Skip to main content

BSWP Begins

I attended the Boise State Writing Project Pre-Institute this weekend and have a painfully full brain and plate now. The crazy part is, that even though I feel overwhelmed, nervous, and confused, I am also incredibly excited to start. I already feel like a world of teacher connections has been opened to me. Everyone was incredibly warm, enthusiastic, and supportive.

When I first started teaching, the switch for my love of reading and writing got turned off and the work of teaching absorbed it. In the last few years, I've started to realize that there is enough room for both professional and personal reading and writing in my life, and by doing both, I am hopefully becoming a better teacher for my students. During the Pre-Institute, we began reflecting on our teaching principles and practices. I feel like the BSWP will help me better define and strengthen those principles and practices by pushing me out of my comfort zone (much like I expect my students to do each day).
From now until June, I'll be working my way through my ginormous to-do list. I am thrilled to be a Buzzwhooper!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Perception vs. Reality

Before I became a "real" teacher, my perception of teaching English was that I would be blowing kids' minds with classic literature and handing out grammar worksheets.  Needless to say, that hasn't happened...yet. Instead, I was surprised to find that I loved teaching about writing. In particular, I found a love of teaching argumentation and persuasion. The seventh graders are gearing up for argumentative writing. We begin by talking about the concepts of perception and reality and how those two things influence our views of the world and all its issues. I have them make a poster that's based off a popular meme to help ground those concepts. It hardly seems like work, and it's one of the few assignments we do where I get to hear things like, "Can I finish this at home?" or "Can I do another one?" The task is to make a perception and reality poster. I start by showing them an example for a teacher, like this one . This makes for a great ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tongue Twisters, Growth Mindset, and Self-Portraits

To celebrate the beginning of fall (or to mourn the end of summer), here is a lovely picture of a sunflower in my yard. Here’s what we were up to this week! The seventh graders continued their exploration on narratives this week.   We practiced summary writing and writing about theme.   We also talked about how setting can influence the events of a story.   We used close reading strategies using the Collections Close Reader .   To put all this practice together, my students have some interesting short stories of their own in the works.   I can’t wait to read them! I’m really kicking myself for not getting any pictures of the demonstration speeches we did in second hour this week.   I’ll leave it up to you to picture my students teaching the class how to make cheesecake, wash a dog, tie a bowtie, ride motorcycles, and make lava lamps.   It was a diverse set of topics to say the least. Friday, we relaxed a bit from the stress of speech deli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dear Middle Schooler

Dear Middle Schooler, I see you on your hard days. I see that zit forming on the center of your face, looking at me like headlights set on high beams. I see those pants that have gotten just a little too short because you grew three inches overnight. I see that your best friend suddenly decided to ignore you for no apparent reason. I see that your parents are going through a divorce and you can’t possibly imagine how you will make it through the day, let alone first hour. I see you, and I know it’s hard. If you polled the entire universe (aliens and all), and asked them what age they wished they could go back to--not a single solitary soul would say twelve. Not. A. Single. One. Because being twelve is like getting a sweaty hug while being kicked in the shins. Being a middle schooler is like lying in the middle of the road and getting run over by a steamroller, and then being scraped off the road and put on the schoolbus because you still have to go to school (Flat Stanley s...
Post a Comment
Read more