About Me

Down the rabbit hole

How I got from there to here….I am an avid reader. I will read anything from the back of cereal boxes to comic strips to the great classic works. In my mind I knew I was not a good writer. Writing my thoughts on paper was hard and what I wrote, in my opinion, was never good enough for the teacher. How I survived “writing” through public school and an undergraduate degree is unbeknownst to me.

My thoughts changed about writing, and especially about my writing, when I was invited to participate in The Greater Houston Area Writing Project Summer Institute hosted by the University of Houston Clear Lake. As we assembled in the room on the first day, we were informed we were going to write for various purposes, write for most of the day, and that we were expected to share our writing with our peers. I thought I can do that….I can fake write, pretend I’m writing and perhaps, most important of all, look busy while everyone else is writing. What I had not counted on was sharing my writing with other people.

I thought the writing project would give me the tools and strategies for me to take back to my language arts classroom in the fall, not for me to become a better writer. Our journal prompt on the first morning was “Why are you a writer?” I listed in my journal all of the ways I was not a writer, that I was never good at writing in school, my English papers bled red ink and I hated to share my writing with anyone. So when the facilitator asked if anyone would like to share their writing, my hand was the first one up in the air. I thought if they’re going to call on me to share, I want to be the first person, so maybe everyone in the room would forget what I had said by the time the last person shared their writing.

When the new school year began I asked my students began to respond to many different kinds of literature. Through their writing and sharing about what they wrote, I knew connecting to books through writing was a powerful tool for learning.

So this blog is all about books, writing and connections to content area subjects