So, how did Summer Invitational Institute 2007 go?  It was magical.  Teachers composed for their own purposes.  Teachers enjoyed reading and performing their texts for each other.  Teachers savored and applauded each other’s writing.  Teachers became writers.

Last night, in the basement of the Big Old Building, Kris, Susan and Melissa brought us to tears—for different reasons. 

Over filet mignon and mashed potatoes with Gouda (we were in Grand Rapids after all), we talked and laughed and processed our month together, mostly trying to seal our friendships in the face of our approaching goodbyes.  Between courses, we finished our read-around.  Some of us read from our published anthology, pieces that we had revised and revised after conferring with our small writing groups.  Others read new genres inspired by one teaching demonstration or another: sudden fiction, children’s stories, poetry that pauses to see details, episodic narratives.  We tried our hand at genres we have or may assign to students—or more likely now, invite them to try. 

This group of teachers wrote to make sense of childhood traumas and losses, of nostalgia for adolescence, of classroom and district wide disappointments.  We wrote about our children, putting our wonder with them into words, making connections between our care for the few at home and the many at school.  We wrote to celebrate those whom we love.  We wrote to entertain, to highlight the witticisms and blunders of each Institute day. 

We told stories that made us laugh until we cried and cry until we needed laughter to help us deal.  Thanks everybody—Kris, Susan, Melissa, Abby, Nancy, Lisa, Brandy, Jen, Cheri, Jodi, Jill, Kellie, Carla, Denise, Susan, Kari, and Tony—for a month of laughter, learning, and word play.

We are all writers.