Such an Honor

For the past two years,

my teaching partner, Christina, and I

have attended the 

National Reading Recovery Conference 

in Columbus, Ohio.

This conference provides classroom teachers, intervention specialists,

title teachers, and principals from all over the country time for professional

development in the areas of reading instruction.

Both years after the conference, Christina and I would

comment that we should submit paperwork to present

at the conference. Each year, though, we never followed through.

Until this year!

Back in February, I received an email about filling out an application

to present on a topic of my choice.

Not completely 100% sure I was ready to take the leap,

I forwarded the message to Christina who was on maternity leave

with beautiful baby Aubrey.

When I didn't hear back from her, the conference

kind of slipped my mind and other educational items

took over.

When Christina returned from maternity leave in March,

I remembered that I had sent her the email and asked

her thoughts.

She immediately said "Yes! We need to fill out the application."

While we were on spring break at the end of March,

Christina came to my house and we spent a few hours

coming up with a proposal and filling out the application.

Our proposal was titled,

"Fostering the Love of Learning Through Poetry."

Now, if you don't already know,

Christina and I are NUTTY about poetry.

We use poems to teach just about every concept

of our Common Core Curriculum.

We change our voices when we read the poems

and create motions to help our students remember the

words.

At the end of every school year, we host

a poetry read to entertain the students' families 

with all of the fantastic poetry we have learned

throughout the school year.

We create themes every year like

"Welcome to our Poet-tree Read"

(forest themed)

and "Take Me Out to the Poetry Read"

(baseball themed).

This event is a hit every year for the staff, students,

and family members.

We submitted our application at the end of March,

but we were informed that we would not hear

if our proposal was accepted until July.

Flash forward to today.

I check my personal email today

and noticed that I have an email from

Ted Phillips.

"Who is Ted Phillips?"

I then read the subject:

"Your session has been accepted."

Session? What session?

This must be junk email.

As I go to hit delete,

something stops me.

Something in my gut told

me not to delete this email.

I decide to open it up,

fingers crossed that it isn't

an email with a virus

that is going to shut down my computer,

and read,

"Congratulations! 

You are a National

Reading Recovery Presenter!"

Woah, what?

Did I read that right?

Thank goodness I didn't delete this email!

I quickly called Christina to give her the good news.

So there you have it folks,

February 2-4, 2014

you will find me in Columbus, OH

sharing my love of poetry

to teachers of all kinds!

Such an honor!