Slice of Life: Four Presentations in the Days Ahead

(This is for the Slice of Life challenge, hosted by Two Writing Teachers. We write on Tuesdays about the small moments in the larger perspective … or is that the larger perspective in the smaller moments? You write, too.)

In the next two weeks, I am facilitating or co-facilitating four different workshops at three different places, and while I am making good progress, I still feel a bit scattered, thinking through all of the tasks I have to do to get it all into place.

October Presentations

This weekend, my Write Out colleague Bethany Silva and I are doing an online presentation for the 4TDW (teachers teaching teachers about technology and digital writing), and we used Zoom this weekend to finalize most of the planning. Online presentations like this are tricky because you want to engage the audience and encourage them to visit resources, but then you need to have them all come back to the platform. The virtual conference is free, by the way, and our session on Write Out (an initiative between the National Writing Project and the National Park Service) is on Saturday, from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

A week from today, meanwhile, I am gathering with some grade 3-6 colleagues in our school district, as I have been asked to lead a Professional Learning Community around Project-Based Learning. I have a bunch of activities and activators all set up, but there is limited time, and we will meet only one more time this year. Yeah, not really a PLC. More like a PBL teaser, but I’ll do my best to get conversations started and underway.

Finally, two other presentations take place a week later at our Western Massachusetts Writing Project’s annual fall conference. on October 13 at UMass Amherst. There, I am doing another version of the Write Out workshop (but this time, more localized, around our work with the Springfield Armory National Historic Site) as well as a workshop about digital annotation and the Writing Our Civic Futures project from Educator Innovator. My aim is to get us annotating a text (by Linda Christensen) on paper (first, solo, and then as a workshop), then together, online, joining the crowd annotation project.

Phew. October just started, and it already seems busy.

Peace (sharing it),
Kevin

7 Comments
  1. WOW! You are busy and these presentations all sound great! I can’t wait to hear how everything goes. Hearing about your presentation at UMass makes me wish I was back home living in Springfield again. Lucky teachers who get to work with you!

  2. Your passion for writing is pushing you into wonderful opportunities! I hope your presentations go off without a hitch, and inspire your participants to try new things in their own classrooms. Will your Saturday presentation be archived?

  3. That’s an amazing lineup of activities you are engaging in this month. How do you manage to do it all, AND teach every day! I really wish I could attend one of your presentations in person. That said, I can’t make this Saturday because I’ll be traveling north with my daughter to the Hudson Valley. I’ll have to settle for hearing about them afterwards from you on SOL. Please do let us know how they turn out!

  4. As others have said – wow, you are BUSY! I am wondering and hoping that slicing about all you have coming up helped settle and maybe focus your mind! I can only imagine how lucky your audiences will be! Keep us posted on how it all goes! Thanks for sharing all that you are doing via this slice! AND – good luck!

  5. I’m glad you get to relax occasionally with slices and soothing comments because your schedule this month seems anything but relaxing. More like invigorating, really. Have fun!

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