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Channel: Annie Campbell – Write Now. Write Here.
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School: Still Working to Get a Good Idea Off the Ground

The story of the Wright Brothers is not a new one for me.  Our summer trips the to Outer Banks have included restless trips to the Wright Brothers Memorial– visits punctuated with sulky complaints of...

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Hope Sticks

You could smell hope in the newly sharpened pencils.  You could see it in the stacks and packs of blank notebook paper.   You could hear it in the spotless new shoes squeaking on the varnished 100 year...

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School Reform or Reform School?

The third grade Virginia Standards of Learning in Social Studies (Virginia’s version of the Common Core) define community as a place where people work, live, and play (3.10).  This definition is too...

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Word.

I am the daughter of a wonderful cook.  While other people were growing up on casseroles, I skipped home to Salad Nicoise and Gazpacho.   “We are having a Great Dinner From Life!” my mother would say....

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In the Grand “Schema” of Things

I wrote this five years ago, but I am reposting this in honor of  my beautiful sister, Thanksgiving, Family, and Reading. My sister and I can read each other’s minds. Really. On Thanksgiving the table...

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Another Chapter in Room 204

February was the month of love that we started celebrating in January.  January 15 to be exact.  Set Up is key.  This is true if  you are giving a party, telling a joke, or painting a house.   It is...

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Unwrapping December

Discover. Uncover. Reveal. Unwrap. This was the deliberate work of December in Room 204.   We  started with a stack of brown paper packages tied up with string. I had a master list of titles that...

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Homework or Home Wreck?

Not all good researchers are teachers, but all good teachers are researchers. We simply can’t help it.  We hypothesize. We look for trends. We make connections. We develop questions and we seek...

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In the Shade of the Miracle Tree

Throughout my career, I have stood sentinel on the line between church and state. Perhaps you imagine that line as a dividing line between people of different religions—or perhaps that line evokes an...

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Stop and Say Hello

Thirty-seven years ago I became a teacher. I became a teacher because I was passionate about peace and justice and I wanted to make the world a better place. It was the right decision and I grateful...

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Learning Joy

I know that a lot of learning takes place in Room 204; the children learn from me, and I learn from them. These twenty-five students are twenty-five teachers. We teach each other and, as a result, I...

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Love’s Signature

Is there room for a eulogy on a teaching blog?  In this case, I think there is.  I learned so much about writing and living and loving and teaching from my sister.  I have written about her on this...

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Who is Your Inner Editor?

If you write, I am pretty sure you have one.  And if you don’t  write, I know you do– and I know they’ve had the last word.  So far.   Some people call them inner critics.  I have two and they have...

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Don’t Forget to Look

My memory is stored in touch, sound, sight, smell, and story. The places I lived and visited as a child are working stage sets for the truth-story mix that fuses my Once with the unfolding Now. That...

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I Can See Clearly Now

Last February, just days after my sister’s memorial service, I noticed a shadow falling across my line of vision like a curtain. My poetic friends mused about the timing. Yes, I was living in the...

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October Truth

My first real teaching interview was in Stafford County, Virginia.  It was still rural then and there were only a handful of elementary schools. Everyone knew that if you were from Emporia you would...

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A Little School of Citizenship

I became loosely aware of politics in the third grade. President Johnson came to our church. And another time his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, came. I stepped forward to say good morning and that...

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The Gift of Silence

What is the gift that children want and cannot give themselves? My third graders are ready with the answer. Silence. This is a secret most children have not yet named for themselves. Silence is a gift...

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Cinderella and the Underground Railroad

This week I announced that we were going on a field trip that did not require signed permission forms. We were going on an imaginary field trip that would require courage, open minds, and a willingness...

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Living the Questions with Children

“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke “What do you know to be true?” This spacious question...

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