IREL2025

I attended IREL2025, a 1.5 day virtual Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy (and Life). It was exactly what I needed this July. Created and kicked off by Dr. Sonja Cherry Paul and Tricia Ebarvia, I recommend you knowing these two smart ladies if you don’t already. Check out their website, their work and their books! Their opening session got me thinking about “What am I willing to stand up for?” They shared past history and emphasized that remembrance is resistance. And also pointed out that I don’t need to be the one standing in front of the tank or marching down the street. But I can do something, using my tools and talents.

They passed the baton to Cody Miller and Jess Lifshitz, two people standing up for the LGBTQ+ community. Again, they deliberately taught about history. Then they shared work happening in classrooms. They shared tools and ideas. At the very least, I was inspired to download and print these posters to deliberately show my committment to inclusion.

Next, Amanda Hartman and Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi presented on the topic of Centering Palestine in Racial Justice and Liberatory Education. Amanda instroduced herself by saying, “I am an anti-Zion Jewish woman…I want to unlearn harmful narratives…” and Abeer stated she speaks three languages: Arabic, English and sarcasm which she said helps her working with Middle Schoolers! Abeer taught me so much about the history of Palestine which I humbly admit, was mostly new to me. “We need to unlearn and not erase Palestine.” She compared it to the US displacement of Native Americans and to what happened in Tulsa, OK. Together, they shared this video called I Am From Palestine. Amanda then shared books to add to our read-aloud pile as a tool.

After the Institute I got the suggested picture book, Homeland by Hannah Moushabeck at the library and made this notebook page. At the very least, I plan to read the book aloud, encourage my students to think about their homeland and also play the video. I find it powerful to reflect on what a person calls home. I want my students to have the opportunity to reflect on their home and to show respect to all the places we collectively call home.

Session 3 was led by my favorite – Colleen Cruz!! She is an expert on supporting students with IEPs and she consulted with my school 2 years ago. Learning from her during this session has me excited to buy her new book coming out soon and to work to arrange for her to return to our school. First, she asked us to think of a student, their strengths and then the obstacles they face. From the start, she reminded me that ALL have strengths! Like the other presenters, she shared the history of the disabled in the US. I learned so much and afterwards, viewed Crip Camp on Netflix to understand the history even more. I ended the session wanting to use this 10 Dimensions of Belonging by Erik Carter as a school audit exercise because, as Colleen stated, “If they don’t feel they belong, they won’t learn.”

The Institute ended with a conversation between Sonja and Tricia with the amazing author, Jacqueline Woodson!! In 2016, Jacqueline’s book, Harbor Me, was published. She believes kids have a deep sense of fairness and she trusts that the kids of today get it. As an institute participant, I get a free copy of this book!! I had read it and now want to reread it. Could I create an ARTT (a place to talk) in my classroom?

I LOVED all the music played in between sessions and recommend the IREL 25 playlist! They reminded me how I need to play more music for my students! Maybe have them create our class playlist!

The 2nd half-day was time to plan in breakout rooms. Tricia stated that if time to plan after a PD doesn’t happen, the PD is not used. I don’t want that to happen. I want to use ideas heard to inform my teaching in the fall. So many ideas still swirling around. One is to stick with IREL leaders and to read Sonja and Tricia’s books and Colleen’s when it comes out and reread all the links on my padlets from both IREL23 and IREL25. Such smart thinking!

My padlet notes from attending IREL25 – this summer, virtually

My padlet notes from attending IREL23 – two summers ago, in person at MLK Library in DC.

As I reflect on my personal summer 2025 learning, I can say:
I used to be the kind of learner who attended TCRWP summer institutes and I loved learning there from 2009-2019.
Now I am the kind of learner who attends IREL.
Where do YOU go to learn?

Summer Break

Today is the first Tuesday of my Summer Break, as school ended last Wednesday for me. Year 33 is now in the books! Since Wednrsday, I have already deep cleaned my closet and dresser drawers and donated clothes I no longer wear – too big, too small, too worn – to Goodwill.

I have already finished reading 2 books and recommend them both Everything Is Tuberculosis and Rebellion 1776. Plus, I drafted a reading notebook page which I will finish today and then post a photo of to my 2025 Summer Virtual Book Club – I invite you to join! All directions are on the padlet.

I have already spent a morning shopping at the outlet mall for baby clothes to take on my July trip to visit my granddaughters. Yep, I purchased a Bluey t-shirt and these cute watermelon-print summer-weight matching PJs in size 2T and 9 months. Plus, a few more items, because size 2T and 9 month clothing are so dang cute!

Then yesterday, I found the pages I downloaded and printed at school a few weeks ago after listening to Krista TIppett’s On Being Podcast. “Beginning today, and for the next six weeks in the On Being podcast feed and Substack, we’re opening a reflection/course experience curated by Krista and drawing upon her conversations with several visionary humans.” (shared on May 29th). So yesterday, as I sipped my breakfast tea, I listened to the first episode and journaled by hand on the paper I printed out, writing to these 3 prompts:

• RIght now, today, what is filling you with despair? And what is giving you hope?
• What is hope? Answer this question through the story of your life?
• Who have been the “live human signposts” of muscular hope in your life across time? Hold their faces, and the qualities of their presence in your heart and in your mind’s eye in the days to come.
  

Summer Break is in full swing for me!
How about you? What have you already done?

Change of Scenery

“It is going to be hot tomorrow, so I think we should aim to head out early. Then we can return to watch the 1pm baseball game on our TV. Think we can aim to leave at 9am to catch the 10am ferry? If we miss it, there isn’t another ferry until 11am,” my host (better than Julie McCoy!) stated.

“We’ll be ready!” I replied before my mom and I retire to our individual guest suites in her lovely home near Wrightsville beach in North Carolina.

And at 9:47am, she turned the car carrying her husband, my mom and me into the Ferry to Southpoint drive, paid $7 and followed the man’s directions to pull the car into Lane 3. A car pulled behind us and four cars were in front of us. Plus the two lanes of cars to our left. As I opened the car door, a refreshing breeze blew. My mom and her cane carefully stepped up the ferry’s white steel steps to the observation deck. And for 35 minutes, we all enjoyed a boat ride. The breeze. The sea gulls. The blue sky meeting the horizon.

“Please return to your cars,” the voice commanded over a loudspeaker. And again, my mom and her cane, a little slower going down the steps, made it back to the car.

Then our “Julie” drove around the cute Town of Southport first, so we could see the lovely old homes with wrap around porches surrounded by mature trees and blooming crepe myrtle trees. She parked using my mom’s handicapped parking pass in a space between the Christmas Shop and a Country Store. We walked through both, purchasing a book for Aden and some postcards. Then all got a dish of ice cream to enjoy on the ride back home.

A perfect Sunday outing. We ended it watching Garrett (my mom’s grandson) pitch for the Nashville Sound on the big screen TV in what felt like the “Ledo Deck”. So fun to have a change of scenery and a friend who acts as the perfect cruise director for her AARP guests!

The ferry in the distance is the kind of ferry we were riding on!

Classroom library –> Home Library

First, I pulled every book off from the home library shelves and sorted them onto the floor.
Sorting created 5 piles: the donate pile (to public library to be sold at their annual book sale),
the hard back picture book pile, the soft back picture book pile, the novel pile and the PD book pile.
Then I moved to the basement and repeated the sorting of the books stored in the MANY bags.

Basement? Yep. Last January, I seriously considered retiring. So daily, I removed books from my classroom library, brought them home and placed it in the basement. Quickly, a 6 x6 foot portion of my basement was covered by grocery recycled bags, all filled with my books. Over 32 years as a teacher, I had collected so many books: picture books – novels – PD books – TCRWP Units of Study – poetry books. Now, I had a summer weekend to organize them and place them onto eight empty shelves in the bookcase in my TV room.

As the donated pile grew, I began filling the emptied grocery bags up with these books. Then, I moved these bags to the car, drove them to the public library, borrowed their cart and wheeled in my donation. All on a 90 degree summer day.

Once back home, the fun began. How did I want to fill my shelves with the books I was keeping. I love my poetry books and because they are colorful, I decided to arrange these first, by color. Blues on the far left, yellows in the middle and whites on the far right. These filled the left side and spilled in to the right side. I then filled the right with some nonfiction hardback books, my favorite picture books purchased on my trip to Vencie and my very favorite picture book, The Girl with the Watering Can. I read this each year to my kindergarten class and then took them on a fieldtrip to the National Gallery of Art to find all the paintings in the book.

Next, I placed the hard pack novels and picture books across the bottom shelves, arranged alphabetically by author, from Kwame Alexander to Jaqueline Woodson.

I placed the soft pack books across the third shelf in ABC order, from American Girl to Nic Stone. And placed all the soft backed picture books on the far right.

Even though there is a slim chance I will actually use the TCRWP’s Units of Study for teaching both reading and writing, I wasn’t ready to give them all away. Maybe I’ll tutor. Maybe I’ll use them when reading and writing with my grandkids. Or maybe they will just grace my two top shelves as a reminder of the many summers I spent learning from the staff developers at Teachers College. Also, on the top shelf, Iadded my collection of empty journals, ready to be used!

What a productive summer weekend I had. A portion of my basement is now empty. Every book I want to keep is neatly organized in my bookshelves. And a large donation was made to my public library. At the next community book sale, I predict a new teacher will happily purchase one of my PD books, a new parent will happily puchase one of my picture books, and a child reader will fill a bag with my gently used paper back novels. All at “yard sale” prices!

What’s next on my agenda for organizing this summer? Well, underneath my bookselves are doors hiding a shelf that is overflowing with my writing journals. Years of journaling notes. So next, I plan to read through them and decide what to do with them. Not sure what the sorting piles will be. Just know that the after photo will look much better than this one:

What are your summer organizational plans?!

Three glimpses of Summer Magic

1. Visiting a friend last week in NC, my mom recalled meeting her mom at Lincoln Park when the firend and I were only 3-yrs old (now we are 59!). Our moms stayed friends across the years until my friend’s mom passed away. She shared with us, “On the day my mom died, the white heron stayed outside our house. Now I often see it and know mom is saying, ‘hi.'” The next morning, as my mom and I were getting ready to leave, we saw the white heron. Seems my mom’s friend of 50+ years was magically letting us know she was glad we came for a visit to NC.

Look closely to see the heron!

2. “He got the call! He’s heading to Norfolk and will pitch Friday!” My nephew is a baseball pitcher. In high school in Chesapeake, VA. In college at the University of Tennessee. He got drafted by the MLB and started with the LA Angels and then got traded to the Baltimore, Orioles. He started in Single A, pitching at Aberdeen, then moved to Double A in Bowie, MD. This week, he got that magical call to move to Triple A and pitch with the Norfolk Tide. All the local papers ran articles on him because he grew up just 20 minutes from the Norfolk ballpark. This summer, he continues to chase his dream of pitching in the major leagues. #ProudAunt

The team didn’t win Friday but he pitched wonderfully!

3. On a quiet Monday, the day before the July 4th holiday, my husband brought the mail in and handed me, not one, but two postcards. Kim Johnson (who I met here and also at the Slicer Gathering at NCTE22 in Anaheim) sent me postcards, using the labels she sliced about HERE as she prepared for her Route 66 trip. If I can’t be on a trip right now, it feels magical to receive mail from someone who is. Thanks Kim!!!

Three examples of “summer magic” for me.
How about YOU?

Summer Ends – School Begins

This summer
summer of 2020
pandemic summer
productive summer
summer of PD
summer of home cooking
summer of long neighborhood walks
staycation summer

This school year
school year 2020-2021
pandemic school year
school year like no other
school year to teach 6th graders
school year to teach Reading
my 29th school year.

Here I go!

Summertime, Writingtime!

I love summertime….this summer, I have time to write.

Yesterday, a teacher hosted another teacher and me. She had just returned from attending the Heinemann Boothbay Literacy Institute (on my bucketlist) and offered to simulate some of what she did with us.

First, we did 2 Quickwrites using Linda Rief’s book, The Quickwrite Handbook. Here is what I wrote in 2 minutes after listening to my friend read Getting It Right by Kevin Carey (You can hear Garrison Keiller hear it hear on Dec. 14, 2016’s The Writer’s Almanac).

I used the prompt, “Borrow any line, letting the line lead your thinking as you write.”

I was never the smartest kid in the room. I was more the B+ student, dutifully compliant but not a natural. Grace was a natural. She read aloud with such expression when it was her turn during Round-Robin Reading. David was a natural. His science fair projects were so smart. Both had smart parents, assisting. I had loving parents but parents who did school just as well as I did. Now I am paid to read-aloud to students. I am quite good at it. As a teacher, I notice the Graces and the Davids and mostly the Sallys.

I’ll admit, that I had Linda’s book and skimmed it but hadn’t tried any of the exercises. However, with my friend’s guidance, I now see the power of reading another’s writing and then letting my pencil quickly write off of it. 

Then my friend showed us the Watercolors she made at Boothbay. She had paint sets and cups of water and 4×6 watercolor paper and black thin sharpies and some shells. And for the next hour, we painted! First, shells. Then copied an image from my phone of flowers.

So lucky to have a friend who values turn-around PD!
So lucky to have time to write in the summer!

Have you ever tried Quickwrites? Do you ever watercolor?
I now recommend both!