Last Thursday I visited a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's been on "the school visit calendar" for 6 months, but between you and me, I wasn't sure I'd make it because . . .
I've been wanting to translate my old slide show into a Power Point for ages, but WOW, it's been a TON of work. First I got my slides produced digitally and they turned out terrible. Grainy and fuzzy so I photo-shopped about 30 of them and then had to re-shoot about 25 pictures for a total of 55 slides. Plus add Text Slides with graphics and fun fonts and colors and borders and all that good stuff.
SO MUCH WORK it's not even funny. Weeks of work - and I had help from my family, too! The ones who've taken PP classes. Without them I would have totally sunk into despair.
I was up until 11:00 the night before finishing. Went to bed. Woke up at 2:30 and didn't sleep the rest of the night worrying that everything was in order. Left for school the next morning by 7:30 a.m.
I made it through and it all turned out great! The kids were wonderful.
The entire 7th grade had read THE LAST SNAKE RUNNER and had a field trip to Acoma Pueblo the previous week so they were PSYCHED to meet me and see all my old-time ancient pictures of snake runners and hear the stories of how that book came to be written. Which is fairly interesting if I do say so myself because I had help from an Acoma man from 1906 named Selfon. Except he's dead and we've never actually met.
The second workshop I do is a hands-on writing workshop called "The Creative Diary". WHICH WORKS BEAUTIFULLY. We talk about Imagination in all aspects of life and I then I take them on an Imagination Journey. At the end of one hour they have TWO stories written and ready to be critiqued and polished. It's awesome!
Here are some pics!
Talking about Imagination and showing off a motorized mouse my hubby made
when he was a kid out of wire and pliers.
Reading their stories out loud to the group. Boy, everyone wanted a turn!
Writing, writing, writing!!! Everybody went crazy scribbling!
Me and Melanie Templet, Librarian Extraordinaire!!!
She and I talk a mile a minute when we get together!
(My hair was doing weird things here . . . )
Me in the beautiful library. Need to get some shoes that are not
so "old lady". They're comfy though.
Melanie's office. This sign suits her personality perfectly.
SO MUCH WORK it's not even funny. Weeks of work - and I had help from my family, too! The ones who've taken PP classes. Without them I would have totally sunk into despair.
I was up until 11:00 the night before finishing. Went to bed. Woke up at 2:30 and didn't sleep the rest of the night worrying that everything was in order. Left for school the next morning by 7:30 a.m.
I made it through and it all turned out great! The kids were wonderful.
The entire 7th grade had read THE LAST SNAKE RUNNER and had a field trip to Acoma Pueblo the previous week so they were PSYCHED to meet me and see all my old-time ancient pictures of snake runners and hear the stories of how that book came to be written. Which is fairly interesting if I do say so myself because I had help from an Acoma man from 1906 named Selfon. Except he's dead and we've never actually met.
The second workshop I do is a hands-on writing workshop called "The Creative Diary". WHICH WORKS BEAUTIFULLY. We talk about Imagination in all aspects of life and I then I take them on an Imagination Journey. At the end of one hour they have TWO stories written and ready to be critiqued and polished. It's awesome!
Here are some pics!
Talking about Imagination and showing off a motorized mouse my hubby made
when he was a kid out of wire and pliers.
Reading their stories out loud to the group. Boy, everyone wanted a turn!
Writing, writing, writing!!! Everybody went crazy scribbling!
Me and Melanie Templet, Librarian Extraordinaire!!!
She and I talk a mile a minute when we get together!
(My hair was doing weird things here . . . )
Me in the beautiful library. Need to get some shoes that are not
so "old lady". They're comfy though.
Melanie's office. This sign suits her personality perfectly.
1 comment:
And you're in awe of me?? Dude, I think you have that completely backward! I mean, your bio is better than my whole life. And then a school visit on top of that.
Yeah, I'll be the one cowering at Storymakers. :)
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