Category: Writer’s Notebook

Posted on

Snapshot: Pandemic Teaching


I am sad. They have officially cancelled school for the remainder of the year.

I feel lost. My identity is very much wrapped up in my teaching. I love what I do.

I miss my students and colleagues, I miss the excitement of interacting with people everyday and exploring their curiosity and ideas. I miss being able to commiserate with my friends. Moving online with my team and students is not the same as being together in our school. People are anxious and overwhelmed and not sure how to best move forward.

It could be any day of the week, as we have lost all of the markers that delineate one day from another. It’s like living in the movie GroundHog Day. I believe today is Tuesday, because Mommy School was up and running, the emails from school have not stopped and I think Isaac might have an online piano lesson this afternoon.

There are many lessons that will come with this time, I hope we will be better able to see them as we try to move forward through this quagmire. I will try to write through the successes as we continue through.

I did want to link this article from Edutopia, as it has lots more great YA Book Recommendations, that might be just what you (or someone you’re spending your days with) needs right now.

“22 Young Adult Novels to Help Students Process the Pandemic (or Forget It for a Bit)” Check it out here. Order online from your local book store!

Posted on

Snapshot: Passage Study

Take a look at this passage:

from Shoe Dog: A Memoir By The Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.


        “Perhaps nothing ever revealed my mother’s true nature like the frequent drills she put me through. As a young girl she’d witnessed a house in her neighborhood burn to the ground; one of the people inside had been killed. So she often tied a rope to the post of my bed and made me use it to rappel out of my second-floor window. While she timed  me. What must the neighbors have thought? What must I have thought? Probably this: Life is dangerous. And this: We must always be prepared.

          And this: My mother loves me.”

I loved this passage. As a writer, I like how he poses several questions after he shares such a vivid image of he and his mother practising escaping a burning building. In recounting the story, he wonders what it must have looked like to others– but more importantly, he answers what it made him think of… and in the stragest of circumstances, he sees that his mother’s odd behaviour was really her love for him.

This was a great passage for students to note and imitate craft. Share a vignette, pose the questions. End with possibilities: Probably this:… And this… And this…

Read my review of Shoe Dog here.

Posted on

Snapshots: Teaching

This blog started because I read a lot because I want to be able to recommend titles to my students. I also look for wonderful passages and beautiful sentences– those too are for my students. I want them to take notice of what they read: what it means to them; what it makes them think about; what they question; what it looks like on the page; how it is crafted to get our attention.

The Snapshots Page includes posts that snapshot moments and thoughts about my teaching of reading and writing.

Posted on

Snapshot: Why Reading Matters

Reading stories. The Paperbag Princess; his first feminist story.

“A child who reads will be a child who thinks.”

I have spent all of my adult life studying children’s literature; the effects of reading; how to help students who strive to be better readers; and overall, espousing the powerful effects that reading can have.

My own childhood was replete with books and stories: I can still hear my mother reading to me lovingly, in voices I can still recall in vivid audio in my own head. There is no single piece of furniture I have bought more frequently than a book shelf– all manners of sizes and shapes. And still, I do not have quite enough shelves to house all of the books that have meant something to me throughout my life.

Marie Kondo, the sweet, Japanese organizing guru (whom I adore because she makes me recall all of the sweet Japanese women I taught with 20 odd years ago)– would have us believe that we should only keep things that ‘spark joy.’ She’s against books that don’t continuously add value to your life; but takes care to recognize their importance: “Books are the reflection of our thoughts and values,” she says. Over the years, even I have let some books go– passed them on; donated them; made them part of the collection I loan out at school. But many of them still spark joy.

An online Twitter colleague posed the question: “When a student asks: What’s the point of reading literature… what’s your answer?” and I was so thrilled to read the responses, because they resonate deeply as to why I believe in the power of books! Here are a few:

Shelly Boyd Stephens
‏@smbpinky
Replying to @piros_grant @ncte @teacher2teacher
All literature is actually about you. Authors use themes that make us think about common human experiences. Sometimes, we can easily see ourselves in a book, sometimes it’s subtle, but they’re all actually about you.

Karl Ubelhoer
@MrU_ishere
Replying to @piros_grant @ncte @teacher2teacher
To travel the world; to explore love, loss, and greatness; to live the lives of a thousand people; to breathe life into stale lungs; to find my better self.

Meredith Johnson – #BookCampPD
‏@mjjohnson1216
Replying to @piros_grant @ncte @teacher2teacher
from @matthaig1 Reading isn’t important because it helps get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. Reading makes the world better. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Escape. Reading is love in action.

Here’s a fun Infographic on how Reading Makes You A Better Person.

So, READ. Read to your kids, read for yourself. Just READ.

A well-loved series of amazing potty humour. Never gets old.