Rough time

It’s been a rough few days, but today was my vacation from reality.  My girlfriends and I woke up at 5am, met up, drove to the train station, and raced to New York for a taping of “Live With Regis and Kelly”!  It was a great day and so much fun.  Definitely just what I needed.  Of course, tomorrow it is back to reality.

I spent the rest of my day planning for this week.  My students are beginning to work on the revisions for their poems and this week I am assigning their multi-genre poetry anthology.  Of course, that means making my own model.  I’ve spent a lot of time working on it and I hope it inspires my students without inhibiting them.  Sometimes it seems like models give them a template to use and they never vary from it.  I am going to try and encourage them to be creative and only use my model as just that- a model.

Only four days this week, thankfully.  It’s nice to think tomorrow is already Tuesday!

A Reader’s Life

Today we went to Ikea. Ever since we moved into the condo, my boyfriend and I have needed bookshelves. To be truthful- I have needed bookshelves. I am the reader in our house! Finally, we made it up to Ikea for their $19.99 Flarke bookcases (about the only ones I can afford in bulk). Approximately 6 ft. tall, with 5 shelves, we bought four of them. One is for the living room downstairs, where I plan to keep all the books I haven’t read yet, but plan to very soon. In other words, I now have an entire bookcase devoted to my “to be read pile”. I think that’s a sad thing. 🙂

Three of the bookcases will go upstairs in the office. There is already one bookcase in there, but it is filled to overflowing. The new ones will allow us to shelve all our college textbooks, reference books, and professional resources. I am so excited to finally have somewhere to store all my books, other than piles on the floor!

The best part of our trip to Ikea was our purchase from the As-Is department. Everything in this small room is already put together and is sold at a discount. Granted, much of it is damaged, but a few of the items are always display/floor models that they are ready to move out of the store. We were really lucky and found a gorgeous white bookcase to match the few pieces of furniture on the master bedroom. The best part is, it was quite cheap! Now, we had to somehow squeeze it into the car, and that was quite and adventure, but we did it. The bookcase is now set up in the bedroom and is holding all of my hardcover series books- Twilight series, UK Adult editions of Harry Pottere, and A Series of Unfortunate Events, Books 1-13. There are still some shelves to be filled in, but it looks wonderful. And I am finally starting to make this look like a home. A home filled with books. 🙂

My Eighth of Eight Poems

Yellow

Sunlight on a summer afternoon…….laser lemon

Spring daffodils……unmellow yellow

The walls in my kitchen……..goldenrod

Towels in my bathroom……dandelion

The hair on my head…….dirty blonde

A new dress……canary yellow

My mother’s favorite color……soft yellow

My Seventh of Eight Poems

Today has not been a good day, professionally.  Needless to day, I am all over the place and couldn’t get anything down on paper for my poem.  Anything I did get down, I didn’t feel comfortable sharing over the internet.

Sometimes

life just doesn’t go the way you want.

But

when one door closes,

a window should open.

Even

if it takes a while

to find your way to that window.

My Sixth of Eight Poems

Thank goodness Stacey put up a poetry prompt today, because I desperately needed the inspiration! I enjoyed the “I Remember” poem, and ended up writing about the journals we were required to keep in eighth grade. We wrote everyday for ten minutes, and my teacher allowed us to pass our books around during that time. Essentially, we wrote long notes to each other, like notebook IMing, and responded to each other. Sometimes I wrote in 4 notebooks per period! Today, I love to look back through those notes to see the girls we were. 🙂

I remember sitting in a classroom, surrounded by my fellow eighth graders

I remember taking out my journal

I remember being allowed to pass the journal to my friends

and having constant notes going back and forth in them

I remember planning for the eighth grade dance

I remember when my best friend told me she was moving to Texas

I remember being heartbroken and angru

even though we would have gone to separate high schools anyway

I remember planning her goodbye party in our English journals

I remember filling that notebook with the hopes and dreams of 5 eighth grade girls

I love looking back through that notebook

Twelve years later.

My Fifth of Eight Poems

Standing atop the ancient world

Originally uploaded by thereadingzon

I wrote the draft of this poem in school today, while my students were drafting their latest poems. I have to say, I am extremely impressed with the work they have been doing during this unit of study! They are digging deep and the poems they are producing are wonderful! Today we tried a six-room image poem, from Georgia Heard. We used an image graphic organizer and it seemed to help some of my more reluctant poets- the backbone of a graphic organizer really eased some of their stress. They produced some beautiful poems!

The image poem focuses on one place, and lets the poet truly describe it for the reader. I chose the top of the Pyramid of the Sun, in Mexico. Standing atop that ancient structure was both humbling and awe-inspiring. It made it easier to write about.

I wrote the first draft of this poem in class and read it to my students. I admitted to them that I am very uncomfortable sharing my own poetry, and that I do not have a lot of confidence in my ability to write poetry. After I read, they heaped on the praise…..I blame this on the high amounts of praise I shower on them after they share. Hey, it’s rubbing off!

My Fourth of Eight Poems

Couplets are not easy, let me tell ya! I definitely do not like being held back by a word or line count.

This is a couplet about my family’s newest puppy. She is about 6 months old now, but this picture was taken on her first night home. She was exhausted from playing with everyone and settled herself in for a nice, long nap!