I'm Good At a Lot of Things...

But maintaining a blog is not one of them. You would think I'd know this by now.

I just stumbled upon my first failed blog a few minutes ago. I last posted there in 2011. It was a crafty/home decor blog back when everyone had a crafty/home decor blog. It was fun until it wasn't.

Then there was the class/TpT website that was going to be both a place for me to communicate with my students and market my Teachers Pay Teachers business, Room 215 Happenings. Once school started, though, I was too busy teaching to be much of a teacherpreneur (which is how it should be, I think, really). And while I posted assignments for awhile, it quickly became clear that only one of my ninety students was using it, and given the emails I would get if assignments weren't posted within five minutes of the final bell, it became clear that it was actually his parents who were using it. (Seriously, I had over 1,000 page hits from the same IP address in a two month period. It was a very bizarre situation.) I decided I wasn't going to allow parents to use my website as a bullying tool, so I just stopped using it. It's there, and it's a space when I need a place to put a link for kids to access.

Now I really am wanting to do more with my TpT store, in part because while there are some fantastic resources there (and some lovely labels-hint, hint, wink, wink), many of the resources can still breed the worksheet mentality I see too often in teachers. I want to write about HOW to use the resources as practice instead of as an activity. I want to do my part to help my colleagues think deeply about their practice. But I need to separate it from my class website because my classroom is no longer Room 215! I didn't move, but they are renumbering. I'm not changing my store because that's too much work for something that really won't matter (I don't think my customers care what my classroom number is).  But for school I need to be consistent.

And, of course, I need to do a better job keeping up here. Which is why I wrote those two long paragraphs above. Just like when writing a novel, sometimes you just have to WRITE, I have done quite a bit of writing this summer, including the opening scene for novel #2. The rest of it is still playing out in my head, but it is significant that I have finally set Aaron and Brooke aside and moved on to the new guys (the narrator still doesn't have a name, which may be my next post).

So, a thousand years later, I've written something for anything out there who might still be reading.

Until next time.

(And there really will be a next time. Soon. I promise.)

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Putting Books in Kids' Hands

The title above has many meanings:

1. It's my favorite part of my job. I LOVE finding the right book for the right kid. I love seeing them get lost in a book, and I feel great pride and like a good teacher when I'm the one who found that book for them.

2. It's our responsibility as adults. I want my students to be independent readers, and part of that is finding books on thier own. But that takes time. It also takes teaching. As adults--teachers, parents, librarians, booksellers--it is up to us to help teach children to find books they love. For me this means keeping a library of over 800 books in my classroom, checking out books from the public library and letting my students read them, buying books I think they will love, etc.

3. It's the title of my curret Donors Choose project. Donors Choose is a fantastic organization that allows teachers to post their needs and people interested in investing in students to make a donation towards those needs. My current project, when funded, will provide 50 books (over $500 worth) to my kiddos. Right now I have 66 students. I will have at least that many again in the spring. Former students come back by to check out books. I have random students I've never met come see me for books because word gets around that I have them. Right now I have the chance to get this project funded through Sonic's Limeades for Learning initiative. Between now and October 26th, go to https://www.limeadesforlearning.com/projects/1321095 and vote for my project. Share via the site and get more votes. If you go to Sonic during this time, you should get a sticker on your drink cup or bag with extra vote codes. You can enter them at the link above.

My students are so excited about this. Please vote and share to help me provide them with the books they need to become lifelong learners and readers.

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On Validating Writers

The following is a repost from May, 2012. These thoughts ring true right now as I am in the midst of reading the first major piece of writing from my juniors. 


As of 10:00 this morning, I am a free woman. At least until school starts back the first of August. Oh, how I have missed you Summer Break!! Usually I spend my summers working with teachers with the Middle TN Writing Project, so all of June is in a classroom that requires an hours drive each way. I love every minute of it. We're changing things up this year, though, so I won't be going every day. Instead I'll be developing some online professional development programs and organizing a three hour session to present to my faculty. But that I can do from home, so no commute, no spending my summer salary on gas, and no racking up miles on my still-smells-new car.

Right now the husband is outside dong something, the kid is at her grandparents' house slipping and sliding, I am (for once) not in the middle of reading a book, and the laundry can wait. It's the perfect time to write. But my novel and I are not speaking right now. The first draft is technically done, but I'm trying to add a few needed scenes before I officially declare that. Since this is a much larger project than anything I have written before, I'm finding it to be quite a challenge to add significant sections in at this point. With a five page narrative, there's only so much to add. And finding said parts is easy. Wading through a couple of hundred pages looking for one scene, not so much. But something happened yesterday that made me think of something that happened several years ago, and I wanted to share it. I'm actually not commenting on what happened yesterday: that's another post, but here's the other story.

In 2000, I had the most amazing composition professor. Dr. Hagaman was like a grandfather to his students: gentle and kind. He shared his writing with us, and never criticized anyone to my knowledge. One of our assignments was to write a "Literacy Autobiography" explaining how we got to where we were with language. I'll have to retype it and post it at some point. Dr. Hagaman praised my writing in my final portfolio, but even with that and so many other compliments on my writing, I did not see myself as a writer.

Fast forward to December 2007. I was back at my alma mater, taking the last two classes for my Master's degree. Dr. Hagaman and I met each other in the hallway of the main liberal arts building. He stopped me and said, "Didn't we have a class together several years ago?" When I answered that, yes, I had taken two of his classes, he said, "Yes, yes. You wrote that wonderful piece about listening to the music of Opryland from your backyard." That is exactly what my literacy autobiography was about.

He didn't remember my name, or even which class I had been in, but he remembered my writing. That's when I began to see myself as a writer.

That moment inspired me to write more and to share my writing. But more importantly, it changed how I respond to students' work. It is hard to share your words with an audience, and we all--teenagers and adults both--just want someone to get what we're saying. I try to focus my comments around that: getting what they are saying, connecting to it. It's not all praise. I wouldn't be a good teacher or fellow writer if it was, but I really want my kids to know that I am hearing their words. When I start with the good and offer specific praise, I find that my students are more apt to take my criticisms to heart. They want sentence two to be as good as I said sentence one was.

But they want to be heard. They want me to know them. And when I remember sometihng they wrote weeks later--maybe even when they are no longer my students--they know their English teacher cared about them as a person. That will always be goal one for me.

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Small Moments of Success

I stare at the screen of my Kindle, afraid to look up. It's the first day of indepdendent reading in my standard junior English class, and it's so quiet that the only possible scenarios are that all twenty students are asleep or they've left.

But they haven't done either. They are reading.

Well, nineteen of them are. "CJ" is not, which doesn't surprise me since he was the only student out of the sixty plus I have on my course load this semester to not turn in something for the initial in class writing I assigned. I also had an email from his mom before the end of the first day asking me to email her if he was absent. And he's made it clear that he could better spend his time working, that school is standing in his way of making money, and he's dropping out on his eighteenth birthday. That's in six months, and given that he's still classified as a freshman, I'm not sure there's much I can do to change his mind.

When I ask the students to find a stopping place, I'm met with a few relieved sighs, but more protests. Those make my heart happy. Once again, it took only one class period for me to prove that teenagers like reading--teachers just need to help them find the right book and give them time and space to read. CJ, though, loudly tells the class that he read ZERO pages. He's so proud. The other students look at him like he has three heads, which shuts him up much faster than I could.

The next day I walk up to him during a transition between activities. "Look," I say, "I know you don't like to read. I get it." He smiles a bit at my acknowledgement, which is a nice change from his typical scowl. "But what if I found a book for you about something you're interested in. Would you give it a try for me?" He says he will, and says he'll give me some topics to look into.

He doesn't, and now it's time for indepedent reading once again. Every other student in the class is lost in a book; his head in down on his desk. I walk over to my shelves stuffed with over 700 books and choose five, making sure to select short books so I don't set myself up for failure. "Why don't you look these over and see if any of them speak to you. Just start with the back covers," I say. He huffs and makes a show of fake slipping through the books, distracting the others as he does. I settle back on my stool and ignore him.

When I sneak a peek at him a few minutes later, he's picked on of the books up. He sees me and immediately puts the book back down. I ignore him.

As class ends, he brings four of the five books back to me. "I think I'll try this one," he says. "It looks okay."

"Be careful," I warn. "you might accidentally enjoy it." He smiles again.

And when independent reading time comes around the next week, he takes out his book and immediately begins to read. No arguments, no posturing. He's reading. And in that moment, I don't care that the book is of horrible quality or that he's only read sixteen pages when some of his classmates have already read 1,500. All I care about is that this could very well be his last English class, and the act of reading a book he chose for pleasure is a skill he can take with him. It's a way he can keep learning even if he chooses to give up on school.

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Out of My Comfort Zone

This is a re-post of a blog post I wrote on June 1, 2012. It's interesting to go back and reread my thoughts on my novel--so much has happened in two years!

Something amazing and interesting and terrifying happened today. I finished the first draft of my novel. As in, done. There's a beginning and a middle and an end. There's even dialogue. Normally I write personal essays and memoir or professional pieces. This is my first attempt at fiction. Ever. You'd think I have started with a short story, but I like to be difficult.

I'm really proud of myself for seeing this project through. From the beginning it was just something I pulled out to play with from time to time. It actually started after I shared the premise with some students. They loved it, which encouraged me to put a couple of thousand words down. I played with it a bit the next semester, mostly because I was forcing my Creative Writing class to write fiction, so it seemed only fair that I do so, too. This past Fall's CW class is where I really got serious about it, encouraged greatly by the news an essay of mine was going to be published. I wrote pages upon pages...until Fall Break. Then we went to Disney World for a week. I didn't have time (or a laptop) to write, and I lost my momentum. I didn't open the document for almost six months.

But I did go back to it. And now it's done. Well, not really, of course. It still needs revising and editing. I'm hoping to get in the hands of some beta readers soon (any takers??). But just getting the story through to its conclusion is HUGE for me. I'm the queen of unfinished projects. Just take a look in my craft room.

I'm also scared. Not that people won't like it (if they even read it), because though I certainly had an audience in mind, I was never really writing for them. I'm scared because the story is done and I'm not ready to let the characters go. I really like them. I might write some more scenes that occur after the story ends, or maybe try out the stories of some minor characters, but it's not the kind of book that calls for a sequel, and certainly not the bandwagon that is the trilogy. Basically, now that the draft is complete, I'm not sure what to write next.

The book, if you're wondering, is a YA romance, though a slightly older audience could relate (the narrator is just out of college) titled Anything Less Than Everything. It's a girly coming of age story--my favorite.

Now I think I'll go reread some Sarah Dessen or something to fill the space left by my little book's completion.

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Back to School Sale

I LOVE Back to School. Shopping. I love perusing the Sunday circulars in late July and August. I love buying brand new supplies for the year, even if my old ones are usable. I love finding the perfect fall outfit even if it's thirty degrees too hot to wear it.

And since this is Back to School weekend for me-I start my 13th year of teaching on Monday!-I'm throwing a sale! Anything Less Than Everything is available as a countdown deal this weekend. You could snag it for as low as .99! But hurry: the sale ends when I wake up to get ready for school on Monday.

You may have seen me squealing over on Facebook and Twitter that the book is finally available in paperback. My copies arrived yesterday! That feels more real somehow, getting to actually touch your words on paper bound up in their pretty cover.

The link on the right will take you to either version.

(This picture was actually take by my sweet friend Courtney, who somehow got her book before I even received mine!)

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Turn Any Device Into a Kindle

I've had a lot of potential readers ask me how they can read Anything Less Than Everything if they don't have a Kindle. As of right now, the book is only available on Amazon for Kindle, though it will eventually be available through Barnes & Noble for NOOK, and I am working on the paperback version. In the meantime, though, I thought I'd post clearer instructions for reading books via the many Kindle apps (clearer than, "just download an app, like I have been saying).

First, find the device you will be using from this list. There are so many to choose from-PCs, Macs, phones, tablets--whatever.

Next, open the app from your device and connect it to your Amazon.com account. If you don't already have an account, how have you been getting your Christmas shopping done? you'll need to create one. Here are some troubleshooting guides from Amazon.

You might have to update your One-Click payment settings before you can make a purchase, as Kindle content requires One-Click. I use gift cards to keep myself from getting in trouble! And that should be it! I can't make purchases from the Kindle store in-app, so I buy on my laptop (or phone from Amazon full site mode) and use the pull-down menu to tell it where to send my purchase, which you may not see if you don't have four Kindles, a laptop, two ipads, an ipod, and an iphone attached to your account. Oops.

Hopefully that at least gives you a place to start in reading Kindle books if you don't have a Kindle, though I realllllly recommend the device! I don't always carry mine around, especially if I aleady have other devices with me, but it's small enough for my purse and inexpensive enough that I don't worry much about just tossing it in there. And then I always have my books with me--a must in my world!

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Why I Decided to Self-Publish

I stared at the "submit" button for a few minutes before clicking it, thereby putting my work out there for the world to see.  Okay, more like two years. For two years I left Anything Less Than Everything languishing in final edits because I knew finishing it would mean doing something with it. I have notebooks full of writing that I am completely content to have stay there, but this was a novel. A novel! 62,000 words. I knew I'd invested way too much time and effort to allow it to stay with me. The fact that I teach writing to both teenagers and other teachers also pressed me to publish. Publication is part of the writing process, after all, one that gets skipped more and more the older the students get. If I'm going to encourage--require even--my students to share their writing, I have to be willing to do it myself.

I've had other pieces published. While taking Shakespeare in grad school, my professor had the class write a collaborative essay and she submitted it on our behalf to a scholarly journal. Then I was approached by someone at the National Writing Project about including a memoir I had posted on the eAnthology in the National Gallery of Writing. Two years later I responded to a call for submissions for a collection of stories about teaching by teachers. So I have stepped slowly into the world of publishing. The process of publishing a novel, though, is much different than my other publishing experiences.

At least traditional publishing is.

Traditional publishing generally requires an agent, who might be able to help you get picked up by a publisher. Then your book might make it to the bookstores in a location where it might be seen and purchased. To be honest, that was more work and more mights than I was willing to take on. I'm not looking to make a career change or anything! The fact is that I had a story that I was rather fond of and wanted to share it with readers. That's it.

And so I began investigating self-publishing. I read a lot of self-pubbed books to see what those authors were doing right and wrong. There are a lot of horrible self-pubbed books out there, and I didn't want to be lumped in that group. I read about the process of formatting manuscripts, designing covers, writing blurbs...everything. I have complete control of the process, but I also don't have help. Well, that's not completely true. There are myriad resources out there to help self-publishers, but at the end of the day, all decisions are my call. That's both freeing and paralyzing.

In the end, self-publishing was the best way for me to achieve my goal of sharing my story. I do feel a bit weird (okay, a lot weird) proclaiming my authorial status to the world for fear real authors will roll their eyes. I skipped the rejection letters and heartbreak, after all. (Although, an author acquaintance of mine was one of the first to comment on my Facebook post that Anything Less Than Everything had released.)

Selling the book through Amazon, et. al. allows me to get my story out to a wider audienIce while offering a bit more protection of my work than just throwing it up on a website. And charging for the book actually makes it more likely that people will read it than if it were free. Weird, but true. I doubt I'll ever be adding "Over 1 million copies sold" to the cover or anything, and that's okay. That may be the greatest writing lesson I've learned over the years: writing doesn't have to be best-selling for it to be legitimate writing. It still counts, even if the audience is small. It's the doing that's important.

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