In Week 4, Time to Refocus on the Intent of the Course, Braiding New Ideas with What Has Happened Thus Far...Welcoming the Darker Months

I seriously can't sing enough praises about Sonya Huber's book, Voice First. It's simply phenomenal and written exactly how my minds words....I needed it and I now can teach it. Tonight, we brainstormed (Bryan-stormed) some of the untapped voices we have, and then did an exercise of developing additional passages for the personal pieces we wrote (braiding in the new voices).

I arrived with Fall glasses for everyone, making a note that "Joy is always a top priority," and that sometimes we need to pause and really take a look at what we're trying to accomplish in the course. Lucky for me, I'm the master of finding cheap props to help me accomplish my goals. 

The temperatures changed. It was warm in the sun, but when it went under, it grew cold. Walking out to my car I immediately felt a cold coming on (they're going around). Of course, I also got my flu shot yesterday. 

This was my post-shot Zoolander pose. 

I also captured some of my graduate students in their frames. I love it because they all wore them throughout the night, focusing on reading, workshopping, and thoughts of revision...all to support the art of teaching as a writer. "We're not after product here...we're after process." 

This morning, I'm going full force for Day 1 of the Reading Landscapes, Writing Nature online orientation, as we will meet all the new educators tonight. I'm sure we'll be an exhausted bunch, but that is par for the course.

Why wouldn't a teacher be exhausted? 

Okay. Time to get to work.