My Rock Stars

I'm not much of one to travel. 

Oh, I have been to a few places and have actually left the country on a couple of occasions.  Last summer my teaching partner, her husband,  Mardell and I even went to whole new world .... for an entire week but I really hate being gone from home for more than three or four days.

However, every year without fail I go to the Denver Reading Conference.  I save my personal days for this purpose and I look forward to it.  This year was no different.

Vicki and I went together.  We left after school on Wednesday.  In fact we about beat the busses out of the school yard!

Last year when we went, we stopped at Centerra in Loveland and hit the big Barnes and Noble on the way down.  Consequently we spent several hundred dollars and couldn't afford to go to the Tattered Cover.  We weren't about to make that mistake this time.

To be on the safe side, we stopped in Cheyenne for supper.  

We ate at Sanford's Grub and Pub.  Curly and Ann at the Woodshed turned us on to Sanford's many years ago.  Vicki had never eaten there before.  Think junkyard ambience.  It was started by a couple of college kids cramming for finals.  I think they have great burgers and have tried replicating them at home.  Mom doesn't care for my replications, but this is a woman who eats peanut butter by the spoonful, so I try to keep things in perspective.

We got to the Marriott at the Denver Tech Center at about 9:30.  We were both beat and we hit the sack soon after we arrived.

The keynote speaker for the morning was Lester Laminack.

I'd heard of him in passing, but I had no clue
about anything he had written.
We now own every children's book that he has written
and two of his professional books for teachers.  We are ordering the others on payday.  He was that good.

We have not laughed so hard for a long time.  He moved around the room, climbed on chairs, pranced, and kept us very entertained.  He kept reminding us that we all had little Lesters in our classroom. Then he laughed maniacally.

We were so glad that we had gone.  That one session alone was worth it.
From there we went to a session where recipients of a grant outlined their projects.  We got a nice list of books to use with ELL kids if we ever have the need.  But better than that, we learned that we can apply for the grant even though we don't live in Colorado.  That would buy some more books for our classroom which is always a good thing.

Next we hit some exhibits and bought Lester's books.  The fool things are mostly in hardback.  I especially like hardbacks, but I don't like paying for them.  It kills me to buy one when I could be buying two paperbacks.  That's how good his books are ... we bought three hardback and two softback titles!

The author luncheon on Thursday was Jane Yolen.

She shares her birthday with Mom,
and everyone sang her Happy Birthday a few days early.

Care to guess who is older?

Jane turned 70 and Mom turned 66 on the 11th. 

Unfortunately Mom didn't have 700 teachers sing Happy Birthday to her.  She didn't even have one teacher sing Happy Birthday to her.  Trust me when I say there is a very good reason for that.

That afternoon we were scheduled to go see Julie Dannenberg who wrote First Year Jitters.

This was the book I bought for myself the night that Karen asked if I wanted my own classroom. 
We both really wanted to see her. But instead, we skipped out of that session and went to Lester Laminack's.

 

He read his Book Saturdays and Teacakes to us and explained how he invited the author to his grandma's house for the illustrations.  It was no longer his grandma's house ... his cousin owns it, but he called all of his family and they brought back her belongings and recreated her kitchen so that the illustrator could capture the feeling.  I think Lester's "Mam-maw" and Grandmother Hall were cloned.  Their kitchens certainly were.

He talked a lot about how he wrote the book and what his intentions were.  He illustrated how deliberate the process is and why he used the typesetting that he did.  It was fascinating and gave us a whole new level to consider with our student's writing.

I even won one of his books as a door prize.  I even told him that it wasn't enough to just win, I also wanted it autographed.  To Trudy the Great no less.

We hit a few more sessions and then met up with the other Scottsbluff teachers that were there.  We went to supper at P.F. Chang's.  It was good, but it doesn't hold a candle to The Wonderful House.  We are really spoiled.

After supper we went back up to our room and read children's books for the next hour or two.  By this time we had purchased about thirty or thirty five books.

The keynote speaker for Friday morning was B-O-R-I-N-G.  But I managed to get a few math papers graded, so it wasn't a total loss.

We have a student teacher this year.  Her name is The Young Thing.

So after the keynote, we went to get a book signed by Patricia Polacco for her.  We had just started a unit on alphabet books and discovered that Patricia Polacco had one titled G Is For Goat.  We bought us a copy and got one for her.

To get a book autographed, you have to get a ticket and stand in line for over an hour.  I think that is a Colorado law.  We had been there for about half an hour when one of the conference organizers explained that she wasn't personalizing books this year because her carpal tunnel was so bad.  She also explained that she was using book plates in place of signatures.  We were very disappointed, so we went to plan B.  I rushed off to the book store and bought another alphabet book "W is for Whale" since we have an ocean theme.  Then we went to get a ticket for Roland Smith's line.  Instead, we were greeted by Roland Smith himself and Vicki even got a hug from him.

 

We were slated to go to Jerry Pallotta's session...

 

but instead we got some books autographed by him and opted to wait for Patricia Polacco.

Incidentally, his shirt says "Read a Zillion Books". 
I want one. 
Just in case anyone cares.

The wait for Patricia was well worth it.  It turns out that she would personalize one and sign every book you brought.  Usually they limit you to two books, so we had left the other twenty up in our room.  It didn't matter .... getting The Young Thing's signed was the important thing.  Besides, we got our photo with Patricia.

 

I normally despise getting my picture taken, but we work so hard all year at elevating children's authors to rock star status, that it was worth it.  The kids will be impressed.  She visited with us for quite a while and told us about how her mother taught a multi-age room just like us.  She is truly a neat person. 

Heck, our students were impressed to hear that we rode alone in the elevator with David Schwartz. 

We didn't mention the fact that we didn't converse with him.

It was about ten o'clock at night and he looked more wiped out than we felt.

Anyway, we left the autographing area and went off in search of our next session on writing.  It was a commercial for a program guaranteed to improve student writing.  We picked up a few good tips, but the commercialized sessions don't thrill us much.

Then we went to the Patricia Polacco luncheon.  The theme for the conference was "Living Story Quilts" and Patricia read her book titled The Keeping Quilt.  It was incredible.   But even mo
re so when she pulled out the actual quilt that the story was based on.

 

In this photo, she was talking about her rotten red-headed older brother.  But then she went on to explain that you were truly lucky if you had a red-headed friend.  She recommended getting one if you didn't already have one.  There is a red-head in each of her books.

So Sister Two and Sister Three, a little more respect for the red-head in the family please.

The quilt belonged to her great-great grandmother and was made from the clothes of all the relatives they had left behind when they came to America.  She pointed out which applique had come from which relatives clothes.  There wasn't a dry eye in the room when she finished.

Her accent reminded me so much of Granny.  Especially when she said America.

She also told about her farm and the gardens and livestock.  That really made me think of Granny and miss her.

We had chosen to go see Nancy Pollette because we thought we would pick up some great tips.  We were right and we discovered that we have several books that she has written.  The name didn't ring a bell at all, but she started talking about different books and showing them and Vicki and I would lean over to one another and say, "We've got that one."

The hour that we spent with her just flew by.  This was the last major conference that she is doing because she is going into semi-retirement.  She told us this and then explained that she had been a teacher for 59 years!  She laughed as we were all doing the math and said that she'll turn 80 this year.  She doesn't look old enough to be 70, much less 80!

Then we went to Will Hobb's session.  I can't stand science fiction, so I was really disappointed.  But he signed his book Howling Hill for us.

Our last keynote session was Nancy Atwell.  We had used her book in my Adolescent Literature class.  She was very interesting, but obviously she is geared more towards the middle school crowd.  We didn't get out of there until about 6:20.  I had texted Mary and told her we would be done about 6:00 because she and Jamal were driving to Denver to have supper with us.  This is a long-standing tradition.  Fortunately, the boy didn't get out of wrestling until late, so they weren't waiting on us at all.

We went to T G I Friday's.  The food was pretty good, but really nothing to write home about.  The company was the best part.  Jamal was his usual charming self and we had a delightful evening.  We had originally thought that we would coerce Mary into taking us to the Tattered Cover, but somehow we spent our allotment at the Boulder Book Store which was the major vendor for the event.  So instead,  Mary took us back to the Marriot and once again we collapsed into bed.

On Saturday, we got to see the Two Sisters.  They are teachers who have written a book called The Daily Five which is a structure for managing students within the reading/writing block.  These two ladies are hilarious.  We had a two and a half hour session that seemed more like twenty minutes.

After it was over, they drew for two door prizes.  The first name was called and the winner received their book.  My name was the second one called and I was so excited.  

I won a plastic ruler, a pencil, and a raspberry shortcake cookie.

Whoopee!

But they too signed our book and we discovered that they are holding a one day conference in Portland, Oregon in June.  Vicki and I are going to write another grant in the hopes of attending.  Mardell is already plotting out quilt shops along the way!

Our last luncheon was with Jon Sczieska.  He is a scream.  His autobiography is entitled "Knucklehead", so that should be some indication.

He has been named as the first National Ambassador of Young People's Literature.

He even has a medal to prove he is the Ambassador.

 

He delighted in showing it off.

His stories were hilarious, if not a bit raunchy, which is precisely why kids love his books.

We left Denver happy, but exhausted.

Fortunately, we weren't too exhausted to stop at Centerra on our way home.

They were having huge sales on presidential biographies, so of course, we had to buy a couple .... or eighteen!

All in all, we ended up with 59 kids books and 4 professional books.

I'd say it was another successful conference!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Last week we were working on Color Coding Language.  It was the day after we had paper maiched.  One of the words in our sentence was "weary".  Vicki asked if anyone knew what that meant.  No one raised their hand, so I offered a helpful hint.  "This is how I felt at the end of yesterday," I said.  One fourth grader promptly raised his hand and said, "Crazy."

Last year our high ability educator took our kids every other week for enrichment.  Her last name is Witzki.  We always referred to the weeks that she was here as a Witzki week. Her name was kind of hard for the kids to pronounce, but never did it became so evident as when the principal was down asking the kids how she could improve the school.  Imagine her surprise when a first grader promptly responded, "We want more Whiskey Weeks."  Yeah, me too kid.

Or the time when a fourth grader asked me why I let my housekeeper drive my car all the time!

Plum Creek Literacy Festival

This week-end was the Plum Creek Literacy Festival in Seward.

Since we had slaved so long and hard last week holding parent-teacher conferences,
we had Friday off so we left town as soon as Marissa, our zoo crew, arrived.

We sped down I-80 so that we could reach A to Z Books in North Platte.

This is a FABULOUS used book store with a tremendous children's section.

At least it was until we arrived! Now it is much smaller.

Much, much, much smaller!

It was a beautiful fall day. A bit chilly, but not so bad that we needed more than our jackets. My trusty sidekick had stocked up on Peanut Butter Oreos, Chocolate Creme Oreos (only to be eaten away from our domicile) and of course, Milk Duds. Life was good.

The countryside was beautiful. It is still
much greener on the other end of the state.

At one point we thought perhaps a filming of

Alfred Hitchcock's Birds was taking place.

This was one of half a dozen groups of starlings.

We also saw about 112 deer between six and seven.

Must not be deer season yet.

We stayed at the Hampton Inn in York.

We arrived at about 8:00 central time.

The room was very nice, as Hampton Inns always are.

They had pay for view movies and

guess what we watched!!!

Yep, again --- and it was just as good as the first time!

Mardell thought Vicki and I were crazy ....

we had already listened to the soundtrack for the entire trip down.

We got up the next morning and went down to the continental breakfast.

There was a woman there that I could have sworn was the older sister of a guy in my graduating class. Of course I didn't go up to her and ask who she was. My mother would have, but not me.

We went on to Seward. The event is held at Concordia.
What a beautiful campus.

We registered and immediately began buying books
because we don't have enough in our collection ....
even with the 200 we bought in North Platte.

Then we got into line so that the authors could sign them.

This is Gail Gibbons signing one of the dozen books that we bought.

Oh look! The woman in the yellow behind her head

is the same woman from the motel.

Now I'm truly curious, so I get close enough to read her name tag.

Teresa! Yes, of course, that was her name!

At the motel I couldn't pull up her first name for the life of me. I knew what her last name was, or at least thought I did. But this was too much of a coincidence, so I braved up and asked her if she was originally from Alliance. She was very startled and replied that she was and I explained that I had graduated with her brother. I also told her that she hadn't changed one bit. She hasn't even aged. Bitch. I really hate people who don't age.

Our first session of the morning was Gail Gibbons.

She told us all about her life and how she began writing books.

Did you know she used to work on "The Electric Company" program?

She was very interesting, but she talked too fast and was hard to understand.

Next we went to Cynthia DeFelice.

The hour that she spoke just flew by.

I can hardly wait to read more of her books!

Next we went to Hans Wilhelm.

He is a very funny man.

This hour went by even faster.

He demonstrated how he draws his characters.

It took him 35 seconds to draw Noodles, the dog.




Did I mention that my new camera takes video as well as pictures?
Have I mentioned how incredibly happy I am with my new camera?
My new camera ROCKS!

After Hans, we went to the author luncheon featuring
Mo Willems. He is funny as well.

He is almost sacrilegious about the art of writing children's books.
He had the audience in stitches the entire time he spoke.
I don't think the other authors were as amused as the audience.

The lunch was quite good. We had a turkey cobb salad,

garnished with edible flowers. I got Vicki's flower
because she isn't very adventurous. They also
had the best homemade, or college made, bread
that we have ever tasted. It was even better than Granny's!
Dessert was a chocolate mousse with raspberries. Delicious.

After the luncheon, I got into Lois Lowry's line

so that she could sign The Giver. I didn't know that she was
going to be there signing, so I had to buy another copy.

Of course, I already own fourteen copies of this book.

But, did that matter? No, I had to have her sign it since it is one

of the most powerful stories I have ever read.

She even did it right.

Then we packed up and hit the road
.... on to supper at Ole's.

Ole's in Paxton is well worth the stop.

I hadn't blown every penny on books
so I tried the prime rib. It was scrumptious.

Unfortunately, we will have to go back

because my camera battery died

and I didn't get many pictures of all

the dead animals that watch you eat!

The ones that I did get aren't at all good ...
I had to keep taking my battery out and putting it back in an
effort to get every bit of battery power out of it that I could.

The neon lights reflected in the glass case where

the polar bear resides.

We can hardly wait until next year!

Why I Teach

Tonight was Open House.  It was lots of fun for the kids to be able to show off their room and where they sit and where they store their materials and where they sit for story time and where .... and where .... and where ....  It's amusing to watch the parents --- their heads are just spinning.  The kids' eyes are alive with excitement and the parents' eyes are glazed over just wishing the fool thing was over already.

Our room is especially tough because we have such cool stuff and all of the animals.

We even had older kids coming in to see their "old room".  They wander around and point out every thing that has changed.  It's even more amusing when they drag their parents in to see what was changed since they were in that room!

The last thing I wanted to do today was attend Open House.  I still feel lousy and I knew it was going to be a very long day.  One of our first grade girls put it all into perspective for me this morning when she gave this to Vicki and me:

 

Check out the spelling on my name!  Trootey --- very good for a first grader!

Do you think she could have gotten another I Love U on there?

It just warmed my heart.

It seems that this same little girl got into trouble at home after school and she told her mom just to take her back to school where they love her.  Made my night.

Throughout the course of a year teachers receive a great deal of artwork, notes and letters.  I love it because the kids pour so much of themselves into their efforts and they genuinely mean whatever it is they have written.

Last year we had daily journal topics.  On April 19th our topic was to write about a person that you admire.

Here was a third grader's entry:

That is why I teach.  The relationships that you build with kids are phenomenal!  

What an impact we can have on kids --- often without knowing it.

Sister Three's comments on a previous post prove that.  Unfortunately, it is often negative.  I don't imagine Mrs. Grothen ever got a note like this from her.  Come to think of it, Mr. Miller never got one like this from me either.  I think I drew him up as an experiment for The Mad Scientist's Club (which had exactly two members) and gave him three heads and warts.  But that's neither here nor there --- back to my kids.

Their humor also shows through.  One young man wrote a book about us.  It was bound with 419 staples.  I have scanned it for your reading pleasure.  I didn't ask him, but I'm sure he won't mind.  He'd just grin.

Catchy title, don't you think?

He gets right to the point .... I know it's hard to read but the mean Trudy is going "Rah! Rah"  (I think that's supposed to be scary) and the student is cowering and saying, "Ooh, chills."  The nice Trudy announces that the class gets a movie party and the student cheers.  

Next we learn about Mrs. Klein:

The student is asking the horrible Klein if he should get his box and she replies, "Shoulda lisined (listened, for those of you not versed in kidese)"  The good Klein praises the child with a simple "good work" as he beams.

 He writes "But Trudy and Mrs. Klein get in fights some times."  This is a case of you have to be there to understand. We have an on-going, good-natured argument about whether or not commas are vital before the and in a series.  Harry, Barney, Tom, and Shirley went to the movie.   OR can you simply write: Harry, Barney, Tom and Shirley went to the movie.

We asked several people to help us settle the argument last year.  One would agree with her and then one would agree with me.  It was split pretty even.

Let's just suffice to say that she is older than I am and we learned it differently.  Besides, I'll never admit that she might be right!  Every time we are in a bookstore together, we look through style manuals trying to prove our point.  So yes, we do sometimes argue good-naturedly in the classroom, but that's all.  Really.  I do think it's funny though that I am once again making the Rah, Rah scary noises and Mrs. Klein is making the Wah, wah crying noises.

Yes, we realize we need to do more work with there, their, and they're.  It's in the lesson plans.  Really.  I'm sure someone has them in their plans somewhere.

This little guy is kind of a shyster as you'll see in the next pages.

 

He probably missed the boat here.  Our principal would have paid for a copy.

For those of you who don't know, we use a classroom economy in which students are "paid" in scholar dollars, or scoller dollors, as he put it.  Twice a year we have auctions and they can purchase fun items like Flarp and Whoopee Cushions.  Parents love us.

I especially loved his last picture of me:

Too funny.  Stuff like this keeps me going and keeps me smiling.

Of course, they are also very artistic and creative:

 

"Trudy in a dress" seems to be one of their favorite topics.  My former teaching partner wrote a song to this effect that still haunts me from time to time.  Kind of like a certain awful, pink dress that appeared at my 40th birthday party and then earlier on this blog.

This is a VERY LARGE (I had to reduce it and splice it as you can tell) portrait of me in a pink polka dotted dress and you can't tell it, but I have a wedding ring on as well because I've met the man of my dreams.

Sister Two --- you can quit laughing now.

Here is what was written on the back:

 

I keep some of the best things I receive in a file by my computer.  When I wonder if it is all worthwhile, all I have to do is open that up and I know that it is.

My Classroom's Web Site

I have been updating my classroom's website.

I'll be glad when we get permission slips from parents to add photos.

I think pictures add so much.

Stop by and take a look and let me know what you think.

http://www.sbps.net/vnews/display.v/ART/48c1e5cb9097a 

Can you think of anything else you would want to see as a parent?

I welcome all comments and suggestions! 

Foster Grandparent

Another school year is underway!  Mom was at school
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  I think she was especially excited
since her cataract surgery was such a success.  She could
actually see the kids and see what they were doing.

We have 25 students and the first day is always so much fun.
The kids are always so excited and anxious to get started.


One family brought the teachers sweet corn and
another baked a cake for the class

and brought each of the teachers a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

 

Sister Two, did you do this for your kids' teachers?

The students were excited to see the new mural.  

They were responsible for painting the background.  

I just have a shot of the top portion ..... 

I can't get far enough away to take a good picture of the whole thing.

  

Here is a small portion of the bottom section .... 

  

I think of Frog Legs every time I look at it!

Speaking of Frog Legs, how is third grade going for her?

Our third and fourth graders are going on a field trip tomorrow.

They get to go to the Farm and Ranch Museum.  Mardell

is going to get to go with them this year since she is retired.

I get to stay with the first and second grade 

with Grandma Pam and our new student teacher, Miss Barker. 

She and I are going to do some pre-testing while 

Grandma Pam plays games with the kids like she's doing here.

 

She's going to work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays again.

I sure hope she likes playing games because she's going to get 

lots of practice!  She's also going to do lots of reading and listening

to kids read.  We're really going to work her hard this year!

We appreciate all of the extra hands in our room.  

They are a godsend.