Hitting the Books

Lucy Calkins, founding director of Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, started the morning off with a passionate and thought provoking keynote at the Riverside Church.  She talked of building a better world through literacy and how we, as teachers, can each change our corners of the the world.  

A couple of my fav quotes from Lucy C: 

• Strategies are just tools to be used if they are not backed by passion - just like a screwdriver is just a hunk of wood and piece of metal without someone who wants to take the back off the dishwasher.
  
• We write to cherish the moments that would otherwise float untethered and undifferentiated, without meaning; to push the pause button, to hold the moment in our hands.

So we sat in church and drank up the sermon from the leader in the field...

In this photo, I wanted to exhibit my camera's ability to capture the glow of knowledge surrounding K and L's heads, as well as the other 1000 participants from 48 US states and 19 different countries.  (It's call "cross" mode - on the camera) 

Later in the day we broke into grade level sessions...

In my small group section, a writer's workshop mini-lesson was modeled and we all wrote about a significant moment, (which I enjoy getting to do!), and shared our work with partners.  In the afternoon we talked about the structures of units of study and mini-lessons.   Loved my section presenters - articulate, engaging, practical.  

And, yes, there is homework.  I seem to have been assigned about twice as much homework in the 2nd grade section as DR, K, and L were assigned in the K and 5th grade sections.  All K and L had to do was decorate their notebooks, (with what?? we left our art supplies home - I think L is affixing some produce price tags to her notebook and K is doing a one footed version of River Dance on hers to give it a hip-hop, weathered look). One of my assignments was to write for AT LEAST 30 minutes, which I am doing now.

A highlight of my day was getting to hang out at lunch with my fellow Banana Slug, SC.  I haven't seen her up close and personal for around 4 and a half years!  Long ago she left the West Coast and now works here, at Columbia.  Super exciting to have a spontaneous lunch together on a different college campus, though I missed grazing the granola troughs and sampling from bulk bins, (eating skills SC taught me), since we both had to get back to business.