You are enough.

The day I was tasked with assigning the daily writing prompt during my time at the Eastern Michigan Writing Project summer institute, I decided to read the picture book Extraordinary Jane by Hannah E. Harrison. The first time I read this book, I was so moved that I began to weep when I reached the last page. The message of Extraordinary Jane speaks to so many of us, and I think it speaks to all of the Writing Project participants. We compare themselves to others and feel like we don't belong among our brilliant colleagues. But we do belong. I do belong. And so after reading Extraordinary Jane to my colleagues, the writing prompt I chose was just three simple words:

You are enough. 

To talk back to that prompt, I decided to emulate the style of Harrison's text in her book, Extraordinary Jane.



*~*~*~*~*~*

Beth was ordinary
in a class of extraordinary writers.

She couldn't turn an everyday object
into a brilliant metaphor
like Bill
or weave a beautiful poem
like Lorena.

She didn't blow people's minds
like Michael
or make people laugh
like Amy.

Beth was just
Beth.

She tried to find her writing niche
but poetry was a struggle
crot essays didn't make sense
(how can you write an essay with no transitions?!)
op eds made her brain hurt
and then there was that disaster of a novel
she tried to write once.

Beth was just
Beth.

A solid, capable, all-around
writer.

And that was is enough.

A letter to my students

I wrote this letter on the second day of the 2014 Eastern Michigan Writing Project. We went on a writing marathon to various locations in the area and this piece came out of our first stop, which was at Whole Foods of all places. Now that I'm coming back into the classroom in the fall, I felt the need to let my students know just how much they mean to me. I don't think this is the final version, but I do want to read this to them on the first week of school.


To my students:

I want you to know that I believe in you. There are innumerable messages coming at you these days from people telling you that you CAN'T:

These students can't even identify what a verb is.
These students can't write.
These students just can't learn.

But through the sea of voices telling you what you can't do, I want you to listen for my voice across the din and hear me saying that you can. Let me be your beacon, a respite from the storm because you, too, serve as my guidepost, a constant reminder for why I continue to weather this storm. I hear the same discouraging messages, telling me that I'm not doing enough to make you "college and career ready." While you are being called "these students" I am being called "you people" and in one reductive swoop, informed that I want too much despite never doing enough.

But to me, you are enough. You keep me passionate and excited to come to work everyday even when all the other noise that surrounds me (testing, teacher evaluation, politicians, scripted curricula...) is telling me I want to quit. I did, in fact, quit for a year. But do you know what ultimately called me back? Each and every one of you. 

You make me happy.
You make me fullfilled.
You matter.
I believe in you.

The nErDcamp Revolution

Logo designed by Laurie Keller

"Nerds like us are allowed to be unironically enthusiastic about stuff… Nerds are allowed to love stuff, like jump-up-and-down-in-the-chair-can’t-control-yourself love it. When people call people nerds, mostly what they’re saying is ‘you like stuff.’ Which is just not a good insult at all. Like, ‘you are too enthusiastic about the miracle of human consciousness’.”  - John Green

When most teachers think of professional development, what usually comes to mind is soul-sucking, district-mandated drivel that doesn't really develop anything other than the desire to gouge out your eyes with a paperclip if it will get you out of having to sit through another mind-numbing in-service led by an "expert" who has never taught a day in her life.

But the encouraging news is that teachers are starting to take their professional development back in the form for Edcamps. An Edcamp is what is known as an unconference. Instead of writing proposals and having a committee of people to read through and decide months in advance who will present, Edcamps have no set schedule until the day of the conference.What makes Edcamps so revolutionary is that this is a small but mighty step in proving to the establishment that we're tired of being told how to do our jobs by people who aren't in the classroom. So instead of waiting for administrators to realize the necessity of teachers learning from each other, teachers have decided to stop waiting and just do it themselves. We're taking our profession back and telling the doubters, "Don't you worry; we got this."

nErDcamp is a spinoff of the Edcamp model with a literacy focus. The name nErDcamp comes from Nerdy Book Club co-founder Colby Sharp who, along with his wife Alaina and a slew of Nerdy planners and volunteers, began the first nErDcamp last year. This year's nErDcamp was even bigger and better, with two days of learning rather than one.

• Day one comprised of planned sessions, ending with a keynote by Donalyn Miller. In the evening there was also a Nerd Run 5K.
• Day two involved the main part of nErDcamp which were the unplanned sessions, followed by Nerd Camp Jr. in the evening.

I could only attend day one since I am currently participating in the Eastern Michigan Writing Project, but even that was enough to make me realize what a powerful force this new model of professional learning has become. Teachers from all over the country (and even Canada), descended upon Western High School in Parma, Michigan to learn from each other and to celebrate what it means to be a nerd. Nerdy teachers, as John Green pointed out in the quote above, are wholeheartedly and unabashedly enthusiastic. We don't hold back our love of learning. When you release us from our cages of stifling, dispassionate bureaucracy and place us in a setting with other Nerds, an explosion of Nerdtastic fervor happens. As evidenced by the fact that #nErDcampMI was a #1 trending topic on Twitter last weekend:

Photo credit: Dan Spencer

As Colby Sharp pointed out in this tweet:

It feels it little bit like #nErDcampMI is currently the center of the literacy universe.
— Colby Sharp (@colbysharp) July 8, 2014

It's hard to believe the small town of Parma, Michigan could be the center of the universe, but for the 300+ teachers that came to nErDcamp and the people on Twitter who weren't there but wished they could be, so it was. If only for a couple days.

Mark your calendars because on July 6 & 7, 2015 nErDcamp will return for year three. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Cindy Minnich and her son Bryson came to Michigan from Pennsylvania

There were pins from all over the U.S. and even Canada!

Just a small sample of the generosity of publishers who provided books for the swag bags

Colby Sharp introduces Donalyn Miller's keynote to a full auditorium

Nerd Run 5K awards

Love these ladies! me with Cindy Minnich, Donalyn Miller, Niki Barnes and Kristin McIlhagga

Linda Urban talks about how to add detail to your writing to the kids at Nerd Camp Jr.

To see all I learned from Nerd Camp, check out my Storify:
#nErDcampMI 2014: Tweeting My Learning

EMWP: A day in the life

One of the things we are tasked with as participants in the Eastern Michigan Writing Project Summer Institute is to create a daily log for each day. Individuals sign up for a day and find a way to present their "day in the life" creations. Here is my daily log for July 9, 2014:

National Writing Project: See What Everybody's Talking About

This week I started the Eastern Michigan Writing Project Summer Institute. Reflecting on my first week, I now understand why I have heard teachers speak of it in only positive and superlative ways. Since the institute is only three weeks this summer, I actually feel kind of cheated out of that fourth week now. I don't think I'm going to want it to be over after only three weeks. I have driven home from Eastern Michigan University each day this week feeling empowered and energized. Teachers, if you've never done the Writing Project before, put it on your bucket list. And don't assume that it's only for English teachers. Educators of all subject-areas and backgrounds participate. What we all have in common is a passion for our students and a need to better ourselves by continually learning and growing.

To learn more about the National Writing Project or to locate a site in your area, visit the NWP website. 

Pay attention to signs. They're all arond us.

I am not someone who just gives in to the hands of fate and thinks that everything is predetermined. But I do think there are some things in life that you need to make happen and some things you need to let happen. The trick is finding a balance between the two. I sort of follow Oprah's belief that luck is merely when preparation meets the right moment.

I recently saw a job posting for a teaching position at the school I attended from 5th-12th grade. At first I tried to resist the temptation to apply, but something kept nagging at me to do it. So after many hesitant reaches for the computer mouse, I finally clicked send on the email I wrote to the principal with my resume attached.

The very next day I received a call to come in for an interview.

When I went to the interview, I was amazed at how easy and right it felt. I didn't feel like I was being grilled for a job, I felt like I was just talking with two colleagues about teaching. Next thing I know, I'm being offered a job to teach 8th grade English.

I didn't know how to feel at first. I wasn't expecting it all to happen so fast. So even though I accepted the offer, for the past week or so, I've had doubts about whether this was a good idea.

But then yesterday I walked to the mailbox and noticed there was an envelope addressed to me with the return address from a former student. I opened the envelope and immediately began to weep.

The letter this student wrote was telling me all about how she had just read my favorite book, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and she wanted to share her thoughts with me. She wrote it just like the letters they used to write in their reader-response notebooks in my literature class. She poured her heart and soul into this letter and showed me just how much she understood and pondered the book. It looks like she even tore it out of the same composition book she used in my class.

If I had any doubts about going back into the classroom in the fall, this letter just squashed them. God or the universe or whatever you happen to believe in really does send us signs. We just have to be observant enough to notice them. This sign was hard to ignore. It came at just the time I needed it, and if the letter weren't sign enough, this student will also be going into 8th grade. The grade I'll be teaching in the fall.

My faith has been restored

Last week on Twitter, there was a big kerfuffle because Borough Press, a UK imprint of HarperCollins, commandeered the hashtag that Donalyn Miller created six years ago for teachers to share the books they read over the summer. It's called the #bookaday challenge, and it is what it says: read a book a day during the summer and share it on Twitter. It has been an incredibly useful form of professional learning for teachers, as they can see what others are reading and talking about as a way to know what to bring back and talk about in their classrooms in the fall.

Borough Press didn't bother to research whether the hashtag was already in use, or if they did, they didn't seem to care, and chose to use #bookaday for their own marketing, creating a schedule of book-related tasks for Twitter users to complete such as:

Book I own more than one copy of
Book with a blue cover
Book that doesn't belong to me
Book I forgot I owned

Compared to Donalyn's version of #bookaday, these tasks were all very trivial and muddied the feed of what teachers and librarians were trying to use for the benefit of their profession and their students.

At first, Borough Press would not waver, going so far as to say that because they were using the hashtag, it was trending. Their "apology" had a very #sorrynotsorry tone to it, and so I felt compelled write a poem a la William Carlos Williams, via Gail Carson Levine:

This whole situation felt like yet another example of a big corporation silencing the voices of teachers. But because so many teachers and librarians caused enough of a stir, and Donalyn also brought up the fact that #bookaday is referenced in her copyrighted work, Borough Press finally backed off and created a new hashtag, #bookadayUK.

The result of this unfortunate situation has restored my faith that teachers' voices do matter, can be heard, and can make a difference across the din of corporations muddying the educational waters. We're so used to hearing teachers' voices silenced or sullied that even a small victory like this is still a victory. We might be "small," but we are mighty.