Monday, June 22, 2009

Dynamic Duos!

I promise that I have not forgotten to write about Teaching with Intention (WOW-LOVE IT!) or Ann Marie, Mary Lee, or Cathy-some wonderful and inspirational women! I will return to that VERY soon!

In the meantime...

This week I am attending a Reading Institute with a staff developer (Alison Porcelli) from the Teacher's College in Milan, Michigan. It is a great conference, very intense-as these things often can be. I am neglecting homework for tonight to do this quick post-oops! I have had this thought on my mind and I feel the need to express this to all of my new "blog" friends. Be warned...this is a sappy post :)!

I have been thinking a great deal about the influential people in my life, and there are many! As I have developed into the teacher and person that I am today and as I continue to grow and learn and reinvent myself I realize that I am not an island.

I am first a mother to three of the most adorable children you have encountered! I am so thankful to have a thoughtful, caring, and supportive husband. He is a wonderful dad to our children and a husband who listens, challenges, and encourages me daily.

I also have a "partner" at school. I currently job-share with an incredibly gifted teacher. We have been teaming for 2 years and we are about to enter our 3rd. I feel like we often share a brain. When we spent time together last summer, our husbands were a bit skeptical of the way we could finish sentences for one another. She has taught me so much as a teacher, friend, mother.... She is always open to trying new things and we are able to figure out these new ideas together. It is a beautiful partnership and one that I hope continues for many years.

This week I have the opportunity to share some time with my best friend. She is a teacher in a neighboring district. She quickly took me under her wing during my student teaching experience and has been a mentor and friend ever since. She is so knowledgeable and she is always learning more and more. She shares her thoughts and ideas with me encouraging me to take risks. When I was coming back to teaching after a year off, she was the first one I called. She taught me the workshop approach and set me on the path to creating workshops in our classroom. The following year, with our Writer's Workshops and Reader's Workshops up and running, we attended conferences together and talked non-stop all summer about the changes we would make the following year, planning units of study, management, environment, organization, etc... In our personal lives, she has been a shoulder to cry on during one of the darkest times in my life and she was there on some of the brightest days-visiting when each of my children was born. She is a friend like no other.

So when I think about influential pairs or duos like Fountas and Pinnell, Sibberson and Szumasiak, Laverne and Shirley.... I think about the people in my life and the duos we create! They are pretty dynamic, if I do say so myself!

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