During Spring Break, BH and I flew to see our GREAT granddaughter. During the trip, I was informed by my university that I had to self-quarantine when I returned. Mind yu, this is not an additional 2 weeks of Spring Break, this is 2 weeks of working from home. Most of the members of the department are either telecommuting or doing a self- ( Read more... )

Do not ask me why, but for some reason today my first thought upon waking was a memory of the former resident of the back bedroom, now Career Girl, giggling through THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR, and then demanding, "Again!" This scene played out over and over or me and for BH with Career Girl and Nurse Girl both. I think somehow the memory ( Read more... )

Dawn comes early in Maine. It was full on morning at 4 am. I confess that I did roll over for a couple more hours, but it was not easy. There is something about lolling around in bed when the sun is up, the birds are chirping, and the breeze makes the screen door whisper. And, though I could have slept in more, I staggered to the shower, ( Read more... )

On the drive back home today, I finished listening to an audiobook production of BUDDHA BOY. It was a perfect traveling companion, just the right length for the round trip. While I loved the recording of the audiobook by Full Cast Audio, it was the afterword by the author that caught my attention, making me pull over to jot down a brief note ( Read more... )

Many, many years ago, as I was being trained as a writing project fellow, one of the speakers talked about reaching "satisfice." We can never be 100% pleased with our writing, but we had to find a point where we could release it into the wild with some measure of satisfaction of our work ( Read more... )

I have seen several posts lately on social media about handwriting. There is a question as to whether or not teaching cursive is "worth it." As soon who suffered through the Palmer Method of cursive writing, I can attest to the fact that I spent hours making circles and swoops and practicing parts of making a letter in cursive handwriting. I ( Read more... )

I was surprised this week when NCTE posted a link to something I wrote 5 years ago: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/CNP/0254-April08/FieldOfDreams.pdf. I was also a tad apprehensive: how would ( Read more... )

I guess the title for this post could just as well have been: potpourri. However, as always, it is a confluence of ideas that seem to guide me as I think and write these days. All of these are anecdotal in nature. I am not sure there is a strong connection among them, but we shall proceed and see what happens ( Read more... )

Spent a good part of the day at the Montgomery (Texas) County Teen Book Festival today. Since I am not in a public school classroom, being able to see kids interact with authors is a real treat even for a Saturday landing at the en of a grueling week that began with travel back from another time zone ( Read more... )

Here is another of the key components of the UNprogram. It is a building block that is ephemeral, hard to pin down and, therefore, often overlooked. I am talking about TIME. It does not cost a thing in terms of materials/spending. It is flexible and can be used in many ways, too. Without it, all the books and pens and other tools are useless ( Read more... )