Switching Gears...
Tomorrow begins the new college semester. I would say “spring semester,” but it certainly doesn’t feel like spring! 
I teach two college courses.
The first, Introduction to Young Children with Special Needs, is at our local community college. In the spring semester (there! I said “spring!”), I teach the hybrid version. This means that over the semester, we meet on campus five times, and the rest is done on-line. I love to teach this way in the spring semester, because the weather can be dicey and I am a chicken about driving in lousy weather!
My other course, Introduction to Early Childhood Education, is done entirely on line through Fisher College in Boston. It’s an eight week semester, and I never actually meet the students. But I’ve seen some of the most amazing learning moments occur in the on-line courses, because it brings forth a different kind of communication. I love teaching both of these courses.
That said, my “January break” is over! I call the month between Christmas and when the new semester begins my “sprint period.” That’s when I try to get a big chunk of work done before the college teaching kicks in again. I run as far and as fast as I can with my writing during this period.
I did meet my goals!
**I sent my revised manuscript FIREFIGHTER’S KID to an agent recommended by a friend. That felt great!
**I finished the first draft of my next poetry collection. I love what Laurie Halse Anderson
(halseanderson) and Cynthia Lord (cynthialord) have to say about first drafts. So, yes, it is imperfect and uneven… but it is ON PAPER! Now I can mess with it, revise, tinker, and play with it, in between the teaching moments, the driving moments, and the mothering moments.
Finally, this is a link to an oral history project; a friend sent it to me in honor of MLK Day. Once you get through a brief ad, you get to hear an amazing woman named Gladys speak!
Enjoy.
http://specials.washingtonpost.com/onbeing/#101607-2v-GladysM.1
I teach two college courses.
The first, Introduction to Young Children with Special Needs, is at our local community college. In the spring semester (there! I said “spring!”), I teach the hybrid version. This means that over the semester, we meet on campus five times, and the rest is done on-line. I love to teach this way in the spring semester, because the weather can be dicey and I am a chicken about driving in lousy weather!
My other course, Introduction to Early Childhood Education, is done entirely on line through Fisher College in Boston. It’s an eight week semester, and I never actually meet the students. But I’ve seen some of the most amazing learning moments occur in the on-line courses, because it brings forth a different kind of communication. I love teaching both of these courses.
That said, my “January break” is over! I call the month between Christmas and when the new semester begins my “sprint period.” That’s when I try to get a big chunk of work done before the college teaching kicks in again. I run as far and as fast as I can with my writing during this period.
I did meet my goals!
**I sent my revised manuscript FIREFIGHTER’S KID to an agent recommended by a friend. That felt great!
**I finished the first draft of my next poetry collection. I love what Laurie Halse Anderson
(halseanderson) and Cynthia Lord (cynthialord) have to say about first drafts. So, yes, it is imperfect and uneven… but it is ON PAPER! Now I can mess with it, revise, tinker, and play with it, in between the teaching moments, the driving moments, and the mothering moments.
Finally, this is a link to an oral history project; a friend sent it to me in honor of MLK Day. Once you get through a brief ad, you get to hear an amazing woman named Gladys speak!
Enjoy.
http://specials.washingtonpost.com/onbeing/#101607-2v-GladysM.1