Where I've Been and What I've Been Doing

For the past month I've been participating in the Summer Institute at Coastal Savannah Writing Project. We met every week day, and what an intense experience it was. I am still processing everything that I experienced. Does this happen to anyone else: after an all-encompassing experience, you keep ruminating, thinking, recalling, everything that happened? There was just so much to do and to think about. We wrote daily, met with book groups, writing groups, and wrote collaboratively. There were presentations by the facilitators--so many strategies to use in the classroom. And there was research and reading--lots of it. In the whole month I did not read one book for pleasure. I lived, breathed and dreamed the Summer Institute. My own presentation was on the use of the Writer's Notebook as a strategy for developing voice in student writing. Once I had presented to my colleagues I found many things I need to change or improve. I will be presenting at a fall conference in October.

One last assignment remains: my implementation plan. This is where I show how I will incorporate everything I have learned in Summer Institute in my classroom this year. There are so many strategies I would like to incorporate--but at the same time, I want to keep my plan realistic. In the past I have incorporated Socratic Seminar, Writer's Notebook, and writing with my students. But I usually only try to adopt one new strategy in any given year. This time I am going to try to adopt several new strategies. And of course I have to actually write my implementation plan. So far I have done some research, gone over my notebook and notes, assembled all the books, notebooks, etc. that I might need, walked the dogs, given the dogs baths, and made falafel burgers. Mmmm. The falafel burgers were good (my adaptation of a Moosewood Collective recipe).

All of the reading I did in the past month was for the Summer Institute in some way. Should I review some of the books I read for the Institute? I did really love Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, which I thought was quite brilliant.

Now reading: Simon Van Booy's The Secret Lives of People in Love (my review will be posted on Thursday). My TBR pile is literally a tower. More in another post about my grand reading ambitions for the next few weeks and months.

Thanks to all the wonderful folks who visited my blog during Blog Fest 2011. I wish I could have given a book to every one of you. I'd love to do another giveaway soon--it was fun. I did go back and delete all the comments from Blog Fest because people had left their email addresses in the comments. Out of respect for the privacy of those who commented, I thought it was best to just delete them all. But it was thrilling for me to have so many new visitors.  Thanks to each and every one of you.