Blue-Sky Teaching

I love coming to summer school on these June mornings and seeing so many of our athletes hard at work. On the football field, sweat-drenched players sprint the length of the field in the coolest part of a Missouri summer day.  Cross country runners, just back from a 7-mile run, stretch out and cool down on the cement sidewalk. Good coaches know that at the beginning of the season, they have to build endurance in their athletes, push them to challenge themselves, to get stronger, more agile, faster, and better at each practice.  Cross country didn't start with a 7-mile run; they built to a 7-mile run.  Varsity football looks different than freshmen football. The athletes I watch today are in those difficult practices by choice. They want to score the winning touchdown, to go to State this year.  They want to break personal bests and to win races in cross country meets.  And still, even though they have chosen their sport, not all of these athletes will last the season.

Instead of being in Boothbay, Maine right now at the Boothbay Literacy Retreat, learning alongside Penny Kittle, Kylene Beers, Teri Lesesne and Linda Rief, I'm here in Columbia, Missouri helping some kids recover an English credit that didn't quite happen this school year. Don't get me wrong, it is rewarding work seeing these kids finish a book, finish a paper, give a presentation, which they did not do during the year. But still.  Boothbay, Maine.  Yoga on the water.  Choosing a beautiful new journal.  Early morning writing with Linda Rief.  Sigh. Luckily, we have Twitter!  I missed yesterday's conference, but today I'm sneaking in some catch-up time.  I opened up TweetDeck, logged in and found the hashtag, #bblit16, and I'm in - finding nuggets in the tweets, like these gems: Twitter is great - people tweet out most important ideas, and I'm gobbling them up.  What a great way to stay current on best practice ideas.  Any conference that is

It's almost the end of June.  My summer school class has dwindled to just a few students finishing up their work recovering a lost English credit. My brain is creeping off to the next school year.  Where do I begin? I will be teaching Literacy Seminar again next year - three  sections.  I am also going to teach one section of an 11th grade reading/writing lab (which is remediation and support for reading and writing).  Finally, I'll have my first group of AVID 9th graders.  I am very excited about the variety.  I love my reading kids and I'm always thinking about how to improve that class.  I've had many of the 11th graders in Lit Seminar, so I need to think about how that class can best meet students' needs where they are now.  And then there is AVID - students who have made a decision to learn how to be more effective in school and who have a goal to go to college someday.  This voluntary piece is the opposite of reading class - a class of kids who have chosen t

After the hectic end to the school year, a mini-vacation to visit family in Wisconsin, and starting summer school, I am back! I'm teaching credit recovery for 9th grade English - read that as "you are assigned to my class if you did not pass English."  Read that also as, "We are not excited to be here with you, Ms. Hagen."  Luckily for these kids, I am excited to be here with them!  For me, it's another opportunity to get kids who don't see themselves as readers or writers to change their view of themselves and of literacy, and maybe even their view of school itself. Who are these students?  They are a true mixed bag - I have struggling readers and writers; I have attendance problems, behavior problems, compliance problems, language problems, attitude problems, and probably a variety of other problems that I'm not aware of.  And, I have students who did not meet deadlines, did not like the books or the paper topics assigned to them, and those who