in my school badge and keys, I did not feel as though summer was here. Today, however, when I did not have to wake up to my alarm clock, and was able to get up and sip a mocha while reading a writing magazine, I realized summer vacation has begun.

So, what’s on my agenda for this summer? Getting back to blogging looms large on my list.

Other items that rank high on my agenda include:

• Typing in the final revisions on my novel The Swallow’s Spring I can at last begin my search for a literary agent.
• Reorganizing my office so it is more user-friendly and therefore can remain more functional next school year.
• Sorting out my boxed of files, particularly my teaching files so I can find the resources I want more easily next year.
• Mapping out the two novels I want to begin working on this next year.
• Reading
• Spending time with my husband, granddaughters, kids, and Mom.
• And maybe even starting an art journal. (See my “Journal” and “Oodles of Doodles” boards on Pinterest”

What’s on your agenda for the summer?

 

Church Street Pizza…
Zach, David, and Me
A sidewalk table in the cool green shade,
A quiet street,
A tall icy drink and thin slices of gooey yumminess.

I feel the need to apologize after my long silence, however, life has not eased up enough yet. School gets out this Thursday. Then I hope to renew our acquaintance.

Yesterday I finished my revision of The Swallow’s Spring.

I had needed to read through it because I discovered the formatting was not correct for electronic submissions, and I wanted to make sure, once I’d redone the formatting, everything had landed where it ought.

Also, I met an agent last summer who was interested in the novel but recommended I revise one more time before I submit. So I did.

I am excited about the finished novel, and even more excited that soon it will be able to fly out from my nest. All that’s left to do is key in the chapter changes.  (I revise best on paper, in pencil). By March, this swallow should be winging her way into the publishing marketplace!

What kind of revision journey are you on, and how do you revise best?

I am in the midst of revisions right now. At this particular moment in time, it feels like the process will never come to an end. So, I thought I’d better remind myself of this quote I love from Katherine Paterson:

I love revision. Where else in life can spilled milk be transformed into ice cream?

Oh, ice cream…here I come!

In The Daily Beast, on October 3 of last year, Seth Lehrer made a comparison between J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books and her new, adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, reflecting in particular on the role of literacy in the stories. He writes:

“Unlike the Hogwarts students, the adults who populate the Pagford of The Casual Vacancy…are not readers. They do not ride into imagined worlds; they do not fill their lives with books. The conflict of the novel hinges on competing institutions” and “those who try to escape them. In a world without books, there are only drugs.”

I know Lehrer is talking about a fictitious world, but isn’t that a stark reality of our own literate societies as well?

 Today is what my children always “affectionately” called THE LAST DAY OF FREEDOM.

Yes, school starts tomorrow and I return to my job–tutoring GED students in writing and holding down the fort two-days-a-week in a little jewel-box of a high school library. I love both my roles. And I love regularly switching from one to the other. There’s no chance to get bored. I count myself truly blessed to have work I love, that helps teens learn to communicate effectively, and that connects high school students with books.

So why THE LAST DAY OF FREEDOM? I suppose a better description is “my last day to dance to my own fiddle.” As of tomorrow, I will return to balancing my writing life with set working hours.

Do I return rested? Yes!

Do I return with the satisfaction of a long-term goal accomplished? Yes, I finished revising the final pages of The Swallow’s Spring right up to the words “the end”!

Do I return with wisdom? Yes! (See “Happy New Year!”)

Do I return with a plan? I do. I will:

• write whenever the opportunity opens up for me
• revise during my lunch half-hours (It’s amazing how the bits of time add up)
• blog on the whim
• submit my stories to agents and publishers
• be prepared to participate in my writing groups
• and continue to learn and grow as a writer.

What about you? How are you going to make your writing life real amidst the realities of daily life?

 

I love fairy tales.  (Hence my tower and starry sky.)

My first sales as a writer were retellings of folk tales to Cricket Magazine.

My first novel is a retelling of a medieval legend–basically an extended fairy tale.

The unexpected twists and turns of folk and fairy tales delight me, as does their worlds of long, swishy skirts, castles, adventures, magic, and redemption. (Inside my X x 10 year-old-body, I still feel like a princess engaged in the quest of her life. How about you?)

And so it was with delight that I sat down yesterday afternoon to sort my “Art: Illustration” Board on Pinterest.  From it I pulled all my folk and fairy tale pins and created an “Illustration: Fairy Tale” board, and then, for good measure a board for Sleeping Beauty (Illustration: Sleeping Beauty)–my favorite fairy tale–and boards for a few other stories for which I seemed to have enough pictures as well.

It was such a pleasure to pour over images and various interpretations of these familiar, and some not-to-familiar stories.

Although I am not a big “Disney Princess” fan, I did include a number of pins from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. This is the first fairy tale I ever fell in love with, and that love included the style of the film as well. I didn’t know until I was a young adult in college that the touchstone for the artists was Gothic art and architecture. All I knew was that the film’s  highly stylized forest, and it’s high arching castles and furnishings had grown into a piece of my soul. (I think Gothic cathedrals are enchanting!)

I read somewhere a psychologist had determined that a person’s favorite fairy tale can tell a lot about who she or he is.  I would like to read more on the topic.  Have you read interesting books or articles relating to this? If so I would love it if you would comment with titles and the names of authors.

In the meantime, I hope your Monday passes happily ever after.

 

The following quote is from  an October interview with Patricia Cornwell in the October 2012 Writer’s Digest.

One thing I’d advise is: Treat your writing like  relationship and not a job. Because if it is a relationship, even if you only have one hour in a day, you might just sit down and open up your last chapter because it’s like visiting your friend. What do you do when you miss somebody? You pick up the phone. You keep that connection established. If you do that with your writing, then you tend to stay in that moment, and you don’t forget what you’re doing.

I’d never thought to look at my writing time in this way. It is something I cherish, something I often yearn for, even feel homesick for when I am too long away. But I seldom give it the opportunity of a fifteen minute phone call with a friend. I seek chunks, large swathes of time for me and my novels. But how much more could I accomplish, and even more important, how much better might I feel if I indulged in frequent visits in between!

(And maybe, that is the secret to sane blogging when I am committed to working full-time and writing as well. Hmmm!)

I’m going to post this at the top of  my bulletin board.

 

(I love colored index cards! What office supply lights your fire?)