Kate Messner's Blog, page 10
June 7, 2012
Sorry for all the re-posting!
Rest assured, I'm working to fix it, and I'm not trying to deluge you with posts. I'm just confused.
Teachers Write: Meet your guest authors!
One of my favorite things about being an author is being part of an incredible community of people who write and illustrate books for kids and young adults. Some of you interact with these authors via Skype and online, and you already know how much they rock. The rest of you are about to find out, because more than THIRTY guest authors have offered to visit us at Teachers Write! over the next ten weeks.
Meet your guest authors…
Jo Knowles (More than a guest! Jo shares Monday Morning Warm-Up on her blog to start us off each week!)
Joanne Levy (More than a guest! Joanne created our #TeachersWrite Twitter list!)
Gae Polisner (More than a guest! Gae’s hosting weekly Friday Feedback!)
Jen Vincent (Jen’s more than a guest, too! She’s a teacher-writer who’ll be blogging every Sunday about her journey & inviting you to join the conversation.)
Some guest authors will be offering Monday morning mini-lessons. Some will be providing Tuesday & Thursday writing prompts, and some have signed up to answer your questions on Wednesdays and hang out to be part of our Friday Writing Happy Hour conversations. They’re doing this because they support teachers and librarians, so please support them, too, by purchasing and sharing their books whenever you can.
The list above is a work in progress. It includes folks who signed up and committed to visit on specific days. Other authors will be dropping in from time to time to answer questions and join our conversations, too, so get ready for some surprises along the way. (You never know who’s going to show up at writing camp!)
Note for authors: If you signed up for a day but you’re not on this list yet, please let me know and I’ll fix that. (With 570 more than 700 teachers/librarians signed up so far, it’s been a little crazy around here… 
If you haven’t signed up to help but would like to join us as a guest author, please drop me an email (kmessner at kate messner dot com) I’m focusing on traditionally published folks for now because those are the books teachers are most likely to know & have as models in their classrooms – also because I don’t want this to get too overwhelming. Thanks!
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Teachers Write: Meet your guest authors!
One of my favorite things about being an author is being part of an incredible community of people who write and illustrate books for kids and young adults. Some of you interact with these authors via Skype and online, and you already know how much they rock. The rest of you are about to find out, because more than THIRTY guest authors have offered to visit us at Teachers Write! over the next ten weeks.
Meet your guest authors…
Gae Polisner (More than a guest! Gae’s hosting weekly Friday Feedback!)
Jen Vincent (Jen’s more than a guest, too! She’s a teacher-writer who’ll be blogging every Sunday about her journey & inviting you to join the conversation.)
Some guest authors will be offering Monday morning mini-lessons. Some will be providing Tuesday & Thursday writing prompts, and some have signed up to answer your questions on Wednesdays and hang out to be part of our Friday Writing Happy Hour conversations. They’re doing this because they support teachers and librarians, so please support them, too, by purchasing and sharing their books whenever you can.
The list above is a work in progress. It includes folks who signed up and committed to visit on specific days. Other authors will be dropping in from time to time to answer questions and join our conversations, too, so get ready for some surprises along the way. (You never know who’s going to show up at writing camp!)
Note for authors: If you signed up for a day but you’re not on this list yet, please let me know and I’ll fix that. (With 570 more than 700 teachers/librarians signed up so far, it’s been a little crazy around here… If you haven’t signed up to help but would like to join us as a guest author, please drop me an email (kmessner at kate messner dot com) I’m focusing on traditionally published folks for now because those are the books teachers are most likely to know & have as models in their classrooms – also because I don’t want this to get too overwhelming. Thanks!
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In Defense of Summer Reading Freedom
I am a huge fan of reading. And a huge fan of summer.
But I am not a fan of Summer Reading Requirements for kids.
That’s not to say I don’t think kids should read in the summer time. I do. At my house, you’ll find us all settling in with our books & sweaty glasses of iced lemonade at about the same time every afternoon. So if that’s your idea of a summer reading program, then forget what I said about not being a fan. It’s that other kind of Summer Reading I’m talking about. The kind with capital letters and mandatory lists.
I’m a teacher, so I understand the reasons that some schools hand out lists of what has to be read over the summer months. They have to do with testing and accountability and achievement gaps and the list goes on and on. But I think there are much more compelling reasons for schools to keep their standardized noses out of kids’ summer reading.
One-size-fits-all lists are a recipe for failure. Kids in the same grade read at wildly different reading levels, and handing them all the same book as required reading is like giving them all the same size sneakers, no matter how big their feet might be. There is no “perfect book” for seventh graders or for tenth graders or fifth graders. Not even the one that the teacher loves so much. The reality is that any one-size-fits-all book requirement is going to be too easy or too little for some kids, too much and too difficult for others. If our goal is to create readers, this is not the way to go about it.
People have rights as readers. Think about it. You’re probably looking forward to some summer reading yourself, right? I’ll bet you have some titles in mind, and I’ll bet that some books will pop up over the next few months, too — books that your friends recommend or books you read about online. But wait…. On June 24th, someone gives you a list. “This is what you’ll be reading this summer,” they say. “Okay?”
No. Not okay. Not even if it’s a list of, say, twenty titles and I get to pick any five I want. Twenty titles? Out of all the books in the world? I get to choose from these twenty? Really?
Summer is a time when our kids actually have the luxury of extra reading time, and if they’re passionate about what they’re reading, they can read for hours on end. We can’t do that in school (as much as it’s a lovely thought). But summer readers only show that kind of passion when they have choices. As teachers — and parents — we need to respect those choices.
I live in a fairly small community, and sometimes, parents approach me in the dentists’ office or the waiting room at ballet lessons to talk about concerns over their kids’ reading.
“I’ve been wanting to talk with you about Jane,” they’ll whisper, leaning forward as if they’re about to confess her addiction to heroin. “She reads those…those….Clique books. What should I do?”
“Get the rest of the series for her,” I’ll say. “The library has all of them.”
I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count, with slight variations. You can substitute graphic novels, Gossip Girls, R.L. Stine, Manga, or any number of books that kids love, that their parents have judged as less than literary. And sure…there’s an argument that those books are the crack of the reading world. But guess what? An addiction to reading is what we’re after here. And rabid, passionate reading can mean huge growth for kids’ literacy. I was reminded of that this week, grading my English final exam, a reflective essay in which students discuss their growth as readers. One student wrote:
I used to read mega-slow, and by mega, I mean ultra-mega slow. But then I picked up the Clique series and it’s like everything changed. I couldn’t put down that book at all. So I kept reading and then I noticed I was reading at least 60 pages in one class period.
That’s what we in the education world call fluency. And it’s an essential element of literacy — one that we can’t always develop as well as we’d like in the classroom because it takes time. Lots and lots of time reading books that kids love. Books that might or might not be on that Summer Reading list with the capital letters.
So what’s the alternative? If you don’t send home a list of classics and give a test in the fall, how will you know kids are reading? Well…you won’t. But the truth is that half of them aren’t reading that list of classics anyway, so there’s not all that much to lose by going with a more progressive summer reading model. Ask parents to commit to a daily reading time at home. Teach kids how to request the newest YA titles through inter-library loan. And if you really like lists, what about letting kids make their own, based on your suggestions and recommendations from classmates?
There are some great summer reading idea lists floating around – here’s one that Josie Leavitt over at ShelfTalker pulled together from reader suggestions after lamenting the state of summer reading lists. And here’s a list of recommendations from at Not-Your-Mother’s-Book-Club.
And one more…courtesy of my students. I love teacher Cindy Faughnan‘s end-of-the-year assignment and stole it last year to use with my own 7th graders. I use their suggestions of “The One Book to Read This Summer” to make a list of recommendations that I send home in their portfolios.
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Teachers Write 6/7 – Thursday Quick-Write
First of all today, a HUGE thank you to the authors who popped in to answer questions for our Wednesday Q&A day. There is some mighty useful information in the comments here, so you may want to bookmark it for later, too. And teacher/librarian friends, please do me a favor? Take a few minutes to look up all those authors who made time to answer your questions yesterday – their responses will mean more if you learn about their books. And if those books sound like something your readers would enjoy, please consider adding them to your IndieBound wish-lists or GoodReads to-read lists.
Okay…ready to write? Today’s Thursday Quick-Write is courtesy of guest-author Margo Sorenson!
A student walks into the library/media center at lunchtime. What is she/he thinking? Worried about? Dreading? Hoping or wishing for? What are the risks/stakes for him/her? Show us in a paragraph or two.
Note from Kate:Some possible formats for this quick-write:
A journal entry from that character, written later on
A letter from that character to his or her best friend
A letter from that character to his or her worst enemy
A poem in the character’s voice
A monologue in the character’s voice
A conversation in dialogue between the character and a friend/the librarian/an enemy
For those of you in the middle of a work-in-progress, try this with your main character, or better yet, a secondary character you want to develop more fully. Imagine him or her walking into a room and feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Why? You can write this from a third person perspective, from the focus character’s point of view, or for a twist, try writing from the point of view of a disinterested observer in the room — someone who has no idea who the person is or what’s going on. What would he or she observe in terms of mannerisms and body language?
Feel free to share a paragraph from your Thursday Quick-Write in the comments later on if you’d like!
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June 5, 2012
Teachers Write! 6/6 Wednesday Q and A
Got questions about writing? Wednesday is Q and A Day at Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp, and we’ll have a bunch of great guest authors answering.
Teachers & librarians – Feel free to ask your questions in the comments. Published author guests have volunteered to drop in and respond when they can.
Guest authors – Even if today isn’t a day you specifically signed up to help out, feel free to answer any questions you’d like to talk about. Just reply directly to the comment.
Note from Kate: I’m chaperoning my daughter’s field trip today & won’t be checking in until tonight. Keep the lemonade cold, okay? I’ll stop by later & answer questions, too. But note that if you’ve never posted a comment here before, I won’t get to “approve” it for moderation until I’m home, so it may be later on when it shows up. Thanks for your patience!
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June 4, 2012
Teachers Write! 6/5 Tuesday Quick-Write
First of all, I have to tell you that you are amazing. I’m away at BEA in New York this week but came back to my hotel room late Monday night and read your posts and your commitments to make writing time, and I’m so, so excited. (I might have teared up a little, too. Collectively, the 700+ of you are a serious inspiration!) I’ll be commenting more later in the week, but for now, I just wanted to say to all of you….well…wow. Well done walking that walk.
So…let’s get on with Day Two, shall we? On Tuesdays & Thursdays during Teachers Write! Virtual Summer Writing Camp, I’ll be sharing quick-write prompts, designed to get you free-writing for a few minutes in response to a question or idea. These can be used as a simple free-write, brainstorming, warm-up activity OR as a way to deepen your thinking about a work-in-progress. Got your keyboard or pencil ready?
Tuesday Quick-Write:
Write for two minutes to describe a very specific place. If you’re just free-writing, it can be a place that you love, or have visited, or a place that frightens you.
This is one of my favorite places (which also happens to frighten me sometimes), the Florida Everglades.
Anyplace is fine. If you want to relate this to your work-in-progress, choose a very specific setting within the piece and imagine yourself there.
When your two minutes are up, stop writing.
Now…if your place is real and you can go there, go there now. I’ll wait….
If it’s far away, find a picture of it. If it’s not a real place, put yourself there in your mind. Now write for one minute about each of the following:
Everything you SEE – Pay attention to big things and tiny things. Search for concrete details.
Everything you HEAR – Be specific. Don’t just say “a scraping sound.” Say a “high-pitched, raspity-raspity-screeeeeaking noise.” You can make up words if you want.If you aren’t in the place, try to find a video. Or guess what you might hear.
Everything you SMELL – Especially pay attention to the smells that surprise you. If you’re not in the place, pictures can help you smell. Look carefully…what would that dumpster smell like?
Everything you FEEL – Weather, wind, things that land on you or brush against you. Again – pictures help you imagine if you’re not there, and if it’s not a real place, try imagining images and then assigning sensations from a similar place that might be real (desert, tundra, etc.)
Now, go back and rewrite that descriptive paragraph. Include your best tiny, surprising details, and work on senses other than sight. Better? More vivid? This is a fun activity to do with kids, too. Have them write about the playground or gym or cafeteria; then go there and hunt for sensory details!
Feel free to share your final paragraph in the comments if you’d like! I’m busy at BEA in New York through tonight but will check in to read from the airport if I can, and you can cheer one another on, too!
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June 3, 2012
Writing & Fear: An open letter to the #TeachersWrite community
Dear Teachers Write! campers,
So… I hear some of you are kind of scared about this whole writing thing. Jen Vincent mentioned that many of the comments on her Teach Mentor Texts writing group blog post today were about anxiety over sharing your writing, or being good enough. She thought I might want to blog about that, and she was right.
This is where you’re probably expecting me to say, “Don’t be afraid” or “There’s no reason to be scared.” But I’m not going to say that.
Be scared. That’s absolutely fine.
Because you know what? I’m scared, too. I put up a blog post a few days ago expecting a dozen people to sign up for a cozy little online writing camp. And then I turned around and there were more than 600 of you. Way cool…but for sure, a little scary, too.
I’m also scared when I start a new book. When I was writing my first book, I thought this would be a temporary thing…that the second and third books would be easy and fun and fearless. But no. Turns out they’re all scary in different ways, and making art – the very process of making art – is inherently fear-producing. (There’s a whole book about this idea, by the way – ART AND FEAR by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s excellent.) But making art is scary in a good way.
You see… there are two kinds of fear. The first kind keeps you safe from things that might cause you real and imminent harm.
My son and I encountered this cottonmouth while we were hiking in the Everglades in April. We were scared, and we quickly identified our fear as the kind that saves you from danger. With this kind of fear, it’s good and healthy to act on your fear and run away to avoid venomous bites and other potentially fatal things.
But there’s another kind of fear – the kind that we feel when we’re about to exceed the artificial limits we’ve set for ourselves. When we’re about to step outside of our cozy little boxes and try something new. Something that’s scary because we might fail. And what will people think?
I learned a lot about this kind of fear in March, when I gave a TED talk at the organization’s annual conference in Long Beach.
Photo by James Duncan Davidson – TED
There were 1500 people in the audience, including CEOs of huge companies, inventors, producers, engineers, a former vice president, and other leaders in just about every area imaginable.
One of the other speakers was Bill Nye the Science Guy, who said something that I am going to remember for the rest of my life. He told one of the other (scared) speakers, “If you weren’t nervous, it wouldn’t be worth doing.” And he was right. I was terrified when I stepped onto that stage. Absolutely terrified. It was extremely uncomfortable. But I learned so much from the experience, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The kind of fear I was feeling is not the kind we should avoid. It’s the kind of fear we should seek out because it gives us opportunities to be brave and to grow. In fact, nervous writing camp member Colby Sharp reminded me this morning that Mattie Breen, the main character in Linda Urban’s brilliant novel HOUND DOG TRUE says it perfectly: “You can’t have brave without scared.” It’s true.
That twist of anxiety you feel when you think about sharing your writing? Think of it as a big, huge billboard in your heart that says, “GO, YOU!! YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING AWESOME AND NEW!” And after you do the new awesome thing, you will never be quite the same. Your world will be a little bigger. And this is good.
So go on now. Be scared. Be brave. And write.
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Teachers Write: Meet your guest authors!
One of my favorite things about being an author is being part of an incredible community of people who write and illustrate books for kids and young adults. Some of you interact with these authors via Skype and online, and you already know how much they rock. The rest of you are about to find out, because more than THIRTY guest authors have offered to visit us at Teachers Write! over the next ten weeks.
Meet your guest authors…
Gae Polisner (More than a guest! Gae’s hosting weekly Friday Feedback!)
Jen Vincent (Jen’s more than a guest, too! She’s a teacher-writer who’ll be blogging every Sunday about her journey & inviting you to join the conversation.)
Some guest authors will be offering Monday morning mini-lessons. Some will be providing Tuesday & Thursday writing prompts, and some have signed up to answer your questions on Wednesdays and hang out to be part of our Friday Writing Happy Hour conversations. They’re doing this because they support teachers and librarians, so please support them, too, by purchasing and sharing their books whenever you can.
The list above includes folks who signed up and committed to visit on specific days. Other authors will be dropping in from time to time to answer questions and join our conversations, too, so get ready for some surprises along the way. (You never know who’s going to show up at writing camp!)
Note for authors: If you signed up for a day but you’re not on this list yet, please let me know and I’ll fix that. (With 570 teachers/librarians signed up so far, it’s been a little crazy around here… If you haven’t signed up to help but would like to join us as a guest author, please drop me an email (kmessner at kate messner dot com) Thanks!
.
June 2, 2012
Teachers Write: Meet your guest authors!
One of my favorite things about being an author is being part of an incredible community of people who write and illustrate books for kids and young adults. Some of you interact with these authors via Skype and online, and you already know how much they rock. The rest of you are about to find out, because more than THIRTY guest authors have offered to visit us at Teachers Write! over the next ten weeks.
Meet your guest authors…
Gae Polisner (More than a guest! Gae’s hosting weekly Friday Feedback!)
Jen Vincent (Jen’s more than a guest, too! She’s a teacher-writer who’ll be blogging every Sunday about her journey & inviting you to join the conversation.)
Some guest authors will be offering Monday morning mini-lessons. Some will be providing Tuesday & Thursday writing prompts, and some have signed up to answer your questions on Wednesdays and hang out to be part of our Friday Writing Happy Hour conversations. They’re doing this because they support teachers and librarians, so please support them, too, by purchasing and sharing their books whenever you can.
The list above includes folks who signed up and committed to visit on specific days. Other authors will be dropping in from time to time to answer questions and join our conversations, too, so get ready for some surprises along the way. (You never know who’s going to show up at writing camp!)
Note for authors: If you signed up for a day but you’re not on this list yet, please let me know and I’ll fix that. (With 570 teachers/librarians signed up so far, it’s been a little crazy around here… If you haven’t signed up to help but would like to join us as a guest author, please drop me an email (kmessner at kate messner dot com) Thanks!
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