- Three Ways Digital Portfolios Shift Your Assessment Focus (Teaching Channel, April 2018).
- Looking to the Future: Assessing Innovation in the Classroom (FreshGrade, March 2018, *need to register with FreshGrade to read free eBook)
- How I Read as a Literacy Leader (Reading by Example, April 2018)
- Developing a Principal and Coach Partnership (Lead Literacy, April 2018, *subscribers only)
Reflection: The Space to Write
I stayed at a cabin this weekend with my family for a relative’s college graduation, a quiet place along the bluffs of the Mississippi River. There was no wireless available. Cellular reception was spotty at best. While my younger family members fled in the evening for a more connected location, I was happy as a clam with my current status.
I’ve come to regard the lack of access to the Internet as a gift to my efforts as a writer. Getting any of the previously mentioned pieces completed has enough barriers to begin with; adding a wireless connection compounds these challenges. Allowing my mind the space to read, to reflect, and to do nothing other than to just be is a welcomed respite.
That’s not to say that I wasn’t writing. I was, either in my head or in a notebook I’ve been using as a journal. Much of this writing was prompted by The Writer’s Guide to Persistence: How to Create a Lasting and Productive Writing Practice by Jordan Rosenfeld. This is a resource I am rereading. Rosenfeld shares advice and strategies for sustaining our practice. The following quote is one of my favorites on this topic of space and time:
Your writing practice is a changeable, fluid creature. It ebbs and flows, squeezes down to the size of a pea, and then expands to fill multiple universes. A writing practice is ongoing as long as you always keep a part of yourself invested in it, give it just enough water to stay alive during difficult times, and tend it into hearty fruition at the best of times. (47)
The time I gave to myself has proven fruitful: I drafted the initial post for an upcoming collaborative book study on my blog.
Writing today is almost a paradox: we need to carve out the time and space away from the Internet to craft prose that will be well-received with an audience largely online. This is a unique issue that I enjoy exploring and will continue to revisit in the future.