Blog

March 5, 2024

American Embassy School – New Delhi

The American Embassy School in New Delhi walks the walk. Enriched by Diversity is not just a slogan on the high school building it’s interwoven within the fabric of the school. We had a wonderful two weeks working with teachers and students from pre-K through 12th grade. Librarians extraordinaire, Dr. Chris Fazenbaker and Wendy Guyer […]

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December 10, 2023

We will never work overseas again!

We’ll never work overseas again! That was our fear mid 2020 during our Covid sabbatical but thankfully, we are back on the road again meeting up with old and new friends. The overseas gigs began trickling in last year – Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan gave us a taste of our former road warrior lifestyle […]

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May 9, 2020

Read, Write, Speak it – an introduction

So, Sara and I have been working on an iteration of this project for almost a decade. We are going to be rolling out this resource this Fall. Nearly 200 lessons ready with slides to project and teacher notes to guide instruction utilizing poetry, prose, mentor texts, language lessons, standards based, while still being fun […]

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April 30, 2020

What we’re doing while we stay at home…

Well – our spring was cancelled. We will sorely miss all the places and faces we were looking forward to seeing. But, as we stay home as we try to flatten the curve Sara and I are not resting. We’re busy at work making face masks . Sara performed an autopsy on a mask we […]

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February 24, 2020

OCTELA 2020

OH – IO! Sara and I try to make the Ohio Council of Teachers of English language Arts (OCTELA) whenever we can. We’ve probably attended a just under a dozen or so times the last 20 years – international travel often takes us far away but this year we were able to make it. I […]

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February 20, 2020

Osborne Andrews Academy

4.0 GPAs are a dime a dozen. Okay that’s a little inflammatory but the sentiment holds true. The admission process for colleges and universities has become tougher and tougher. With AP and IB classes and the extra emphasis toward college ready students the tip top of the crop is getting more and more crowded. So, […]

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February 12, 2020

Reading Recovery 2020

Reading Recovery teachers are hard core. Chatting with the folks around the Scholastic booth we learned that that the reps were very impressed with the engagement, questions and expertise of the attendees at the 2020 Reading Recovery National Conference. Sara and I have been fans for years, since even before presenting at the World Literacy […]

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February 7, 2020

Eastern Middle School 2020 edition

Sara and I have been visiting Eastern Middle School in Old Greenwich, Connecticut for over a dozen years in a row now. They are easily our most visited school.   Why? Because we love them, and they love us.  We’ve seen these sixth-grade teachers through baby booms, blizzards, missed flights… you name it we’ve seen […]

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January 26, 2020

Back in the Saddle

It’s been way too long since we’ve posted an update here. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy – we have. I promise to get back on track so consider this an ice breaker to get things rolling again. Since we last spoke Sara and I have been all over the country – from the […]

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September 5, 2019

Hilliard Heritage Middle School

Why You Matter. That was the theme of the day when Sara and I visited Heritage Middle School as our first school visit of the season. This 7th and 8th grade building had a multi-faceted approach to invite the students to explore what made each of them unique and important. They invited Sara and me […]

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Testimonials

“Sara and Michael bring infectious energy and joy leavened with deep knowledge of best practices in literacy to their work with children and teachers.” Ellin Keene – Author of Mosaic of Thought and The Teacher You Want to Be
“Sara and Michael bring magic, and a contagious love of words to both students and teachers alike!” Georgia Heard - Author of Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School More testimonials...