Exciting News! I will be presenting with my principal Jane Shartzer at the NESA Fall Leadership Conference in Katmandu, Nepal Oct. 21-23. Check out info about our presentation below.

NY, NY! I’m so happy to be in the Big Apple! Giving ourselves a day to just BE in NYC, my husband, our daughter and I caught the new hit musical Memphis yesterday. It was so much fun! We walked a thousand (according to a 9-year old) blocks to get there from our hotel, pushed through people to get to the cheap(er) ticket queue, then killed 3 hours before the matinee shopping in Macy’s on 7th Ave. A wonderful Sunday afternoon in the big city!

This morning I woke up fully thinking about the real reason I’m here: Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Summer Writing Institute, which starts tomorrow at Columbia University. I’m part of the Literacy Coach/Principal group throughout the conference. I will be able to sit in on sessions for K-2 and 3-5 teachers at different points during each day, but my focus will be on the role of the coach. (I’ll be honest, I have some mixed feelings about this. I’m a teacher first, and I feel like I might be missing out being in this “other” group. We’ll see…)

Thinking ahead, these are some questions I have now, which I hope will be answered this week. (Of course, I’m probably going to answer questions I don’t even know I have yet. I’ll add those as they come up.)

1. How can “smaller” schools (I’m thinking about independent schools like International schools and those without the benefit of district-style planing and professional development) build a sustainable workshop model? (Beyond the obvious- hire people who know how to do it. How often does that actually work out?)
2. What would a plan for developing teacher capacity across multiple years look like?
3. How can you move a staff forward, while still planning for teacher turn-over?
4. How can parents be given information/training about workshop which will make them confident in the model?
5. How can teachers who are more comfortable with top-down rather than side-by-side models of instruction be transitioned into this kind of teaching?

Rereading these questions, I realize one BIG idea I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: connecting international schools.

As a member of this community, one who will move from school to school and country to country throughout my career, I want to STOP recreating the wheel. There are going to be teachers at this conference from my schools- international schools- from all over the world. With the internet, with regional conferences (NESA, EARCOS, ECIS) and international conferences like TCRWP, we CAN come together like never before. Why don’t we?

In 5 days we are heading to the US for our summer vacation. Hitting the bookstores in the states is something my daughter Sydney (who is 9) and I always do together. This year we’ve had some practice as Abu Dhabi has a surprising number of good bookstores. (Never cheap though.) Then, when we arrive at our summer home in Wyoming, we dust off the library cards and stock up on returnable books.

Last night, Sydney was talking about the books she wanted to read and I realized they were all from the same series! It was like a warning bell went off in my head- “Time to get a new reading diet in front of this kid!” But where to start?

One of my favorite children’s book blogs is The PlanetEsme Plan: The Best New Children’s Books From Esme’s Shelf. Esme writes great reviews and showcases books I find I’m truly interested in reading. I’m adding Esme’s blog to my daughter’s igoogle page so she can get RSS feeds about new books. (Tech integration right?!)

I’m hoping with a little help from the net I can interest Syd in some new titles this summer.

(Incidentally, I met Esme years ago when I was working at the Mailbox magazing in NC. She had written her first book Educating Esme about her first year teaching at an inner-city school. It is an interesting story, one I remember thinking non-educators needed to read!)

During my early years as a teacher in the US, I spent weeks over the summer going through my classroom, organizing and setting up. Now however, as we plan to get on the plane the evening school is out and not return until the day before we are to report for work, I am trying to do all of that “set up” now. That said, I do think I’m getting better at keeping the clutter to a minimum.

Yesterday, I went through all of the files I’ve had sitting in the cabinet for the past 2 years. Some are mine, but most were here when I arrived. I decided that I would conduct a massive “purge” of materials I haven’t used in 2 years. Guess what? That cabinet full of files? Now, 3 of the 4 drawers are empty!

At the end of the week I will put up a short video clip showing my literacy room. It is amazing how far things have come in such a short span of time at this school!

I think it is important to point out that this blog is mainly aimed at International School Educators. The reason is simple: We need each other.

Six months ago I moved from Shanghai American School (Pudong Campus) to the American Community School of Abu Dhabi in the UAE. This wasn’t my first international move- and it certainly won’t be my last. However, arriving here and realizing that this school was wrestling with some of the same challenges we were dealing with in Shanghai was an eye-opener.

Here’s my thought then: if we are all on the same page- why not split up the problems? You know- I’ll do the odd numbers and you do the even? Then if we brought lots of international schools into the mix and they all shared and collaborated and learned and grew…

So, if you want to take away (or add to) any ideas seen here- please do so. In fact, I hope you do. The more we work together, the more we impact the children that move among our international school community.  The more we work together, the more we impact the teachers who move across and among international schools every day.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know you were headed where they were using the wheels you know well rather than trying to recreate them?

Photo Credit: www.lclark.edu/…/objects/idea_bulb.jpg