Currently Celebrating

This has been a week of celebrations after a long four days of technical difficulties that taught me a lesson. If I but believe, positive possibilities can be found. From the ashes of a black hole of technical difficulties, rose the following celebrations.

On February 29, 2016, I completed Laura Shovan's Found Object Poem Project: twenty-nine poems written during February. I was recognized along with fellow bloggers/poets, Linda Baie, Jessica Bigi, Donna White, and Charles Waters.  

I started writing a series of posts on March 1, 2016 for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge: Clearing A Path. The first post can be accessed here. 

During the week, the Apple Creative Team assisted me in finalizing my local literacy council's newsletter, New & Views, that sports a new look on some of its pages. Digital photos and tweets are interspersed throughout. Of course, any new endeavor that is heavy with digital photos is hard to pass through many school district firewalls so an alternative plan was created and by Thursday night a solution found. This issue of the newsletter and others will reside on the lilac.ws website in a member only section.

An article that my team previously wrote for New York State's English Council's journal, The Record, was reprinted by Iste's Professional Learning Network in their Literacy Special Interest Journal Issue #5. The article, "Engage Me! Building Family connections Through Digital Storytelling written by Blanca Duarte, Toni Kinnear, Carol Varsalona, and Kris Yturraspe can be accessed here.

On Friday, I introduced the multi-talented award-winning author, Andrea Davis Pinkney, graciously sponsored by Scholastic, Inc., at the LILAC/NRC Spring Conference luncheon workshop that was held on Long Island. The day was filled with many memorable moments and great learning. You can see tweets from the conference on Twitter under #lilac16, @LILangArtsCoun, and#elanetwork. 

Needless to say after a long week of literary tasks and accomplishments, I came home and fell asleep.

Today after a very relaxing yoga session, I sat down to compose this blog for Ruth Ayres' Celebrate This Week, a site where positivity can always be found. Access the site here to read the beautiful post Ruth wrote greeting all bloggers. Many other bloggers are writing as part of the weekly tradition. Some of these bloggers are also slicers. 

This post, with a lesson learned and current celebrations, is also being offered for Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life. It marks the fifth one of the Clearing a Path series for the March SOLSC challenge. Please visit the site here to read the various slices for today.