School is out, grades are in, and break has begun. Transitions are sometimes smooth, sometimes rocky, sometimes just bleh. I’ve been somewhere in between the three, sort of waffling between the joy of having no schedule and the angst of having no schedule. Though in possession of a long To Do List, it’s always nice to take a few days off, don’t you think? The problem is I’m not good at being off.

I’ve read two books this week, but neither of them have satisfied my desire to be swept away into another world for days on end. While on Twitter yesterday I learned of the documentary, Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,” which I passed on to my friends who are wrapping up the novel with their students.

After reading To Kill a Mockingbird each spring for many years, I realized how much I missed reading Lee’s novel this year. I started in on it yesterday and got to page 90 which, as every freshman English teacher knows, contains the famous quote. It is rather liberating to reread this book without having to focus on similes, metaphors, symbolism and other elements of literature so pertinent to the beloved state curriculum. The language, word choice, sentence structure and small nuances of the rich story which I didn’t have time to explore with my students jump out at me now and have swept me away. Sometimes those sweet, familiar words are just the perfect balm for the restless, transitional soul.

Caroline is now one and it’s amazing to watch her interact with the world and try to take care of her own needs and desires. Despite an excellent attempt at problem solving, she is also learning that her desires cannot always be met.

I’m late coming to the Remarkable Creatures party. Tracy Chevalier swept me away with Girl With the Pearl Earring a few summers ago just after school was out for the year. I remember sitting on the back porch getting eaten by mosquitoes, but being so mesmerized by Chevalier’s characters that I was not able to put the book down long enough to go inside and get the Off.

Remarkable Creatures tells the story of the lives of two women who lived in early 19th century England and changed the scientific world forever with their fossil discoveries. Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot are unlikely companions, crossing boundaries of age, social stature and educational levels, but united in their passion to uncover long-hidden treasures of the past. It must be difficult for authors to take the lives of real people and weave their stories into a believable narrative. Chevalier excels at this art! The title says it all. I didn’t put my iPad down for two days and enjoyed this story very much.

Amelia, almost three, has taken to calling us on the phone from time to time. Here is a partial list of this weeks questions: What kind of birthday cake did you have on your birthday, Nana? Are you and Pacah going to have a puppet show tonight because Mommy and Daddy and me are going to have one? Do you have any kids, Nana? What you and Pacah having for dinner, Nana? Where is Gracie, Nana? Did Gracie go out to eat with you on your birthday? Who stayed with Gracie when you went out to eat for your birthday?

What a joy that there exists a window in the life of every child, just a small snippet of time, when it is possible to observe their brain process the world. There is no filter, there is no agenda, there is no hidden layer of language–we get to watch and listen to very pure reactions to the world that spins around them. It’s a treat to witness the abundance of learning and thinking that takes place during this stage. I don’t think I appreciated this gift enough as a young mom, so I intend to savor it as a Nana.

And, not to be outdone, I must report that darling little Caroline, almost one, has the best pincer grasp I have ever seen. That child loves her food and doesn’t miss a crumb. 

A friend recently reminded me of a very significant “aha” moment I experienced about five years ago. I noticed that when the friends of my children came home from college for a visit and I had my teaching supplies strewn all over the kitchen table, the kids would dive for many of the texts on the table and exclaim something akin to, “OH! I read this sophomore year in Mrs. Mench’s class. I LOVE this book.” After a while I would bait them, eager to see if this reaction would hold true. It did–sometimes even accompanied with closed eyes and the book held tightly in their hands. Many, many teachers were mentioned by name.  Not once did anyone say, “Oh, the character development in this book is so unique!” or “The themes contained within this book were extremely significant to my development as a person!”

Kids need to connect new knowledge to something already present in those very full and very active brains.  In my theoretical and untested hypothesis, those brains contain filing cabinets with the faces of many teachers on the front. Kids remember classrooms, the way a classroom smells, the soft classical music playing in the background, the way the light filters into a room during a certain time of day, and the classmates that surround them. They file all of those sensory experiences behind each teacher’s face on the filing cabinet drawer.

Teachers are the velcro to which new learning sticks. Carefully crafted lessons and adroitly led discussions combined with high expectations and a warm, respectful environment create fertile ground for new thinking. Years from now, they may not remember the names of each character in a book, but they will remember the pleasure of learning in that time and in that space. They will remember the significance of being connected to other learners, other humans, as well as the experience and power of creating new thought.  And all of it is neatly organized in that filing cabinet.

Honestly and truly, I love to learn in a really nerdy, I can’t get enough new thinking into my brain, kind of way. Though I don’t consider myself to be very smart, I’ve always managed to find a way to hang out with the cool kids who are. That’s why I just can’t get enough Twitter.

My PLN (Personal/Professional Leaning Network) consists of people who really know their stuff and generously share it with the world. Not only do they find great articles and websites to explore, they create new material on a regular basis. Educators familiar with Blooms Taxonomy know that “Create” has recently been moved to the top of the pyramid of intellectual behavior. It used to be enough to “Evaluate,” but now you must do something that newly acquired intellectual motherlode. The internet provides the perfect milieu for sharing newly created knowledge.

This is the age of information overload, but I don’t have to read it all, analyze it all, evaluate it all or even create it all because my Twitter PLN works together to do all of that. If you think Twitter is about what you had for breakfast or where you can find really cool shoes are on sale, you are missing out on the power of the Twittersphere.

It’s easy to establish a Twitter network. Create a Twitter account–it only takes a few minutes and despite the burden of another user name and password,  it’s painless. Take the time to create a short bio and add a picture of yourself. Then use the search tool to find just a few people from your areas of influence you admire, and try to locate them on Twitter. Follow them. Once you do that, you see who they follow. Add those folks as people you follow, too. Talk to peers who are using Twitter and find out their user names. By following them you will have even more access to local folks to follow.

If I have shared a link with you over the past few years that made you see the world through a new lens, it most likely came from my Tweeps. If you’re eager for a place to start, you are welcome to follow me: @LindaReed (and yes, I did sign up for this service so long ago that my very common name was available as a username). I have had few Professional Development experiences (with the exception of the #Boothbay Harbor Literacy Retreat) that cause me to think as deeply as do my Tweeps. They are awesome and generous, and of course, smart.

They just walked out. Today, legislators in a second state got up and walked out. What a poor example this sets for the children who are watching the situation play out. It’s never okay to abandon a responsibility, particularly a civic responsibility bestowed upon so very few citizens. Leadership happens when ordinary people take a seemingly impossible situation and find a way to solve a problem that no one else even dared to dream. It happens when you work behind the scenes to mediate with all parties involved and navigate new paths down which former adversaries can walk side by side. Democracy is messy work. Who is going to stand up, stretch out a hand to the other side and commit to finding a solution to these difficult problems? No one has come out ahead in this situation, especially not our children.

Nicholas Carr wrote an article in the Atlantic Magazine during the summer of 2008 which made the rounds in educational circles as we started school that fall.  “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” was the fuel for many  interesting discussions and speculation. This article is an underlying premise for Carr’s book, The Shallows, published this summer. Have you noticed that you have trouble reading for a sustained period of time at a very deep level? Do your eyes interact with text differently than they used to? I can answer yes to both of those questions and The Shallows helped me understand the change.

Though I can’t begin to even scrape the surface of the topics covered in this book, Carr touches on the malleable nature of the human brain and its ability to literally rewire itself after a series of surprisingly few repeated experiences. This is of great importance to teachers of course, as the brains of the young people before us each day in class are not the same brains we were teaching even five years ago. How are we to alter instruction to best meet the real and physical needs of today’s students? Is it important to shut down technology for certain parts of the day to assure that students are able to think deeply and enable their brains to retain that capacity?

This book is an interesting read for everyone, but crucial a one for those who work in education.

No one has been a stronger or louder advocate of the iPad than me. It’s a revolutionary tool that causes us to rethink what a computer should look like. It’s not an overgrown phone–what an uneducated stereotype that moniker has become!

The iPad is a computer on which documents can be produced, photos can be edited, spreadsheets can be created, presentation material can be produced and books can be written, read, annotated and cherished. It is the perfect travel companion, providing maps, podcasts, historical information and other pertinent information to make travel smooth as silk.

In the classroom, the iPad allows teachers to move around the room with the world in her hands, allowing for digital writing conferences, sharing of personal assessment information, and engaging the troops with relevant tie-ins germane to content being studied.

However, the drawback of the iPad (at this point in time) is getting information off of the iPad and into print. Though there are ways to do this at home, or in a small closed network, in my current job I have to print observations of lessons taught by student teachers in a number of different schools. To access (often) closed networks containing a variety of printers is nearly an impossible task. Yes, I could email the notes to the preservice teachers observed, but in many schools they are not able to access “outside” email servers, much less print a document. The next generation iPad will likely contain a USB port through which one can take information from the iPad and transfer it to a computer. Or, the print capacity will be far more wide-ranging and include a native ability to interact with hundreds of print drivers. But for now, I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Air, also known as AirNana.

After only four weeks of lugging my MacBookPro (MacNana) this semester, along with other teaching materials, my shoulder is begging for mercy. Rather than wait for the next generation iPad and undergo certain pain and torture from extensive Physical Therapy, I caved. The 11 inch MacBookAir weighs just over two pounds, as compared to the MacNana at 5.6. I know that doesn’t sound like a great deal of difference in weight, but even with a lightweight and stylish Vera Bradley bag, those three pounds are quite noticeable.

AirNana has two USB ports which allow me to use a thumb drive to transfer my observation notes to a computer in the library of any school and print the notes on the spot for a post-observation conference.

Would I take AirNana on a trip? Probably not. The battery life is not as good as that of the iPad, and though VERY light, it weighs about twice as much as my iPad. My eBook library is on my iPad and I don’t care to move everything over to a new machine at this point in time.

However, AirNana is a good machine for me to use here and now to get information from point A to point B on restricted networks with minimal hassle. It may be obsolete in two years, but isn’t that the game we play with emerging technologies?

It’s here! The most maligned month of the year is upon us. Always a fan of this cute little 28 day calendar page, I was shocked to learn that many people, most people, don’t share my joy about the month of my birth. Think about it, friends–someone tells you that in the next 28 days you will still be paid as much as you are for a 31 day month, there will be a holiday involving love and chocolate and flowers, AND!, there will be a paid holiday thrown in for good measure! Don’t you think that should make your skirt flutter? But, no. Sadly, like most others, you will whine and complain and barely hang on just to get through this month.

Here are just a few “how to love February” tips. Try to make your house glittery and sparkly and red, with a little candle glow thrown in for good measure. Get lots of battery operated candles with built-in timers from Restoration Hardware and set them to go on as the shadows get long at 4:30 in the afternoon and go off at your bedtime. As the sun sets, your house will glow, automatically, courtesy of batteries and timers and your wonderful eye for picking up cheap sparkly things. Oh, and don’t forget the disco balls. Disco balls are all that during the month of February.

This is a picture of my Pottery Barn dough bowl filled to the brim with silver and white ornaments and a candle all aglow, with a few disco balls thrown in for good measure. I love this big old bowl and have fun filling it with seasonal joy throughout the year. To see an entire post about dough bowls, visit the fabulous Nesting Place.

Spread the sparkle, eat the chocolate, enjoy the flowers and shower all your pretty ones with love.