CELEBRATE This Week: LXVII

I'm glad you are here to celebrate! Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link. Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.

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One.
Did you meet Kate this week?

We spent a little while deciding on her name. Earlier in the day, I said to a friend, "Maybe we should name her something we need to hear all of the time." I considered Beatrice Pleasant -- B. Pleasant. I really loved Story, until Sam said, "Shouldn't we name her after our favorite authors?"

It was unanimous -- Kate became her name...after Kate Messner and Kate Dicamillo, our favorite authors.

Before bed, we printed pictures of Kate for the kids to take to school. Sam showed me the back of his photo.

"We gave her a middle name," he said.

"Who gave her a middle name?" I asked.

"We did. The kids. We talked about it and decided her name is Kate Faith Ayres."

I didn't say anything, just stared at him, wondering how this young boy has so much wisdom.

"It's a good name, isn't it, Mom?"

I nodded. "Yes, it's a good name."

And a reminder to me that not only does story matter, but so does faith. I have a feeling that Kate will be teaching me a lot about faith.

Two.
This Sunday at 8 pm (Eastern). Join us with Mark Levine as we talk about writing across content areas.

(Three. I blogged every day this week.)

Share your celebrations and ask a friend to join us!

Believe in Them

Sometimes the grind of parenting a child with a hard history gets to me. Sometimes I'm tattered teaching a child how to give and accept love. Sometimes I'm worn out fighting the same battle over the same boundary for 600 straight days.

And then someone says something like, "Wow, I just can't imagine becoming a mom the way you did."

On a day with grace, I'm able to seal my sharp tongue behind my lips.

Sometimes affirmation follows. It sounds like this, "I admire the way you see who they are made to be rather than who they are right now."

My knotted heart begins to untwist. Even if I get nothing else right as a mother, the only thing I really need to do is believe in them.

It is this simple. I believe in them.

A few weeks ago I was meeting with a team of teachers, talking about the possibilities ahead for their young writers. They were quick to tell me all of the things their students couldn't do.

It's easy to be tattered at the beginning of the school year by all our students aren't doing as writers. We remember the mature June writers who left a few months ago. Sometimes we get worn out fighting the same battles over conventions or writing process for years in a row.

So I said, "I admire the way you take students who don't do this and won't do that and transform them into independent writers with quirky stories and big voices by the end of the school year."

The teachers sat a little taller and smiled. "We do that, don't we?"

Yes. We do that, because we believe our students can.

Just like parenting, the one thing we must get right as teachers of writers is to believe in them.

Please plan on joining Christy Rush-Levine and me for the #TandCWriters Twitter chat on Sunday (9/7) at 8:00 pm. We will be talking about all of the ways we prevent our belief in student writers from becoming worn and tattered. Naturally celebration will weave throughout this conversation, but so will formative assessment, inspiring books, and good ol' grit. I hope you will join us!

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