Updates!

(This Mom Loves email subscribers – be sure to read to the end!)

When I launched this site in 2010, blogging was all the rage. Over time, it has lost some steam (and/or I have lol) and I find myself “microblogging” on my social media accounts much more often instead. For example, if you’ve been missing my recommended reading lists, you can still find them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – but even those are less regular (biannually instead of monthly) since most of the reading I do these days is work-related, specifically on the topic of literacy! If you’re looking for personal highlights (my daughters are now 16 and 18!) then Instagram and Facebook are also the places to check, while my Twitter feed is much more education-heavy. Be sure to say hello wherever you follow me!

Some professional highlights from the past year (outside of teaching my wonderful kindergarten students of course!) have been:

• providing a keynote at the Alaska Science of Reading Symposium (my Dad made the trip to Anchorage with me which was pretty special)
• presenting at IDA Ontario’s Literacy & Learning Conference again with my friends Leigh Fettes and Nellie Caruso
• sharing remarks and responding to press at the Ministry of Education’s announcement of revisions to the Ontario kindergarten program
• setting up my new home office
• a trip to Florida to visit UFLI and FSU, and
• training more than 500 of my school board colleagues in the use of the Acadience screener!

Another huge highlight: our podcast! (“Our” includes my incredible coproducer Una Malcolm.) Season 3 of IDA Ontario’s Reading Road Trip podcast is out now – the season premiere was a live-audience recording at LitLearn where I got to interview the brilliant Dr. Anita Archer and Dr. Sonia Cabell (shown below.)

If you’re interested in education and you’re into podcasts, I encourage you to check out Reading Road Trip in any podcast app. Over the three seasons so far we’ve had some incredible guests with valuable information to share with educators, administrators, system leaders and also parents on a range of literacy-related topics. We’ve heard that our shows have been used for informal podcast club discussions as well as more formal staff meetings which is fantastic. We also absolutely love feedback from podcast listeners so please reach out here or via social media to let us know your takeaways from any of our episodes! It’s like Christmas every time I get a message from someone who appreciates the show.

I created a Literacy Portfolio page for this site which is a résumé of sorts for anyone who is interested in more details about the work I’ve been doing in this area over the past few years.

And…stay tuned for more exciting projects that are in the works!

Email subscribers: thanks for hanging around despite a lack of frequent content here on the blog. If you reply to the email that you received with this blog post, I’ll enter you into a draw to win a $25 gift card to your choice of store on giftcards.ca or giftcards.com! I’ll be making the draw on Friday, August 9th. Good luck!