Engage in an online literature discussion group on our class blog. Please read the rest of the book and make four entries 1)propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss, 2) make connections to your teaching and work with students, 3) make connections to your work as a writer. 4) Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit
Please respond to one or more of your classmates’s entries in your study group.
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Pg. 72 “Techniques used to teach writing can be useful in teaching mathematical communication.” In our district, we have Common Formative Assessments which are point in time assessments meant to give us a look at where the student is on a particular strand. Included in the CFA, is a piece asking the student to explain their answer. Another place we ask the students to explain their answer is in the strand 25 assessment. We used to ask the students to either show their work or write how they solved the problem, but not we just ask how they solved the problem and the resulting answer is part of the grade. Students cannot do well in math today without being able to write. They have math journals, Everyday Counts which incorporates writing, Problem of the Day which has a writing component, and Spiral Review which has 2-3 writing parts. And that’s just for the warm up. Once the lesson starts the writing begins. Through think a louds, vocabulary introduction, questioning, writing takes on a pivotal role. The math journal becomes filled with exploration, questions, ponderings, thought break out, and synthesizing as students struggle to put it all together. They read eachother’s journals and share their thought processes as they work across place value, rounding, and sequencing.
Pg. 68 “Writing was a process, writing should be regularly and in a variety of forms and at all grade levels.” This was written as a philosophy statement and mirrors strongly what we do in the Manchester Public Schools. Although we do not have a writing program in place right now, we have the Four Traits of Writing Blocks and Empowering Writers to help us get started. We also have a strong sense of writing across the curriculum. Our students are fluent in writing in Math where they explain their thought processes that led them to solve a problem. They are experts at creating letters or other response journals to speakers that have come in or to express ideas they have about current issues. Recently our Board of Education was set to vote on whether to eliminate ice cream from the menu because of health concerns. My students had a lot to write about and the Board of Education received 18 letters strongly protesting the move with well thought out reasons for why they thought this was not a good idea. My students complete response journals to the read a loud we are doing to keep their thoughts, questions, and memories recorded. In science, they are completing a cyberlesson for class that involves a lot of variety of journal responses from notetaking, to synthesizing information, to letter writing to communicate understanding of a concept. In Social studies, the students are writing to the Commerces in each state to request a map and information to help us do our reports on the states. The entire unit is writing.
Pg. 59, “In order to prepare each child for successful employment and productive citizenship in the 21st century, teachers must know their subject areas deeply, understand how children learn, be able to use that knowledge to teach well, use modern learning technologies effectively, and work closely with their colleagues to create rich learning environments.” I see where most of my students’ parents work, and I hear from parents how much they want their children to go to college. Most of my parents work in low level, low paying jobs and they want more for their children. The key is education. I had a parent two years ago that worked at NAPA car repair, but was an unbelievable writer. I would have to spend hours going over her emails and letters to me to understand all the nuances and fine points because it was so enjoyable to read her writing. Her son was also gifted in this area. I often encouraged her to take some courses at MCC so that more people could benefit from her writing. She was truly gifted.
Pg. 62-63 I loved the section of professional development at staff meetings on writing. I particularly enjoyed the section on videotaping. When I first started at Nathan Hale, I had no clue on this Earth how to do guided reading, or what a writer’s workshop was. The district paid for a sub and I went to watch a colleague at another school who was an expert in these areas. Once I saw how it worked it instantly clicked, I got it. It made me realize how much we need to model our own writing practices to have the kids “get it.” I also loved the idea of bringing students and their writing to a staff meeting and publically conferring with them. Imagine the joy of that student who gets to hang out with all the teachers. They would practically be falling over themselves for the opportunity. And, the staff would get to see two or three teachers conference and it would become clearer how to conference with a students. We always have one or two professional writers visit our school each year and it is a phenomenal opportunity for students and staff to ask questions, enjoy the writing, and watch how it unfolds in the author’s head.
Testing
1. Propose Meaty Fat Questions to Discuss
* How can educators become instrumental in integrating the writing process with content subject areas as a form of professional development?
*How can teachers really begin to teach students to learn the writing process and see the connection with reading and problem-solving as a means to comprehending text?
*What was the catalyst for writing to now be seen as important for learning subjects other than English?
*How will students who are considered substantially deficient and/or deficient be able to ever "catch up" to national standards that keep getting raised, with teachers who are "highly qulaified" but who have experienced no true professional development geared towards writing?
2. Make Connections to Your Teaching and Work with Students
*As far as the writing process goes in my school, we teach three kinds of writing explicitly-narrative, expository and persuasive. Apparently according to the NWP and Nagin, "single-prompt writing assesments may be useful as a snapshot of student achievement, but because they focus on a single type or genre of writing they have limited value for understanding a writer's overall strengths or weaknesses." (p.77) (The Connecticut Mastery Test then uses a "snapshot" to evaluate and measure a student's writing ability based on a 45 minute prompt)
As a classroom teacher, I would teach the expository or narrative process forms of writing, depending on the grade that year and I really don't recall being able to really look at the students' writings and effectively assist them with their strengths and weaknesses as a writer. The students did fine but I believe that more could have been done. I would teach them what the parts of the Narrative Writing Diamond and the Expository Pillar Framework were and use the worksheets to teach them the skills within the parts. I had no professional development whatsoever, just the different labeled numbered books associated with the writing process format/genre and was told that this is what the students need to know for writing and the Connecticut Mastery Test. I remember just teaching my students the process and using the materials provided (compliance), not really focusing or feeling the opportunity to properly teach the writing curriculum to create lifelong writers-going through the process and imparting insight that the writing process can be integrated in the other content areas.
If I could "re-write" or reteach certain parts of the writing process to my students, I would try to incorporate more authentic pieces of literature to model the skill that I want to teach. (Read Alouds for Writing) I would discuss the author's piece and style with the students and we would then see how they could include this style in their own writing. Once the process piece has been introduced, and the students have gone through extensive drafting, editing and revising, before the published piece, writing groups would be formed according to their skills of weakness-areas of focus. They would be able to work on those areas so that their final revision could be a quality piece that they could be proud of.
3. Make Connections to My Work as a Writer
* "Professional development that focuses on getting participants to write and understand their own writing process often serves to energize teachers. They can share what they have learned about writing with other faculty and staff." (p.95) This is an approach to writing that is not practiced everywhere but should be.
I have never thought of myself as a writer. I know that I can answer questions with enough details to support a point, but I never have thought of myself as a writer.
My earliest recollection of a meaningful "relationship" with writing began when I was eight. My mom had given me a diary for my birthday and it came with two keys. I remember thinking that my thoughts could be written and read but kept because I held the keys to unlocking whatever feelings and thoughts I had written and held in my mind. I believe having a diary was a good way to foster positive writing habits. I have done some interesting projects in my Educational Leadership and Reading
classes. I shared an Action Research Project with my colleagues regarding the benefits of cross-age tutoring of older students who are considered deficient and substantially deficient according to the CMT's and Common Formative Assessments-assisting students in the lower grades with similar deficiencies. The format included background information, data, data analysis, trends and conclusions. I don't know if this could consider me a writer but a form of writing had to take place in order to share my ideas and get a message across to my peers. I have shared my thoughts on articles during Reading class discussions and have also had to reflect on them in writing as well. I guess this means that I did not have to have a book written or works published in a journal, but it is good to share different formats of your
writing with persons to create meaningful dialogue in discussion groups or professional development workshops or other kinds of meetings. In other words, best practices are always good to share because someone can always benefit from some aspect of it!
Response to question 1: propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss:
The text puts an emphasis on high-quality professional developments. Administrators make sure that teachers are highly qualified through certifications,evaluations, and observations. However,who is evaluating the quantity and quality of the professional developments delivered to ensure that professionals are growing as educators and becoming more qualified?
After reading the text, I still am pondering the question: What would be the protocol to fix and provide a solid writing curriculum for all students? After reading about the district in New York I still was not convinced that what they did was going to enhance the students writing. If a teacher is being watched each day, just like an observation, are they really going to be calm and show their best? I know I tense under supervision. When the consultants come into the room for training purposes, how much training and research-based experience do these consultants have to be able to “change” the writing going on in classrooms?
In chapter 5, one question posed was, Are the state’s standards too high or low? My question that I wonder is: Are the standards too high, and the test expectations too high to meet at some students’ developmental stages of learning? Or are the expectations too low, but the test expectations set too high? If test scores and higher performing districts are performing lower than they have in years, there must be a common factor that is causing this to happen to many school districts.
Another question that left me wondering under this section of the text was on page 73. “Highly qualified” means having the credentials to support other teachers’ professional development as an individual. However, if teachers have not used what they learned in years from their masters programs , and have not been provided with up to date new research in education, are they still considered highly qualified? How effective is their research-based suggestions to improve professional growth? Is there another protocol that teachers can obtain to become “highly qualified” so that they are up to date with research? ( I am not saying that “highly qualified” teachers are inadequate. HOwever, if research is consistently changing and all teachers (including myself) are not enrolled in a higher education program to enhance our knowledge of this ever changing field, how are we to maintain are “highly qualified” status? Are we then just “qualified”?
3b-Response to classmate's entry
I had underlined the quote that Sarah used as an entry on page 59 about teacher expertise being the most significant factor in student success. "In order to prepare each child for successful employment and prodcutive citizenship in the 21st century, teachers must be well-versed in many areas to create rich learning environments for their students."
I believe that it is important to use all kinds of media types that attempt to reach the various learning modalities of the students we service in our classrooms.
I remember when I was teaching reading using the Success For All program, we had to use the Read Aloud process and the students had to respond to a writing prompt over the course of three days. For the read aloud set-up and process, I would include graphic organizers, music, tableaux, realia, pictures, think-pair-share, etc. as different ways to get the students involved and interact with the text that was about to be read; discussion questions for during reading activities and reflective activities for after reading. The writing prompt section of this reading program was called Adventures in Writing. I re-named it-"Take an Adventure in Writing." I would use graphic aids such as clouds, birds and planes to drive the point home. The prompt would be a series of questions that needed to be answered and would have to be a "completed writing piece at the end of the week. To accommodate the different learning styles and behaviors, I would have soft music to set the mood and then introduce the prompt to be worked on for the rest of the week. To help the students not feel so overwhelmed, I would count how many questions would be a part of the prompt and divide it over the course of three days. I would only have the students answer those questions for the day with as many details as possible. By the end of the week, the students would just rewrite all that they had written and revised in the form of completed paragraphs. They had been working all along to create a detailed piece of writing.
I agree with Sarah that it is important that "teachers must know their subject areas deeply, understand how children learn, be able to use that knowledge to teach well, use modern learning technologies effectively, and work closley with their colleagues to create rich learning environments."
1. Right away when I began reading the chapter on professional development, I noticed how the author prioritized “time and resources” as key elements in an effective program. How can a district negotiate an intensive PD program with union reps still preserving the parameters of our positions? The town budget is also extremely limiting in this respect. Resources in the form of curriculum materials, topic experts, and substitutes (for 25% of our time! –p.22) must be accessed. How can a district negotiate the necessary cost investment over such a long period of time?
2. I loved the mention of intervisitation and peer networks on page 62. These site visits within the district sound similar to the observations our principal encourages for our classroom teachers. The principal particularly likes to invite teachers to practice vertical collaboration (working with one grade level above or below your own.) Not only is this a great way to observe effective teaching strategies, but the teachers are also working to build cohesive programs and expectations. This is invaluable. However, in our district, time and scheduling limitations don’t allow for frequent meetings. Much information is exchanged on the fly during random meetings- an inappropriate way to plan long term improvement. I believe if we could fully dedicate to this practice, there could be improved professional community and instructional practices.
I was surprised to see that the standards for writing assessments vary so widely between states. Some states appear to value mechanics while others value more critical thought and meaning related criteria. How does each state’s assessment compare to national assessment standards? If they are each modeled off of the state standards, how can they be so different?
3. I strongly connected to the statement on page 87 that “learning to write is also a matter of writing to learn”. In my own experiences as a writer, I feel I have made much growth over the last few years. I have had the opportunity to participate in a variety of situations that required me to produce written work to represent my group. Because of the nature of this work, my writing was subject to scrutiny by many different adults. At first I found this unnerving. I was not a confident writer and I felt pressure to represent the perspective of the group. However, I came to appreciate the feedback through the conversations I had with others.
This collaboration, while improving the quality of my writing, also served to strengthen my voice. Working with my peers helped me to see the strengths of my work and redirected me to the purpose of the text. I believe in this textbook when it suggests collaboration on student work samples in order to improve instruction. I believe this activity could improve instructional techniques as well.
Major responses to question 2: Make connections to your teaching and work with students.
Minor responses to question 1: propose “meaty” fat questions to discuss.
On page 57 the author writes that districts, “want professional development to offer research-based strategies whose effectiveness has been correlated with student performance.” This is extremely true. If you are more lax and have a less research based approach as a teacher, then students will not meet the ever demanding needs today of Connecticut’s high standards. A lot of what I teach and how I teach it in the classroom is what I have learned in research-based professional developments and master’s classes. I have used ELL strategies through a SIOP model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocal), strategies by Nancy Boyles, and Marzano that have proved to increase test scores and I have seen this first hand with my lower performing population of students when I implemented their research-based strategies. The tough issue that arises, however, is that teachers must be willing to change their current teaching practices to provide instruction that correlates with research.
On page 57, I was able to really relate to what the text was saying about improving lower achieving schools in city-based environments. For the last three years, I taught in a school where we were consistently looking for ways to improve our students test scores in reading. Alvarado’s principles that were suggested for systematic change highly reflected what my school did to try to get our status out of “resign” and up our AYP in reading. We did try many of the strategies listed including; shared expertise, focus on system wide school improvement, shared ideas in leadership and team-based meetings, and follow ups to talk about the next steps. Our professional developments were all focused around research-based models of instruction and what we implemented reflected these models. I am proud to say that after leaving the school, our students significantly increased in reading, our school now has made it out of resign status, and has achieved way above AYP.
I truly believe what the text proposes when it states, “ teacher expertise is the most significant factor in students success.” (page 59) In order to meet the standards set forth by the state, teacher’s qualifications need to be much higher. Part of being highly qualified is being technologically aware. College courses have given us a stepping-stone to use to implement technology in the classroom, however, how can we improve in our technological skills if the school doesn’t have the technology and/or professional developments, to offer different ways of using technology to be able to teach it to our kids? If our schools don't have the technology to use to implement what we learned in college, then we forget how to use the technological programs. I speak for myself when I say that I feel that alot of my technological courses have gone to waste. I have become less proficient with powerpoint and have forgotten how to make a web page. These valuable skills are no longer valuable because as a teacher, I have not been able to practice and apply them in my classroom.
The text talks about how public universities are now offering courses in teaching writing. I can’t recall one course in college that taught me how to teach writing to the students. Was this the case for my high school teachers also? How can I be sure that I received the best instruction in writing so that I could pass it on to my students? Who is to blame when students are having trouble passing the written portion of entrance exams because of their lack of writing skills? It sounds like a never-ending cycle to me. The text also talks about we, as teachers, need to make sure that we are learning new techniques to teach ELL students. Here is another example of what I needed to research on my own and teach myself how to do because I never was never formally given a course on how to teach students, whose language is primarily Spanish. Again, who is to blame for ELL students falling through the cracks?
On page 62, as part of Alvarado’s weekly meetings, he suggested many activities that could strengthen reading and writing instruction. As a lower performing school, I found that many of the activities that he listed connected to what I did last year to come up with ways to get students to perform on or above grade level. I can especially relate when it suggested brainstorming new techniques, trying them out, and sharing the results. We did this every two weeks with research-based instructional strategies. Although it was tedious, it did prove to better me as a teacher as well as show some gains in our students’ work. In addition, we would meet weekly to discuss data and progress (progress monitoring) of selected students in reading and writing. This was similar to what the group of Manhattan New School teachers did. My question is however, how long does a new program need to be implemented to have a significant change? These are all great strategies mentioned, of which many my school did try, however, the kids still are not at or above grade level in reading or writing.
I almost jumped out of my seat when I read the quote, “ But if the NWP in-service model, with its emphasis on voluntary participation teacher expertise, extended programs, and teacher research, is to work, then another key ingredient must be added to the mix; a committed administrator.” (page 66) I have worked for an administrator who gave us a lot of initiatives that we followed through with while putting together effective professional strategies to help achieve higher success in literacy, as Alvarado mentioned. It was really unfortunate that once we put something into place, our administrator did not support our actions and once we completed an initiative she would throw another one at us and the collaborative work that we had done, was never talked about again. There was not any consistency and that was very frustrating because I believe that is the reason why our kids didn’t succeed as much as they could have. A committed administrator should value our ideas and plans as educators. This administrator did not, and I believe this played a significant role in the test scores of the students. “But real school reform can happen when teachers come together regularly throughout their careers to explore practices that effective teachers have already proven are successful in their classrooms.” (page 66) I can totally relate to this quote, however, teachers also must give these practices time to be able to see real results or opportunities for change, instead of just getting rid of the practice after a short while after implementing it.
“ The standards movement has helped to focus attention on writing in all disciples and to push for consistency within standards, assessment, and rubrics.” (page 71) After reading this quote, I felt a little uncertain about that comment. I know it’s a dream that all schools want higher standards to up the expectations of the students, so in return they do well in state assessments. However, I don’t feel that Connecticut’s standards, assessments, and rubrics used to grade assessments, are correctly aligned. For example, our standards call for students to write a piece of work that expresses elaborative detail, sentence variety, correct use of conventions in their writing, however, when they are assessed they can only show what they truly have within 45 minutes. They don’t have time to add the detail and sentence variety as they would in an un-timed prompt, yet the data that schools are assessed by are the scores on a timed prompt where best effort was not necessarily put forth. All the other standards that we integrate into writing instruction are not assessed. Is this one writing prompt an indicator of how the kids are really performing in writing? If writing has many different expressive modes, then why are the students just graded on a narrative writing piece whose prompt was chosen for them? When the word writing is talked about, is there a common misconception in teachers’ minds that it only pertains to one type of expressive form?
On page 76 it states that the tests “carry high stakes, they can dominate classroom life in ways that diminish opportunities, for example, by forcing teachers to spend inordinate amounts of time drilling students in grammatical rules out of context, something that has not been found to support writing development.” I can absolutely and completely relate to this statement. Working in a school last year that needed to make AYP and working in a school this year where we were put on the “list” of schools that did not make AYP, I can feel where the constant pressure of knowing what is correct to teach students, as opposed to what I can instruct to strengthen performance on the CMT. There are many times where I will say, “On the CMT you will see this or hear this, etc” I wish I didn’t need to tell them that I was preparing them for the test but it’s almost like I have this habit that I have to make them aware of it.
“ Peer response helps students take responsibility for the quality of their work and can support a climate for high standards and expectations in writing,” is the quote found on page 82. I highly agree with this quote as I consistently have students critique their own work as well as others. This does help to maintain clear and high expectations in writing, because students know what they are writing, why they are writing, and to what level of construction their final work should be. This section talks about how students should have responsibility in developing assessment for their work. How well would this work? I guess I had a hard time thinking about the possibility of my 9-year-old students creating assessments for their own work.
4. On page 77, the author discusses the difficulty of using single prompt assessments to judge a writer’s strengths and weaknesses. He discusses how important it is to use a portfolio model in order to judge the critical literacy tasks inherent in good writing. I see from this page how essential it is to set clear standards from the beginning for my students. Writing tasks give students the opportunity to become creative and think beyond a single response. Such subjective scoring should be detailed and provided at the onset of a written piece. This is helpful so that students know the teacher’s expectations. This is also helpful so that the students understand the extent to which they might be creative in their writing.
The teacher must also use developmental awareness when assessing student writing. This involves being aware of grade level skills and expectations. The teacher must also know student’s past performance to keep individualized standards for performance. In integrated language arts unit, I will be careful to clearly state my expectations at the beginning of each written assignment either with a rubric, model, or graphic organizer. Student reflection rubrics may also be a good resource to use. I already have one from That’s A Great Answer (N. Boyles) that I use for open-ended responses. This text helped me think of this resource- but now I can extend this idea to fit my unit as well.
Sarah- I found your entry on math journals interesting. I have heard of math journals, but never used them for instruction. I have several students in my resource room who participate in modified versions of the general curriculum. I see these particular students for both writing and math goals. I liked how you said that the journals work both for exploration and synthesis. It sounds like they are effective in the beginning stages of learning a skill as well as the mastery stage. I also liked the part where they share their entries and thought processes. This is probably helpful for talking out questions and puzzling instruction. This may also be a helpful format for my social studies unit... You have inspired me! :)
In response to Maggie:
Maggie, I can realte to your feelings about the "learning walks" as we called them last year. That is just what they were. Teachers in my school would walk around in groups to pick out the great things that other teachers were doing in thier classrooms. They would use this data and relay it to us at staff meetings. We really were able to get some great ideas about what we can add or change to our common instructional day. We also did have a writing consultant come into each classroom a few times during one week and report about what she is seeing and ideas that she had for the writing block. She was very knowledgable and some of what she suggested I still use today. It was not meant to be evaluative at all.
We as teachers are always used to being under the spotlight for trying to get the students to perform. Many times I feel like adminstrators pick out what we are doing wrong, and not what we are doing correctly. So when I was asked to have teachers come and observe me I was floored. I think its a great way to show teachers that we all have great things about our teaching styles that we could contribute to the whole school, however, we are only contained to one class.
In response to your remark about national standards, what I don't understand is if all states are compared to one another, using different standards, rubrics, and even standarized tests, how is ranking of states' educational performances accurate?
Response to question 3: make connections to your work as a writer.
“Teachers’ success with technology in their arenas will help them understand how to approach students and how to make extensive use of technology in their classrooms.” (page 69) I thought I was up to date with technology, however, the more new technology evolves, the less confident I feel about using it or teaching it for purposes of writing. For example, I would not know where to start to implement writing by making a class blog, an online student –written magazine, or online book review like the text talks about. I think technology has such a huge impact on getting students to see the different audience and purposes they write for, but I as a teacher personally don’t feel comfortable with amount of experience I do have with it. It's kind of funny because I never thought I would sound like my parents or even grandparents when saying, “ you kids know so much more about technology than I do.”
As I read the second half of the book, I realized that the one common theme that came to mind from the reading was that if teachers don’t feel confident in their own writing, then how can they feel confident teaching students writing? Although I don’t do a lot of writing for myself, or other audiences for that matter, I realized that my students are the only ones I do write for. When I model writing for them, I express work that shows specific words, organization, correct grammar usage, etc. When I grew up we did drills for grammar and it wasn’t embedded throughout the writing process. Therefore, I struggled in school and still today with including it correctly into my own writing. Using this experience, I took the weaknesses that I had and turned them into a strength because I knew that if I couldn’t better myself as a writer, how would I be able to give my students the foundation that they need to become life-long writers?
Response to question 4: Consider how what you have learned from this book might support the work of your integrated language arts unit
As I plan for my unit there are a few ideas that I will take away from the second half of this book. Reflecting upon my own teaching practices, I realized that I have always referred to a student's ability in writing based on just strictly narrative writing or expository writing because these were the focuses for the grade. I need to make sure that as I plan and implement my unit, I give students the opportunities to express their writing in multiple ways. (Argumentative, persuasive, expository, narrative, poetry, etc) I must keep in mind that all students have a talent in one area of writing, and just because it is not in the area that grade level has a focus with, does not mean that the student’s writing is insufficient.
I do web quests with the students as a means to integrate technology into the curriculum. I don’t usually integrate any other kinds of technology because to be quite honest, I don’t know too much about other ways to integrate technology so that students can use it to their advantage to strengthen and accentuate their writing. As I plan for this unit, I will think about ways and investigate ways that I could take technology and integrate writing in a way that is interactive and fun for the students, while also educational, (besides the cyber lesson).
I use rubrics all the time, but I am now more aware of the development of them. In actuality, I have already started developing rubrics for my writing instruction because of what I read in this text. Rubrics for writing need to be content and mechanically designed. I implemented a new rubric for my students I that gave them two scores for spelling and mechanics and content of their writing. I feel that this really helped them focus on what they were expected to do and make them more aware of the quality of work that good writers do. I will continue to devise such rubrics for my unit plan. However, I know that there is an inconsistency between the standards and rubrics being used for district assessments. In attempts to keep my classroom objectives correlated, my rubrics will be formulated with language arts and content standards in mind.
I am replying to Courtney's reflection on herself as a writer. I agree with many of the things she said. I also maintained several diaries throughout my life. When I was younger in elementary school my diary was full of all the imaginary/real hurts from school. In seventh grade, I had the most amazing teacher and she had us journal everyday. She would read what we wrote if we wanted her too. This began a new stage in my writing and in my own personal growth. Now all of a sudden I mattered. My words had meaning and that teacher changed my life. It is also funny to read how boy crazy I was in this age. As I approached high school, I started on a writing journey that has not ended. I love to write short stories and every summer I swear I am going to start on a novel. What I have is a collection of beginnings. This helps me to identify with my students struggle through the stages. I wonder if my thoughts are clear enough, where is the story going, will what I am writing really grab the reader.
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