Andrea, Author at Mrs Payan Reads

Celebration 8/16

Join the celebration by linking up at www.ruthayreswrites.com or just visit and read the great celebrations!

The first thing I want to celebrate this week is medicine. I had another bout of Diverticulitis last week and I am thankful for the quick acting antibiotics.

The second thing I want to celebrate is rest and relaxation. On Monday, my husband and I took the dog and drove to my parents’ camper in a campground a couple hours from here. We had fun spending time with my mom and stepdad. It was fun to take our dog down to the small lake and take her swimming. She is part lab so we knew she would love it. She was quite cautious at first, but by the end of our two days she was a swimming pro!

The third thing I want to celebrate is all the amazing ideas out there for classroom organizing. I will be starting to set up my classroom next week and I love the way the internet is just bursting with DIY ideas and videos and articles about setting up good creative spaces. I spent a good couple of hours on the Choice Literacy site finding really helpful ideas about creating learning zones. I have also enjoyed reading some of the articles on Edutopia.

Last, but not least, I want to celebrate the life of a creative genius who has affected us all in at least one of his many roles. I was devastated when I heard the news that Robin Williams had died. When my husband and I started to list his movies, we really understood how many great roles he had played. My favorite movies of all time include many that he stars in. I am so thankful that we all were able to learn from having this incredible actor in the world for the time that he was here.

I also am thankful for the way that his death is bringing out discussions of depression and the need for people to better understand this condition. I lived for years with a person who was living in the dark space of depression. I went to work every day and prayed that I would not come home to discover that he had killed himself during the day. I watched the desperation and listened to the irrational thinking. I lived with this dark abyss. It is not something that people can overcome without help. Luckily for me, he got help and rose out of that place. However, I would not have thought him selfish if he had not. I would have understood that the hopelessness that he felt had taken over. I hope that the many heartfelt things being written about suicide and depression will help some people to have more compassion and understanding for those with mental heath issues.

What do you have to celebrate today? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 8/11

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? –From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

I started this week with meetings to write our school improvement plan. All day Monday and Tuesday, I had a mix of training and time to work with my school team on our plan. This took away a lot of the time I would usually have had for reading. Also, I got sick again. Round 2 of Diverticulitis is now under control with another antibiotic, but while I was sick I spent lots of time watching television instead of reading. I hope all this getting sick will be out of my system so that I can be healthy as we start the school year. Suffice it to say I didn’t do much reading this week.

Books I Finished This Week:

En el tiempo de las mariposas (In The Time of the Butterflies) by Julia Alvarez is a fabulous book. I was fascinated by the story of the Mirabal sisters in a country led by the dictator Trujillo. I do not know much about the history of the Dominican Republic and it was really interesting to get this small fictional glimpse into that time period.

Gulp! by Mary Roach is a fun non-fiction book that explores different aspects of digestion and eating. I laughed out loud multiple times because of the author’s hilarious play on words and sarcastic voice. There were quite a few parts of the book in which someone with a weaker stomach might be quite grossed out, but I was fascinated by the curious questions this author explored. I am definitely ready to find her other books and to learn about other science from this fun author.

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am still reading Bird by Bird and Escaping into the Open. I am also still listening to The Clockwork Princess. I just started reading Mindsets in the Classroom and Independent Study. I am in school planning mode already and so I am also re-reading excerpts from multiple books and articles on Choice Literacy as I make decisions about how to plan for fourth grade.

What’s Next?

I have Absolutely Almost along with a bunch of picture books in my library bag that I will get to this week. I also want to read some of the I Survived books. I will probably also start Spook by Mary Roach or In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. I know I will also continue reading articles and excerpts from some of the professional books I have as I continue to plan my procedures and first lessons.

What are you reading this week? Do you have any recommendations for me? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Slice of Life: Meetings 8/5

Every Tuesday, a number of amazing bloggers write a Slice of Life. If you are interested in joining in, visit the Two Writing Teachers blog for more information.

Allow me a few seconds of your time to rant about my last two days. I went to a district meeting with my school team in order to write our school improvement plan. However, the district in its infinite wisdom decided to fill our days with presentations that gave overviews of initiatives that we have been implementing for at least two years. I get that there is a possibility that a lot of schools had not been doing these things, but why do the rest of us have to sit through presentations that do not increase our understanding about anything and suck up the time that we should be spending on analyzing data and writing our plan? It is so frustrating to be there for one thing and to end up actually receiving something far inferior and completely different from what you signed up for. I think our team will come up with a good plan, but we would have been much better served having the time to work on it rather than having to sit through presentations that did not move us forward in our understanding. I know many people bring this up all the time, but why are we expected to differentiate our instruction if the powers that be do not see the need or make the effort to differentiate theirs? AAaaaaannnd, Breathe. Okay, rant over.

Now that I have calmed down a bit, I have started thinking about the way this day affected me. How awful that the people planning this day did not respect our time as educators. How awful that these people did not consider our prior knowledge in their lessons for us. How awful that they did not recognize that there were many different levels of understanding in the room and that some of us were hearing this for the third time. As a learner, I felt powerless and without a voice. I was not engaged and lost a lot of the motivation that I came with. I came to work and expected to be given the opportunity to show what I could do. Unfortunately, the people organizing this event did not give us that opportunity.

This experience served as another reminder to be careful about the power structure in my classroom. When students feel powerless and do not have a voice, they will become disengaged with the lesson. I need to make sure I plan for the many levels of understanding that I have in the classroom, and I need to make sure that students are given enough time to work when there is a task that needs to be accomplished. I also know that I need to make sure I have things organized. Wasting everyone’s time by not being ready to present is so disrespectful.

I will always strive to respect the learners in my classroom by making sure I know about their understandings and working to not waste their time. I hope the next time I go to a district training I am able to feel more engaged and productive.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? 8/4

Books I Finished This Week:

El misterio de la cripta embrujada by Eduardo Mendoza is a mystery with a very unique protagonist. It is a well-written book and many people really like it. I did not like it very much. I found it hard to connect with the protagonist and he kind of disgusted me. I think I just have a hard time connecting to books with an odd person as narrator. This happened to me with Perks of Being a Wallflower as well. I think many people would enjoy this book. It just wasn’t my cup of tea.

In The Fourteenth Goldfish, Jennifer Holm takes a premise that seems utterly unbelievable and somehow makes it believable. I love the way she weaves the love of science into this book. Kids who read this book will find out about some famous scientists as well as connecting with Ellie, the main character. I highly recommend this book! Look for this one later this month.

As many other bloggers have said about this book, it will be an important one to add to class libraries when it comes out in the fall. The protagonist and narrator of this book is a girl with Asperger’s syndrome. There are many challenges for her in her daily life. As an adult, I just wanted to get in this book and beat some sense into her father. I think this will be an excellent book for students to read because they will be able to connect with Rose through her connection with her dog, Rain. I cannot say enough great things about this book. You should order Rain, Reign by Ann M. Martin when it comes out in October.

I had not read any of the Squish graphic novels before this week. It is such a cute series. I will definitely keep looking for these books to add to my class library.

This graphic novel is about the author and how he started writing comics. I think it will be a great book to have in the class library. I really enjoyed reading it.

I started reading Article 5 by Kristen Simmons at bedtime one night. Big mistake. I read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more…way into the wee small hours. Then, I read the next morning until I finished the book. This is another dystopian book and I could definitely imagine our world getting to this state. The romance part of the book bothered me a little bit because it is another book in which the girl doubts whether the guy loves her and spends a lot of time being insecure about the relationship. I think it rings true to how a teenager would be in a relationship, but it always bothers me a little. I feel like getting in her face and yelling “IDIOT, of course he loves you!” Overall, though, I really liked the book and will be looking for the other ones in this series.

The Literacy Teacher’s Playbook by Jennifer Serravallo is a very interesting professional read about reading assessment and analyzing the data. I read this one on the Digital Campus on Heinemann’s website, but might need to order a copy to keep nearby. Her approach to collecting and analyzing data is straightforward and easy to follow. This is such an important skill to develop in order to really do the best we can for all students. I highly recommend this book to reading teachers in elementary school.

Books I Am Currently Reading:

I am still working my way through Bird by Bird and Escaping into the Open. I also am still reading Gulp! and listening to The Clockwork Princess. I also just started reading En el tiempo de las mariposas (In the Time of the Butterflies) in order to continue reading in Spanish.

What’s Next?

I borrowed a copy of The Right to Write from my mother so I hope to get to that this week. I also just got Absolutely, Almost from the library. Otherwise, it will really depend on my mood.

Blog Posts This Week

What did you read this week? Any recommendations for me? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate 8/2

Join the celebration by linking up at www.ruthayreswrites.com or just visit and read the great celebrations!

This week was full of celebrations, big and small.

On Monday, we went to the art museum with my mom. We all wanted to see the Kandinsky exhibition that is currently at the museum. The exhibit was really well done and the audio guide had just the right amount of information. Also, they have now made it free admission to all K-12 educators in Wisconsin. I love our Milwaukee Art Museum!

Then, we walked through downtown Milwaukee to go to Cubanitas for lunch. We had a perfect lunch of Cuban sandwiches and plaintain chips with guacamole. Of course, we also had a nice mojito.

Thursday was my birthday. I had a nice relaxing day and some fun treats. For lunch, we went to one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants. Then, I went to Starbucks for an afternoon fancy coffee drink treat. Then, we went out to dinner at the Brazilian steakhouse in town. They had a crazy good deal on Groupon and I was happy we could have a nice dinner for a good price. The food was so good!

The best part of my birthday celebration was The Phantom of the Opera. When I heard that the tour was going to be here over my birthday, I immediately got tickets. It was fun to take my husband to see this show. I LOVE Phantom and I was happy to experience the new pyrotechnics that were added to the show. There is something magical about that dramatic Phantom music being played in a theater with an orchestra. It wasn’t the best performance I have seen of this musical, but I still enjoyed sharing the experience with my husband.

Wednesday, I enjoyed going to the annual sale at The Learning Shop, which is a local teacher resource store. It is so much fun to share this part of the anticipation of setting up my classroom and getting ready for the school year with my husband. I wasn’t just dragging him around the store looking at my stuff, he was wandering around looking for his own stuff. Although this is a little dangerous for our wallets, it is so fun!

Lastly, I worked again to make writing a priority this week. I missed a couple days, but I definitely am developing much more of a habit. I started drafting another incarnation of the novel that I have drifting around in my head. The narrator who emerged in this draft surprised me, but it feels right so now I will play with this version to see what comes out. I also experimented with writing in the present tense, which was challenging, but felt right as well. We shall see where it goes, but I am celebrating the seed that might grow into something good.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Slice of Life: Serenity

Every Tuesday, a number of amazing bloggers write a Slice of Life. If you are interested in joining in, visit the Two Writing Teachers blog for more information.

I am not sure about sharing this. I am not sure I want to really document this. I do know that writing this reflection was good for my soul so I will share it and perhaps someone else will benefit from my reflections.

In the last few weeks, I have found myself reciting the serenity prayer. For various reasons, this small bit of supplication to a higher power is quite applicable to my life right now. I am struggling quite a bit with the hand we have been dealt in life. My husband and I are unable to conceive. We have tried a few procedures, but it has been a long time and we are tired of the disappointment. It is not always easy to tell the difference between things you can change and things you cannot change.

SERENITY

In this world of incredible medical advances and technology, there are so many opportunities to keep trying to conceive. There comes a point, though, at which it becomes absurd to continue to spend outrageous amounts of money for the slight chance that it might work. Logically understanding that it is time to stop trying is far removed from accepting the inevitable. I need vast amounts of serenity to accept this one.

COURAGE

What I can do is to live my life in a healthy way and to take care of myself and my husband. We both need to change our diet and lose weight for our health. It takes courage to change our habits, but it is so important for us to live our best life, even if it is a different life from what we had imagined. It takes courage for me to change the direction I saw my life going. It takes courage to keep moving forward.

WISDOM

This one is tricky. It is hard to know when it is time to stop. I understand the reasons for stopping and I am not getting any younger, but it is hard to know that this is the right thing to do. Every fiber of my being has always known since I was very little that I am made to be a mother. Who am I to stand in the way of this destiny? Except it isn’t me standing in the way. It is infertility rearing its ugly head. I am still working on this one. It is hard to know the difference here.

As I have been struggling through all of this in the last few weeks, the serenity prayer has repeatedly popped into my head. It is so interesting how a small bit of text can help you to reflect on almost anything in life. As I work through one of the most difficult things I have had to work through in my life, I find the words comforting and I hope someone is hearing my prayer.

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? July 28

Books I Finished This Week:

I really enjoyed Princess Labelmaker to the Rescue. The entire Origami Yoda series is so much fun. The rebel alliance continues to make waves in this book. I highly recommend the series.

I definitely will recommend the Infinity Ring series to my students (especially any students who really liked The 39 Clues series). The adventures remind me somewhat of The Magic Tree House, because they are traveling through history to fix some anomalies. It is science fiction because the world of the protagonists is vastly different from ours because of the anomalies in historical events. These are fast-paced books and I enjoy reading them.

Middleworld by Jon Voelkel is the first book in the Jaguar Stones series. It is an adventure book about Maya artifacts and temples. This book reminded me of City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende. The american kid,who is completely in love with the materialistic society, ends up in the middle of nowhere and scrambling to stay alive. There is some magic that happens and he ends up believing in some of the legends. This book would be a good one for fans of Rick Riordan. I highly recommend this book and will be looking for the other books in the series.

Crafting Digital Writing by Troy Hicks is brimming with excellent ideas and resources for teachers to do more digital writing in their workshops. I really liked the ideas in this book and it really got me thinking about how to incorporate technology into our every day lives in the classroom. I already have my students blogging, but this book brought so many more ideas. I was especially interested in the idea of creating more audio texts. I am going to look for his first book The Digital Writing Workshop as well.

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am reading El misterio de la cripta embrujada by Eduardo Mendoza. I also picked up two books about writing to inspire me. I am reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg. I also started Gulp! by Mary Roach and a memoir of a man who went back to his summer camp for one last summer working there before he got married. I also started re-reading Reading in the Wild. It is because of this scattered reading that I did not finish much last week.

What’s Next?

My goal this week is to continue with the books I have already started. I will most likely grab some middle grade titles to go along with these books as well. I will also continue to write more.

Blog Posts from this week:

What are you reading this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate July 26 (Better Late Than Never)

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

I had a wonderful week full of things to celebrate, big and small.

1. I went to the tea shop this week and bought two different flavors of loose tea. I really love the new Blackberry Mojito Iced Tea Lemonade at Starbucks and had not known that there were teas out there with that type of flavor. I bought Watermelon Lime and another tropical flavor tea and will be having some fun refreshing iced tea to drink at home. I love that this is an option for sugar free yumminess (and some antioxidants too).

2. On Thursday, my husband and I remembered that Milwaukee Ale House does free river boat cruises for patrons. They did the cruises earlier than usual so there weren’t many people. We basically had a private cruise out into Lake Michigan. It was a gorgeous day for boating.

3. On Friday, we went to the campground where my parents just bought a trailer. It was fun zooming around the campground on the golf cart, sitting at the beach, and then having a nice campfire to roast marshmallows and make smores.

4. On Saturday, we spent the day with my mom in Madison. We went to the Farmer’s Market, toured the new library, and then spent some time at Memorial Union terrace. We miss some of these things and it is always nice to be able to do them when we are in town.

5. My cousin is going to be leaving for an international teaching job in Turkey. She had a going-away party on Saturday night. I am so excited for her. It will be a big adventure for her since she will be doing her first year teaching this year and it is in a foreign country. That is a lot of adjusting to do. Good thing she is young and full of energy. It was nice to see my extended family at the picnic and to catch up with them.

6. My dog had a mini-vacation at her favorite doggie spa. We love the place where we board her. She has so much fun there and LOVES the place. She can tell when we are packing her stuff up and starts to get excited then. The car ride is a noisy time as she vocalizes to let us know how excited she is. Then, we pull into the parking lot at the place and we almost need ear plugs. She can’t get in there fast enough and she does not look back when they take her into the play yard. It is so nice to have a good place to leave her in really great hands.

I also did more writing this week. I have been reading some books about writing and doing some of the exercises that were suggested. I was really good about daily writing until Friday, when we were with my parents. I will get back on track this week.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? July 21

This week was another great reading week for me. I keep going to the library, which is very fun, but it keeps adding books to an already huge TBR pile. This week my job is going to be weeding out the shelves. I am hoping to keep only the books that I know I will read. I have a very bad habit of buying clearance books at Half Price Books. A lot of times the books I get are very intriguing on the day I buy them, but then they sit on my shelf for months (or years) getting passed over. I am overwhelmed right now by the number of books in my house. I have about 10 boxes of young adult titles that will not work for my 4th grade classroom next year. I have to sort through those books and then find some good middle school or high school homes for most of the collection. I also just need to get rid of some of the books on my shelves. Luckily, there are a number of free little libraries around my neighborhood. I will be stocking some of them with my discarded books.

Books I Finished This Week:

Adult Books:

I loved this book. I am a huge mystery fan so the inherent mystery in this one really pulled me in. I also am a book nerd so the idea of a secret book society and this amazing sounding bookstore really pulled my heartstrings. I also thought the technology used in the book was really cool. I am not sure if it was science fiction or if some of the technologies actually exist, but I was really impressed!

Graphic Novels:

I got this one mostly because it is set at a camp. The story was okay. I wasn’t too impressed. I think some middle schoolers might relate and enjoy this book.

This was a fun book to read. I am not so sure about the format, with some comics that are inserted between the chapters of the main story. I think some readers would find these confusing. Overall, I thought the book was entertaining and I will keep an eye out for a copy to include in my class library.

This is an amazing graphic novel. It would be an excellent text to share with middle grade students to start a conversation about the holocaust. This is a story of a grandmother who is telling the story of her experiences to her granddaughter. I will absolutely be buying a copy for my classroom.

This is another graphic novel that does a great job of introducing a difficult history topic. The Storm in the Barn is set during the dust bowl and would serve as a good starting point to teach about this time in the history of the USA. This is another one that I will be looking for to add to the class library.

I am really impressed with Matt Phelan at this point. This is another great graphic novel that really piqued my curiosity. I had not heard of two of the three world travelers in this book and it was really interesting to read about their adventures.

Picture Books:

The whole time I was reading Poem-Mobiles: Crazy Car Poems, I was thinking about how fun this would be as a mentor text. The cars are so varied and so imaginative. I think it would be fun to have students imagine their own car and work to write a car poem of their own.

I was drawn to this picture book from the cover. It just seemed like an important book to read. It was really interesting to read this biography of an artist I had never heard of before.

Middle Grade:

This is an amazing book that will be a powerful one to share with students. I can imagine there would be very deep conversations that could come out of it. I would like to highlight the idea that you should be kind because you never know what people are dealing with in their private lives. I think this author also did a good job of showing how the problems with girls start and are perpetuated usually through rumors. I think it would be a good book to help girls to see that you shouldn’t always believe it when someone tells you that someone else said something about you. I am definitely considering this book for a read aloud early in the school year.

I like the way the illustrations and comics were integrated into this novel. It is a fun book and I also like how some really rich themes were brought out throughout the story. I know it will be a big hit in the 4th grade classroom.

Young Adult:

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a retelling of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, but it is so much more than that too. Here is what I wrote on Goodreads:

I picked up Briar Rose expecting a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. I got that and so much more in this book. As she did in The Devil’s Arithmetic, Jane Yolen writes a heartbreakingly beautiful story of loss and survival. I was swept up into the story and immediately wanted to solve the mystery. What comes is another tale of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed during the war. This author does such a good job of teaching history while at the same time telling a compelling and riveting story.

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am still reading Crafting Digital Writing and The Literacy Teacher’s Playbook. I also started reading Gulp! by Mary Roach.

What’s Next?

I am trying to start a book in Spanish. I need to start during the day and not try to get into it at night before going to sleep. My brain just isn’t into working so hard before bed. I still have a stack of library books, so I will probably dig into some of them. I also want to get to some books about writing in order to get some inspiration there.

What are you reading this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate July 19th

Join this fabulous group of bloggers as we celebrate our weeks. You can link up on Ruth Ayres blog at www.ruthayreswrites.com

I had lunch with a friend on Tuesday. It was nice to catch up with her and to talk a little bit about ideas for next school year with her. She is going to be teaching at a different school this fall and I will miss her greatly.

I FINALLY got my hair cut. It has been a long while since the last cut and color. I was way overdue for the haircut. Although the stylist left my hair a little too short, I am happy to have hair that I can do something with instead of crazy frizzed-out tangles.

My husband and I went on a tour of the SC Johnson headquarters in Racine, WI. This is just a 40 minute drive from home and I had never been there. This summer, they opened up the research tower to the public for the first time in fifty years. It does not exactly follow fire codes so they had to get special permission to allow tours of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed facility. Both the research tower and the administration building were fabulous examples of his amazingly forward-thinking architecture. We almost didn’t go on Wednesday, but we were both glad that we forced our lazy butts out of the house and went on this tour. I don’t have many pictures because the most interesting things were inside the buildings and pictures were prohibited there.

I did a lot of reading and writing this week. I read some amazing books and I am so happy to have the time to really savor some great literature. I also am working on making writing a daily habit.

I went to an inservice on Friday. It was very difficult to get out of bed to go there. However, I am so happy about the fact that we will be using Infinite Campus this year. The information system we were using was such a dinosaur that the company didn’t provide support for it anymore! My district was waiting for Wisconsin to decide what the statewide system would be before purchasing a new one. It was so nice to work with a system that actually makes sense and will work with our standards-based grading. It will also be great to be using a web-based system. With our old dinosaur system, we had to log into a VPN server from home, if we could get it to work. Report cards and grade book entry will be sooooo much smoother!

My husband and I took the dog up to the beer garden in our park this week. My dog is really embarrassing to take anywhere because she wants to meet everyone and is very vocal about it. She cries and cries. We figured out that the way to get her to be quiet was to have some food on the table. That way, her intense energy is all focused on begging. Getting the dog to be quiet was a thing to celebrate.

After we were done eating, the dog went behind me to eye up the table back there where they were eating and feeding a baby. She definitely saw that this could be a good situation for a dog. At one point, she got extra excited and I looked to see what was happening. The baby was making faces at my dog and waving to her. It was so cute to see the dog and the baby excited about each other. The mother of the baby brought her over and it was so fun to see my dog interacting with her. She did such a good job. It was one of those hallmark moments that you wish you could record.

I started watching and catching up on this season of So You Think You Can Dance. It is so cool to see how these young people are so talented and have such good stories.

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments! Have a wonderful week!