I finally invite you to read, and then I disappear from the radar for a month....So my apologies to you, my neglected readers, if you have checked in only to be disappointed by the absence of any new entries. On the bright side, there is a glut of future entry topics stored up in my mind, and they should be appearing soon.
This past month has been a whirlwind...and not the kind that allows for any blogging time. We closed on our new house and completed phases 1 and 2 of the move the next day -- phase 1: getting my stuff out of storage and phase 2: moving my boxes, our wedding presents, and the first load of Paul's stuff from his house. Some things will have to stay behind for "staging" when we get through the renovations we want to do before putting it on the market. So there is more painting and scraping in my immediate future. In the meantime, it's nice to finally be able to use all of those nice gifts we got for our wedding a year ago!
The bulk of my energy this past three weeks has gone to coordinating the Maryland Writing Project's Invitational Summer Institute. We had a wildly talented group of teachers who met all of our expectations and then some. Our class time began at 8:30 and ended at 3:30, but stretched into the early and late hours of the day with homework and preparation time added. In the end, everyone left with 20+ fabulous lessons for enriching writing instruction in their classrooms and an anthology of the personal and professional writing of the institute's participants. The results of all of our hard work confirmed for me again that this is the best professional development opportunity out there for teachers -- of any grade or discipline (shameless plug)! It is a truly transformative experience. I look forward to staying in touch with all of this year's fellows throughout the year as a mentor and as a fellow writer.
But for now, I return to the domestic front where, not surprisingly, there is still much unpacking to be done. There are boxes of books calling to be put on shelves, clothing to be shelved or given away, and pictures to be hung. And there is still furniture to be bought before we'll be able to give a proper home to everything. Which is why I will keep it short for today....
