The Pyre

KTOY 2018 Team at Newman University In a district, seven-seat Dodge Caravan, I began my KTOY 2018 Team adventure this week. Our team had scheduled most of our college and district visits, so it was time to meet face-to-face to nail down our collaborative message and delegate duties on the very big list of to-dos. Each team member brought something amazing to the table, and our planning session ended with success. Gil secured us the perfect room on the Newman University campus. Sam set our direction with a detailed agenda. Jamie and Sarah provided us all of their scheduling prowess. Jennifer kept us warm with snazzy jackets from her PTO, as well as her compassion for others. Megan gave us all of the #enthusiasm any team would ever need. Brad inspired us with our "Mission: Possible" theme. We all marveled at how close we felt with each other, despite the fact that most of us had only met one time before.  We all appreciated how our individual talents naturally dovetailed

Developing lifelong reading habits in my students has always been a goal of mine. Along the way, other educators have inspired me with their reflections on evoking lifelong reading habits, including Donalyn Miller. I read Reading in the Wild a few years ago, but what I learned from this book continues to inform my teaching today. Shortly after reading this book, I collaborated with a colleague to create a framework for developing lifelong reading habits, which I shared in this blog post . I've been honing this framework every year since its inception. I'm sure I'll never be completely satisfied, but I hope that my efforts will pay off for my students for years to come. This quarter, my students and I have been making reading goals and monitoring our progress towards those goals. While readers make all kinds of reading goals, I started simple: I asked my students to make reading goals based on pages read by mid-November and the end of the semester. Then, they went back