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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

I just finished the first round of parent-teacher conferences for this year. They went really well. For the most part, families and children are happy at school and the children are excited about the activities I am inviting them to engage in. An increased or new-found interest in reading and writing were high on the… Read more

This year I will be teaching grade 3 for the first time EVER! I may have already announced that in another blog post, but every time I say it I get a little anxious. Just a little bit because while I’ve taught every grade from grade 1 to grade 8, I’ve never taught grade 3.… Read more

Tonight I’m having trouble finding words. I write not knowing where I will end up. I just know I need to start somewhere. So, I open up a blank page on my WordPress app and start writing. I take a chance and let the words spill on the page because once I start writing something… Read more

I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic of ageism. And even though I don’t feel comfortable revealing my age or how I’m currently feeling about the age I am, I need to start. The irony of this is that I never thought I’d be one of those people who would avoid any talk of… Read more