As soon as finals ended the first order of business was the annual Recognition Night for Connecticut Student Writers magazine. This year was successful, with a little more than 1,000 submissions, 150 students published or honored, and about 450 students, parents, and teachers in attendance at Jorgensen. Next year will be the 25th anniversary of the magazine. Wally Lamb has agreed to be the keynote speaker, and we are still waiting to hear if we have received a grant from Pitney-Bowes to help fund the event. Mark May 14 on your calendars!
From there we dove right into the Orientation for the 30th Invitational Summer Institute. We had a great bunch of teachers representing third grade through college—and we even had a science teacher. Three of my former undergraduate students attended, and two more former undergrads of mine attended the CWP-Fairfield’s Summer Institute, which is very rewarding to me.
No rest for the weary as a few days later we held an anniversary celebration for the CWP-Storrs, attended by 75 Teacher-Consultants, UConn faculty and grad students, local children’s authors, and a handful of teacher-friendly elected officials, including Susan Johnson, Greg Haddad, and Mae Flexer. Got a nice proclamation from Governor Malloy (had mixed feelings about that), a nice certificate from the legislature, a nice certificate from Senator Blumenthal, a letter from Representative Rosa DeLauro and another one from UConn President Susan Herbst. Representative Chris Murphy’s education aide Linda Forman actually flew up from DC to attend. She also accompanied me on a site visit to EO Smith High School to observe the Writing Center we helped establish there, and to observe Denise Abercrombie’s creative writing students.
At that point I switched hats and departed for Florence, Italy, where I organized and ran an international literature conference for the members of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and the Edgar Allan Poe Studies Association. We had great weather, great food, and 110 scholars from 19 different countries, including Brazil, Israel, India, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan. I even got to spend some time with friends and family while I was there. And I was elected to be the next president of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society, which sounds prestigious but I think will be less work than organizing an international conference.
Returned to the states just in time to run the Summer Institute, which went extremely well. My son and daughter attended four weeks of summer day camp while my wife took her own vacation, thanks to points on our credit card and the generosity of friends who let her stay with them. I ran around like a mad man playing single parent.
The Summer Institute ended July 20, and on July 23 I was driving a 19 foot U-Haul with faulty steering as we moved for the second time in ten months. Our new home is exactly 1.5 miles from the place we were renting. We have a two year lease, maybe an option to buy, poor cell phone service but a lovely wooded yard, and the kids get to stay in the same school district.
Once that was done, we were off to Maine to spend one week in a somewhat rustic cabin on a lake with two other educator couples and our collective brood of children—eight kids ranging from four to 14. Lots of swimming, bickering like siblings, and trips to Hannaford’s. Seems like every day ended with marshmallows over the fire pit, and then lots of alcohol after the kids were asleep. Between camp and occupational therapy, both of our kids are now swimming and biking independently, just in time for me to strap four bicycles onto the back of Amy’s car and pray they didn’t fall into the highway and cause a multi-car pile-up.
Back in Connecticut, it was just the mad rush to be prepared for the start of the school year. The CWP was awarded two SEED grants, one for Teacher Leadership and one for Professional Development in a High-Need School. We were honored with a literacy award by the New England Reading Association, and I have a new course to teach, one for freshmen and sophomores interested in becoming high school English teachers. Plenty of preparatory work to go around.
And then, on the first day of school for my kids, they were put on the wrong bus and I drove around town trying to locate them. Elsa thought it was a big adventure. And so the new year begins.
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