Birds of a Feather...

...flock together.  There is something really powerful about being with 1,000 people who are committed to improving education, improving their teaching, and improving their own writing.  It's super fun for me to get to work on improving my own craft, (though it may not be evident HERE).

Yesterday morning our keynote was from Georgia Heard who is known in The Project for her emphasis on meaningful poetry.

Highlights: (quotes and summarization)

-Learning to slow perception deepens the experience.

-Think of 3 things you have fallen in love with since you got to [TC].

 (mine were cannoli at Caffe Dante, hugging Shari, and having a designated time to write)

That is what it is like to be a writer, to fall in love everyday.  The whole world is a love poem.

-Stories are our character education (for our children/families)

That's Lucy Calkins, in black, sitting on the stage surrounded by lingering groupies.

After the morning keynote I go to my small group section where a Writers Workshop is modeled and we practice teaching/writing strategies.  On the first day our leader wrote a very personal story about her life to model "small moment" writing.  Her willingness to share such an intimate situation set the tone for many of the people in my section to write about very vulnerable experiences.  It's been a tissue-fest for the last two mornings, hearing stretched out, slowed down stories about the loss of a loved one, reuniting with a loved one, finding ways to fill the desire to be a parent, finding tolerance or acceptance in difficult situations, and so on.

On a recommendation from CS we tucked away some delectable Chinese food at The Cottage. The entire dinner for the four of us, with tax and tip came to $40 with wine on the house.  Barganza!

On our way back home we decided to pull a groundhog and pop out of the subway at 42nd Street to do a Times Square walkabout (and use the surprisingly clean watercloset at McD's).   The place was totally buzzing with tourists and cameras everywhere at 11:00ish.