Opening Camp Rewrite for its First Season of Summer Learning Last night, I wrapped the last of the professional learning experiences I’ve been facilitating during this school year, and it was a perfect sort of segue into the summer. I met with colleagues I’ve been learning beside for years, and we spent much of our time together talking about the memories we keep as practitioners. We spoke about the moments we try to hold onto,…
I haven’t been able to read well for the last oh, I don’t know, year or so. I’ve done it, but it hasn’t been the same. I usually have some sort of writing project that I’m working on each year too, but this year–nope. Not really. Not like I typically do. This year, I lost most of my business, took on a pretty wonderful but sometimes overwhelming new full-time job, watched my eldest fly this…
I’ve written about our gnome home and fairy tree before. And yesterday, I sent off the first of what I am certain will be many submissions to publishing houses that are accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Some of you told me I should write a picture book about the events that transpired around here last spring and summer, and so I did that. I have no idea how to do that well, but I did that. I…
If you’ve read my new book, then you know that I’m a huge supporter of what my friend Michelle Haseltine is doing over at #100DaysofNotebookKeeping and Beyond! Last week, she welcomed fellow notebook keepers back into that community, where everyone makes a commitment to 100 days of notebook keeping. I started last year, floundered, and eventually quit. This year, I’m planning to go the distance. One of the things that I love most about the…
My friends and family know that I struggled mightily with post-partum depression after the birth of my first daughter nearly twenty four years ago. I was hospitalized for a bit, and I went through sixteen medication trials before we found one that worked. It took five years for me to fully recover and many more years to speak about all of that openly without feeling one bit of shame. And speaking about it is important…
Those of us who are privileged enough to publish books and engage a platform that grows a little (or by leaps and bounds) each year must take care to protect the commons. Those commons are filled with talented people who share not for profit, but because they know that when we share, we all grow better–together. Each time I publish I book, I make it a priority to elevate the voices of those teachers whose…
It was a rainy afternoon, long before anyone was really thinking about global pandemics and civil unrest. We were visiting my favorite art store, and I noticed this notebook on the clearance table. “That’s massive,” my husband John said. “What would you fill it with?” I didn’t know then. Now, I do. The first pages of this notebook document my work and what I learned from it during the last lesson studies I led in…
We often say that we bought our house because of the trees. Of course, there were many factors that contributed to this decision, but the trees weighed heavily inside of that equation. These huge maples tower over our home, lining the sidewalk that sits just a few feet from the window next to me. My husband walked my kids to elementary school beneath those trees each day. Every fall, they still make my neighborhood glow. They also…
When my youngest was still in elementary school, she began the countdown to summer vacation with so much eager anticipation that one would have thought she hated school. She didn’t. She just loved summer, too. This was evidenced by the fact that each year, on the last day of school, she would step off of the school bus and promptly burst into tears, right in the middle of the street. “I’m going to miss my…
“I just ordered my first box of those weird under eye gel patch thingies that everyone from Rachel Hollis to Oprah to Brene Brown seems to be sporting on social lately,” I laughed, leaning away from the screen. “I mean, if Brene uses them, they have to be good, right?” “Do they sell them in extra-strength Covid-size?” my friend asked. “There is no eye gel patch thingy made for this moment,” I admitted. “But buying…