So, I received my invitation just the other day to PRESENT AT NCTE 2010!
Two friends and I submitted a proposal late in 2009, and it was accepted. I will be discussing personal belief statement essays in our session while my fellow teaching friends will discuss choice literacy and Socratic Seminars. Sharing this news with my students was important to me. I'm forever encouraging them to take chances and be fortified by the taking of the chance in the first place; if the risk pays off, all the better. They recalled the enthusiasm with which I shared my experiences after NCTE 2009 (and they recalled the books--dear God, the books!), so they knew how much this meant to me.
In the midst of the anxiety brought on by the current state of affairs in NJ schools, the acceptance of our proposal was welcomed news to say the least. I'm not sure what will happen with my position next year. There is a strong possibility that it will not exist. I'm feeling curious above all else--curious to see what's next. I'm counting my blessings that I'm not one of the many who will lose a position and have to worry about how they will afford their mortgage or childcare. I have no spouse, no child. I live at home. I'm actually in the most perfect of positions to lose my job, if there existed such a thing. And I'm among the very few who could ever write a thing like that at a time like this.
Let's hope the populace in my district stops letting the governor do the thinking for them. (Fat chance.)
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"If the angel deigns to come, it will be because you have convinced her, not by your tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning." Rainer Maria Rilke
tutto di me
- teach people not books
- Second year educator; social justice minded; sworn enemy of teacher shoes everywhere; figuring out how to do what I do as best as I possibly can, without losing myself in the process.
sagacity
"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Choice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others. While all transition involves change, not all change results in transition."
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness
"'Curiosity never killed this cat.' That's what I'd like as my epitaph."
Studs Terkel
"Whenever I am asked to do a good thing, I say yes right away."
Maya Angelou
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
James Madison
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
e.e. cummings
"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole lives. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before."
Henry David Thoreau, "Winter"
"As long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that have themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine."
Arundhati Roy
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."
Dante Alighieri
" But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. / You are still the bread and the knife. / You will always be the bread and the knife, / not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine."
Billy Collins
"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
Albert Einstein
"The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. . . Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
"'Well, how can you talk without a brain?'
'I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?'"
Dorothy & Scarecrow,
The Wizard of Oz
"Poetry (and now my voice is rising) / is not all love, love, love, / and I'm sorry the dog died. / Poetry (here I hear myself the loudest) / is the human voice, / and are we not of interest to each other?"
Elizabeth Alexander
"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"Seed hope. Flower peace."
Daniel Berrigan
Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Choice is illusory to the degree it represents the expectations of others. While all transition involves change, not all change results in transition."
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness
"'Curiosity never killed this cat.' That's what I'd like as my epitaph."
Studs Terkel
"Whenever I am asked to do a good thing, I say yes right away."
Maya Angelou
"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."
James Madison
"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing / than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
e.e. cummings
"As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole lives. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before."
Henry David Thoreau, "Winter"
"As long as we continue to mindlessly defer to institutions that have themselves begun to cynically drop any pretence of being moral, just, or respectable - why should the government listen? it's doing just fine."
Arundhati Roy
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality."
Dante Alighieri
" But don't worry, I am not the bread and the knife. / You are still the bread and the knife. / You will always be the bread and the knife, / not to mention the crystal goblet and--somehow-- the wine."
Billy Collins
"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"
Albert Einstein
"The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. . . Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measure of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform."
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
"'Well, how can you talk without a brain?'
'I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?'"
Dorothy & Scarecrow,
The Wizard of Oz
"Poetry (and now my voice is rising) / is not all love, love, love, / and I'm sorry the dog died. / Poetry (here I hear myself the loudest) / is the human voice, / and are we not of interest to each other?"
Elizabeth Alexander
"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered the absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
"Seed hope. Flower peace."
Daniel Berrigan
provocation
stimuli
labels
- body politic (18)
- d-r-e-a-m-y (1)
- for art's sake (19)
- g.w. is a d.b. (4)
- grown-up books (8)
- methods resources (2)
- not teacher chic (1)
- poetry (25)
- ramblings of a first year teacher (47)
- recognition (4)
- science (1)
- teacher chic (12)
- travelogue (1)
- unapologetic consumerism (2)
- writing workshop talk (3)
- y.a. books (10)