Thankful to the Great Assist, @JackieWoodson & @rafaellopezart THE YEAR WE LEARNED TO FLY. Week 2, Courses Were Just Made Even Better. Woot Woot! @nancyrosep

On my feet again, I took a trip to the Fairfield University bookstore and found the last copy available of Jacqueline Woodson's and Rafael López's The Year We Learned to Fly For a few years now, The Day You Begin has been a starting point for working with in-practice and pre-service teachers. I'm thankful to Penguin Random House's Nancy Paulsen, for her continued publications and representation of these great texts. I think fondly, too, of the year I was able to use Harbor Me with middle schools all across Connecticut. Woodson't writing is simply magical for the young people we are fortunate to work with and she is a teacher of teachers - I can not think of a greater joy that working with kids as writers, finding voice as a result of these stories....these investments into them.

Lopez's illustrations, too, are brilliant and I like to present the books with just the words before I share the visuals (sometimes I do the visuals without the words). Why? Because it benefits all of our imaginations. The curricular possibilities are endless when teaching with such texts. Sure, conversations are sparked, but the ideas/themes behind them last forever.

I've coupled with this week's classes with the arrival of "Dear You" letters I've assigned on the first night of class  my entire career. I write a class letter to them, "Dear You" and they respond with a "Dear You" letters to everyone else. It's a great way to kick off community, and helps me to learn the cohort I'll be learning with. It's also a way of saying, the day "We" begin, but now to emphasize "who wants to help our nation's kids to fly with us?"

This year, I've held the "Dear You" letters next to emails, phone calls, and texts I received from teachers who are simply at wit's end with the realities of the world. Teaching has always been a calling and the difficulties far surpass any ease. They are beat down, frustrated, overwhelmed, and disillusioned by the ways out-of-school obstacles are coming inside their classrooms. I know now, most definitely, I will be adding The Year We Learned to Fly in the professional development I do with the schools I work with. I want to see this as a yearlong theme.

In both the "Dear You" letters and Woodson and Lopez books, there is color, hope, energy, and vision - they practically coincide with one another. We are storied creatures and we build our day to day upon the giants who have stood before us: educators, family members, writers, visionaries, and change-agents. The dreamers, doers, artists, and weavers. Learning to fly is finding the way to grow wings with the heroes who have taught us their ways. How can we not set forth with excellence when so many before us have done the same? How of those before us grown wings despite the obstacles thrown their way?

Yes, there are days "when the rain seemed like it would never stop and the thunder boomed so hard," but there are grandmothers who teach us, "Lift your arms, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and believe in a thing." 

I believe in the greatness of the books co-created by Jacqueline Woodson and Raphael López, and with their genius I'm setting out today to teach others to believe the same. That is what teaching is...and it is definitely what young people are capable of accomplishing.

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