Stories with Sophie

Ruth Ayres  has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about  sharing your own celebrations . So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating.  Can't believe it's the 19th already!  Time is just flying by and I've been so  busy I haven't made time for writing. There have been lots of things to celebrate this month, I just haven't be very good at writing them down. First and foremost: FAMILY Last weekend the boys and their families came for the weekend (hence no blog post. Hard to write with kids on your lap:) We cooked together, played games, chased kids and dogs and enjoyed being together.  Always a good reminder that no matter what happens in our lives, FAMILY is there to help us through it. This weekend we are spending time with Greg's sister and her husband...the FAMILY we went to Hawaii with. It's good to get together and reminisce about our

  Ruth Ayres  has created a wonderful spot for sharing moments from your week. She even has  a page to give you all the details you need to know about  sharing your own celebrations . So head  on over and see what everyone else is celebrating.  Wow. What a fast week. I left at noon on Sunday with my competency based ed team, drove to Minneapolis, flew to Boston, and drove to Concord, NH. We finally got to our rooms  about midnight. UGH. We were up and at Pittsfield Middle High School by 8:00am. It was a short night, but well worth the trip. My celebrations this week, tend to revolve around this experience Sharing.   Over and over again we were impressed with the staff and their willingness to share everything with us. We spent two days with these people. We met with students, teachers and administrators. They shared how they went about changing to competency based ed. They stressed what they believed were the things that they felt were the most important in buildin

Howard-Winn CBE team with staff from Pittsfield I've spend two days with a group from my school visiting Pittsfield Middle High School in Pittsfield, New Hampshire. Learning Asking questions Thinking Thinking hard Questioning what I do and how I do it Questioning why I want to change--especially why I want to change at this point in my career. It would be so much easier to coast through my last five years. To rest on my "laurels". To embrace being the oldest female in the building and simply do what I've always done. But if you do what you've always done, you get what you've always gotten. And what I've gotten isn't good enough. It isn't good enough for me and it certainly isn't good enough for my kids. Years ago, I used to say to students that in my class I wanted them to learn to think. I would give them crossword puzzles, logic problems, boggle boards and then step back and let them struggle. I wouldn't help the