Amazing week!

Ahhh. I have just spent four days in heaven. Well, heaven for me, anyway. I have had my first week of class in the Missouri Writing Project, and it has been incredible!

We start out each day journaling - our facilitators (teachers who are learning right along side us)provide topics, or we can write about whatever we want. What a luxury to have 10 minutes of time to just write without feeling guilty that I should be taking attendance, checking in with absent kids or doing some other task for school.

Then someone presents the daily minutes, where they review what we did in class the day before in a fun format. There was talk about how this practice might work in the classroom. Maybe a weekly overview?

The main part of the day is where someone presents a Round Table discussion/writing lesson. So far we've done interviews and written oral histories, we revised common stories and revised them to send different messages (I did Sleeping Beauty and had the princess rescue the prince), and today we did several fun activities - you'll have to wait until school starts to see them.

The biggest highlights so far have come during our afternoon activities where we have done things to bring social justice into the classroom. One of them I'm going to save for school, but I'll tell you about today's. We went out to Lenoir, to just sit and talk with someone who lives there. I was really nervous about this activity. I kept imagining interviewing a person who couldn't hear me even though I was yelling, and that person being very angry about the whole thing. My experience was NOTHING like that. It was amazing!

I met a woman named Norma who I'm guessing is in her 80s. She used to be a teacher in a one-room school house in rural Missouri, and then she got married and traveled the world. Her stories of the travels and projects that she and her husband did over the years were so interesting. I was transported to India, Liberia and the Czech Republic. And, it didn't stop when they retired. She and her husband continued helping people in the Appalachians, in Arizona and even in Alaska. I was so inspired to travel and lead as rich of a life as she has. Now I will write up my interview notes into a story. I am so grateful for this experience and can't wait to hear everyone else's stories too.

My last little nugget is that this week we read and talked about the book Life is a Verb (you know that book by the woman [Patti Digh] who loves Johnny Depp as much as I do?). I hadn't quite finished it, so I read the rest this week and it was SO GOOD!!!!

I am loving my summer. I've been writing and reading and having great conversations with friends, and swimming and lounging and painting and loving my kids, and just being happy. I hope you too are having a rejuvenating summer. Ms. Selby, our new principal, sent us an email this week saying she hoped we were resting and having fun because she needs us back 100%. I extend my wishes to you and say also, I need you 100% too. Bring your experiences, your noticings and your wonderful brains. It's WAY to early to say I can't wait to see you, so I won't. Live, laugh and have fun!
Ms. Hagen