Blue-Sky Teaching

When you find out at 8PM the night before an author is visiting your school that there's going to be a two-hour delayed start because of icy roads, you might panic just a bit.  When the superintendent says they'll re-evaluate at 5AM to see if they need to close school all day, you might have to practice your deep breathing to keep the voice that's hysterically shouting, "NO! NO! NO!!" at bay. This past summer I became a site leader for Project LIT Battle, our branch of Project LIT Community, a grassroots book club started in Nashville, Tennessee by Jared Amato, an English teacher who’s on a mission to spread book love and eliminate book deserts in his community.  Our book club started small with my AVID 10 class reading Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give  in September and Kwame Alexander's Solo in December.  We discussed books, played trivia and ate brownies.  The kids, who had never been part of a book club outside of class before, joined by a few te

In this 20th year of teaching, I'm embracing the idea that teaching = constant learning.  I'm accepting that my desk will always be messy - covered with YA I'm previewing, professional books I'm reading, post-it notes, notebooks, and probably lunch.  I'm accepting that I will never feel like an expert.  But, you know what?  That's a huge relief!  This messy, winding, joyful, uncertain journey is just where I'm supposed to be. This year's learning in my classroom has been about increasing student ownership, which means I'm thinking a lot about student empowerment.  This image, from George Couros , is living at the front of my brain right now: This continuum relates not only to the learning environment in my classroom, things like the choices students make, the units of study we do and the topics we investigate, but also to human issues.  How are my students developing their voices?  How are their identities valued?  How are they developing the