“Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, compute, and communicate using visual, audible, and digital materials across disciplines and in any context. The ability to read, write, and communicate connects people to one another and empowers them to achieve things they never thought possible. Communication and connection are the basis of who we … Continue reading What is literacy?
Every year, my school hosts Literacy Lunch. It is a time for families to come share in the love of reading, writing, and learning in classrooms, followed by a meal together in our cafeteria. Literacy Lunch has sometimes been a vehicle for explaining English Language Arts curriculum, and shifts in standards, to parents. Mostly it’s … Continue reading Living literacy
As my colleague and I present at a reading conference for educators this week, I watch the participants’ faces. Eager. Expectant. Reflective. Smiling and visibly misting over in turn, as my colleague and I talk about the diversity of the third, fourth, and fifth grade students who sign up, some of them multiple times, to … Continue reading Magical literacy and learning, part 2
Yesterday my colleague and I presented “Magical Literacy and Learning: The Harry Potter Club” at the North Carolina Reading Association. While we waited for the preceding session to end, I watched other educators gathering in the hallway outside the closed door where our session would be held. I could hear whispers: “Harry Potter . . … Continue reading Magical literacy and learning, part 1
I was sixteen years old the first time I went to New York City—that’s the same age, according to his own writing, that St. Patrick was kidnapped in Britain and carried to slavery in Ireland. I didn’t know this fact at the time. I arrived in the city that long-ago day with my high school … Continue reading In the name of St. Patrick
As the calendar turned from 2020 to 2021, I thought about words. Particularly the word “weary.” It had seeped into my bones. And I wondered if maybe, maybe…as much as I love them…I was tired of words. Tired of the way they are wielded to wound. Tired of the clamor. One word with appeal: hibernation. … Continue reading Spiritual Word Journey
Perhaps you have taken part in the “one little word” tradition for the New Year as a means of living more intentionally and reflectively, maybe letting it guide your writing. At the beginning of 2020, I had a word in mind for the year. Reclamation. Here’s what I wrote, ten weeks before COVID-19 shut us … Continue reading What’s in a word
Years ago, as I was lamenting things I wish I’d done differently as a literacy coach, my mentor leaned over and put her hand on my arm. Shaking her head, she uttered this unforgettable phrase: “Don’t should on yourself.” I wrote it on the cover of my coaching notebook. I would tell it to teachers. … Continue reading Don’t ‘should’ on yourself
An elegy. Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. -Ecclesiastes 9:11 He was born nearly seventy years ago. With cerebral palsy. He … Continue reading Spiritual Journey Thursday: On golf and good-bye
In the 1590s, Shakespeare penned: Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this sun of York;And all the clouds that lour’d upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried… Now is 2020: The year of our discontent. Heavy clouds of pain, anger, injustice enshroud our houses, our cities, our minds, … Continue reading We can’t go back
