I love Saturday mornings. It gives me the opportunity to look back on the week and celebrate all the good. Thank you Ruth Ayers for creating a weekly celebration opportunity. Find out more here how you can start this practice.
My first celebration is for all of the people in my personal learning network (world) that responded to a call I made on twitter. Within five minutes I couldn’t keep up with the tweets. Not only from the folks I called upon but others.
The pros and cons of student-led conferences were discussed, as well as the time it took, how to make it positive, and how to avoid potential pitfalls. Lovely posts, direct messages and emails continued. Amazing. I now have a great place to start my thinking about how my students will enter this work.
The second celebration is the #TCRWP chat on argument and debate hosted by Maggie B. Roberts. My fifth graders are just starting with a Monday debate series, so this was perfect. So many smart people out there doing the work: basically holding up a flashlight so I can go down that path without hitting too many walls. I want to celebrate this outstanding chart that guides students through the physical and mental process of debate.
If this was all I got out of the chat, I would be thrilled. But there was much more. The resources shared in this chat were overwhelming. I celebrate this archive and all of the contributors to it. This is a place I will go to study and grow my beginning practice as at teacher of debate.
Ah, the beauty of twitter. It’s not just the ideas, but the dialogue that I cherish. IT’s the people who question, try, and then share their results as possibilities. I celebrate the dialogue and am honored to be a part of it.
The third celebration is for poetry. My students and I are getting a little more comfortable in the world of metaphor. We read “How is Meadow an Ocean?” by Laura Purdie Salas and then found a connection in The One and Only Ivan: “…her eyes are like Stella’s, black and long-lashed, bottomless lakes fringed by tall grass.” Ah Ivan is a poet! And then there was this response to the poem on a student’s blog.
My fourth celebration is for two days to reflect and reconnect. This weekend, time seems abundant and pressures lessened. I have no commitments. There is extra time. Time to take a little longer shower. Time to drink a cup of coffee at a table, not in the car. Time to read a newspaper article, a post and think about the next thing. Time to consider possibilities.
To Read To Write To Be 