14 Ways to Model Literacy

As we all know so well, children don’t just learn the lessons we plan to teach them. They learn by what we model for them. So if we want kids to be capable readers and writers, we have to do more than help them learn to read and write. We have to model literacy as aContinue reading “14 Ways to Model Literacy”

Pretty Beautiful

“It’s so pretty! Wow, it’s so beautiful! Look at that, it’s so pretty! Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, PRETTY!!!” That was me, age ten, hiking with my family at Mt. Rainier. “It’s just so beautiful. Oh wow, it’s so pretty!” This went on for a long time. Everyone got very tired of my inarticulate gushing. That’sContinue reading “Pretty Beautiful”

In Defense of Boredom

It’s important to have unstructured time. It’s important to have time to daydream, to wander, to tinker, to putz. It’s important to get bored. That’s right. Bored. As I understand it, boredom is a necessary blankness that makes space for truly awesome ideas. “Only boring people get bored,” my mom used to say when weContinue reading “In Defense of Boredom”