Today, I’m thrilled to welcome teacher-librarian Melanie Mulcaster to my little corner of the web. Melanie has made a home at Hillside Public School in Mississauga, Ontario. I had the great fortune to meet her in person last summer, and we became fast friends. I’m honored to feature her reflections about making, reading, writing, and documentation here today. Please follow her on Twitter and drop by her blog to get to know her better. Making…
“Being creative, the act of creating and making, is actually what it means to be human. Secular philosophers like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Carl Jung, and Abraham Maslow all came to the conclusion that creative acts are fundamental. Physical making is more personally fulfilling than virtual making. I think this has to do with its tangibility; you can touch it and sometimes smell and taste it. A great sentence or well-written blog is creative and…
Crafting quality writing curricula that provides writers just enough guidance to consistently propel them forward without threatening their autonomy is no simple task. Many teachers consider their vision, standards, the writing process, the elements of writer’s craft, and the production of specific forms as they chart a course for their year and aligned, multi-grade level maps for their buildings and districts. Day after day, year after year, these same teachers put their plans into motion,…
I’m the founder of the WNY Young Writer’s Studio, a community of writers and teachers of writing just outside of Buffalo, New York. Over the last seven years, I’ve watched children and adults make writing in a variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes. Studio was born from my desire to create a kind of lab classroom for those that I support as a literacy specialist. For the last eleven years, I’ve spent…
There are so many implications for educators who work at all levels of the system here. Hatch inspired me as much as he pushed my thinking. Great weekend read! Some of my highlights: “We must make, create, and express ourselves to feelw hole. There is something unique about making physical things. These things are like little pieces of us and seem to embody portions of our soul.” p.1 “You must have access to the right…