THE CAWP FALL FORUM AND MORE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

Soon the leaves will redden and begin to fall, the air will chill, and learning will dance into full swing for our students.

We will begin meeting regularly with colleagues and team members to analyze data, determine goals,  plan lessons, create individualized  and learning opportunities for students, develop record-keeping procedures, and all the other things that educators do.

As we engage in all of these activities, we also want to consider and plan for our own learning.

What will we do for ourselves?
How will we continue to grow and develop our best potential?
How will we create individualized  learning opportunities for ourselves?

The Columbus Area Writing Project (CAWP) offers both a comprehensive and localized answer to these questions.

As a local affiliate of the National Writing Project, and through our yearly summer writing institute, CAWP offers entrance into  a  national (and  local) professional development network for educators, the opportunity to become Teacher Consultants, as well as a multitude of  other collaborative learning opportunities.

At the local level, in additional to several summer institutes and other programs, the Columbus Area Writing Project  Fall Forum offers one of the best conferences in our area.

Past keynote speakers have included Sonia Nieto, Troy Hicks, Asma Mobin Uddin, Tom Newkirk, and Jaime Adoff.

With a  new location and new feel, this year's Fall Forum, is promising to be a perfect kickoff to a season of excellent professional development activities and events.

We are excited that JoBeth Allen and J.Patrick Lewis will be with us as keynote speakers for 2013.

In addition, our own CAWP Teacher Consultants will be leading concurrent sessions  related to argumentative writing,  spoken word and slam poetry, flipping classrooms, Google tools and techniques for the classroom, teacher activism and advocacy, LBGTQ  advocacy and support, new nonfiction books,  multimodal literacy across content areas, and much more.

Our conference is large enough to hold the big conversations initiated by our keynote speakers and our session leaders and raise the questions we are all asking , yet small and intimate enough so that every one's voice is heard, and interactions, collaborations, and discussions  are comfortable and productive.

If you are looking for that first fall professional development activity,  I invite you to join us for a day of listening, thinking, talking, sharing, learning, teaching , and writing.

The Columbus Area Writing Project Fall Forum

 Saturday, October 5, 2013

                   Ramseyer Hall @The Ohio State University      29 W. Woodruff Ave.      Columbus, OH 43210

 Click here to Register Today

Additional Professional Development Opportunities and Resources

As you continue to plan for your professional development throughout the year, each of the organizations listed below provides a wealth of resources including: conferences, conventions and other events, books, journals, newsletters, and other publications, as well as online resources.

National

National Council of Teachers of  English (NCTE)
         Annual Convention        November 21-24, 2013 Boston


National Writing Project  (NWP)
        Annual Meeting              November 21, 2013 Boston (Runs concurrent with NCTE)

International Reading Association (IRA)
      Annual Convention            May 9-12, 2014  New Orleans

Ohio

 Ohio Council of the International Reading Association (OCIRA)
         Conference                     October 12, 2013    University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash, Ohio


MAZZA Weekend Conference- November 8-9, 2013 Findlay, Ohio


Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OCTELA)
         Conference                       February 28-March 1, 2014 Worthington, Ohio

OHIOANA Book Festival- May 10, 2014

Ohio Resource Center (ORC)
Comprehensive site for of resources for all Ohio teachers which includes support with Common Core, videos, professional development modules,  lesson plans, online journals,  and more.

Year- Long Opportunities

Choice Literacy      
       Online and traditional Workshops   Fall schedule  Beginning October 4

Literacy Connection
       Celebrating Writers with  Ruth Ayres      September 28,2013 and April 5, 2014
       Celebrating Writers Study Group Professional Development Workshops 


What do you want to learn this year?
How will you develop as a teacher?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Regardless of your profession, reflect on the kinds of learning in which you would like to engage both professionally and personally.

What do you need to learn?

What knowledge do you need to gain?

What strategies and techniques do you need to add to your  repertoire?

What is the best way to learn  these things?

Write a professional or personal development plan, including the desired learning or strategies, resources and methods to support the learning, as well as specific classes, books, or other publications that will assist you as you learn.

J.PATRICK LEWIS: OCTELA 2013

I spent this past Friday at the OCTELA (Ohio Council of  Teachers of English Language Arts) 2013 Spring Conference.

I spent this past Friday in the company of other teachers, lovers of books, writers and authors and poets, old friends, new friends, and some I won't meet until next year or the year after.

I spent this past Friday talking, learning, thinking and...  wanting still more.

The OCTELA Spring Conference always inspires better teaching, higher learning, and critical thinking--always  presents new ideas and opportunities to revisit, reclaim, reaffirm or rework old ones, and always challenges us try something radically different.  Thanks Sarah Ressler Wright and the entire OCTELA 2013 Conference Committee!

I had the privilege of meeting J. Patrick Lewis  very early in the morning--he signed the book I had already purchased. (I visited Greg and Jan Michael's (Michaels Associates) table again later in the day to buy more books --no one who knows me will be surprised by that fact.)

We had an opportunity to talk briefly.  I now know what J. stands for --and his signature  was positively a work of art.  I told him he set the bar extremely high for book signing. I will need to rethink my whole approach to this art.

As the opening keynote speaker, his wise and witty words inspired many tweet and retweets. My own tweet from this session is below.

Robin Holland ‏@rholland5

22 Mar

Poetry is... Sound of silence amplified. Daily clues to the ordinary. Subjects for poetry are everywhere. --J. Patrick Lewis. #OCTELA

He spends half of his life writing fun, humorous verse--what he calls ludic verse, and the other half writing serious historic or informational texts. Surprisingly, he has written 85 books. I must own about 20 of his books, but didn't realize just exactly how prolific he had been.

He talked with us about the importance of priming the pump with poetry that children will enjoy and the essential-ness of verbal play, the necessary-ness  of word play.  For more extensive information about J. Patrick Lewis click here  to read an article published Language Arts when he was awarded the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 2011.

Some J. Patrick Lewis Thoughts

Nothing succeeds like failure. If you are failing your are trying. Go on, go on, and keep on failing. only next time, try to fail better (Lewis quoting Thomas Beckett)

Our classrooms must be safe places where risk-taking is the norm. If we establish communities where it is safe to make mistakes, learning is multiplied exponentially.

Children are practicing. they are not poets 

What he meant, I think was that children were still playing and learning---not accomplished or finished.   This one, however,  I have to meditate on--- I always encouraged my students to think of themselves as writers and poets and to act like writers and poets.

I have written 85 books, and I still get rejected. Everybody gets rejected.

I always used to joke that I was going to publish a book of the rejection slips for my poems and poetry manuscripts--I guess in this sense we are all never "finished".

Subjects for poetry are everywhere.

I agree wholeheartedly with this one, thus my tweet above. I  also absolutely loved his several definitions of poetry. 

According to J. Patrick Lewis, poetry is:

Sound of silence amplified.

Daily clues to the ordinary.

Frozen fire. 

The midwife at the birth of the alphabet. 

A blind date with enchantment.

Bonus Writing Strategies to Try 

 I also learned two writing techniques --one quick and easy, one more familiar and serious

Tailgater
A tailgater is a couplet in which the first line is from a well-known poem.   The second line is your own. 

See J. Patrick Lewis's guest blog post on  David L. Harrison's Blog for some very funny children and adult examples of this form.

Mask poem--This is a poem that is written and read in someone else's voice. 

 Near the end of his session, he read the poem The Innocent, which is written in the voice of Mamie Carthan Till (the mother of Emmett Till) and included in When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders.

After hearing this new term at the conference, I was treated to a mask sermon this past Sunday as my priest, Fr. Karl Ruttan, for the entire duration of his Sermon,  took on the persona of the Centurion who was forever changed after  witnessing the crucifixion.

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

J. Patrick Lewis defined poetry in poetic and metaphoric, yet concrete ways.  

How do you define poetry?  Write a sentence or two defining or describing poetry--several lines that create a visual definition or image in words.

Select a well-known poem.  Use the first line of that poem to begin a couplet in which you supply the second line to create a tailgater.

Try writing a mask poem.  Who will you be? Whose voice and perspective will you present in your poem?