Avoidance and lack of focus

So I'd rather be doing anything but writing.

That is the struggle I am going through every day.  I LOVE to write.  I understand that when I write I am creating.  Creating something completely new and something than did not exist until I wrote it.  I give birth with my words.  However, it is a very painful task.  Well, that isn't exactly write.  I don't really find it painful once I start writing.  Usually the words start to flow right out.  I don't actually stare at a blank page for too long.  And when I am writing, I don't really think about time.  It all just seems to melt away and I go into that zone where what is in my head comes rushing out on paper.  However, I avoid writing.

Since I have been participating in Teachers Write this summer, I have been trying to focus on writing.  I started this blog and have written a couple of posts and have a few more in the drafting and pre-writing stage.  I have also worked on the exercises and been very satisified with my writing thus far.  I enjoy it.  I wake up and check the Teachers Write page first thing.  I get excited about the task for that day.  I have even commented twice now and I have enjoyed the feedback.  But every day I avoid writing.

It is 10:00 pm now.  I put off writing until I am laying in bed, ready to go to bed.  Why do I do that?  I have had multiple opportunities today to write. I could have wrote in between the cleaning cycles.  10 min clean. 10 min write.  But instead I perused the internet: facebook, twitter, instagram, gmail, and pinterest.  I took a short nap- I could have wrote then.  I had a hundred minutes in the day that I could have chosen to write and yet I didn't.  I avoided writing.

So, what does this tell me about my students when they sit down during writer's workshop to write.  I think I can understand the sudden need to use the restroom, to work with a buddy, to draw pictures, to escape to the counselors or the nurses, and oh, didn't I leave something in the cafeteria early that I need to get now?  They avoid writing every day.

One of my big take aways is how important it is to have a project in mind.  I read a lot of the other teachers participating and they seem to have a story to write.  I am just writing for the sake of writing.  I enjoy the exercises but they are not taking my writing into a direction where I feel like I am accomplishing something. So rather than just write today, I am working on my blogging articles.  I have purpose in the blogging articles.  Rather than spend all our beginning time working on how to come up with an idea, I think maybe I need to spend more time with my students coming up with a writing project.  What do they want to write each day?  There will be time enough to work with them on exercises that will help them add more sensory details or voice to their characters.  To start, we need to have an end goal in mind.  Even something as simple as the Nanowrimo challenge to write 50,000 word novel has given me motivation in the past because I had a clear goal.  I need to start with identifying writing projects with my students.  They need a reason to want to write and not put it off.  I need to want to write every day.

Teachers Write Reflections

Rather be reading... but I am writing this summer.

For the last three years, Kate Messner and a group of amazing authors have organized a free summer writing support group for teachers.  Every day they post mini-lessons, prompts, and provide support through comments and feedback.  For the last couple of years, I have lurked and made feeble attempts to participate.  This year I dive in.  I believe that to teach you have to do.  While the greats, Lucy, Donald, Regie, influenced my belief in the importance of living the writing life, Katie Wood Ray inspired me to attempt to use my writing experiences for curriculum.  In What You Know By Heart, Katie says. "Because we are teachers of writing, writing for us is more than just the experience of getting it done.  We have to have that experience, but because we teach, we also have to be able to explain that experience.  We have to be able to make sense of it, to see what it means so that the experience becomes something larger than the moment.  The experience becomes something we understand about writing.  It becomes curriculum.  You see, the students who wait for us in our workshops need us to help them understand how this writing thing happens" (7).  To that effect, I am planning on writing a series of posts on my reflections of my writing experiences during Teachers Write.  My hope is to not only experience writing but to make sense of it for my students.

Common Core Implementation

While I'd rather be reading.... I need to spend some time understanding the common core state standards.  In the past year, my district has spent quite a bit of professional development time focusing on the common core.  I feel I have a pretty good understanding of the standards.  I want my focus this coming year to be on implementation, particularly in regards to Literacy.  I was listening to a podcast on Choice Literacy where the speaker recommended looking collaboratively at each standard and create a dialogue on what that standard looks like in the classroom.  To that effect, I am going to begin a series of posts on each standard.  My hope is to make that post an ongoing post in which through the comments, I can continue to shape and develop my understanding of implementation of the standard in my classroom.  I am not necessarily looking to develop lessons for the standards but rather develop ways to implement and integrate the standard into daily practice.  I am going to be focusing on the third grade standards because next year I will be teaching third grade again after a two year hiatus in fifth grade, third grade is also the first testing year, and third grade is the middle of elementary school (the beginning of intermediate).

So, to get things started....  A short video: