Pure Manaʻo

It's the first week of school in Hawaii. Have you been reading to your kids? I saw a post on Martha Stewart Living that listed favorite back to school books so I decided to make a list of my own. Please add on. These are children's books meant for all grade levels (everyone deserves to be read to), with an emphasis on nurturing writers. Harold and the Purple Crayon  has been around for more than 50 years, but the power of a pen - or in this case a purple crayon - still sticks with me. The dot  is a cute little book about a student who does not feel like an artist until her teacher "publishes" her art and has her own it by signing it. This recognition spurs her to do better and in the end she is able to mentor a child who also does not believe in his abilities.  Yes it's about art and not writing, but the students get it and it sets a good tone for writing expectations and the kind of environment they can expect to work in. These two books by Doreen Croni...

Writers- teachers - lovers of the Big Island, there are 26 days to submit your pieces to the local gallery Na Leo o Hawaii http://galleryofwriting.org/galleries/88467 Gallery Title: Na Leo o Hawaii - Voices of the Big Island Gallery Description: This gallery will highlight the voices of the Big Island of Hawaii - from our kupuna (elders) to our keiki (children) - from the fishing village of Milolii to the town of Hawi. This gallery is about living on the Big Island. If you'd like an easy tutorial to submitting your work, please watch the how-to video below: How to submit your writing

In celebration of the October 20, 2009 National Day on Writing, and with the help of NCTE (National Council for Teachers of English), we now have our own local online gallery that is a part of the larger National Gallery. Na Leo o Hawaii , the voices of Hawaii, is for all of us who live on the Big Island. Please help me to get the word out to your colleagues, your students, your kupuna, and please submit your own piece. We are looking for any kind of writing about growing up or living on the Big Island - from eating ice shave at Kawate's, camping at Spencer Beach Park, shoveling snow into your pickup truck from Mauna Kea and making "ice men" in your front yard, or spending New Year's at grandma's house with all the cousins. More information and a flyer will come out when school starts, but the site is up and ready for your own submissions, as well as your family's submissions. Instructions: Go to http://galleryofwriting.org/galleries/88467 Create a login Add p...

Did you have a journal? Were you a writer as a child? Did you lose that passion when you grew up? How long has it been since you, as an adult, have written for yourself -- not because you had to, or it was expected of you, or you were grading papers, but for the pure joy of writing? Cathy Song, Hawaii's own "poet laureate" started writing at a young age. She says, "our family travels started my writing. I guess I was around nine years old when I decided I wanted to be the family chronicler." My own journey started with a Holly Hobie journal given to me when I was seven as a way for me to fill in the empty spaces left from my parents' divorce. My mother gave me a journal every year for the next 30 years. Are we nurturing that passion for writing in our students? Or are we killing that passion with our focus on writing for testing, formulaic writing, and the unhealthy balance of reading first? Choice Literacy, working off the text "Unlucky Arithmetic: Thi...

The National Council of Teachers of English, in preparation for their National Day of Writing, October 20, 2009 has opened up their Gallery of Writing and are now accepting submissions. The organizers invite letters, memoirs, lists, poems, podcasts, essays, short stories, instructions, reports, editorials, video clips, biographical sketches, speeches, invitations, hopes and dreams—writing that matters most to you. We're looking for a high school senior's college essay, a grandmother's letter to a beloved grandchild, a diary entry from a Desert Storm veteran, and a father's poem to a daughter on her wedding day. We want a toddler's first writing about her trip to the zoo and the firefighter's letter to the editor about the upcoming bond vote. Whatever the form and whoever the writer, the pieces you submit here, with their many voices, many visions, many stories, come together in the mosaic that is America writing. If you still have questions, go to the National ...

The Lehua Writing Project is a new site sponsored by the National Writing Project and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. For our first summer, we are offering the summer writing institute geared for educators teaching at the pre-13 level. Teachers will study successful classroom strategies for teaching writing, read and discuss research, and improve their knowledge of writing by writing themselves. Most importantly, like all national writing project courses, the strength of the program is in the ability of teachers to teach and learn from each other. The summer institute is a 3 graduate level course with tuition covered by grants. The course runs for 3 weeks, June 15 - July 2, 2009; 8:30 am - 4 pm in the lush Hamakua coast community of Honoka'a. The location is ideally centered on the big island. Scholarship and travel stipends are available, and if you are traveling to our island and are in need of accomodations assistance, please contact us. For more information and for an applic...