Blue-Sky Teaching

Good Sunday Morning Everyone! Posing with our favorite author Nic Stone in Nashville (Project LIT Summit 2018) Today I'm going to invite you to take a look at how you're choosing to work hard this summer.  I mean, come on, I know you're a good teacher who wants to use summertime to improve. But before you jump into a flurry of unit planning for the upcoming year, I encourage you to pause and reflect on what you're doing, why you're doing it, and what impact it might have on your classroom next year. First, let's jump back to my English education class at the University of Missouri.  I vividly remember reading Nancie Atwell's suggestion in her book  In the Middle that I leave the bulletin boards in my classroom empty at the beginning of the year, so that when the students arrived they could decorate them. Now, up until that moment, Nancie Atwell had been a god to me.  I hung on her every word and embraced reading and writing workshop wholeheartedly. 

My garden is stunning right now. This year my lilies are overflowing with blooms, and because our mama groundhog has apparently moved on, we have actual flowers. Each plant is a mix of blooms and various stages of buds, some ready to burst open any moment, and others that are still green and growing. I’m not worried about any of them; I’m enjoying watching them bloom at just the right time. These plants remind me of students: some are early bloomers, some are in the middle, and others will mature a bit later. Like the flowers outside my window, I want to nurture and value every single one. Instead of assuming slower blooming flowers are broken, I assume they’re just fine and will open with a little more time. This series is focusing on that last category: the late bloomers, the ones who have not had success in school. There are so many reasons our students get labeled struggling, so instead of letting the label dominate what happens in our classes, we can choose to be a