And With a 12-Hour Day, The @CWPFairfield Summer Institute Teachers are Now Oriented

So Stefania, my undergraduate worker, and I worked miracles today because many items arrived in preparation for Young Adult Literacy Labs and the teacher institute....well, yesterday. The funniest of  the items that arrived were from our friend who makes our stickers who sent a text that said, "Meet me at exit 42 at 1 p.m. or else you won't get your stickers until next week?"

Ransom?

No. He's busy too and they arrived (and we picked them up at exit 42 of the Merritt). I told him, "I hope the cops aren't seeing this exchange."

They look great on the writers' notebooks and coordinate all the programs that we're running.

Our hats, too, also arrived - something new and different from t-shirts.

And then there are the 400 or so books that we've ordered for sports writers, novelists, political-minded youth, lil' kids with big imaginations, and and teacher leaders.

Speaking of teacher leaders, last night, we fed and oriented our summer crew who are setting out to polish their own writing portfolios and who will be creating their own demonstrations and workshops to bring back to their schools. We unpacked boxes, assembled over 200 stickers for our summer participants, ordered food, made to-do lists and prepared to welcome our first groups of young writers on Monday morning.

The University will only be open 1/2 day tomorrow and I'll be there putting the final touches on the works ahead (including the contracts for the 17 teachers who will be teaching for us this summer).

So much love, so much joy, and so much need for more sleep. Phew.