Elisa Waingort

We decorated cookies to launch the holiday season, a first for our family of five that has now grown to nine with sons-in-law and granddaughters. We enjoyed a badly needed spa date, a gift from our children; they know how to give memorable presents. So we could get ready for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner, Read more

The alarm goes off at 3:00 am and then again at 3:15. I also set it for 3:30, but I wake up before it can go off again. I reluctantly unfurl my body from the warmth of the covers and sit up on the edge of the bed. I check the sticky note on my Read more

I am working on a book project. It’s not the same book project as the last 5 book projects that never got off the ground. It’s a brand new book project that started taking root in my mind when I was interviewed on the podcast, I Wish I Knew EDU. I have written several pages Read more

Disclaimer: This subject of this post is a work in progress. I look forward to your feedback in the comments. Currently, I make room in my classroom schedule for writing and reading workshop at least four times a week, each. Technically speaking, that would be approximately one hour of reading and writing every day. Some Read more

Full disclosure: Get ready for a rant. Reading and writing are about communicating ideas, emotions, experiences, opinions and more. The act of reading is all about making meaning. We make meaning from the words on the page, the images, the graphs, the titles, the photographs, the pictures and from what we already know about and Read more

I wake up in the middle of the night, startled by sounds from a dream I can’t remember. I turn to my husband. He’s sound asleep. I go to my son’s room. He’s awake. Reading. Did you hear that? I ask. But he hasn’t heard anything because it was all in my dream. Go to Read more

I reclaimed a writing practice a couple of days ago. I didn’t invent it, but I am adapting it. I call it sentence-a-day. I first heard of sentence-a-day from a professor in one of my graduate classes. He suggested that we get into the practice of writing a sentence every day about anything that came Read more

Recently I sat down to write one 6-word memoir about change, which resulted in many 6-word memoirs. (Thanks to @JenLaffin for this #TeachWriteTober writing spark.) What follows is my writing trajectory for this writing challenge, which read like this: Write a 6-word memoir about change. The noun or the verb. Full disclosure: Change and I Read more

Thirty things that are making me happy right now. Written in no particular order of importance. (1) FaceTiming with my oldest daughter so I could see and talk to my granddaughters, even if for a short while. (2) Coming home and being greeted by my dog, Osa, who wags her tail and shakes her body Read more

As part of #TeachWritetober, @laffinteach shared the following writing spark: create a list of all the things that you’ve learned about teaching writing from being a writer yourself. Here’s my list (at the moment). –Be patient with yourself; it takes time to get your writing to sound just right. Not perfect, but just right. –When Read more