I have been trying to write this blog post for some time now. What has gotten in the way? Chemo brain will accept some of the fault. I learned this the first time around with chemo 18 months ago: chemo is a tad indiscriminate when it comes to attacking cells. Yes, it kills cancerous cells. However, it kills other less dangerous cells. Hence ( Read more... )

As I have watched person after person tell their stories at the convention this week, I am reminded of the power of words and the power of response to words as well. These brave people, especially the women, have told stories about incredible loss and have done so without recrimination and finger pointing. Instead they have talked about the need ( Read more... )

I am part of so many communities: family, church, friends, colleagues, readers, writers. The list could go on endlessly. Technology keeps me connected to so many of these communities in ways that I could never have imagined years ago. And this connection to communities means that my brain is often bubbling with ideas and topics and questions ( Read more... )

I am so fortunate. Over the course of the nearly 40 years that I have been a teacher, I have had the chance to meet some of the most incredible mentors. One of them is Terry Ley. Terry pioneered Directed Individualized Reading, an approach where kids read books and then conference with teachers about that reading. You can read about his work ( Read more... )

A recent study in Great Britain concluded: "So who increased their vocabularies the most between the ages of 16 and 42? Our statistical analysis took account of differences in people’s socio-economic backgrounds and in their vocabulary test scores at the ages of five, ten and 16. We found that reading for pleasure in both childhood and adulthood ( Read more... )

Some disconnected observations today ( Read more... )

I got the message when my flight landed at Newark airport. We had 30 minutes to connect for the flight to Stockholm and someone at the NY Daily News needed to interview someone about the censorship of THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART TIME INDIAN. I took the call in the terminal with moments to spare. The reporter had a deadline and I had a ( Read more... )

From a link on Twitter, I read a piece on the Huffington Post online about a recent survey of employers and what they were looking for in candidates:

"Nearly all those surveyed (93 percent) say that "a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than [a candidate's] undergraduate ( Read more... )

I wrote yesterday about the power of words. Someone commented on Facebook that she had committed so many poems to heart, and suddenly that phrase, WORDS BY HEART, reverberated. I have so many associations with this phrase. Here is one:


( Read more... )

One of the things I love about my PLN is that it provides inspiration in so many different ways. This morning after reading Katherine Sokolowski's blog (http://readwriteandreflect.blogspot.com/) about the power of words, phrases kept popping into my head ( Read more... )