Share a Story Day 4: Homework … and I Fail

It is now 3:40 pm (Eastern) as I write this … I’d like to say the dog ate my homework, but, well, dogs don’t eat computers (at least not ours).

That’s not to say I haven’t been learning … I have spent the day reading, doing JUST what the curators over at A Year of Reading suggested. The list of contributors has grown throughout the day, and while I was off checking in on a certain ACC basketball game, a NEW one came in.

I also stopped by the The Reading Zone. As someone who loves words and who marvels at how authors put them together, I found Sarah’s post fascinating. So many different ways that stories come to mind, yet they start in a very old-fashioned place: a notebook.

The idea of dedicating a day to keeping a love of reading alive when learning kicks in and homework starts to pile up came last year. I don’t know if you remember back to October and the New York Times article that had everyone in an uproar. The subject that everyone took away from it was the declining number of picture books being sold as we push kids to read more, faster. I didn’t speak to it then, so I won’t now. But …

Carol Rasco wrote a very thoughtful post with her observations from traveling around the country to various RIF centers and events.  One of the things she hones in on (but from a different angle than the article) is parental expectation.  She asked for input on how to deal with situations where the push was coming more from home than the classroom.

She is probably crazy-busy in the aftermath of last week’s decision to cut RIF’s federal funding, but I hope she finds time to read all the posts at A Year of Reading, particularly the reviews by the students in Monica Edinger’s class. What I came away with was a sense of hope … and gratitude.