And, Because They're Oriented, I'm Off to Pensacola, to the Coastal Florida Writing Project

Last night, at the Fairfield University Alumni House, we welcome 17 of the 21 teachers who will be participating in the Invititational Leadership Institute via the Connecticut Writing Project for 5 weeks of personal, creative and informative writing, all while building teacher demonstrations and stepping up our leadership game! We ate, we planted seeds in our writer's notebooks, we began networking, and we gifted (Luke, 2008), the summer teachers with several books.

Our theme this summer is The Superpower of Hope and we are reading Dr. Rose Brock's edited collection, Hope Nation, Matt de la Peña's Superman: Dawnbreaker, as well as several other fantastic mentor texts to help us with our own work and superpowers!

I am also thrilled to be heading to Pensacola this morning to work with their summer writing project who is carrying forward the same theme and mission. What is your teaching superpower? Where do you and your students find hope? How can our writing pedagogy grow stronger to meet the needs of ALL kids? It's a monumental task, but our capes, pens, masks and notebooks are ready.

We are very fortunate to have the investment of the Noble Trust fund who saw purpose, vision and possibility in our National Writing Project work, especially how it relates to students with learning disabilities and high needs schools. Because of their investment, we're able to increase our urban school participation by 67%, a percentage we are very pleased to celebrated.

I am thinking the now beautiful weather of Connecticut to sweat my $@# off in Florida heat, but am delighted to see a new part of the country and to work with incredible educators in another state. Fridge was cleaned, dishes are done, food is stocked for the kid and laundry is folded. Now, if I can only stay awake enough to catch my flight.