They say that after a while, teachers begin to resemble the students they teach. Well, I haven't gauged my ear or colored my hair pink; I don't have a new boyfriend every week, and I don't hate my parents. I do, however, sometimes share my students' dread of school. I have to force myself to crawl out from my warm cocoon of blankets and trudge off to school. On the drive, I grumble and grouse and just generally pollute the area with my foul mood.
A few years ago, it seemed as if the sometimes were turning into everytimes, and I started to question my career as a teacher. Then I attended the SI. It may sound flowery, but it isn't an exaggeration to say that the SI was like a drink of water in the desert for me. I stretched so much as a teacher, but more importantly, as a person that summer, and it didn't stop when the SI ended. I continued to push myself beyond what my school district expected of me. I had role models who challenged me to see myself not just as a teacher but as someone who could bring change to her students and her colleagues. I reconnected with myself as a writer and began writing for fun and for work and just because. I read and read and read and still am reading in an effort to complete the transformation that began in the SI.
My district pays people to provide professional development, but I can honestly say, that for me, I've yet to find as much value as I have in the NWP. I've learned about technology, web 2.0 and digital literacy. As a result, I've connected my students' out of school lives with their school lives through the use of blogging and social media. I've introduced my classes to Donald Murray and Peter Elbow, and we've "written down the bones." And I've reached out to students outside of my school.
As the director of youth programs at our site, I am rejuvenated in the dreary dregs of March, as I meet the students at our Middle School Writing Conference. Their writing AND their enthusiasm to learn more about writing both awes and thrills me and feeds my soul so that I can return to my classroom hopeful and ready to race with my students to the end of the school year. I feel as though everything is possible as I watch new friendships formed across state lines and race lines during the Summer Writing Workshop. They come early each summer morning, their friends still in bed, and they write and they write and they ask to write more, and I am hopeful that writing is NOT dead and that we can and must continue to dig deep to release our students' voices into the world.
I'm not sure what sort of a teacher I may become, but I know without a doubt that I would not be a teacher today had I not found the NWP. I am like my students in this way also; I need something bigger than myself to believe in and to follow. I need to see that what I do makes a difference and isn't just done for the sake of doing. I crave the collaboration and friendship of kindred spirits and I need to be reminded that what I am today is NOT what I may yet become. The NWP teaches so much more than writing.
A few years ago, it seemed as if the sometimes were turning into everytimes, and I started to question my career as a teacher. Then I attended the SI. It may sound flowery, but it isn't an exaggeration to say that the SI was like a drink of water in the desert for me. I stretched so much as a teacher, but more importantly, as a person that summer, and it didn't stop when the SI ended. I continued to push myself beyond what my school district expected of me. I had role models who challenged me to see myself not just as a teacher but as someone who could bring change to her students and her colleagues. I reconnected with myself as a writer and began writing for fun and for work and just because. I read and read and read and still am reading in an effort to complete the transformation that began in the SI.
My district pays people to provide professional development, but I can honestly say, that for me, I've yet to find as much value as I have in the NWP. I've learned about technology, web 2.0 and digital literacy. As a result, I've connected my students' out of school lives with their school lives through the use of blogging and social media. I've introduced my classes to Donald Murray and Peter Elbow, and we've "written down the bones." And I've reached out to students outside of my school.
As the director of youth programs at our site, I am rejuvenated in the dreary dregs of March, as I meet the students at our Middle School Writing Conference. Their writing AND their enthusiasm to learn more about writing both awes and thrills me and feeds my soul so that I can return to my classroom hopeful and ready to race with my students to the end of the school year. I feel as though everything is possible as I watch new friendships formed across state lines and race lines during the Summer Writing Workshop. They come early each summer morning, their friends still in bed, and they write and they write and they ask to write more, and I am hopeful that writing is NOT dead and that we can and must continue to dig deep to release our students' voices into the world.
I'm not sure what sort of a teacher I may become, but I know without a doubt that I would not be a teacher today had I not found the NWP. I am like my students in this way also; I need something bigger than myself to believe in and to follow. I need to see that what I do makes a difference and isn't just done for the sake of doing. I crave the collaboration and friendship of kindred spirits and I need to be reminded that what I am today is NOT what I may yet become. The NWP teaches so much more than writing.
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