NaNoWriMo 2011

Today is October 11 and October is nearly half way done. What does that mean? It means that National Novel Writing Month www.nanowrimo.org is just a few weeks away. That's pretty scary and exciting.

For the past three years I've participated (and finished) NaNoWriMo, a crazy idea started over 10 years ago by a bunch of college students who wanted to see if they could write a 50,000 word novel in a month. Crazy idea. But they did it and the idea grew and grew to the amazing worldwide phenomenon it is today.

My first year I wrote a novel called "Getting Centred". It ended up being several stories about these interconnected characters all woven together. It stated out okay but ended up kind of a mess. The second year was the best. I wrote a children's novel called "And the Tower Came Tumbling Down" with a little help and inspiration from the classes I was supply teaching for. I still enjoy reading this novel and am working on editing it with my writing group, but more about that later. Last year, since it was my first time with a full time teaching job during NaNo, I decided to do something "easier" and write a memoir piece about teaching. I managed to get my 50,000 words written but I didn't enjoy doing it as much. I love the unknown about writing fiction. I found with memoir, though I do like writing it from time to time, that there was no surprize. There was no trying to think of what was going to happen next or my characters telling me what they wanted to do because what I was writing had already happened. So I think I'm mainly going to stick to fiction this year.

Generally, October is my out-lining month. I do not write by the seat of my pants for NaNo. I outline, chapter by chapter what I would like to have happen and then I write it. But this year I've been very busy with school and focused on my new class, I haven't had a lot of time to think about what I would like to write this year.

Part of the problem is that with my new writing group I've ventured into thinking about becoming more serious about my writing. They've been helping me edit my children's novel and while reading it over again and again I've decided I still like it and I think it could be worthy of being published one day. That's kind of a frightening thought for me but also exciting. Up until now, writing has just been a hobby, but then I think, why not? Why couldn't I get published? I started looking into how authors get published. I read up on query letters and websites where they critique query letters. One thing that struck me is that it seems like in order to get a novel looked at, you need to have other works published. I've never been published, not in a literary magazine, not as part of a contest, not even on the internet, other than little bits of writing I used to post back in the Geocities days.

So it looks like if I want my novel to be taken seriously, I should first try to get some other stories published, problem being, I don't write many short stories. Even as a child I had trouble with keeping my ideas small enough to fit into anything smaller than a novella. I have written some short stories though and I know I'm capable of doing it.

This brings me back to my NaNo idea for this year. What I will try to do is write 50,000 words worth of short stories. I will try to out-line some ideas for the stories in October and then, hopefully, I'll have enough short stories when I'm done that some will be worth editing and sending off to different contests and magazines. I'm excited by this idea. I could be biting off way more than I can chew but the whole idea of NaNo is to push myself to do something I love to do.

Here's to another crazy November!

OT: Please Vote

School is coming along. Each day I'm getting to know my students better and we are coming to an understanding of our expectations and how to show respect to each other. It's slow going at times but I have so much support from the other teachers and principal and vice principal. They are awesome. I'll write more about this continuing journey another day.

But tonight I have a different story. My husband is in a band called the Jaclyn Reinhart Band. They are an amazing group of musicians who work so hard an practice in our basement once a week. I have seen them grow and develop as a group and I love all of them. My husband plays bass guitar for the band. They're an amazing group of people that are almost like another family. 

Every Fall there's a music festival, the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival in Fredericton. It's a pretty big deal for us. Fredericton is relatively small but once a year we attract people from all over the world to play music here. It is an amazing time. They have a competition called the Galaxie Rising Star competition, taking bands from New Brunswick to compete. There are three main parts to the competition, the on-line voting, going on now, the showcase show tomorrow (3-6pm in the Barracks Tent for anyone in the Fredericton area) where there will be 

judges as well as text voting at the show.

Even if you live far away, if you could spare a minute to vote, I would be very happy. All you need to do is go to this address http://www.galaxie.ca/en_CA/risingStar/futureEvents/Harvest+Jazz+%2526+Blues+Festival/167 sign-up with an e-mail address (they don't need your name or anything, just your e-mail address to confirm you're only voting once per address) and then vote. Jaclyn Reinhart Band is the only band in the competition with women in it, and they're amazing musicians. 

If you'd like to check out their music first, my youtube channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/jcchssn?feature=mhee where I post the videos I take of some of their shows. 

This one is one of my new favourites,

Please vote. Voting is done at 12PM Atlantic time.

First week with students

It seems like only yesterday I wrote about the night before the first day of school, and here it is, the end of the first week. It went by so very fast. There were some big challenges this week as well as some big wonderful moments. I'd love to list off all of the highlights but to be honest, there is just too much to talk about so I'll give a few of the big ones.

First off, my classroom does seem crowded with 25 students in it. It's amazing to think that there are classes with more students than that in other schools. In our school that's a very large class. I have three students who are new to our school. All three are lovely and are starting to make connections with their classmates and with me. I'm so happy to see that they're starting to put their hands up during discussion and letting their voices be heard.

We spent much of this week talking about and practicing our classroom and school expectations. I've had to remind the class a few times that, because there are so many of them, that the expectations for independent work and being mindful of others is much greater. I'm the only adult in the room and getting around to all 25 of them to help them just isn't possible. I make an effort to get around as much as I can though. The discussions and practices of routines is helping. The first day was more of a struggle. After that, as we worked through what needed to be done, our days have improved greatly.

One of our big routines that the students love is read to self. I took the idea from The Daily 5. We build up our stamina for silent reading. So rather than saying we're going to read for 20 minutes, I get everyone settled and then I start the timer. Once I see that they're no longer focused, I stop the timer and we graph how we do throughout the month. I let them sit where they want. As you can see from this picture, there are a few in the closet, one at a desk and one lying on the desktops. A few chose to lie down on the desks the first day, then they discovered it was uncomfortable and so the novelty of that has worn off.

On the first day, we managed 5 seconds after three tries. I think they were just too excited about being back and were having trouble focusing on anything. But we worked on putting the books in the right places and being gentle with them and finding spots, what silent reading should look and sound like, all of those good routines that they were able to show again the rest of the week. On Wednesday they read for 3 minutes. Now keep in mind that these are students who do not have very strong reading skills in French yet. So even though they are in grade 5, their ability to read in French at this point is at about a Kindergarten or Pre-K level. This is more about having the experience of looking at the books, reading the pictures, making some connections between the words and the pictures and some of the "mots d'amis" the words that are almost identical or the same in French and English. So 3 minutes on the second day was wonderful.

The third day they got 11 minutes. I was so proud of them I nearly cried. You could have heard a pin drop in the classroom. They were focused. All I could hear was pages turning. Occasionally, someone would whisper quietly to a neighbour. Then I would hear the neighbour quietly ask the whisperer to be quiet. It was beautiful.  Today they were tired and having trouble focusing again, but we did get 9 solid minutes in. I'm so proud of their progress.

This weekend I will try to write more about my new endeavors to get away from the carrot and stick methods of teaching. It's very challenging and deserves its own post.


This is off-topic for my blog, but I am so excited about it that I feel the need to share. My husband's band is in a competition called the Galaxie Rising Star. It's a showcase of artists from New Brunswick and takes place during our big music festival next week, the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival that happens each September. Former winners of this contest have gone on to do amazing things. My husband plays bass in the Jaclyn Reinhart Band and, even though I'm biased, I really do think they are amazing and talented. If you're in Fredericton, they are playing on Friday, September 16th in the Barracks Tent. It's a free show starting at 3pm and if they win they get to play on Saturday night.

But even if you're not in Fredericton, if you could please vote for them in the on-line competition they would be so grateful. all you need to do is go to Galaxie Rising Star, sign up (they just need your e-mail to make sure you only vote once), check out the six bands and then vote for the Jaclyn Reinhart Band. They're doing well in the competition but would love to get some more votes. Their website has a lot of videos that I've shot for them at different shows that they've done as well.

I hope everyone has a lovely and relaxing weekend.