Remember how, this spring, I posted a renewed vow to continue my blog, if not with a slightly different slant? I felt things were changing- I knew I still loved teaching, but I also knew that I was growing in ways that were not directly related to it any longer. I posted exactly three posts this spring- all in that renewed and freshly devoted spirit. I could make my blog work with a couple of changes, I thought. And then (out of the blue) my posts stopped. Dead. No end of the year update or soppy goodbyes to my class. Turns out, I must have been instinctually reacting to a much, much huger change- one that I didn’t even know was happening at the time.

That’s right… I’m pregnant! My husband and I are expecting in December, and we couldn’t be more excited! The first couple of weeks I knew, everything seemed normal. I think I may have even posted one of those blogs during that time. But then, everything ground to a screeching halt as the realities of pregnancy...

Eek! I'm so nervous! I was asked to speak at a local university's induction for a Literacy Honors Society. Me? Speak? Squeak, maybe. I write. But of course I said yes, because saying no would have just brought regrets. Because I'm not good with speaking off the top of my head, I had to write the whole thing out and then go back and outline it so that I wouldn't be looking down at my paper the whole time.

I thought I'd run it by my PT friends first. You're lucky- you get the long hand version, free of ums and flailing hand movements. But it also won't have the two videos that I'm going to show the audience. You'll have to make a mental image.

A couple years ago, I had four boys in my first and second grade classroom who were overly passionate about all things Titanic. They formed a Titanic club and their meetings consisted of them pouring over all my Titanic books. When they ran out of mine, they got all the ones they hadn’t read yet...

Instructions for living life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

~Mary Oliver

This is a photo I took on one of the first real spring days this year. I'm finding so many helpful connections between art and photography and teaching writing. Authors and artists have to live in much the same way- with wide open eyes.

More than ever, as I teach I'm starting to see that sometimes it's not always about the craft of writing. The stand out pieces are those in which the writer noticed something seemingly insignificant and gave it meaning. The small moment that is truly small... the poem that zooms in on the tiniest or most ordinary objects. When I read adult novels and poetry, that is also what I'm searching for. My favorite authors are the ones who can shine a fresh light on something I've said or done time after time...

Once Upon a Time, a very long time ago (in the year two thousand and six) in a kingdom called Pennsylvania, a young teacher started a blog. All she had was a pretty silver Dell laptop, bestowed upon her by her school district, and her day-to-day experiences teaching first grade. She taught and she blogged. She taught and she blogged. People from far, far away logged onto their black and silver and pink laptops and onto their gray desktops (and even onto their classroom computers!) and they read the teacher’s blog. Pretty soon, the blog had a merry group of readers. At all times of day and night, they talked and shared about all things reading.

And the blog grew. And the young teacher grew. The two of them (the blog and the teacher) became part of each other. Years passed. The teacher started teaching second grade. For four years they grew up and up and interwined more and more. The young teacher changed the way she taught because of the smart things her readers suggested...