My Western Sky

     This is the piece that I submitted to the anthology for the 2012 Abydos Writing Institute. For eight summers, I have had the privilege and pleasure of being one of the co-trainers for this life-changing course. The core philosophy of Abydos (formerly the New Jersey Writing Project in Texas) is that as teachers of writing, we must be writers ourselves. Therefore, we must read a lot and write a lot. I have the reading part down, but I still struggle with making time for writing in my daily life. (That is one of the reasons that I started this blog--for accountability in my reading AND writing life.)       A few weeks ago, I traveled to Fredericksburg with my two best friends, and that trip inspired this writing. Even though it will be published in the anthology, I wanted this memory to be posted on my blog because my friendship with Emily and Tracie is a huge part of the person that I am today.  On a front porch in the Texas Hi...

As a school librarian, I have been challenging my students to read AT LEAST FIVE books this summer so that their brains won't turn to mush. Research shows that students who do not read over the summer will return to school behind the reading level that they reached at the end of the previous school year; this is known as the "summer slide." It's time to practice what I preach and throw down a summer reading challenge for my own family. Rather than focus on quantity of books, I want our focus to be on making TIME to read. The biggest complaint that I hear from people (kids AND adults) is "I don't have time to read." Well, actually, you do. The truth is that we don't always MAKE time to read, so that's the challenge to the Bailey family: Make time to read EVERY DAY! Here's our Challenge: We will read for at least 30 minutes each day. Time of day does not matter, and three of our five members of the family must be present for it to ...