Stenhouse E-Books

I have been seeing so many new Stenhouse books that I can't wait to read. I have held off from purchasing for a while because my reading for pleasure has been really limited with my new teaching position and doctoral studies; yet, I couldn't resist any longer. Today I ordered five Stenhouse books - mostly new, but a couple of older books. Whenever time permits, I can't wait to read them. It's hard to decide which to read first!

When ordering, I decided to try out the new E-book option that Stenhouse offers. Once purchasing, it was a quick process to click on the link to download to my computer as a PDF and then transfer them onto my Kindle. The only drawback that I have noticed is that on my Kindle the font is really small, showing a page at a time on the smaller sized Kindle screen. It does have the option to enlarge the text, but it is not like regular Kindle books, instead it zooms in on a part of the page and you have to scroll around to view the rest of the page, rather than just being able to click from page to page. I'm not sure if I will be able to actually read them on my Kindle or if I will end up reading them right on my computer. It will all depend on whether I can handle the small font because I know for sure that I will not be scrolling back and forth! I am thinking that it might work better with an iPad though because of the larger screen.

Either way, I am really excited about the books I ordered. I bought three of the books because they are by authors that I absolutely love: Kelly Gallagher's Write Like This, Cris Tovani's So What Do They Really Know?, and Jennifer Allen's Becoming a Literacy Leader. Later this fall, I will definitely be getting Jeff Anderson's 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know when it is available.

Then I bought a couple of other books that captured my attention - Kassia Omohundro Wedekind's Math Exchanges and Mentoring Beginning Teachers by Jean Boreen, Mary K. Johnson, Donna Niday, and Joe Potts.

So much to look forward to...

What professional books would you like to read?

Celebrating Educators Update

When I started the Celebrating Educators series, I had hoped to have regular posts for a while; however, many educators are already stretched thin with various commitments and responsibilities, making it hard to write guest posts.

Nonetheless, I have been seeing examples of "Celebrating Educators" throughout various blogs, the NCTE listserv updates that frequently have teachers sharing their stories, and in the title of IRA's annual convention in the spring titled Celebrating Teaching.

Educators are working hard every day to make a difference in a range of levels - for individuals, classrooms, schools, districts... I continue to frequently feel energized and inspired by others in the field!

Remembering the Positive

This week was parent-teacher conferences, and the conference for my kindergartener really had me thinking about how much power teachers have in setting the tone in conferences and day to day life in the classroom. My daughter absolutely loves school. She could hardly wait to go to her conference, and she said, "I miss my teacher so much," as we were getting into the car.

Fall conferences are for going over goals, and my daughter's teacher had asked her what she thought she needed to work on in preparation for the conferences. However, before going straight to areas of improvement, her teacher remembered how vital it is to start with positives. I know that my daughter might not have understood every word her teacher said to us in English and Spanish during the conference but like Mari in Painted Words, I knew that she would be able to tell by the excitement in her voice and expressions that she was saying something positive about her. As such, my daughter kept on smiling and smiling.

Yes, we talked about areas to work on in the conference and about her current academic progress, but the tone continued to feel the same - supportive and a sense that she likes my daughter for who she is. My daughter left just as energized as when she walked through the door. At no point did it feel like negative, negative, negative...

The day after conferences I was reading through assignments that my pre-service teachers submitted when I came across a reading buddy assignment where students were supposed to discuss where they think their reading buddy falls on TESOL and state English Language Proficiency standards. I started to read one that had a paragraph starting out with the reading buddy's personality and highlighting the positives about her as a person before moving on to talk about language proficiency in different domains. This was not part of the requirement, yet, she included it anyway, and I thought, That's going to make all the difference in her interactions with kids and families.