The Proposal

A teacher who lives in another state emailed me this week.  She is putting together a proposal for LRA with 2 other teachers and invited me to join them. Kind of neat. My proposal will tie in to what I'm doing for my Heinemann book, so that should work out fine. The three other teachers are all getting their PhD's.  Their proposals are fascinating and quite complex. I'm revising a proposal I used when I was in graduate school.  The topic of the symposium has to do with exploring the tensions of critical literacy teaching.  I'm excited to be involved with this.  I'm not sure I feel too many tensions.  But tensions do come up from time to time.  Case in point. This week I read a book about Iqbal Masih to my class and to .5 of another class who were visiting for a short time.  You could have heard a pin drop when I was done.  I felt a bit of tension as I scanned their faces, but the kids didn't seem upset.  They were just taking in this sad and powerful story.  Finally one kid said, "Whoa" and the chatting erupted like Mt. St. Helens.  I loved that moment.  So, to wrap up, I'm working on a proposal today and then I'll tackle the report cards.  And then... THE OSCARS!