celebrate!

today the authors in the room 75 tribe shared their hard work at our writing celebration. i was so proud of my students because the variety of (student selected) writing genres made for an eclectic program: poems, fantasies, personal narratives, and even a biography! my students were super excited and their enthusiasm only intensified when our v.p. (mr. hammond) and our principal (mr. garcia) showed up. i knew they couldn't stay--they had other celebrations to attend--so i rearranged the program to showcase the work of one of my star authors, frida.

she was really interested in frida kahlo, so i encouraged her to write a biographical piece on her namesake. she took to it like a duck to water. over the course of 6 weeks, she revised, edited, augmented, diminished, and ultimately created an informative and entertaining piece of non-fiction. she titled it the dove, after kahlo's nickname.

just before our guests left, i made a terrible program decision: i let blanca share her piece on how her grandpa died and how sad she was that she never met him. big mistake. about three quarters of the way through her piece, she broke into sobs... i rushed to tell her she didn't have to continue, but--being the trooper she is--she continued reading through her sniffles and tears! i made a big deal about how brave and courageous she was to share her piece and how impressed i was with my tribe that they respected her enough not to laugh, (even though a few did)... but it was a bit awkward, and i back-peddled to find a lighter piece to try to restore some levity in the room. shoot! why did i start with ashley's funny poems?

all's well that ends well. we didn't have enough time to hear all the stories, (we had to have time to celebrate publishing with some junk food!) so i told them that we'd continue sharing the stories tomorrow...