Through the culminating project for the grad course and Nancy Atwell's foundational The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers, I investigated, implemented, reflected on, and made adjustments to Reading Workshop in my seventh, ninth, and tenth grade Language Arts classes. I feel the pleasure, dedication, and focus all students have exhibited when the right book gets into their hands and the rest of the classroom melts away as they quietly engage with a book, turn the page, and are intent on r-e-a-d-i-n-g...
Compelled by my students' example of content, self-directed, and self-motivated readers, I also made time during the holiday break to read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which I have always felt as though I - an enthusiastic Language Arts teacher and fan of Steinbeck's earnest observations of life - should read. Since quickly completing that "big book," I have regained the spark to begin Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book with a calm voice and attention to detail reminiscent of Steinbeck.
In November, I also had the pleasure of representing the Indiana Writing Project at the National Writing Project's Annual Meeting and attending my sixth National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention. The "golden lines" and ideas I carry away from the meeting and convention include:
- Perhaps "new" literacy is something that has no official academic standard or assigned role in day to day life, but is an enrichment and illumination, a new means of being and communicating. It affects our lives and way of life before we know where the ripples will end or evolve into. New literacy is very personal and dependent on the user; it has not been canonized.
- From the Area 3 Writing Project, Bee Foster's astute observation:"If it contains meaning, it's [an opportunity for] reading. If it requires a process to create, it's [an opportunity for] writing."
For more joie de vivre via (digital) literacy, check out the brief movie based on illustrations and lines from the book Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night.