I can’t remember a year where I was as ready for Spring Break as I was this year. As it’s wrapping up today, I finally had a few moments to update the site! Go to the home page for more details!
Happy spring! 
Spring Break = Deep Breath
Posted onTeaching is hard.
Posted onI shared these thoughts tonight on Facebook, and they seemed to resonate with my teacher friends. Maybe they’ll be a blessing to you as well…
When we say that teaching is hard, please don’t misunderstand us. We’re not talking about the mountains of paperwork or never-ending to-do list. It’s not the meetings or the parent conferences, or even the curriculum. We can handle the lesson plans, and we can go entire days without a bathroom break if need be. That’s not really what we’re referring to either. We say that teaching is hard because year after year after year, 25ish families put their precious angels in our care, and we begin a race to be enough. Smart enough, sweet enough, tough enough, flexible enough – we are one person trying to stretch and grow enough in order to meet the very different needs of every single student. Every year, we love them like they are our own and give everything we have so that they can successfully leave us behind. They make us laugh, cry, jump for joy, and bang our heads against the wall. They are our greatest pride and our overwhelming responsibility. We work long into the night and, yes, all summer long. Those precious faces are why we say teaching is hard. And why we can’t imagine doing anything else.
I keep looking at the faces of those precious babies in Connecticut, and I just pray their teachers know that they were far more than enough.
Update!
Posted onI added tons of pictures from the last couple of months to the site last night. Anchor charts and more!
How Taylor Swift Made My Day…
Posted onMy work with Scholastic has been a fabulous experience, but the opportunities it has brought forward have really made my head spin (in the best possible way). Today, we participated in a live webcast with Taylor Swift, who talked about her life as a reader and a writer. Last week, we recorded a question in a third grade class at my school, and Taylor answered it today. It was an experience that made the kids giggle and the adults get teary-eyed, and it was an experience that I know none of us will ever forget. The webcast has been archived, so I invite you to share in the experience. My school pops up about the 19-minute mark, but the whole thing is a big bowl of happy. Watch it all if you have time. She even gives a mini-concert at the end!
Enjoy….
*If you don’t have Flash, try going to http://www.taylorswiftwebcast.scholastic.com
Prompt Cards
Posted onI just added updated versions of the literacy prompt cards, including some brand new cards created by teachers at my school. Check them out here.
Update (finally)
Posted onIt’s been a while, but I’ve finally updated things around here! Click around for new anchor charts, updated prompt cards, and student notebook samples. Enjoy!
Top Teaching
Posted onI know I haven’t updated in a while, but I’ve been busy with my latest project. I’m now a weekly blogger for Scholastic’s Top Teaching! The blog redesign hasn’t happened yet, but the posts are beginning to go up! I’m excited to be part of this fabulous team. Check it out!
Please pardon the interruption….
Posted onMy not-so-unlimited bandwidth is almost at capacity for the month, so it’s highly likely that my site will be down for a time. I’m working on a solution to this. Thanks in advance for your patience!
Mini-Update
Posted onTechnically, my summer has been over for two weeks now, but I’m still in a bit of denial. We have a JumpStart Summer School program at my school, and I absolutely love it. It started a couple of weeks ago, and it’s a great way for the invited kids (and us teachers) to get back in the swing of things! The teachers are all bravely fighting the battle of the “summer slide”, and I know we’ll have great results.
I also taught six workshops in the last two weeks (whew!) on assesing readers with a notebook. I taught sessions for teachers of Kindergarten through 5th grade. On my campus, we are going to try notebooks at every grade level this year, so I was excited to begin processing this work with some teachers from around my district. I added just a few charts from those workshops – you can check them out here. (My apologies for the quality of the poorly-lit iPhone pictures.)
I found several scripted minilessons that I’d forgotten about on my iPad, so I will add those soon.
Hope you are having a fabulous summer! I’m headed back to New York City tomorrow for a training with Scholastic – stay tuned for more info on that!
Julie
…and I’m back!
Posted onSo sorry that the site was down for a few days. I had a lot of hits this month and exceeded my “unlimited” bandwidth. Luckily, it resets every month, so we’re back in business! (Where on earth did August come from, by the way?)
Thanks for your patience!