Twas the Night Before @LRA_LitResearch & All Through The House (This Madman Was Frantic). Phew!

Maybe I shouldn't have hosted Thanksgiving at my house, because I've been feeling like a turkey with my head cut off post-NCTE and NWP. Still, the work being done at the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University needs to be shared, so I am going to California to present on two years of work with Project Citizen and Ubuntu Academy, in relation with the Invitational Summer Institute.

I did the numbers. In the last two years this work has served 100 young people and 45 teachers in collaboration for best writing practices and writing.

It doesn't cover the 1,000s of kids and teachers who have gone through CWP's programs since 2014.

Last night, however, I had the last instructional class for content area literacy students and it was an absolute blast. I've done this "scripted" workshop before, but for some reason it totally resonated with the math, history, science, English and foreign language teachers I'm working with this year. I brought in special guest, Lawrence O'Toole Teacher Leadership Awardee Shaun Mitchell to help me with the presentation. In short, the educators got theatrical, whimsical and intellectual with multimodal communication and New Literacies, as we did a night of artistic and theatrical communication.

Shaun wrote late last night, "I needed that. I haven't heard a group of adults laugh or have fun as much as they did in your class in a very long time. It was rejuvenating."

(cough cough). I couldn't do it without him.

The skinny is that the graduate students performed a script that tapped their individual interests as we begin to head to the final laps of the semester (and yes, I always add 4th grade jokes to the script). We used the inspiration of Scholastic Arts Awards with the success of Shaun Mitchell's classroom to make a case for why drawing, sculpting, performance, writing, creativity, and painting belong in all subject areas.

I knew by the way that doors slammed in my hall that we were on to something. There was tremendous laughter and joy coming from room 101 of Canisius Hall and it reminded me of my teaching days in Kentucky when the humorous learning from my classroom created disturbance from more traditional folk.

Laughter? Joy? Happiness? Love? What does that have to do with literacy?

I'd argue everything.

So, I have a 5 a.m. departure time and I am looking forward to seeing a new part of the country. Of course, I wish I could pack Chitunga, Abu, Ali, Lossine, Kanyea, Akbaru, and others to come with me, but that's not the way this program rolls. Instead, I'm bringing part of the story of what we're doing in southern Connecticut and I am thrilled to offer the whacky, yet working, intellectual contributions being made.

Ah, but on the other side of the continent? We got this. It's all for my Syracuse University family. Inhale. Exhale. Happiness. That's what I'm after.