Check It Out

 Funny how when you are not looking a poem taps you on the shoulder and leaves.  It happened to me this week during our teacher in-service.  Last spring, I tried so hard to participate in Elaine’s challenge from  her interview with Janet Wong. The poem, out of my reach and I stopped fussing with it although I had a class try it out.

Our school is working its way toward becoming a “writing workshop” school based on Ralph Fletcher’s work.  So as a staff we are experiencing writing for ourselves more  in staff meetings. (oh, twist my arm, please!)

The prompt this week?  A getting to know you poem: “I come from”.  Staff followed the nudgings to create “I Come From” poems. We will collect the poems, place them in a notebook for our school community to read.

And there it appeared. Well, not exactly.  This pantuom is growth of the poem seed planted earlier this week and revised while sitting through some might boring stuff at the spelling in-service yesterday.

I Come From

I come from a grandfather clock and abandoned violin wrapped in a wool blanket
Santa Ana winds bit my cheeks as autumn’s ring of fire glowed in the night sky.
I come from John and June who combined their names to creat mine
I come from foot fights with my brother during family road trips.

Santa Ana winds bit my cheeks as autumn’s ring of fire glowed in the night sky.
My nickname, “radar ears”, laughter, and “have you practiced the violin?” heard daily.
I come from foot fights with my brother during family road trips and
Gingersnaps, cauliflower-tomato soup-bleu cheese casserole and roast served on Sunday.

My nickname, “radar ears”, laughter, and “have you practiced the violin?” heard daily.
I come from dad’s teaching life, mom’s service to others, the weekend party house
Gingersnaps, cauliflower-tomato soup-bleu cheese casserole and roast served on Sunday.
I come from climbing trees to read, time with my grandmother and aunt, mentors both.

I come from dad’s teaching life, mom’s service to others, the weekend party house
Poetry, photos, family mysteries and the importance of education drummed into me
I come from climbing trees to read, time with my grandmother and aunt, mentors both.
Love, family, laughter, an imagined life-

Poetry, photos, family mysteries and the importance of education drummed into me
I come from a grandfather clock and abandoned violin wrapped in a wool blanket
Love, family, laughter, an imagined life
I come from John and June who combined their names to create mine

More poetry can be found at Charlotte’s Library  today. 

Happy Reading.

MsMac

Yep, it’s my new year. Every late August is the beginning of the new year for me.  It usually means a week of seat time.  Which is hard.  I am active. I need to move around. My brain only assimilates what my bum can endure.

So yesterday was no different.  The morning was all about getting to know the staff again, setting the tone for the year.  The district has recommitted to the work of Richard DuFour, “professional learning communities”.  We were sidetracked a few years ago in a superintendent mess.  Now the district is returning to this theme.  That’s the nature of education. Cyclical. 

An impromptu lunch with other library media specialists was fabulous.  We find alternate ways to meet these days since our district focus is all about the building professional learning community not the district professional learning communtiy. (Which as someone who is awaiting the results of the national boards knows it is one of the tenets of being certified.  Which distrcit wide committees do you sit on? How are you involved st the district level? Very interesting to answer these days.)

The afternoon was better than anticipated.  Not because of the training in “Nettrekker“, a powerful subscription search engine ( whcih BTW, can screen out Wikipedia articles) but because the manger of the library media services mentioned “we are dipping our toes into blogging”. WOW!  My hand shot up (only to be reminded that this was not a discussion but a deliverance of news).  And to that end I am thankful to hear the legislature is doing a one time funding of $4.09 per FTE which will fortunately supplment our budget this year (which probably will take a 10 % cut as the district has financial woes).

So what does that mean? “Dipping our toe into blogging.” It is so amazing to me that the district is thinking about this because my “professional growth option” for this year is working with two fifth grade classes in a longer setting as I explore ways to blog with them as an educational tool.

Does it mean that we will use edublogs? What does a “blog moderator” do? Will it be on “Edline”, our in house web page?

And about blogging with students. How do I start? Who else is using blogs as a way to teach?  Lots of questions. This is good.  The August that comes without the big questions from me will be my last year of teaching.

Today I sit in another meeting. A meeting to discuss the norms and agreements for our porfessional learning community at Silver Star.  I wonder if an agreement could be that we all must write a bit more. I need to finish the mission statement for Family Library Night and for this blog.

If you have not had an opportunity to read Book Moot’s post on starting the new year, it is wonderful.  I shared it with my principal and other librarians as “the post I wish I had written”. Go. go now. and read it.  I printed it out to put in my school journal for review during the year.

Gotta get ready for school. Gotta remove that dream about finding out about my national board scores from my head.  Have you signed up for the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference yet?

Happy Reading.

MsMac

Part of leading the poetry workshop last week.

Demonstration on using photos as poetry prompts.

 
Vashon Island, WA 2007

Vashon Island, WA 2007

green gray pottery
living organism
gurgles at low tide
draped in algae scarves
lingers in seaweed stew
elegant product of the ocean
nutritious food
from the
forest of the sea
barnacles treated to
remnants daily

For more on Poetry Friday visit Read. Imagine. Talk.

Happy to say that the conference registrations are arriving in the mail! Hooray. 

Note to Self:  On cheat sheet page, put a place for name. Have some mystery short bios because I forgot to do that. Oops!

Note to Self:Type the cheat sheets as they ARRIVE! Now I have twenty plus to type in because of adopting the Scarlett O’Hara attitude, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Wondering to self: Do I have everyone listed that has sent in their registration?  Please let me know if I do not. You can check the roll call page.

Note to Self: Visit here. Buy conference schwag soon.

Happy Reading.

MsMac

               
Happy Birthday, Eisha! 

Enjoy this lemon, apricot, marionberry virtual cake.  Recipe is courtesy of Laini  with a little tweaking.  (I used marionberries and apricot jam instead of blueberries and lemon curd. Only because they were on hand).

Happy Reading.

MsMac

I have been thinking of a question posed to me at my Tuesday poetry workshop: “Is there a core collection of poetry books that should be in every school library?”  Wow! That is a question and immediately my mind went to, who would be willing to agree to a core list of poetry books? I thought of the comment, “well, core list of poetry books, what next?  A core list of books for the library?”: What about the individual flair of each library?”

I feel challenged to create a list of poetry books that should be in every library (at appropriate levels of course). I actually hate lists. They are like sand dunes, ever shifting, changing. One book fits this year and not next year, books go out of print.  A book might  get left out. I hate being left out.

But in the interest in answering the question and in the interest is sharing with my colleagues, I am creating a list of the top 100 poetry books for the library, for the moment, for this year. 

I invite you, reader, to submit the title of a poetry book that you believe should be in a core list.  Send me your comments and I will add to the list.  Will there be a 100 titles at the end of this project? It could be 25 for all libraries, 25 for elementary, 25 for middle school and 25 for high school perhaps. Let’s see where the titles fall.  Please let me know the level of your book.

Disclaimer:  I apologize for any book NOT listed in this intial 26 titles. They are in no means listed by any order.

Thank you goes to Kelly who is rounding up the Poetry Friday this week.

Happy Reading.

MsMac

Just arrived home from teaching two sessions, “Incorporating Poetry in the Writer’s Workshop” to teachers at our first ever Summer Literacy Institute in my district.  Both went well, I have to tell you though, I had butterflies in my stomach this morning as I drove to my destination. 

It has been so long since I worked with adults in this capacity. Would they understand my intuitive apporach to teaching poetry?  Would they understand my thoughts that you do not teach poetry units, that poetry is a format?  To me it makes sense that a child might bring you a piece of writing, which would be a lousy story and a great poem.  You, the teacher, have the task to facilitate and guide. I did not realize until preparing for this course, how much this might be a pet peeve of mine.

The day turned out well.  People participated. No one sat there chatting with their neighbor out of sheer boredom.  Everyone shared a poem draft they had written.  The time flew and of course, we  ran out of time.

My greatest frustration was when attempting to share some of the blogs I frequent and ran up against the “Websense” blocking of certain sites. Drat!  Blogspot.com is one such site that is unilaterally blocked. Grrrr!

Oh, and this idea was raised: “a core collection of poetry books that should be in every school library.”  Now there is a project!  So I am thinking about creating a list of “The 100 Poetry Books Every School Library Should Have in the Collection”.  This gave me pause as I have been intentionally developing my poetry section.  Would I have any of the books on a given list?

  What would you like to see in every school library for poetry?  Leave in the comment space and I will add to the list.

I have begun listening to Gossamer by Lois Lowery. Wowee! I am hook and am realizing how much listening to stories is teaching me about writing stories.

What are you reading? What would you expect in the 100 list?

Happy Reading.

MsMac

I went to the coast last weekend.  The tide was incredibly low.  A pantuom tribute to the wonderful world of the tide pools.  I love the t form.

Sea garden, low tide
Ruffled kelp, the ulva taeniata* and others
Intermingles with bull kelp
Cormorants fly in, out, feeding their young

Ruffled kelp, the ulva taeniata* and others,
Slick, slippery carpet challenges trespassers
Cormorants fly in, out, feeding their young
Microscopic alien signs of existence

Slick, slippery carpet challenges trespassers
Walking at low tide, looking
Microscopic alien signs of existence
Sea stars, anemones, glistening tide pool jewels

Walking at low tide, looking
Quiet treasures reveled: Upside down chitons*
Sea stars, anemones, glistening tide pool jewels
Aware of environmental follies?

Walking at low tide, looking
Intermingles with bull kelp
Aware of environmental follies?
Sea garden, low tide

Becky over at Becky’s Book Review is hosting this week.s Poetry Friday.

I abandoned the alarm clock in June at the end of school for the summer.  Thing is that most days I awoke at 5 AM but did not get out until the 6-7 AM hour.  My respite from the school year.

Now the calendar shows August, the alarm clock is back in my life. To build that muscle memory for the upcoming school year. To guarantee at least an hour of quiet writing time and wake up time. To resume those 6 AM workouts.

 
Last years conference in Chicago

Last week I was panicky over the number of registrations coming in for the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference.  “Ye of such little faith!”  I should have known that like me, July should be known as “National Everyone Go and Play Month”.  I was not home for a full week, why would anyone else be home?

This week airlines are offering “fall fare travel sales” (not to the rock bottom fares I love though)

Bloggers want to see the following topics:

CYBILS

Beginning Blogging

Community blogging

Pod casting

Social networking to promote your blog

And

VLOGGING?  Who will lead the session on Vlogging?

 I feel a bit like the “little red hen” when I ask, “Who will help out?”  Will you help?

Rumor has it that there will soon be some shirts and mugs for sale on Café Press in honor of the conference stay tuned.

It is August and that means that I am unofficially back to work. Officially not until the end of August.  But I get that itch and start thinking about what the year will bring for me.

I am beginning my 35th year of teaching and my 30th in Evergreen. Wow!

I loved, loved, loved, listening to Esme Raji Codell’s The Diary of Fairy Godmother earlier this summer. It is sooo much fun.  I will be promoting it heavily this year and hope to have a book study in the library with it.

I went through a reading drought.  I could not believe that during my road trip in July, I did not read at all!.  I have since made up for it, having read Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a Jance mystery, Web of Evil, and A Clearing in the Wild by author, Jane Kirkpatrick.  This Sunday my book club meets to decide the books for the year. Three Cups of Tea is on my nightstand and will also be suggested.

Next Tuesday, this time, I will be teaching a workshop on using poetry in a writer’s workshop.  I get to teach it twice.  I haven’t taught adults in awhile so I am a tad bit nervous about doing so.

It is 53 days until the Second Annual Kidlit Blogging Conference which I am co-chairing with Laini.  I am excited to see the registrations coming in!  Have you mailed yours yet?

Gotta get back to reading.  What are you reading?

Happy reading.

MsMac