INK Sisters Write

Dear Kim (and friends!), Yikes. Oh boy. Holy moly. I am not ready for THIS... I should clarify. The visit. The actual school visit. I AM SO READY FOR THAT. As a former classroom teacher, literacy coach, and school director, this is my dream, baby. Taking a book that I wrote and using all of the teachery wonderfulness from my years in the classroom- yes and YES! Sign me up. (No, really, sign me up .) I've made teacher guides. Book-pairing lists. (Thanks, Bookish Ambition for getting me started.) I have a flyer detailing the assembly and workshops. I've painted thousands of rocks for the pre-k to grade 2 art projects and bound hundreds of journals for the grades 3-5 book making. Kids have even practiced the activities. All is good, right? Until the first phone call with a PTA president. And she says, "How much do you charge?" Pause. Pause. Sweaty. Pause. "Hello, Ms. Green Myers. Are you there?" I'm here, but bar...

Dear Kim (and friends!!), Our students are nearing the finish line (teachers too.) A quick sprint to the end is all that we have left. At our school, the students literally speak in terms of "finish lines", "touchdowns", and "goals". Not because of the annual field day, but because of the new reading program. The final unit in the American Reading Company's curriculum is SPORTS FICTION. No SPORTS FICTION unit would be complete without a poem from Mr. Kwame Alexander. But, what Kwame book to discuss? CROSSOVER? BOOKED? THE PLAYBOOK? Since many students are shin guard-deep in soccer right now, I picked BOOKED. In this verse novel, Kwame Alexander uses a variety of poetry styles to bring his main character, Nick Hall, to life. Nick is obsessed with soccer. When he becomes sidelined, books are his new game. The lesson: After reading from the book, we "borrowed" one poem and used it as a seed for our own poetry. Students were ab...

Dear Kim, Last week I was asked to comment on a recent book banning that occurred in an elementary school. Part of my reflection included: "... Yes, at 14, my life was different. No longer was I anxious about settling a drunk mother to sleep or watching her slowly (then suddenly) kill herself. Instead I was worried about taking a t-shirt without asking my new stepsister, aware that little belonged to me in this new house with this new family. The problems weren't equal, but they were still teen worries, anxieties, things that consumed my mind and spread like cancer, eating all other thoughts.  At school, where people tried to make me memorize the Latin names for chemical elements, or saw me smiling and joining every after school club; people couldn't know how hard I was fighting. Fighting to keep the worries away. Fighting to understand who I was, who I wanted to be, and even if I wanted the gift of life. That fight is not unique. All kids are fighting. They n...

Dear Kim, Thank you for your post yesterday. Monster is a powerful book. You wrote, " Monster  will haunt you and cause you to examine your perception of your actions towards those charged with a crime regardless of the verdict."  Today's #AuthorApril writers also created a novel that examines a broken system and a man's search for himself.  X: A Novel makes her readers question the choices that Malcolm X made in his teen years as much as we question the system that was supposed to protect him, yet failed him in such monumental ways.  X is for X: A Novel authors, Ilyasah Shabazz and Kekla Magoon Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter and author, and celebrated young adult author, Kekla Magoon weave fact and fiction into this emotional story of what young Malcolm's early life might have been, from Michigan to Massachusetts to New York and back again. A few months after the book's release and a few months before the Coretta Scott King author hono...