Will they survive? Will they flourish?
Three nights of freeze warnings and this view in the daytime.
It’s spring. A time of growth. A time for blooming. And yet, a time for snow and freezing temperatures.
Do we let Mother Nature take her course? Do we try to mitigate the results? Plants, flowers, pleasing to the eye. What’s our response?
In our schools, it’s the season of standardized tests. Tests in the midst of the pandemic that continues on. A year+ like no other. What are the options?
What’s the cost? Check out Tim Wheeler’s blog.
What are our goals? What are the habits that we want students to develop.
Melanie Meehan and Kelsey Sorum have this gorgeous new book. We featured it on our #G2Great chat March 25th and Val Kimmel’s blog post is here. It was featured on TWT here.
One of my favorite resources in this book is Chart 1.9. It speaks to me of reasons why I write daily. It speaks to me of why students need to write daily. And it speaks to me of things that are not so easily counted. Not so easily measured. But habits that I want all students to have. In their writerly lives. In their daily lives. In their student lives. In their adult lives.
To name just a few habits:
Perseverance
Empathy
Resilience
What habits in life are you willing to identify today? What habits will you nurture today? What habits do you actively support? How do you do that?
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A gardener once told me that plants are hearty and will weather through. Hope that is the case. This is a great chart. We want out students to form habits of good writing. This is not something that students learn for a test and then forget. It is something that becomes part of them and they carry with them throughout their lives.
We will see on the plants.
As for writing habits … not just learned for a test. Not measured by a test. But so important in life.
Writing for a test seems like just the thing that would stop someone from actually developing writerly habits for other purposes. Writing for grades too. This Slice of Life challenge has really helped me get back to writing for myself, something I really haven’t done since 3rd grade!
Vivian,
So glad that you are writing for yourself and that Slice was an impetus.
So hate that many school practices can have effects that are opposite of our goals!
Ohhhh– thank you for making this connection, Fran! There’s a lot more to writing than structure, development, and conventions! I love the way you’ve connected bits and pieces in this post, and I’m cheering for the tulips!
Melanie,
There is so much more to writing!
Especially writing for life!
And yes to connections that strengthen and help us grow.
( I just found out I have to worry about the rhubarb freezing. It may be totally gone for the year!)