Launching Independent Reading

The routines and habits we create in our classrooms show our students our values. We can tell kids all we want that we'd like them to read at home each night, but if we do not make time for reading in class, that message isn't conveyed, and more than likely, they also are not reading at home.

In 180 Days:Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents, Gallagher and Kittle  state, "Every day we send a consistent message: Everyone reads in this class." (page 49)

Me: same.

Every day kids read their Just Right books. Every day I take status of the class and ask them what they're reading. When they abandon a book, I know. When they leave the book at home three days in a row, I know. When they finish a book, I know. When someone reads a great book, we tell the class about it. They add to To Be Read Lists after book talks and they log all the titles of the books they complete. In my class, kids read during our block, and they read the 20 pages every night assigned as homework, because every day, I ask them how it's going. I expect them to read VOLUMES of text, and they do!

We also have to confer with our students for lots of reasons:

• To help the kid who has never picked a book pick one.
• To find out why another keeps leaving their book at home.
• To figure out who is "fake reading" and who's actually really reading (comprehending).
• To see if they are applying the strategies from universal curriculum into their texts.
• To be the person to look a kid in the eye and be there, just with them, to listen to how a book changed their thinking.
• To share a joy and love and passion for a book or a character. (Edward Tulane, anyone?) :-)

Every day while students read, teachers confer. Kittle and Gallagher note that in a ten minute period, they aim to talk to 3-5 students. To begin the year, they focus on getting to know the students' reading habits. These are fact-finding conferences. Information is collected and recorded. These early conferences may go like this...

If a student indicates that he or she likes to read, Gallagher and Kittle follow up with:

• What do you like to read?
• What are your favorite genres?
• Who are your favorite authors?
• Do you have a favorite series?
• What are you currently reading?
• How do you find time to read?
• Where do you read?
• When do you read? (page 32)

If a student indicates they do not like to read, they follow up with:

• Why don't you like to read?
• Did you like reading when you were younger? If so, when did you stop liking reading? What caused this shift?
• When was the last time you selected a book on your own to read?
• Have you ever read a book you liked?
• Can you name an author you like?
• What interests you? What do you do in your free time? (page 32)

It's going to be day 3 of school here in D100 tomorrow. It's getting close to the time when students will begin picking books. Time for Kidwatching (Goodman): who will easily pick a book and settle in? Who will avoid books at all costs? Who will pick one, then return it, then pick another? Who will sustain reading for 25+ minutes? Who can recommend a book?

And what will we find out when we sit down and give our time and hearts to each child, individually? Hopefully these prompts for conferring with kids will get you going!

won't budge

In my middle school ELA class, I expect two things to happen on an ongoing, daily basis: Independent Reading and Writing.

Independent Reading
I expect my students to read every day. That happens in class and it happens at home. Independent reading is the cornerstone of my middle school ELA classroom, because...

If children are to build vocabulary,
they should read.
If they need to develop fluency,
they should read.
If they need to learn about a topic,
they should read.
If they need to be a person they are not,
they should read.
If they need to grow, to stretch, to dream, to laugh, to cry, to find a friend, to vanquish a foe,
they should read.
-Kyleen Beers by way of Stacey Riedmiller @literacyforbigkids

So in my class, reading is paramount. Kids must read, and they will. There are a few things I do to create readers.

1. My library is full. I spend my classroom money not on anything else but books (well, also some Sketcher markers, composition notebooks, and folders, too). But mostly books. I follow people on Social Media who are reading new titles, and I get my hands on them and get them into my classroom. And I read! I read the books in my library so I can recommend them to my students. I know my library. I learn my readers. I match them up.

2. I provide time in class to read. If kids are to value reading, they have to see that their teacher values it so much that they create time in class for them to do so. Sometimes it's 10 minutes each day for the week. Other times it's 45 minutes once for the week. But every week in my classroom, students are reading.

3. Additionally, students are required to read 20 pages of their book at home each night. My kids do not do reading logs, but instead I take Status of the Class. Each day, I spend 3 minutes asking each child (orally) to tell me where they are with their reading. They might be starting a new book, in which case they will tell me the title, they might be continuing a book, in which case they tell me the page number they are currently on, they might abandon the book, in which case that will cue me to see what's happening via conference, they might be finishing a book, and asking for time to select another. I always know who is reading what, and I do that with Status of the Class.

4. We book talk. During the first quarter, I do the book talks. It's common that many students are not used to reading and completing a lot of books prior to my class. So during the first quarter, I talk about a lot of books with my students. I have them keep a "Books I Want to Read" list, so they can have a list of books going for when they finish. By second quarter, they are ready to start book talks, and so each student will do two book talks during the quarter. The point is that we are constantly talking about books. Check out Penny Kittle's Book Love for more on this.

5. Finally, when students are reading independently, I am conferring with my readers. I set up a schedule so that I make sure I see all my readers over the course of a week or two... my point is that my conferring is not random. When I confer with my readers, I ask them to briefly tell me about their book (summarize in 3 sentences) and then I have them read the page they were on to me. I then ask them to summarize that page, and while they are reading to me, I am on the lookout for a teaching point. This is not easy work and it takes time to master (I'm still not awesome at it, but I keep trying!) But the idea is that in my classroom, kids are reading, and I'm talking to them about their books in more ways than just one.

My students do independent reading in an ongoing way, but sometimes we do a novel together. In that case, they will set their Just Right books aside and we'll do the novel. I will lead the novel and do more in the beginning with them, but then once I've set purpose, I will require them to read more on their own, so we can then discuss when we are together.

We also do book clubs at the end of the year, after they have built their stamina with independent reading. You can read more about that here.

Writing and Blogging
In addition to reading, my kids are writing, lots. We are lucky to be a 1:1 district, so we blog. But, we also Quick Write, Journal, and publish papers. For this post, I'm going to focus on Quick Writing and Journaling, which leads me to blogging.

Quick Writing
In the beginning of the year, as we are getting to know one another and the routines of the classroom, we begin writing with Quick Writing (Penny Kittle, Write Beside Them). 

This is how I prompt kids to quick write:

1. Write for the entire three minutes, as fast as you can. I prompt them for quick writing, but I also tell them to follow the thoughts in their head. So if my prompt is, "Something I like about school...." and they start that and then go off on a tangent about shopping or a friend, that's totally fine. The goal is to write, and write fast.

2. I tell them to ignore the critic speaking in their head. Writing is hard! You totally judge yourself. You worry about punctuation and spelling and yet there are so many ideas you need to get out. When you quick write, the goal is to write a lot, and it can be messy, it can be unpunctuated, it can be disorganized. Just write.

3. Relax, have fun, and play! This is meant to be a playground for writers. To play around with ideas and words and meanings and anything else. No judgement, just write.

So with that, I then give them a prompt which I do as a sentence stem (with a sentence stem, EVERY kid can get started writing, because they copy the stem and then keep going. Using a question is a little trickier!) We practice Quick Writing for a few days and I observe behaviors, like looking around the room, kids playing with their pen or pencil, avoiding the writing, etc. Then I roll out success criteria:

Last year I notice I had a handful of kids that wouldn't just get to business, so this helped most of that group focus shoot for success. There were still a couple after this that had a hard time, but then it was time to confer :-)

Journaling

I did not add this component in last year, but I will this year. My philosophy is is line with Reading and Writing Workshop, so I know kids must have choice. The prompting in quick writing isn't a lot in the choice field, so this year, I'm planning to add in journaling - eventually I'd like to quick write one day and then journal (you pick your topic) the next. It will take time to build to that but I'm hoping to create some choice writing "play" time for kids this year.

Blogging

All of this leads to blogging! Kids have to have some experience with writing before you go to the tech - they have to know how writers find ideas (my kids are expected to publish two blogs a week, it's always at least two free choice blogs, but sometimes I assign something for one of them. Kids HAVE TO HAVE free choice. Writers are not prompted. Kids shouldn't always be prompted, either!) Then, my blogging mini-lessons teach them everything I do with blogs:

• Dashboard vs. Blog
• How to publish a post
• How to use the tools in the blog post (add a link, a picture, a video, bullets, change font, etc)
• How to publish a page (and the difference between the post and the page
• How to write a Slice of Life (see Two Writing Teachers)
• How to comment appropriately and in an engaging fashion
• How to use labels to organize your posts

If you want to blog with kids, the first thing you have to do is write your own blog. As with anything else, you should be doing all the work you ask your students to do, which will give you so much insight into what you are asking them to do.

Not going to budge on these things. Of course there are other components to my ELA classroom - poetry, and reading and writing instruction, publishing papers, discussion, book clubs, etc, but these two components create readers and writers. They will *always* be at the heart of the work I do with teens.

What about your middle school ELA classroom? Please share what works for you in your classroom!

Happy Saturday!

library organization

Over the years, I've had many different ideas for organizing my classroom library. For the better part of my first 5 years, I didn't really pay any attention to it, an so similarly, neither did the students. Then, in grad school I got that the library is the heartbeat of your classroom, and that the more effort and energy you put into it, the more the students would use it. The library really is a great reflection of a teacher's beliefs about student-selected independent reading!

In the past, I had lots of baskets of books, by genre, by author, by topic, and so on. The baskets were numbered so it made reorganizing it easy for students to help with. Here's a pic from my library back in 2009, not exactly up close, but you get the idea:

Since coming back to the middle school, I have been able to rethink the library again. I decided I didn't want to use the numbering system because I wanted kids to be thinking about genres more. So, I got some color coding labels and here is what I came up with:

Pink labels represent fiction.
Green labels represent nonfiction.
Yellow labels represent poetry.

Then, within each color, I also label a more specific genre:

Fantasy, with an F on the pink label --

Realistic Fiction, with an RF on the pink label --

Informational Nonfiction, with an I on the green label --

I also have biography, which is not pictured here.

Poetry, just a P for poetry on the yellow label --

And this year, one of my new additions in fiction, Young Adult, with a YA on the pink label --

I started to get some of my old books out of the basement (they were stored at home while I was at the elementary school) and I'm finding that I still might need some baskets. I have a bunch of the Percy Jackson books, Harry Potter, and Cirque du Freak that should probably stay together, but I'm glad I've got this color coding and genre listed on the spine of the books.

I'm just reminded that it takes time for students to get into the books. I was so excited to have all these new YA books for kids, but then no one was reading them. Beautiful, brand new books, mostly hardcover! Some of my seventh and eighth graders are still going back to the Wimpy Kid and Big Nate books, which are fine, but with the elementary perspective I now have, I know that kiddos in third and fourth grade read those, and so what I want for my kids is to be reading books that are more age appropriate.

So, we will continue with our book talks, and I will keep pushing kids to try new books. It's one thing to hear a book talk from your teacher. It's another when a friend recommends a book.

How is your library looking this year? Any new insights into organizational tips? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Happy Friday!

rainy day thoughts about school starting

Good rainy morning to you! Sorry this post is late going up....my cousin is visiting from the suburbs so we were busy riding bikes around the city last night:

Is it raining where you are? One of the things I love about my apartment is that it is on the second floor, so I get to sleep with my windows open. I love waking up to the sunshine streaming through, or in this case, the gentle music of the rain falling. Fortunately, I don't have any outside plans that the rain could impose on, so I welcome it this morning!

I was thinking a little yesterday about going back to school, and the fact that I don't have my own class again. And then I was thinking about if I were going back to a middle school class, what I would do differently knowing what I know after coaching for a year in elementary school. So here are just a few things that you might consider to enhance your middle school literacy instruction if that is where you'll be next year!

First, as I happened on the test data from the last standardized test, I would make a list of the kids who didn't meet the standards. I would keep this list in a planner somewhere, and then after getting to know the kids I would adjust it based on what my "kidwatching" skills told me. I would basically be trying to figure out who are my most vulnerable readers, and then I would give each of them an assessment like the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment to determine more. 

This assessment is going to give you information about words read per minute, accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Within comprehension, you'll be able to see how they do with retell, questions about the text (craft and structure) and questions about the text (inferential). It really gives a lot of information, so this is where I'd start with my readers I was most concerned with.

You might be wondering how you'd have time for all that assessment when you've got a room full of kids. Well, I'd also be teaching them how to do independent reading for the first month of school. So, my lessons would be about management and I'd keep them brief, so the kids could get to the heart of the work - the reading! If you have the Lucy Calkins Curriculum, these lessons are in the first unit - Building the Reading Life. If you do not have this curriculum, I highly suggest buying this book:

Couple of things: I know it says it's for guiding readers and writers grades 3-6, but it will totally work for middle school. Anyways, this book is awesome, and full of great ideas, but chapter 9 is the chapter you'll want to follow along with. It will lay out lesson plans for the first 20 days of independent reading. I always started my middle school class with these lessons, and I highly recommend them!

So, when can you assess those kids? Well, get your kiddos reading, and then you'll have time while they're busy working to test a kiddo here and there. I would also find more time throughout the day - during homeroom, maybe during a plan period - to get them all done. Like I said, the information you'll get from the assessment will be fab!

The last thing I'd do in the beginning of the year is talk to my admin about getting guided reading books - short, leveled texts - that I could use to give specific guided reading instruction to my kids who need that extra support. The middle school I was in didn't have much in the way of leveled books, so I'd figure out a way to get what I needed - donor's choose, borrowing from an elementary school, maybe getting money from the school budget, I'm not sure. All I know is that I'd need books to give them more tailored instruction!

Anyways those are just a few things I was thinking as I was deciding what to write about today. I'm sure when more come to me, I will share, especially because I want to share about guided reading lessons, too....since my work bestie taught me so much about it!

For now though, that is all since I have a date at hot yoga and then for High Tea at the Drake! Hopefully the rain will stop long enough for us to get to the bus stop!

Have a great day!

An InLinkz Link-up

a cautionary tale....and fave books

Write your post.

Link up with BigTime Literacy!

Remember the Rule of 3!

Today's BTBC prompt is to write about your favorite books as a kid or as an adult. I do have some favorites now, now that I've been a teacher and have some great mentors and colleagues who showed me the way. But...back when I was a kid, not so much.

The problem? Basal readers. My teachers never made me do independent reading. Sure, they taught us about reading with a basal and we read stories from a said textbook, but the lessons never went to independence with Just Right books. I grew up a kid who wanted to be a teacher and I never liked to read! Is that ludicrous or what?!?!

I share this with you because if you are a teacher who only uses a basal and does not create the space for students to do authentic, self-selected, independent reading, what you're teaching them won't transfer. The kids might learn some things about reading, but unless they have a way to apply it, it doesn't really do much. I've already talked in another post about the accountability piece, and I can go more into detail (let me know what's still unclear!), but kids have to read independent, self-selected books, or they won't become readers. End of story.

Now that all that's out of the way, I can share some of my fave books that I've found since I became a teacher!

First, a picture book:

Amos and Boris is a beautiful tale about unexpected friendship. Amos, a mouse, and Boris, a whale, unexpectedly become friends. When you read it to kids, be sure to use a squeaky voice for the mouse and a deep voice for the whale. They'll love it, and you'll love reading it to the kiddos!

A book for meditation and well-being:

I found out about this book through yoga. The teachers would read passages from this one to us at class and I had to have my own copy! It has 365 different passages - one for each day of the year - and they are about all different topics: love, acceptance, being kind to yourself, regret, moving on, etc, etc. You can read them according to the day of the year it happens to be, or you can look up topics based on how you're feeling. I've loved it when I've felt happy and it's a source of comfort when I'm feeling sad. Highly recommended!

A chapter book:

This is my all time fave book, ever! It was recommended to me by the librarian at the first elementary school I worked at. Read it with my first group of sixth graders, liked it, but didn't love it. Read it with another group of sixth graders...liked it again. Then talked to someone about the ending, who offered a new interpretation of the ending and *then* I loved it!

A few years after that, I read it with seventh graders. Loved it. But then, when I waited to read it until eighth grade...that was the best. Sixth graders: too much of it goes over their head. Seventh is better, but eighth is the best. Highly recommend. I'd read it with kids every year if I could!

Side note: The movie version is coming out on August 15th! Read the book before then (and leave me your comments about it here!)

Anyways, sorry to cut it short (I orignially wanted to put 5 books on the list) but I had a late night because I saw Taylor Mali at The Green Mill tonight! Do you know about him? He wrote this spoken word poem called What Teachers Make:

I'll post all about my evening tomorrow! Let's just say there were laughs, there were tears, and there was inspiration to keep on keepin' on with the writing. More to come tomorrow! :-)

An InLinkz Link-up

book obsession

ICYMI, we made a collaborative blog for the community at my elementary school. So far we have a few posts from a few different teachers, including one that was a Wordle of all the places you could read over the summer. One of our fifth grade classes came up with that, and it was a cool idea! I tagged it as "reading habits" and then I got to thinking about reading habits and reading rituals and that got me thinking about all of my bookshelves!

I love my bookshelves, especially when they are super organized. (I just fixed up my home book shelf before I did it's photo shoot!) Here it is:

This is from IKEA and it's survived move after move. I don't think it's going to make one more though, but I love it so much I'd buy it again.

Anyways, across the top I Have some of my favorite books - I was obsessed with Nicholas Sparks and used to read everything he would release. By the 10th book, it was the same story over and over again - set in the charm of the South by water with a love story that has some kind of terrible problem. But, loved them when I was into them! 

Then of course you see the Twilight books. Don't judge! Twilight was the first book I reread - I went through that series when I was doing my reading specialist certificate. Loved them...and I will always have a special place in my heart for those books!

Across the middle row I have lots of books about teaching and professional topics. I brought a few home from work that I need to revisit this summer. Then I have another favorite author, Jodi Picoult:

She's in the middle of that one - I had more of her stuff but took them to school when my eighth graders were nearing the end of our time together....The way she unexpectedly twists her stories will leave you like....whoa! Highly recommend her stuff- some of it is darker than others, but great stories.

Some of the other books in that stack I tried but didn't finish - like Anna Karenina and Wuthering Heights - I think I need to try again. The Promise of Stardust - don't remember the plot of that one but I remember it was super good. So how is that for a recommendation? :-)

Finally, most of my collection of my critical literacy books:

When I taught eighth grade, we always had our year-long theme be "You can change the world," which came from ideas from these titles. I'm hoping this summer to work on my units for the Social Justice Projects and publish them to TpT!

Well that's what is at home, along with assorted books laying all over the house:

At work, I have two more shelves - This one (also from IKEA) houses all my professional reads:

and this one holds all the picture books that Christine and I have:

This is some $20 book case that is on it's last leg, but it holds fiction on the top and NF on the bottom. When I was in grad school that's when the major book purchasing began happening. Here are a few of my favorites to teach with:

This one is about a rat who has a lisp and gets bullied. Then one day, his lisp comes to his aid as he (unintentionally) makes his school community better. This book is adorable and great for building community in your classroom!

Chato's Kitchen is a book about a low-riding gangster cat. I love this book because I totally do voices for the cat and the mice. Pretty sure there are some other books that feature Chato, too. 

I love Chewy Louie - it's a great text for an easily identified plot line. The dog chews up everything and the family goes through all these steps to help the dog stop chewing, including a singing therapist lady. Great book!

I've used Freedom Summer as part of my middle school Social Justice unit. Anyways this story is set in Mississippi in 1964 and is about two boys - one of which cannot do the same things as the other because of his race. It's a great way to open conversations about racism - in the past and current day!

So there you have it, all of my book cases! Do you feel any particular affection for yours? I'm sure you do, if you love books as much as I do!

Quick announcement: This summer on July 1st, I will be doing a PD for our district so teachers can get their own blogs going. I am going to hold a BigTime Blogging Challenge, too, with prompts for each of the days in July! I'm going to add this topic to the list, so get your ideas ready for July so you can link up with me! Of course, the purpose of blogging is to come up with your own ideas, so at any point throughout the challenge, you can always write about a different topic rather than the prompt, but just know I'll have a link-up every day of July. I hope you can join!

Have a great weekend! Only three days left of school for me (plus two of curriculum the week after!)

if I were still in the classroom: reading relationships

In a few weeks, the Literacy Coaches and teachers from around our district are going to be doing some summer curriculum work. In an effort to prepare for that, I've been busy reading Lucy Calkin's Curricular Plan for fifth grade. Today I came across reading partnerships and I so wish I knew about this when I had my own classroom!

If I still had my own classroom, I would totally build reading partnerships into my reading workshop. Reading partnerships are pairs of students who stick together (I'm envisioning a pair who would stick for a quarter of the school year at least) and talk about their Just Right books. You can build these pairs in various ways: by ability, interest, friendship, or mentor partnerships.

Ability Paired

The first way to create a pair would be by ability. If you choose to put kids together who are like ability, they are more apt to read the same kinds of books, and that would make discussions easy for them to have.

Interest Paired

Another way would be to create pairs by interest. If you know you have a few kids interested in the Percy Jackson series, for example, you'd put them together.

Friendship Paired

Or, you could pair students up by friendships - essentially let them choose one of their friends to pair up with. As you can guess, this might be kind of messy because you might worry that they would focus more on talking about their plans for the weekend than about the books they are reading, but when our kids move on to high school, they will rely on their friends to support them academically as they call one another for support at night. So, if you choose to go this route, you will want to teach them self-discipline and model exactly what the behaviors of an engaged pair would look like, sound like, and feel like. (Actually, you should do this for all the kids - regardless of how you pair them up...it's just good teaching!)

Mentor Paired

Finally, you might have your partnerships built as mentor partnerships - where one student will mentor another along their road to independent reading. Lucy Calkins reminds us that books bring peole together, and in this case, that is so. You may even find that children who otherwise wouldn't have ever talked to one another become friends with one another - all because of books!

So, what I'm envisioning for my hypothetical upper elementary or middle school classroom would be kids matched up in one way or another and then as a Do Now or as a share time at the end of the class period, they would get to talk to their partner about their Just Right book. 

Lucy Calkins says, "Pretty much every single day a reader needs protected time for reading and protected time to talk to someone about what he or she has been reading, as well as what work he or she has been doing as a reader. That is, these partnership conversations are sometimes full of talk about what is happening in their books - all readers love to talk about the characters, places, and plots of their books, especially as the books get increasingly complex. You'd never deny readers this pleasure because it is intrinsic to reading. At the same time, you want your readers to be able to answer the question, What work are you doing as a reader? What are you investigating? And you want that answer to show that they are responding to your instruction, moving across what Normal Webb calls Depth of Knowledge levels, so that they move from recall to synthesis to analysis" (A curricular Plan for the Reading Workshop, Grade 5, 2011-2012, page 20).

See that part in red up there? This is so true! One of the girls in my RtI group has been carrying around her new Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul book and every chance she gets with me she's reading an excerpt or telling me about another story in the book. This is a natural phenomenon with reading and if we create reading partners, it will help our kiddos engage more with the books they read. Additionally, we will have them add the content we teach in class to their conversations, moving them from just the general plot line, to application of our mini-lesson content within their conversations!

Your Turn:
Do you have reading partners in your classroom that talk about their books daily? What do you think of the idea? Is this something you'd be open to trying? Please share your experiences!

Happy Monday Tuesday!

love letters...better than money!

Today I ran to the office to make a quick copy, and when I got there, Maria, our secretary, said, "Ms. Brezek, I have something for you!"

I replied, "Oh, is it money?" thinking that there was some outstanding reimbursement that the board still hadn't approved. (I actually think they do still owe me some money, but I clearly need to keep better records.)

"No, no," she said as she took some papers from a manilla envelope and handed me two essays by former students, and I thought, "Oh yes, it is that time of the year!"

See, after my eighth graders move on to the high school, they always have to write an essay at the end of their freshmen year about a teacher that impacted their education. Two years ago, I got a few, and this year, I got two more. I love this day - because these essays are much like the letters I used to write with students!

today's letters: a great blog to follow!

Before we blogged about our books, we wrote dialog letters. Students would be responsible for writing one letter a week to me - but all about reading and their books. Then, I would write a letter back to them about their books. Round and round we'd go over the course of the school year, having our own 1:1 conversations about books.

When I came to Heritage, these changed to blogs, but I still kept aspects of the letter writing. When seventh grade began, the first homework assignment was to write me a letter in response to a letter I wrote to students introducing myself. They would write back (on stationary that I provided them) and tell me about themselves. These would be filed into their writing portfolios as an On-Demand writing sample to look at at the end of the year for growth.

At the end of seventh grade, I wrote them another letter (one same letter that was copied for all students) and their last homework assignment was to write me back. I love these "love letters," as Nancy, a fabulous teacher who I got to work with called them. I would bind them into a book and save them:

Here's a letter I wrote to them at the end of seventh grade:

In eighth grade, we continued talking about books, writing blogs about books, and developing our thinking about experiences with them. At the end of eighth grade, I again, wrote each child a letter. This time though, every student got a hand-written, personal letter. They *loved* this, and even though it took ages, I loved doing it too, because then I got back the best love letters of all!

Here's one of my faves from the end of eighth grade last year:

So back to my main point about the freshman essays. This year, Lillian and Kirstin were the two girls who wrote about me. Here's Lilli:

Did you love how she said that I have a degree in Lit Studies? :-)

And Kirstin said...

Anyways, just wanted to share the highlight of my day with you all, and let these two special girls know just how important they are to me. Lillian, you remind me how important it is to *really* get to know someone before I pass judgment and that great relationships take time. And Kirstin, you are always so happy and so positive - I am not sure there is much that gets you down and I love that about you! Also, you remind me that it is great to try new things that might be outside my comfort zone! Thank you both for trusting me for the two short years we spent together, and I hope we are always just a phone call or a text away!

So...any of you do the letter writing, too? It's that time of the year, my first without my own class and I'm feeling kinda sad!

Please leave a comment with your version of the love letters, especially if you are someone who is out of the classroom now, like me!

Happy Wednesday!